NFL Catch-Up

Welcome to the inaugural podcast of NFL Catch-Up, hosted by brothers Mike and James Mathews. The purpose of our podcast is to recap the opinions and analysis from national experts across the NFL podcasting landscape -- delivering you a weekly catch-up of the most interesting takes from around the NFL. We'll be dropping NFL Catch-Up every Friday morning all year long across the major podcast platforms. You can find us on X @nfl_catchup. We're also available on the web at nflcatchup.com.

Welcome everyone to the very first episode of NFL Catch-Up, I’m Mike Mathews.

And I’m James Mathews. We’re excited to bring you our weekly round-up of the hottest takes and most compelling discussions from experts across the NFL podcasting world.

Given the NFL season kicks-off next week, we thought we’d dedicate this episode by recapping a handful of the most interesting team and player opinions and projections for the coming year.

Let’s start in the NFC North. On Move the Sticks podcast with Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks, Bucky feels strongly that Chicago is poised for a turnaround and it’s not just because of the move to draft Caleb Williams. He said it actually began last year midway through the year when they made the trade for Montez Sweat. His point was that Chicago’s defense played as a top five defense after the trade – and was as good as any defense in the NFL once he got there last year.

He feels they have a lot of pieces in place now that make it all work together. Some examples included Gervon Dexter -- a key building block for them as a very athletic, enormous, perfect body type for how they want to play. That they handled the linebacker position in free agency, getting TJ Edwards and Tremaine Edmonds, guys that are smart, they're tough, they're fast, they can cover, so they're good there. And then Brooks says he would put the secondary up in terms of talent up against just about anybody. He loves Brisker at safety as a young player -- second round pick in 2022, Jaylon Johnson he feels is a star as a young player -- second round pick in 2022, saying there's a reason he got 20 million bucks a year. Kiler Gordon, just seeing him move around and how physical he's been in the preseason, he thinks he's got a chance to take a major leap as someone who's playing the nickel for them. And Tyrique Stevenson is a physical aggressive corner. So he feels that the secondary is really good.

Bottom line, Brooks’ prediction is the Bears are poised to flip their record this year to 10 wins, from their 10-loss season last year. That would be quite the turnaround.

For our next segment, we’ll recap the recent podcast over at The Ringer NFL Show with Sheil Kapadia, Deontay Lee and Steven Ruiz. who offered some interesting thoughts on the AFC East.

The Ringer segment begins by reporting that the Jets are now the AFC East betting favorites, which wasn’t the case earlier in the offseason. It was Bills, then Jets. Now the Jets are +155 according to FanDuel followed by the Bills at +175. And the Dolphins are not far behind at +240.
Ruiz says he’s got to pump the brakes on the Jets hype. Although he feels the defense is indeed going to be even better and he thinks they are going to be better on offense provided Aaron Rogers stays healthy.
That's a big if though. And it's not only Aaron Rogers, it's Mike Williams that has to stay healthy. Tyron Smith has to stay healthy. Guys that haven't gotten injured in the past, like Quentin Williams for instance, have to stay healthy like he has the last couple of years.
So a lot is riding on the injury luck for a team that's often injured. For that reason, Ruiz pumped the brakes on the Jets hype.
Ruiz said he’s going with the bills because he thinks maybe he sold their stock a little too early in the off season, especially after the Diggs trade, but he’s liking what he’s seeing out of camp.
For example, he thinks Josh Allen's going to take a step forward. Sean McDermott's going to have that defense playing better. And he’s really high on Khalil-Shakir. He predicts Shakir can effectively replace the production they got from Stefon Diggs.
And if that's the case and the defense is better, this team's gonna be better than it was last year, and they were one of the best teams in the AFC last year.

Wrapping up The Ringer AFC East prediction segment, Kapadia makes the point that this is one of the few divisions where you could probably go in one of three different directions, including the Dolphins, to win the division, and in fact all three analysts predicted all three teams will make the playoffs. Should be a fascinating division to watch.

On this segment of NFL Catch-Up, let’s recap this week’s NFL on ESPN podcast with Kevin Clark joined by Ben Solak, discussing players and coaches that could swing the super bowl.

The episode begins by discussing that there are 13 players earning over $40 million per year, Trevor Lawrence, Love, Burrow, Tua, Goff, Herbert, Jackson, Hurts, Murray, Watson, Mahomes, Cousins and Allen. Only 6 QB’s are viewed as being worth their contract value and therefore have the ability to take their team to the super bowl every year because of how good they are…the six being Love, Burrow, Herbert, Jackson, Mahomes and Allen.
Their follow-on discussion was about Allen and McDermott. Clark makes the point that while there’s still a question whether McDermott is the best coach to take the Bills all the way, you have to give him credit for authoring one of the greatest QB development stories in history and smashing the over/under predicted Vegas win total every year since he began coaching. But there’s this lingering question of whether he continues coaching for year-to-year ‘competency’ rather than taking coaching risks and schemes to achieve ‘excellence’ aiming to win the Lombardi trophy.

