Dalton Scale 2025: Searching for the NFL’s QB Prime Meridian

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The Heed the Call Podcast

is the Dalton line of male desirability.

Yeah, I would say that checks out.

It works.

Absolute purgatory

of male desirability.

That is our show.

Welcome to Heed the Call.

I'm Dan Hansis with Mark Sessler and Connor Orr.

But you know what?

Even in that case, we're all happily in relationships, kids.

You could be that way too if you're in the similar purgatory out there, listeners.

I think I would say that for years and years, maybe not, I think there's been a reckoning of late, but for years and years, we probably thought that we floated above the

middle line there.

But I think it's been made clear by society that we do not.

I'm not saying all of us, Connor, but I think that...

Speak for yourself, Mark.

I've always looked at myself as kind of a Kevin Euclis, just get on bass guy.

And so

in that way, shape, or form, anything that happens in the romantic department is just a major bonus.

Wow, I haven't thought of Kevin Euclis in literally nine years.

This is a very important episode.

I've been looking forward to this one.

We had some...

technical difficulties.

That difficulty being we didn't have a podcast last summer, so we didn't get a chance to do

this episode.

So it's actually two years in the making.

It is, yes, of course, the Dalton scale.

And

it's a quarterback episode.

It's fun.

And to do this the right way,

I believe,

and I think we're all on the same page, that you have to have the right crew to really figure out this position, the most important position in sports.

So without further ado, today's guest, a favorite of ours,

just did his podcast, which you could check out wherever you get your podcast, The Bill Barnwell Show.

Yes, it is Bill Barnwell.

Welcome to Heed the Call.

Welcome back, I should say.

I am very flattered that I am seen as an authority on bad quarterback play as a Giants fan.

I feel like I have seen a lot of it over the past 10 or 15 years.

So, sorry, I shouldn't say bad quarterback play, but just difficult to evaluate and contextualize quarterback play.

So I have a lot of experience in this topic.

That's well said, Bill.

For a first-time panel member for the Dalton scale, you really did kind of neatly sum it up.

And I'll say I could try to give you an explanation of the Dalton scale, but I don't think I or anyone else here would best explain what we're trying to do here.

The person that should explain it is that guy right there.

That is Chris Wesling over my right shoulder, as he always is every show, our late, great friend and former colleague on Around the NFL who invented this idea of the Dalton line.

And we will now move out of the way and refer back to a prior episode of the old show.

And Chris will explain what is the Dalton scale.

Andy Dalton

is the prime meridian of NFL quarterbacks.

He represents quarterback purgatory.

If you are ranked below Andy Dalton, your franchise needs a quarterback.

If you're ranked above Andy Dalton, you're in ship shape.

Everything's figured out.

You're good to go.

First of all, how nice is it to hear?

Wow.

For all of us.

And

that was taken from an episode in 2019.

So Dalton still in the league, right?

Where's Dalton these days?

Backup, right?

Carolina.

Carolina.

South Carolina.

And before we get into figuring out who the new Dalton line is, because he might be still in the league, but since he's no longer obviously a starter, let alone a guy seen as a franchise passer as he was with the Bengals,

he doesn't qualify for this conversation.

These are currently starting quarterbacks.

But maybe, maybe, and I'll start with you on this, Bill, and hit it, Justin, before we have this conversation, a little bit of a.

And Dalton's going to take it for the touchdown.

Maybe just a look back on Andy Dalton and his heroic run as the Dalton line.

Say something nice about Andy Dalton, Bill, I guess is all I could say.

Yeah, I go back to that year where he had like top three receivers, top five offensive line, and we saw him really be an MVP candidate.

I want to say that was 2015.

2015, I believe.

All of these highlights are from that season, Bill.

It was the last year of Grantland.

So I'm like trying to put it in my head there.

And then sadly, he gets injured late in the year, can't participate in the postseason.

Kind of honestly, like another Dalton Scale candidate in Derek Carr, where that one great year he had with the Raiders, he was not able to play in the postseason.

Never really got his way to play his way out of the Dalton scale and maybe establish himself as not just a great regular season adequate quarterback, but maybe a great postseason adequate quarterback the way that my Giants and Eli Manning did during his postseason runs.

So I feel like, you know, we got to see really so many different levels of Andy Dalton over the course of his career.

But at his best in that season, that man was really good.

Absolutely well said.

Connor, anything you want to add?

Is that the Rudy song, by the way?

Feels a little

inappropriate.

But

yeah, this is, it's so strange because some of these guys are just, we talked about this with Derek Carr a couple weeks ago when he retired and he had that bad leg break right before the playoffs.

And sometimes I think the Dalton scale line is as fine as a moment like that where you can either permanently wedge like win a playoff game and just wedge yourself right on the other side of it, or you spend the rest of your career in this sort of dark Bermuda triangle, you know?

Mark,

I think

part and parcel to the Dalton scale, and you know, we tried to unpack with Chris certain nuances of it, and I think it boarded it into kind of how you see it, bird's eye view, or I guess your own view, but like

a lack of playoff success, too, where it's like, you're good, but not great.

And we kind of agree that you can get us like nine wins, but there's a ceiling for the glory.

This was supposed to be

a celebration of Andy Dalton.

I don't know why.

How have we swerved back into taking the man down a notch?

I'll say something nice.

I'll say one thing about Dalton.

And this is more aesthetic, because I really do believe this, especially if you take a look at him in the Carolina world.

Part of his clunkiness was the haircut, the overall just like personality, a very bland.

He became, he started to look like

a hot villain down the stretch here.

And so I think he went through some image things that makes it harder to categorize him the way that I did 10 years ago.

I think you're referring to when he grew in the beard.

Right.

I think that put him on the right side of the male desirability scale.

I agree.

All right.

So, and we mentioned Derek Carr.

And it is interesting, the one time, I believe it was that 15th season, right?

That, and Carr broke his leg right before the playoffs, Dalton breaks his wrist or his hand.

And that was the one year, to quote another famous Wes-ism.

Wes celebrated West of us, which was that

first playoff Saturday wildcard game when the Cincinnati Bengals and then eventually the Houston Texans would always fall.

It was just a big celebration.

The one year where I thought Dalton could have changed the narrative around his career, when he was having like an MVP caliber-type season, he's injured and he doesn't play in the game.

And I believe that was that crazy Saturday Night Steelers game, actually.

It was.

Which was Nevante Spurfict Antonio Brown game.

Yeah.

So, anyway,

now we move forward because not only is

not only is an Andy Dalton in a different place in his career,

other potential successors like Derek Carr, Carr, now out of the league, Ryan Tannehill, out of the league.

So we figure out who that figure is.

Who is the dividing line for a franchise passer?

I want to start just to kind of maybe a show of hand, a raise your hand if this person does not belong in this place.

Because I want to just knock out some passers that I don't think are in this conversation.

And I also want to, one more guideline for this conversation.

Let's keep kind of make them ineligible.

First,

rookie passers, obviously, for guys that have only played one year.

I think you could put them on the right side of the line if it's a guy like Jaden Daniels, obviously.

But whether you're Bo Nicks, Caleb Williams, Michael Pennix, Drake May, J.J.

McCarthy, they're not in this conversation.

Because it's premature, okay?

So on the other side of it, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Jaden Daniels, Jalen Hurts, Matthew Stafford,

Dak Prescott.

Are we all those guys?

Is there anyone those names that

are going to be brought up in any capacity?

Or

are they firmly on the right side of the Dalton line?

Bill?

The ESPN employee in me started to tense up when Dak was added to that list of quarterbacks.

Unfairly,

I think highly of Dak Prescott.

He was knocked dead last year, even before the injury.

But

I don't think you could make any arguments really strongly against any of those guys short Dak.

And Dak was second in MVP voting the prior season.

As much as Cowboys fans give him flack,

this is the same franchise that has endured a lot of bad quarterback play in between Troy Aikman and the Tony Ormond Dak Prescott era as any Cowboys fan old enough to remember that

would not want to go back to those days.

So I can't imagine there'd be much argument against any of those guys not being part of this conversation.

Connor's always a wild card.

Connor, do you have an issue with any of those names?

Not an issue, but can I just say, I actually think I'm pushing for an expansion of that list because I think in order to do the Dalton scale at this period in time, I believe we're in a defensive counter-revolutionary period that prioritizes success in the run game.

I think we saw that the way that teams drafted this year, the way that teams succeeded last year.

We are under 32 passing attempts a game for the first time since 2009.

Passing yards per game is the lowest since 2007.

And I bring that up just to say this.

I think it widens the pool of quarterbacks who you can label a franchise player because

you're asking less of them in this period of time.

You're putting more on your offensive line, your run game, your scheme, and especially your defense.

And so I'm pushing for a wider

post-Alton scare.

Okay, so

just using kind of, I mentioned those first eight guys, I had them split in half in my tier one and tier two.

I have a tier three before the conversation starts here.

And why don't we get the conversation going this way?

Because

this is not like, it's not like who's going to win and nominate the guy.

This is a group exercise, okay?

So we're trying to work together on this.

And I'm going to read my tier three.

And when I get to a player that you think is potentially a real conversation piece for the Dalton line, I want you to stop me and then we're going to talk about that player.

Okay, so these are guys for me are outside that conversation, but I think this is the place where we might have a player or two or even three.

Okay, Jared Goff,

Brock Purdy,

Justin Herbert,

Jordan Love,

CJ Stroud,

Baker Mayfield.

Any of those?

All right, Bill's got his hand up.

I feel like Baker is the place where you have to at least start having

that conversation.

And I will say, I was not prepared for how tense that 30 seconds of audio and video was

for me emotionally.

It felt like, I don't know, you were reading off,

you know,

people.

I don't even want to speculate on the job.

Like a jury verdict.

Yeah, yeah, there was a, there was just a reason.

It's like it's Vietnam and you're finding out where you are on the draft election.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

When we think about Andy Dalton and the context for where he was being evaluated at the time Wes originally brought up Andy Dalton, which would have been right around that 2015 period, if I'm not mistaken, maybe a little earlier,

that sort of feels like where Baker Bayfield is, right?

I mean, a quarterback who is just good enough to get you into the postseason.

The Bucs have, he did win against,

no, no, sorry, they lost both.

Did Baker, what Bakers not want to play off game with Ted Bay, if I'm not mistaken.

Do you want to play off game with Team Team?

No, they beat the Eagles.

Beat the Eagles to your team.

You beat the Eagles.

They beat that terrible Eagles team.

Yeah.

I'm mistaken.

I apologize.

And then played well against the Lions before losing.

And then last year, kind of a messy playoff game.

They lose to Washington, sloppy game

at home.

But

a quarterback who is just good enough to get you in there, a quarterback who thrives off of being

underappreciated, a guy who at the same time, the moment you put any stock in him, it feels almost like

you've tipped over the scale.

And so the water spills out of the cup.

Anytime you put another drop of water into the cup, the cup is completely full.

I just sort of feel like that feels, even if I don't necessarily agree, and I think I would probably not have baker as the guy for me but i do believe that's a fair uh a fair group to put him in this version of baker with that version of andy dalton i think we're if holistically

baker mayfield's overall career begins to fit in this exercise i think if we were to say here's the guy we came up with as our andy dalton line guy and it's baker mayfield i sense a lot of pushback because there's growth to this player and he's played some of his best football recently.

So it's optics-wise a little tough.

But I do think that if you went back two years, he would fit.

Not personality-wise, though, because part of it to me was like the milk toe.

I know I'm baking this in on my own thing, but it was the persona that doesn't seem like he's ready to go Michael Jordan on you in the big moments.

And Baker Mayfield's got a little bit more pizzazz to him.

I love that.

I've really learned to love Baker and enjoy what he brings to our league.

And I know people are down in general on counting stats and you got to pop the hood on everything now and you got to trust your eyes and all that stuff.

And it's like, I agree to a certain extent, but I also just need to point out this was a starting quarterback,

Baker Reagan Mayfield,

who played 17 games last year, completed over 71% of his passes, threw for 4,500 yards on the nose with 41 touchdowns and 16 interceptions.

And that is fing spectacular production at the quarterback.

He's not the guy.

He's in the, he was, and he's got another new offensive coordinator, which you got to factor in because, you know, obviously Cohen left town and you, that, that core of wide receivers, they kept together.

They're older.

And it might be hard for him ever to be that productive

eight yards an attempt as well.

His career mark, and you have to bake in that he was a Cleveland Brown for a period, 50 and 53.

As a, I know wins aren't a QB stat, blah, blah, blah.

But I think where he, the level he's playing at right now and the confidence that he's gotten to as a quarterback now at this stage of his career, he's on the other side of this conversation for me.

Just like the Buccaneers, I feel very comfortable with him as my guy that I'm paying franchise QB money.

I'm going to sound like Mark Schlerith or like Daryl Johnston here for a second and provide stinking the moose.

Stinking the moose.

Stinking the moose.

And provide the most statistically free gut feel analysis of all time.

But I do think that there's sort of an underbelly of the Dalton scale where to me, it's like, okay, if you're down 10 points at the beginning of the fourth quarter or, you know, you so you know you have like two or three drives left in the game, are your hands in the air like, okay, forget about it.

Or are you like, okay, this guy can legitimately throw us back into this game?

And Dalton, to me, was never that guy.

Now, a lot of the

stats, especially if you look at the fourth quarter of games, don't necessarily bear that out.

But I think the makeup of Mayfield puts him on the other side of that line for me because, and I don't know if it's just an innate thing.

I don't know if I was, just because I was once upon a time a Browns fan, but it's one of those things where Baker to me represents an improvement on Dalton in that regard, at least.

I think the undescribable nature of quarterbacking, that just like you're trying to put words to it, is part of this for me.

It always has been.

And I think it was for Wes, too.

I mean, it's just, it's hard to put words and numbers to that, but I agree with what you just said.

I will not not try to put a specific number to it, but I'll just say I think there's a difference here in terms of variance to me that I think Connor is describing, right?

Like

Andy Dalton was never bad enough to get cut by the worst team in football and end up playing for a hopeless Rams team starting on two days' notice.

And by the way, winning a game.

He was never that bad.

He was also, to me, never good enough to get multiple, you know, in back-to-back years, get his offensive coordinator hired as a head coach to put up numbers, even at points last year where Kate Auden was his number one receiver because all his wide receivers were injured.

With last year, the running game was better, but the year before with no running game to speak of, with an inconsistent offensive line the year before, which should improve a bunch last year.

You know,

I think that

we can't sit here and say, okay, well, Baker's just a product of a great OC and a great set of receivers because we've seen him do it in at some points in Cleveland and at some points in Tampa Bay without those things in play.