Next discussion from Clark was about Anthony Richardson and the Colts. The point was don’t sleep on the Colts. They have a #1 WR in Pittman that has shown he can win in any situation. And AD Mitchell promises to be a stud. They have athletes all over the defense. And Anthony Richardson was one of the most highly rated QBs in throwing into what was defined as ‘perfectly covered plays,’ which shows you he has the capability to become really special. Solak however points out that the one big question mark is their secondary, in particular their CB room.

Solak then shifts the conversation to Jalen Hurts and the Eagles saying this is a fascinating situation to watch. You look at their roster and it’s arguably more talented than the Colts, it’s a very complete roster minus the retirement of Kelce – but they to date have been effective at drafting replacements, making sure they’re ready for expected departures. However the key is of course Hurts.
His camp is saying he wants the offense to be more complex, wants to push the ball down the middle of the field more…well OK, Brian Johnson is out – the OC is gone – Kellen Moore is in the building. You want complex, we’ll give you complex brother.
Lots of words, lots of guys moving. It’s not a small menu of passing concepts, it’s a deep menu of passing concepts.
There’s a lot of straight from the pocket concepts, this is BIG BOY OFFENSE. That has to get married to Jalen Hurts who is so good in the QB running game, spread, RPO heavy offenses.
This is a big offensive change that the quarterback has very clearly been championing. Solak’s view is it’s not going to be perfect, particularly in week 1, and there’s going to be growing pains. But we’ll all need to reserve judgement until we get into October football.
So if Hurts is capable of taking on this greatly increased responsibility of the Offense, then this team could be capable of making it to the super bowl. If Jalen Hurts can’t do that, as we haven’t seen him in this type of pro-style offense before, if he can’t handle the blitz, and if his bailing out of the pocket too fast issues remain, we know just how bad this could be -- this could be a 1 and 6 team.

On this final segment of NFL Catch-up today, we’ll recap the newsworthy events and takes from Tuesday’s cut down day. We’ll start with the NFL Network ‘The Insiders Podcast’ with Tom Pelissero, Ian Rapoport, and Judy Battista.

Starting in Cleveland, one of the most fascinating decisions was in their quarterback room given they had Winston, Huntley and Dorian Thompson-Robinson competing behind Deshaun Watson. In their initial 53-man roster, they surprisingly kept all four. Rapoport expects they will soon reduce down to three QB’s, but the huge question is which QB will be leaving.
Rapoport said DTR is viewed as having great potential as their long-term #2 QB, so he’s staying put. Ian strongly believes that both the other QBs, Winston and Huntley, have come up in a number of trade conversations. But Winston is a difficult trade situation given his large contract, while Huntley would be a lower-level signing for teams looking for a less expensive backup option. He thinks Huntley would makes sense for Minnesota. Surprisingly, Rapoport said it’s possible they could start the year rostering all four QBs as injuries do occur across the NFL each season and these assets could be more valuable during the season.

Moving to the Odell Beckham Jr. situation in Miami, Cameron Wolfe joined ‘The Insiders Podcast’ and said although Beckham wanted to be active for week 1, the team made the ‘long play’ decision to put him on the PUP list for at least the first four games which leaves their wide receiver room very thin in September – in fact they only kept four receivers on their initial 53-man roster.
Wolfe offered that we should all keep in mind that the Dolphins have been giving reps to running back De’Von Achane at the receiver position in camp to get him and Raheem Mostert on the field at the same time. Wolfe thinks that’s a personnel package to look for while they await for Odell to get back.

Moving to the Ross Tucker Football Podcast, part of the DraftKings Network. Tucker said the one cut that jumped out to him the most was Noah Brown. He had a really good year for the Texans last year and they gave him $4 million dollars on a one-year deal – fully guaranteed with a $1 million signing bonus. So some team is going to pick up a really good wide receiver on the open market.

Finally, on the ‘NFL Daily’ podcast with Gregg Rosenthal, joined by Evan Silva of Establish the Run, the most shocking transaction of the week according to Rosenthal was the trade of Ernest Jones, the Rams’ captain on Defense, to the Titans, only giving up a pick swap of 5th and 6th rounders. So basically the Rams said ‘we’re getting rid of this guy, we’ll take whatever we can get.’ Shocking to Gregg, because when Aaron Donald retired, he said to Earnest Jones ‘this is your Defense now.’ Strange and weird move by the Rams, Gregg says, but he makes the point that the Rams really like the undrafted free agent, Omar Spates, who he assumes is in line now to start.

Thank you for listening today. We would kindly ask that you rate, review, share and subscribe to NFL Catch-Up. Remember we drop every Friday morning all year long. You can find us on X @nfl_catchup. We're also available on the web at nflcatchup.com.