He has been the driving force.

And so Andy Dalton never hit the lows Baker Mayfield did.

But outside of maybe that one season we talked about earlier, I don't think he's hit the highs Baker Mayfield has at his best.

And so maybe we're...

It's not fair to characterize those two, or even if the averages for Baker Mayfield might be fair, even if his 50 and 53 record might seem like it might fit a Dalton scale scenario, I do think that he's had higher highs and lower lows.

And the idea of a Dalton is a guy who is never going going to be that great, but not necessarily ever going to be that upsetting or worrying for your franchise.

Right.

Predictably mundane, I think, is an

innate trait to being the winner of this, if that's what we want to call them.

I don't know if it's a winner, but Baker's had a fascinating career.

Yes.

Is he even 30 yet?

All right.

Now, now we're going to get into it because I want to throw out a name here, okay?

I'm going to throw out a name here, and it's going to be Justin's going to get excited because he's going to be like, oh, I could use this for social.

The next tier is

the tier for me where it really begins.

I'm going to start with Aaron Rodgers.

Aaron Rodgers in 2025

as

the purgatory.

Now, obviously, the Steelers disagree because you don't make that move, I don't think, unless you think he's on the other side here and he could actually lead you places.

But I believe what we saw from Aaron Rodgers last year coming off the Achilles, and now I'm just talking about him as a quarterback and less about everything else he brings, which you really probably can't leave out because we're talking about a franchise player essentially.

But I believe Rodgers' skill set on the field, his mastery of the

mental side of the game in many ways,

and the high points of even last year and the disappointment,

and going also off the low points as well, which were were disappointing.

I believe he is someone we should have a conversation about, Connor Orr.

I was so enthralled by that that I muted myself

like at Zoom in 2020.

I agree with you.

And I kind of, so I offered myself a little bit of a cop-out when I put together my own list.

And based on what I had said before about, I think there being a broader pool of candidates, I think Rodgers fits into a three-quarterback pool that I have of aged quarterbacks who could who could kind of put you over the hump if everything else was right around them and if they played the way that best suits their skill set, which is a big question for Rogers, right?

Is he going to welcome a run game?

Is he going to welcome run action, which he was forced to do with Matt LaFleur, but then opted not to do it all with the Jets

the following year?

And I think it's Gino.

I think it's Rodgers, and it's Kirk Cousins are just in that little

kind of period where it's like, okay, if you put them on last year's Lions team or a Chiefs team, if Patrick Mahomes gets hurt, or maybe not a Chief, maybe that's a bad example, but the Eagles, something like that.

Can they get you to the Super Bowl?

Can you feel confident with them on a down-to-down basis?

And I think the answer is yes.

And I think for one more year, Rodgers is on the right side of the Dalton scale for me.

I also,

I had a strange category with guys like that clumped in together because I, Dan, I would ask you this, having done this for so long, like

it's hard for me to classify Rodgers in this position when he's won multiple MVPs, when he's won a Super Bowl.

And it's like, I get that he's, like, if he came out of outer space today and we get this version of Aaron Rodgers, I get it.

But like, How do we factor in like the experience of Aaron Rodgers in our lifetime?

It's like, I have a hard time putting like a Super Bowl winner and a four-time, three-time end.

It's a separation of name versus game.

So it's like, what is he giving you right now?

And in terms of what, to your point, like what he's done in his past, the mastery of the position

above the shoulders, like I am factoring that in because while his physical skills have declined, and especially like, for instance, his mobility after the Achilles takes him down a notch, what he gains in that ability, Bill, to read defenses and check out of plays and just be someone that's always under control even though in many there were many examples last season where he had a chance to bail out the jets at the end of games and couldn't make the play anymore couldn't couldn't find a way out of out of tough spots so for me i think he he does fit in this exercise uh can i just push back real quick because i think it's like category of aging or declining skills and i that for me with the dalton match and out of the gate when we started all this was like he's not a physically dominant quarterback, but like to Bill's point, it's kind of like a B line of Dalton from A to Z.

Like he's sort of always been the guy.

And so we're talking about the guy that was like the best quarterback on earth, and now he's sort of just aging.

Yep.

Yeah, I would say it's tough for me to put him on the right side of the Dalton scale, just because, the Dalton line, I should say, just because you're looking at,

you know, a player who

was bottom eight among starters in QBR in 2022, Torres Achilles, a bunch of snaps in 2023, and there was bottom eight in QBR again in 2024.

And that's just one stat.

And the stat does not necessarily capture everything about a quarterback, but it's tough for me to think, okay,

you know, he's going to be significantly better now in his 40s on a new team with less familiar,

certainly playmakers and,

you know, less to work with, I think, on offense.

Although I do think the Steelers offensive line is an underrated.

I think Arthur Smith is a solid offensive coordinator.

I just, the thing that I think separates Rogers from Dalton to me is that with Dalton, there was a beigeness to Andy Dalton.

Like it was never, there was never a conversation of, oh, are the Bengals going to mold their offense to Andy Dalton's strengths?

There was never a conversation about what Andy Dalton's strengths were.

It was just, oh,

this Andy Dalton was an empty vessel.

in which the you know an offensive coach or architect was going to empty his mind into andy Dalton, and that was going, he was going to absorb whatever was out there.

Andy Dalton was a sponge, perhaps, of quarterbacks.

And you can't say that about Aaron Rodgers.

You refrained Bill Barnwell.

And if you want to aggregate him, a dead behind the eyes ginger, is that what you're saying?

No, just someone who's being controlled like a puppet.

There's a big difference between those two things.

Connor.

It's so here's what, because sometimes you have to consider these on a a case-by-case basis.

I think Bill brings up a great point with QBR, but you know, we always make the comparison between Favre and Rodgers.

Favre had that 40-year-old season in Minnesota with a 107 quarterback rating.

And if I remember correctly, I looked it up a couple minutes ago, had like a 72 and a 70 in his final two seasons in Green Bay.

So for Rodgers in particular, I think what tips him on one side of the scale or the other is, do you think it's possible that he has one more of those seasons in him

just like Favre did where it appeared that he was lost in the statistical wilderness?

Because I think that, to me, is the thumb on the scale one way or the other.

And I want to just circle back to what Ceci said there, because I think Mark's right.

And I feel like Wes would have jumped in with a similar point that what we're looking for is not

maybe

Rogers fits the mold where he is as a player now, but we're kind of looking, to Bill's point, for that empty vessel and

someone who just kind of just

sits there.

And he's almost always sat there.

And why don't we cycle back, Connor, to the other name you mentioned there, which is Geno Smith.

Now, he's a guy that I think might be a more natural person in this conversation.

However, there's a lot of people in the football cognizant

who believe that Gino should be in one of the tiers that we mentioned 15 minutes ago.

And it's even insulting that he's even being brought up now.

Your thoughts, Connor?

Well, this is hard because I'll lump him in with Baker here in that sometimes it takes a while for a quarterback's skill set to become relevant within the context of what the NFL is now.

Sometimes it takes a while for the right quarterback and coordinator to find each other and to put enough on tape where you you can get enough to put together a playbook or a call sheet for a quarterback like that.

In that way, I think Gino's still kind of in his era at this point.

And while it's weird to say that about a quarterback that's in his early to mid-30s, I think his best season could be like almost like a Randall Cunningham age 36 year where it's everything is right and the personnel is right and the coordinator is right.

I think that that's still something that makes sense to me.

And again,

I just think we have a wider pool in front of the Dalton line now than we have before.

So for me, Geno is comfortably in front of it.

I just think that way.

And I don't think that you would have,

I'm more of a Chip Kelly fan than other people.

I respect him a great deal.

I don't think you have a coordinator like that lining up to work with a guy like that if you don't think that there's something there, if you don't think that there's some tools there.

I think like for me, it's hard to separate how I felt about Geno Smith for a long time versus what's actually happening.

Like I just sort of struggled with that over the past couple of years.

And in in this exercise, it's hard for me to pick an ascending player.

Like, he's getting better as a quarterback.

I do think, though, like, I sat there with his name on my list and I was like, isn't he kind of everything I think about this?

But then, if you go look at what he's actually done over the past two years and what I think he's still capable of, I also have him above the line.

Bill?

Yeah, I agree.

I would,

I'll go back to the football cognizant side of this argument, right?

I mean,

it was a different time a decade ago.

We didn't have incredible access to all 22 the way we do now.

Film Twitter was not anywhere near as prevalent of a thing.

But to my recollection, I don't recall many people, you know, getting those, oh, that boy nice tweets out about Andy Dalton.

It was never about, oh, look at this great throw, Andy Dalton.

Let me put together this three-minute highlight clip of Andy Dalton.

And Geno Smith could put the ball in danger sometimes.

You can make some decisions I don't love at times.

But you can make those arguments about Geno Smith.

You can put together some really incredible physical throws from Geno Smith that I feel sort of aesthetically separate him from Andy Dalton and that scale on that side of things.

And there's also,

I think, a built-in gap here of...

the context in which we evaluate quarterbacks, right?

Because we're still

just like the NFL.

Every year we're reevaluating our situations.

We're reevaluating what we think of a player.

And with Anthony Dalton, he came straight into the NFL and was immediately a solid starter.

And that was all we knew of him.

With Geno, there's that built-in sort of almost decade of us thinking he's not an NFL caliber starter, of us thinking, oh, he's just a journeyman backup before he did prove, no, he's much better than that.

And he is a viable NFL starter.

And so I still think that colors some of our discussions about Geno Smith, perhaps unfairly.

I think the player we see on a week-to-week basis, to me, is comfortably ahead of Eddie Dalton in that line on the Dalton scale.

One more, I think,

drop in the bucket for Geno on my end is the fact that he had almost 100 quarterback rating and a top 15 EPA last year, despite that offense being irreparably broken and so broken that a first-time young head coach uses the rest of his equity that he has with ownership to fire his offensive coordinator after one season.

So I think you have to keep that part of of it in mind, too.

And the Seahawks, it should be said, decided they didn't want to have him be their quarterback anymore.

He's appeared in one playoff game

and got blown out by the Niners a couple of years ago and has been a 500 quarterback in terms of wins and losses.

Again, I know QB wins is not a stat, but I feel like he's much closer in this conversation than you guys, but I'm not going to push it because I don't have support from either side of the aisle on this one.

All right, Bill, how about you?

Why don't you throw one out there actually

right after this break?

Tease.

All right, taking a quick break to remind you that if you love this show, if you love the cess dog as an example, a prominent example, there is more than the Heed the Call universe over at patreon.com slash heed the call.

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All right, we're back.

Yes, we are, in case you just tuned in, uh, which would be weird on a podcast, we are trying to find the prime meridian of NFL quarterbacks.

And we've gone through several names so far.

I don't think we have a match yet, so we keep on moving.

Bill Barnwell, uh, can you nominate a potential uh Dalton line player?

I will throw out the quarterback who was directly below Baker Mayfield for me.

To me, if I had to pick one, and I understand this is not how the process works, but when I was thinking about this, the conclusion I came to is that this was the person who most closely emulated the line for me, and that is Trevor Lawrence of the Jacksonville Jackson.

And there's differences here.

There's aesthetic differences.

Obviously, the hair, we mentioned earlier, how the hair was an anti-dalton defining characteristic.

It's very different for Trevor Lawrence.

The expectations were higher for Trevor Lawrence.

He has won a playoff game in dramatic fashion, admittedly one where he was terrible in the first half before he brought it back in and led them back.

But

if you're a Jax fan, are you sure Trevor Lawrence is your guy anymore?

I mean, there's been, I felt like they were able to tell themselves a story multiple times about Trevor Lawrence.

And that hasn't been true.

It was, oh, well, throughout the first year because it was Urban Meyer.

And then he was so good in the second half of his second season.

It was, okay, well, now now he's going to be the guy.

And then he was bad during the second half of the following season.

And then it was, oh, well, he was hurt.

He's going to be fine in 2024.

And then he was a mess in 2024 outside of getting injured before and after, unfortunately.

So I feel like we now have this quarterback who...

we had lofty expectations for.

Jags fans had lofty expectations for.

They had been waiting for so long to get a Trevor Lawrence.

And

not only is he extremely expensive, but generally underwhelming or whelming.

And maybe he is whelming, but it just feels like

that breakthrough has not come.

And we're already

into his second contract at this point.

Oh, this one is very interesting.

Now, I'll say to Mark's point that

if a, and this one's a little, it's a little naughty.

It's a tough one to kind of figure out.

It's spicy.

Because

if Andy Dalton is forever the perfect explanation of what QB Purgatory is, a former second-round pick who developed into a successful, on many levels, quarterback that a team was able to install as their starter for several years, right?

Lawrence's outsized expectations make it very difficult to figure out who he is.

And I think the Jaguars are still trying to figure out, right?

Because not only was he the number one overall pick and said to be the best prospect since Peyton Manning,

last summer they gave him the five-year $275 million contract extension, which is the money you give to a guy that you absolutely believe is the man who will take you to the Super Bowl one day.

But you're right, Bill.

Like this, the production hasn't matched it.

And I believe bringing him up now is the first time it would ever make sense, Mark, because I believe for the first time a little doubt has crept into the room here in Football End where you're starting to wonder: is okay, he's not Peyton Manning.

Is he even a true franchise guy?

And the injury side of it, actually, now is also part of the conversation, too.

Is he not built for this?

Even though he passes the test, he looks like he's straight out of central casting, is what a franchise passer should look like.

His body might be telling us other things.

It's

an extremely juicy candidate for this exercise.

I'm surprised and I like that.

If I were a coach or a coaching staff,

I would innately view Trevor Lawrence differently than I ever would have viewed Andy Dalton based on the size,

the

draft stock, like the basic idea that he still has yet to be unlocked by the right coaching staff.

And I need to see, I just kind of need to see more before I slot him into that world.

I still feel like his higher moments have shown me something that like there's more to come here and it's been a there's been a lot of transition in Jacksonville.

I don't think it's an easy organization to thrive in to begin with.

So

I can't go there with Trevor Lawrence.

It's such a good name to bring up, right?

Because to me,

he is on the Baker realm for me because even there were games last year where I think there was the one where Brian Thomas got hurt and Evan Ingram got got hurt.

And I thought he played the best fourth.

I forget who it was against, but I thought he played the best fourth quarter that he played all season.

And you're just like, where is this guy?

And why can't we see him on a regular basis?

But it's like a series of failed science experiments where you brought up Urban Meyer and then the Doug Peterson thing.

As a Lawrence defender, I already know the excuse that I'm going to go to this year, which is, okay, well, you tried to solve that by pairing him with a first-year head coach slash play caller and a first-time offensive coordinator.

And then instead of getting him a solidified weapon, you kind of got Travis Hunters, who I still think is really raw.

I don't know how much he's going to contribute on the high end of this offense.

And so I'm already building in those excuses.

And that's what makes this exercise so beautiful, right?

Is like there is something where these players, some of them, are just near to you.

And I love that Bill is cutting through the bullshit here and being like, you know what?

Trevor Lawrence just might be handsome Andy Dalton.

Like, well, handsome or Andy Dalton.

Hot or Andy Dalton, you know.

Oh, pre-beard, post-beard.

I don't know if he is hot or be honest, but that's the arch of those eyebrows.

It reframed his entire face.

And then all of a sudden, it was like, whoa, he's got some symmetrical features.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, this is a different podcast, it sounds like.

One I'm also

eager to contribute to.

But I think Mark's point about the expectations being different is really meaningful and makes it difficult to really lump him in at this point.

I think the way I would frame it is

maybe this.

The first time the Jaguars were hiring a head coach when they had the first overall pick and knew they were going to take Trevor Lawrence, I think just about anybody who was going to be a candidate was excited to work with Trevor Lawrence.

Maybe every single candidate they reached out to would have been thrilled at the idea of working with Trevor Lawrence.

And this stuff matters if you're a coach.

You're going to want to work.

Like, if you have options, you're going to be thinking about, can I win with this quarterback?

Even after the first season, Nervin Meyer getting fired, I think it was very clear that Doug Peterson, whoever else they were interested in, Nathaniel Hackett famously, were interested in working with Trevor Lawrence.

Now,

would every single coach the Jaguars reached out to, would they all feel like Trevor Lawrence was the guy or someone they were thrilled to work with or someone they thought, yeah, we can win a Super Bowl with this guy?

I still think some would.

I think Liam Cohen does, but I don't know that every single coach would feel that way.

And that's different to me than maybe the first two times they were hiring a head coach.

But to that point, I do believe Liam Cohen, who famously flip-flopped on the Bucs before deciding I'll go to the Jags.

I do think, and that guy is obviously a gifted offensive mind who

our Baker-Mayfield conversation,

you can't divorce the guy that was running the show with Baker from Baker's best season statistically of his career.

I think Liam is going there because, in part, Trevor Lawrence is his quarterback and he's buying in that that could still be the dude if he just has the right team and coaching around him.

I am with,

I believe, Mark, and I'm not sure Connor, but like, I can't put him there yet.

But I think it's a good name to bring up, not just for content, but also because it's the first time in his career where somebody's got to step up and be like,

I don't know.

And Bill, you've done it.

So if nothing else, it was successful for that reason alone.

It's time to have a more nuanced, different conversation around Trevor Lawrence instead of just pointing fingers at all the reasons why people are fing him up.

Mark, throw out another name.

I've got a short list here.

I will pull up the one that I think I see.

Give us a name, Mark.

Give us a name.

Tua.

Okay.

Now, I want to.

Another lightning rod, by the way.

Well, right.

And I'm not trying to go

Emmanuel Acco on this one either.

Like, because I think that in today's world,

Hookum Horns, it's Emmanuel Acho.

Well, so I wasn't even talking about it.

That's where Justin jumps in on this show.

Jesus Christ.

I apologize for mispronouncing the name.

I do.

Bill, did you know that our producer went to UT?

Yeah, you do now.

I was a classmate of Acho's at Texas.

He was a co-worker of mine at Fox Sports.

All I ask is that you say Acho and not Acho.

Well, I've been sternly corrected.

Bill, you and I both went to Northeastern.

Should we just talk about Reggie Lewis for the next half hour?

Liam Ezekiel.

Carlos Peña.

J.J.

Berea.

We can hit on all the greats of Northeastern.

Go ahead, Mark.

Tua, he's on my list too.

I want to hear your case.

Yeah.

I think the argument against is the pristine numbers and accuracy and what he's been able to do over the last couple years in the Dolphins offense.

Yet, there are major concerns around durability.

You've got an owner that behind Tua's back multiple times has sought out other quarterback answers.

You had a head coach that left that basically told Tua, I don't believe in you.

Now, I don't think it's a personality thing with Tua.

Like, I think this is, it's not like

he's kind of in this middle world where it's like he can get you three quarters of the way through a season.

And then it's not just him, but everything starts to fall.

I don't have faith in him going to the Super Bowl.

I don't have faith in him tugging the Dolphins in the AFC title game necessarily.

Good, but not great.

And yet the number, it's one of these guys that you could look at through any looking glass and tell me a very different story.

But it's the overall Tua experience where it's like, I'm not even, there was, you know, last, a year ago, I didn't even know if he should be on the football field.

It's like,

his career is a little mysterious.

He can't control the health side of it.

But there is sort of a crumbling at the end of the season when it matters most surrounding Tua and the whole Dolphins.

But Tua is the quarterback.

And so that is why I think he's in the conversation for like, do we move on from this guy?

Maybe we do, depending on what comes along.

I think it's a great name, Mark.

And you know, what you can do is you can

make all these buckets.

And I think what

was interesting about Dalton was he seemed sort of, like Bill said, a sponge where it was schema verse.

I almost need to pluck Tua out one more time and just throw him somewhere with like your B-level offensive coordinator du jour, like lifetime milquetoast guy that when your team hires him, you're just like, all right, fine.

You know, like the equivalent of like

Chan Gailey circa 2017.

Like, I need to,

you want to multiply.

You want the Dalton scale with the Dalton offensive coordinator scale.

My brain's hurting.

Yes.

So I need to, like, I'm incepting this a little bit, but because, again,

there comes all these little feels that are attached to this.

And Mike McDaniel is a big bugaboo for me because I think he's brilliant.

And I've long thought that.

And so I've always been a proponent of damn, even get this guy Kirk Cousins.

And I think it's better.

And I think it's more interesting.

And I think if you shot up that guy with Truth Serum, he would probably tell you the same thing.

But it's one of those things where...

because of that we have this strange sort of maximized version of Tua that we don't always see and to me it's like he's almost an off-scale player because he's like he's not able to be Dalton scaled because it's not totally quantifiable does that make sense or like or yeah

It does.

And it does seem to make evaluating him difficult because the numbers are so good.

And yet, it feels like, as a society, we all have collectively been like, ah, no, we don't really believe those numbers,

which was not the case with Dalton, right?

Dalton had solid numbers, but it wasn't like he was, you know, outside of that one season putting up top five numbers.

So we had to account for that.

I sort of feel like,

you know,

there's a resignation about the Tua situation in Miami.

A few years ago, when you talked about Tua Tunga Violoa, there was really, you know, it was difficult because you had Dolphins fans who were furious at the idea that you would be skeptical of Tua, that you would be, not think that he was going to be a superstar.

I don't sense that anymore.

You know, there's always fans who are angry if you're not saying great things, but that sort of feels similar to the, you know, the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh season of Dalton for me in Cincinnati, where there was a resignation amongst the fan base of, okay, that's just what this guy is.

Like, we can't be mad about it because we know we've seen it.

And until he proves otherwise, it's hard to argue with those debates.

It's not like a Lamar Jackson, where he's so good during the regular season that even though he struggled in the postseason, you could still have the debate: oh, if he just gets this to go right or that to go right, it'll be different.

Two has been either unable to play in the postseason or so poor in the postseason that there's nothing you can put out there to really

make that look different.

And I think there's just a, you know, there seems to be a sense of resignation amongst Dolphins fans that, yes, this is just who he is.

He's going to put up good numbers.

He's unfortunately going to battle injuries.

And we can't count on him whatsoever come the postseason or even in late December.

That I feel is reminiscent of Dalton to me.

And that leads me to put him maybe on that same pedestal.

I think he's certainly worthy to talk about as the line.

I'm closer to him on the wrong side of it, though.

I think it's fair to wonder at this stage of his career when he played with

the final peak seasons with Tyreek Hill, playing with Waddle, playing with a running game with Mostert had like 20 touchdowns one year in this offense.

A-chan and what he gives that offense.

Mike McDaniel and the way he cooked up the scheme that was perfectly suited in a lot of ways to what Tua does well in the NFL.

And you could say he might have already played the best football of his career and the most productive football of his career.

In five years from now, he's hanging around as a backup somewhere.

I think he's much closer to that reality than an ascended quarterback or someone that gets a huge contract, another contract after this.

I'm just not the biggest Tua guy, and I think it's possible he's already gotten on the downslope of his career.

Is that too harsh?

Is that harsh?

No.

Because there are going to be Dolphins fans.

There's still a lot of Dolphins fans that, and maybe they do put too much stock in the stats and the counting numbers, which are tremendous.

And some of the, we just talked about it with Warren Sharp, had a long thread last week or whatever, where he was just like, all these underpop the hood stats all point to Tua being an elite player as well.

And Connor, I know you push back on that.

Like, he is kind of an interest, like the Rorschach test, right?

Like, he is what you want him to be, and it makes him very difficult to evaluate in an exercise.

And if we, if, you know, there was a world where we nominated him, people are going to go absolutely ballistic on us.

Okay, let's do it.

All right.

And the episode.

Tua.

So my question is with Tua, right?

Sound off in the comments.

Like and subscribe.

Engagement.

With him, right?

Is his situation ever going to get better when he's in his prime as it was maybe a year ago or two years ago?

To me, like, okay, is this going to get better than prime Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddell as your 1-2,

A-chan as your running back, McDaniel as your play caller?

Now, and you can say, well, our defense was and our offensive line wasn't, but every team has deficiencies.

That was a pretty damn good situation and a pretty damn good window for a quarterback.

And we kind of saw,

I don't think that's unfair to say it's at your best because where's he going to go?

Is he going to go to, like, every quarterback wants to play for McVay or Kevin O'Connell?

Is he going to go to one of those places now?

And even there, do we think he's a Super Bowl quarterback?

I don't think so.

Yeah.

You know, we talked about Dalton having that great season.

That was four or five years into his career.

It's possible to have had that season really in his, you know, second full season as a quarterback or third full season as a quarterback.

And

I think you're right.

I can't imagine a scenario where he has better pieces around him than what he had that year.

And I would be surprised if the Dolphins, as a franchise, were going to have a better roster for him in the next two or three years than the one they had that season when they did make it to the postseason, but he was unable to play.

We just had this entire conversation about Tua, and we very, very vaguely referenced his health issues.

Durability is a skill set, and he is a guy that has an extremely troubling history of brain injuries.

So

you got to bake that into.

You just got to.

All right, Connor, do you have another name?

Yeah, this one is interesting.

So it's like, do you ever watch one of those mentalist shows where they show you when you walk into a movie theater, like the colors or whatever make you want to buy popcorn?

So

when I wrote this list, the player as I wrote him down ended up being exactly in the middle.

And I didn't put him there on purpose.

Like it just sort of fleshed out that way.

And I view him this iteration of the player, right?

This iteration of the player.

I think Russell Wilson is your Andy Dalton line.

Wow.

Like, wow.

Right now.

26.

This is not the name I was expecting.

26 and 8, 26 and 9 touchdowns.

Those were almost identical to your peak Andy Dalton numbers.

He's despite, I think that there's a lot of people who will, because because of their personal thoughts on Russell, probably drag him down to the other side of the Dalton line.

I think he's the definition of your hold-the-line, middle-tier, serviceable starting quarterback.

And I think that there's a lot of external complications with the guy that will tug him to one side of the line or the other.

And Mark, this is where we're hitting into that little bit of a conversation point around this again, where this is a former Super Bowl winning quarterback.

This is a guy that has been named all-pro.

He's been on like eight Pro Bowl teams.

He's a guy who's in conversations about is he a Hall of Famer.

So he doesn't fit that classic Andy Dalton mode, but I do agree kind of.

This version.

Yes, this version, if we're just talking about the player, where he is in his career, I would have him below personally, but I understand where you're saying production-wise,

he's a guy to talk about.

I think it comes down to

how you view the exercise, because I struggle with the first three quarters of Russell Wilson's career where he was marvelous, fun to watch, part of a good team, but two Super Bowls and changed that organization.

Like, you know, the definition of a quarterback coming in and completely changing what we think about the Seattle Seahawks for eight, nine years,

it's hard for me to do it for the same kind of reasons, like you said, Dan, about with Aaron Rodgers, where it's like, I agree with you right now, he fits, but I'm kind of looking for the guy that has never been really higher or lower than that.

Okay.

Yeah, there's certainly a level of what we know about Russell Wilson, what we remember about Russell Wilson, that I think colors this conversation in a way that

it wasn't the case for Andy Dalton.

At the same time, I think the part that I find so difficult to reconcile is the numbers are the numbers.

And Russell Wilson's numbers, the last two years have been just fine at quarterback.

And yet we saw the Broncos say, we would would rather move on from you and pay you tens of millions of dollars to go play somewhere else instead of having your contract continue to guarantee.

And then the Steelers say,

yeah, you just took us to the postseason.

We would rather have Aaron Rodgers as our quarterback than run away.

Maybe Aaron Rodgers.

But yeah, yeah, we'd rather spend four months pretending to listen to Aaron Rodgers do podcasts than

just re-sign you when we already know what you have and what you are in the building.

That's the part that I find so difficult.

We've now heard two teams say basically, yeah, we don't even see you as a below-average starter.

We see you as basically a guy we want to move on from.

And to extend that, Bill, you could even make the case that the Seahawks, they made that move once he was no longer in their minds on the right side of the Dalton line.

And that's why they moved forward.

Yes.

And to be fair, Russell Wilson was going to be very expensive for the Seahawks, and they got a lot of draft capital.

That trade turned out brilliantly for them.

But the Broncos let him go for free.

the steelers let him go for free that i think makes it tough for me to believe that he is on you know close to the right side of the dalton scale even though i think um his numbers frankly belong on the right side of the dalton scale that's see that's why and again i know that i've turned down other people's suggestions because of external complications, but I think that he is the guy where if you were to peel away, because I think part of the reason that Denver got rid of him, part of the reason Seattle got rid of him, it was the socio-emotional, right?

It was the, your vibe doesn't fit with us.

But if you drop this guy into any offense in the NFL right now, I would include the Giants in this.

I think he's going to be somewhere between 23 and 24, you know, 23 and 27 touchdowns and, you know, 8 and 11 interceptions.

Like, it's just, it's a constant thing where you can just put him there and that's what you're going to get.

And I feel like that's like, that's Dalton-esque to me.

I think the minor disconnect on this program, because we've had these conversations, Connor, where you're higher on Russ than perhaps Mark and I are right now.

And also we just talked about a bill on your show where we were looking at the Giants' schedule.

We were trying to figure out like who are the teams that don't have Super Bowl Hope right now.

And I looked at the first half of the schedule.

I was like, oh, he's going to be chum in the water and they're just going to use him as a bridge to get to Jackson Dart when the schedule softens up.

I don't think he's, I would set his like over under, it starts the season at like six and a half.

And if that's where you're coming from, if you agree with that sentiment, like there's no way that guy is on the right side of this conversation or even the purgatory guy.

Interesting.

But

I like that you bring in 2025

consistently a pro Russ discourse,

which isn't around a lot.

So good for you.

Yeah.

And I would say one thing about the Dalton aspect of this is they have to annoyingly stay in the lineup as the starter.

Do you know what I mean?

Because it's got to be like we somehow, this was always a Bengals thing, too, where they were like, we're not looking for something much better.

We're fine with Andy Dalton.

And he's going to be swimming starting jobs.

Yeah.

There's not a lot.

There's not many guys that have now going to be starting quarterbacks, most likely for four different teams.

I know he was hurt at the beginning of last year, but he was going to be QB1 if the calf issue wasn't a thing.

You know what?

We've been dancing around this, and I'm going to throw it to Bill because I know Bill's going to nominate the person that I think has to be the center conversation point of this because I think it just makes so much sense.

I'm building it up because I'm so confident that Bill is going to nominate this person.

If he doesn't, I will.

So it won't be a failure if you don't, Bill.

But I just feel like we've been dancing around the man who, to me, might be the perfect fit in this exercise.

When you spend 30 seconds building it up, like I'm going to say it is almost definitely going to feel like a failure.

I can tell you from

the Bill Barnwell scale, if I do not name the name you're putting out there, the only person we have not mentioned where I feel like there is a real discussion to be had is Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals.

Is that his name?

Okay, but I think I know who you're going for, Dan, but I'm not.

Wow.

Then who's the name?

Well,

let's talk Kyler.

Yeah.

I'm high on Kyler.

I think he creates...

You would never look at Kyler Murray's style of play for better or worse and say, oh yeah, that's very Andy Dalton-esque.

Like, for whatever you want to say about Kyler, he is the driving force of the offense, good and bad.

He has a very specific style.

You need to play into that style.

At his best, he is,

you know, he could be an MVP candidate as the driver of the offense, which I think even in his MVP season, Andy Dalton wasn't the driver of that offense.

At his worst, that Rams playoff game, he can look like he's never played football before.

The variance is too high for me.

But, you know, in terms of the, do we feel great about this?

I can see Cardinals fans saying they're a little nervous.

Yeah.

This is now the third joining with Trevor Lawrence and Baker Mayfield, third number one overall pick we've talked about in this exercise.

And Kyler is befuddling.

He's been befuddling to us on the show.

He's been befuddling to the Arizona Cardinals.

Remember all the drama around his second contract with the team and putting the video game clause in it because they didn't know about his focus.

And he's had injury issues and he's undersized and his helmet's way bigger than the rest of his body.

And it just freaks me out.

But he is,

and I still believe him to be fantastically gifted physically.

And I think maybe even as someone who I'm not a Kyler believer,

but I also feel like there's a range of outcomes still to his career where I think I just can't stick him in the middle.

I can't stick him as purgatory, but he's another interesting name.

What do you guys think?

I had him in a weird place on my list.

I think there's some Cardinals-esque elements to this as well.

Like, he's the kind of guy I would love to see traded somewhere and get a fresh start with a good offensive coordinator.

And it's like,

again, with the Dalton thing, and maybe I'm too locked into what I think this represents, but he's a little too flashy, athletically spicy for me to view him that through that lens.

I think this, we're talking about peak years that adjust things that we believe are possible out of quarterbacks.

I think Kyler in a year two with Drew Petzing, I think this defense is going to be excellent in Arizona this year.

Year two of Marvin Harrison Jr., if that somehow materializes, I think we could end up having the outlier Kyler season.

If that doesn't take place,

I think he's prime candidate for like almost like a lifelong post-Dalton Dalton.

Do you know what ruins it for me, Bill?

You know why I can't go there with you?

November 15th, 2020.

Yeah.

Kyler flushed out of the pocket near midfield against the Rams, tiptoeing the sideline, and then throws a dart Hail Mary completion to DeAndre Hopkins to win the game.

I can't get that play out of my head.

I don't blame you.

But to be fair, then Joe Milton is ahead of the Dolphin Scale because I can't get that Joe Milton

out of my head either.

He beat the Bills.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, that's true.

Milton's got an incredible skill set.

Mark will tell you all about it.

All right, let's close with this name, guys.

And we could, if anything, if we've somehow missed the name,

fine.

But I cannot believe we have not talked about a guy that is obviously near and dear to my heart.

I've been a defender of him for many, many years.

He made me look smart.

Doesn't happen often, but he made me look very smart last season when he broke through and had a big, big-ass year

in Minnesota.

And yet, he ended up not getting another contract with that team.

He ends up now replacing

Geno Smith.

Interesting.

Put the red strings together.

And he signs a kind of wonky deal for a guy that ostensibly is your new franchise passer.

There's just a lot of like red thread here that say that maybe

another ginger, Sam Darnold,

is the true dividing line in the NFL.

And he did not produce as a Dalton scale guy.

But at the same time, Andy Dalton, there was the year specifically 2015 where he produced at a level that was similar statistically as Darnold did.

We need to see what he does in Seattle here.

I understand that

to almost calibrate really who he is.

But I believe you bake in a lot of that about the uncertainty about his future and how poor so much of the past was and then the the the moments of greatness last year in minnesota where he came into his own seemingly he is to me the the kind of the purgatory where you can't figure him out where he fits in and for that reason i believe he is the man that is the successor to andy dalton okay

i had him um highlighted as well and i i kind of didn't want to take the show sideways um

when I offered Siwa, which I thought was a more juicy como to begin with.

But Darnold fits.

The one thing, though, it's like, it's hard to gauge because he's been in so many different environments.

And again, Dalton just stayed in the same place forever.

And it's like, I wonder what we'd be thinking about Sam Darnold had he been with, in a, in a sort of, I guess, more constant environment from year one till now.

He's been through a lot.

You could call him like an ascending player like Baker Mayfield.

Like maybe this is happening to quarterbacks when they're given more of a chance.

But Dan, yes, like he kind of absolutely fits.

And I think, you know, mentally or spiritually, like I pack in the meltdown at the end of last season that took away to me, it kind of didn't undo, but it put a lot of money.

It costs a machine on the game.

Those last two games.

Right.

So I think it fits.

Yeah.

So it's, it perfectly slots right behind Baker because I think it's a similar backstory, but I don't have the late game confidence in Darnold necessarily that I do in Baker.

I don't see that innate gut killer instinct.

And also with Darnold, you know that there's going to be a regression.

There has to be a regression because you played last season with the best play caller in the NFL and the best wide receiver in the NFL.

And so you're probably going to come down to this moment where your numbers begin to solidify concretely into a very Daltonian stat line.

Bill.

You know, I love ordering a good Daltonian salad you know gotta get some get some walnuts some raisins dressing on the side yeah you gotta really you want to make a too tasty range of stuff yeah i i i i certainly see the arguments and i would not be

i i i would be willing to be a signatory if the panel believes that sam darnold is the representation of the dalton line

The only tough part for me is that, yes, we saw a similar season to Dalton's 2015 that breakout.

Wow, he can do that kind of season.

But the difference was in the vast majority of Andy Dalton's first six or seven seasons in Cincinnati, besides that one, he was fine.

The vast majority of Sam Darnold's other seasons outside of last year, he was a mess.

And I'm willing to write that off as bad coaching.

lack of talent around him, lack of belief around him, injuries, mononucleosis, all these different things factoring in.

I'm willing to make those excuses, but

we haven't seen him be adequate yet.

We've either seen him be really good or pretty good or really bad.

And Andy Dalton, I feel like this comes down to him being adequate over and over again.

So even though I think probably Sam Darnold's true talent and the guy we're going to see in 2025 is going to be a very similar person to what we saw from the average Andy Dalton season during

the Marvin Lewis pump in Cincinnati.

I don't know that we've seen that yet.

And that makes it tough for me to validate him there because he just hasn't been that player, even though he might actually be that player in reality.

You know what?

It is,

I'm going to spin it in a positive way.

It's like, what are we doing here?

We're supposed to know the game.

We're supposed to kind of see things before they happen.

It's a bit of a projection.

It's a bit of a projection.

And I do think, yes, I think the Jets f ⁇ ed him up.

I think, and then he goes and he bounces around the league with the Panthers and where was he, San Francisco for a cup of tea.

Then he gets to Minnesota and he finds his way.

And to your point, Connor, he's playing with a really gifted play caller and the best wide receiver alive.

And that was probably the height of what he'll give you.

I don't think we're ever going to see the depths of what was happening when he was seeing ghosts with the Jets and Adam Gase.

I think he's going to settle in right in that middle.

It comes down to, and it's great.

I'm glad you brought it up, Bill.

It comes down to if you're comfortable kind of projecting that's who he actually is when he hasn't actually been it yet it's it's really well said

hmm so do we have a conclusion i don't know justin can we get a little um a little recap of kind of the names and anybody that we seemed close on

sure do you want to give me the names or you want me to just register them just run through who we brought up and then and we'll stop if there was someone that we were close on i don't think we were for the most part right and also stop me if i completely forget a name that we definitely talked about.

Starting with Rogers.

So Rogers, I think the consensus was his career arc doesn't really match Dalton.

So move on from Rodgers.

We had

Trevor Lawrence, I think, was the most, ooh, interesting of the names, but ultimately maybe a TBD there.

Let's see him under another coaching staff before we can decide.

Tua seems maybe the closest to a consensus here of all the guys we talked about.

Kyler Murray was very much in the conversation, I think.

Russell Wilson, very mixed opinions about what Russell Wilson is and that he fits.

And then Sam Darnold.

Sam Darnold feels like a decent option here.

And I think that was sort of the consensus as well.

One more thing to try to erase the Wilson thing and then glob onto somebody else so that I can get out of this.

Remember, this is a collective group assignment.

No one's winning this.

Gino was another one that was kind of

some people above, some people maybe below.

Not enough consensus to decide.

I want to add one more point to when Bill brought up Kyler, I think one of his hesitancies that he said was the mobility and the top-end playmaking aspect of it, right?

At the end of last season, when I was writing about quarterbacks drawing illegal QB hits, I had looked up how many quarterbacks in the league that we would consider mobile or athletic in some way, shape, or form versus maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, right?

In the NFL right now, I would argue that there's 22 to 24 mobile passers, like quarterbacks who are able to escape in the pocket and do something incredibly athletic.

Do we have to also bake that in?

to our future Dalton scale expectations because the more and more that these quarterbacks come through flag football, youth football, they're doing more of these athletic, balletic maneuvers all throughout throughout their life.

And so, there's going to be more of these quarterbacks with that skill set.

And it's almost one of those like flying balloons that takes our eyes off of the hard numbers, which are just like, yes, this is Daltonian at its very essence.

I don't know.

I get traumatized when Connor brings up flag of football on these shows at this point.

So that kind of got on my radar right there.

But I agree with the rest of it.

I'm not going to talk about that again, I'm proud.

It's a really good point.

I actually read about this, how I think one of the weirdest things, or if someone who hadn't watched football in 40 years watched an NFL Sunday, the thing that would freak them out the most was that there are eight quarterbacks who are part of their team's quarterback running game.

And that's something I think when you ban out the guys who are scrambling quite a bit, guys who are mobile, who are running as part of the offense, it's totally true.

I feel like our idea of what the average quarterback looks like is very different than it would have been a decade ago.

And so it's not unreasonable to include that and have some expectation expectation for that being part of the average quarterback or the Dalton-esque quarterback, even if it's not aesthetically exactly the same as what Andy Dalton was.

Is Sam Darnold not for nothing, but is he like the Dalton line of quarterback mobility?

Ooh.

Yeah.

Pretty good.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that's a very fair argument to make.

Let me see this year.

It's a boot-heavy offense with Clint Kubiak.

He's going to be on the move a lot.

Let me,

I'll get back to you December.

So do we want to how do we want to button this up now?

Because I don't want to push anything through legislation.

I don't want us to feel like

we need to come up with an answer.

Maybe it's enough to say to Bill's point that Darnold is someone that we have a very close eye on, but we need a little more time.

He might be the true successor, but we need to reconvene like they did with the tush-push rule

next spring and figure this out.

I'm okay with that personally.

It might be a little bit, it might not put meat in the seats in terms of engagement, Justin.

But I want to do this right too.

I mean,

what are you guys' thoughts?

Final thoughts?

I think it comes down to, and you know, we've done this before where we did not come away with

a titleist.

Again, if that's what you want to call it.

But Sam Darnold to me and Tua are my top two candidates.

And I still want to ponder them both more.

So, yes, I'm okay waiting.

What do we call it?

Adjourn?

Is it what do they call it when it's

you're pushing it?

What is a legal delays?

Mistrial?

No, that sounds like a failure.

Mistrial is a failure.

You know how you can go on the border of two states and you can stand with one foot in either state.

You can say, oh, I'm in two states.

That's how I feel about Darnold and Tua right now.

I'm willing to stand in either state, but I don't feel confident enough about either to take that step into both.

I feel like there's a very narrow space between those two.

Colin Lowney's house growing up in Pearl River, New York.

I could be in Jersey and New York.

Wow.

Yeah.

Big moment.

Big moment.

Only at his house.

I mean, wouldn't that line

down the house?

Well,

now we're really off the topic.

That's why I don't.

Shout out, Colin.

All right.

Bill.

So we will.

We'll adjourn this meeting.

We have, we're our eyes on, because it's such an important thing that,

and

Wes always mentioned it, like,

you know people go up people go down but the person who is that that that dividing figure always stays in the same place so we're going to we have people that we've ruled out and people we feel confident about could be that next figure so let's see how it all plays out in the season ahead bill you were so kind with your time you got a newborn at home and and yet here you are delivering the goods where can people find the bill barnwell goodness elsewhere i would imagine wherever you get your podcasts i have not checked every podcast feed, but I assume wherever you do it, just type in my name.

Maybe you'll find it at ESPN.com, on the ESPN networks occasionally,

just anywhere ESPN related, you will probably eventually find me rambling about football.

Beautiful.

Got two of our great writers on the show today.

That's a

that's unusual.

Does it make you want to get back in the game, Mark?

Not really.

All right.

Thank you to everybody.

We'll be back in a few days.

The great Jordan Rodriguez will rejoin us later this week.

So make sure you're there for that.

And until then, do what you must.

Heed the call.

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