00:00I was talking over the weekend with a bunch of friends who are back into football, back paying attention.
00:08I think the majority of my friends or the people that I communicate with about sports don't pay attention as
00:16much to the July and August conversations.
00:21It bores them. They don't really find preseason football to be worth consuming.
00:27It's a terrible consumption for a sports fan.
00:30And this is when they start to pay attention.
00:34So they'll ask me, what do you think?
00:36You know, what about this? I heard about this offensive line center issue.
00:40The tonsil injury seems like a big deal.
00:43What about, you know, their secondary? Is it going to be better?
00:46Is the defense going to be better out of all the players they added?
00:48Who looks like the guy that's going to be the guy that ends up, you know, leading the team in
00:54sacks
00:54or ends up being a real big-time run stuffer?
00:57You know, how much better will the defense be?
00:59But the number one question is Jaden Daniels.
01:04The number one topic is Jaden Daniels.
01:06And I found the conversation to move away from whether or not they thought he was injury prone
01:14to something that really surprised me, which is, is he actually elite?
01:22Is he actually an elite-level talent?
01:28I've got a friend, Doug, who I've not talked to in a while,
01:31and he reached out to me last week and just said,
01:34I think we should have taken Drake May in the 2024 draft.
01:40Yeah, off of last year, Drake May was really good.
01:44Now, he was truly god-awful in the postseason.
01:49Like, compare Jaden's 24 postseason to Drake May's 25 postseason.
01:55They're not comparable.
01:56One was electric, clutch, great.
02:00The other one was terrible and unclutch.
02:03Actually, I shouldn't say that.
02:04But he had that big run on fourth down in the snow in Denver against a depleted football team
02:10that they barely hung on and beat.
02:12And then they got absolutely run out of the building in the Super Bowl.
02:17But my friend Doug said,
02:20I just don't see the elite traits, size, arm, decision-making that I see with Drake May.
02:30So, I don't want to turn this into a Jaden Daniels or Drake May conversation.
02:35I want to stick to this.
02:37Because one year ago, there were very few, if any,
02:42that said that Jaden Daniels wasn't an elite-level talent.
02:47The injury thing aside, push it to the side.
02:50You may be fearful that he's going to be injury-prone for the rest of your career,
02:53which is precisely why you would have taken Drake May at number two,
02:58because he's a bigger, stronger build and may be physically able to withstand
03:02the rigors of the NFL over a long career.
03:07But put the injury, you know, possibilities to the side.
03:11And tell me if you still think a year after we were all thinking this is an elite-level talent,
03:18if you still believe he is that, because I haven't changed my mind on that at all.
03:2624 was not make-believe.
03:29You saw everything you needed to see in a quarterback to make you believe
03:36that this was elite-level ability.
03:40He can throw it.
03:41He can throw it deep.
03:43He can throw it medium-length.
03:45He can throw it short.
03:47He can throw it with big-arm strength.
03:49He can throw it with great touch.
03:51He can throw with anticipation.
03:53He can throw with timing.
03:55He can throw under pressure.
03:57He can throw without pressure.
04:01He obviously can move.
04:04This is a guy who is elite-level when it comes to playing off-schedule quarterbacking in the NFL.
04:12Number one's not there.
04:13Number two's not there.
04:15Number three's not there, which he's able to.
04:17He's able to process one, two, three.
04:18He's able to read defenses one, two, three.
04:22And then we got to go make a play.
04:24Nobody did that better than he did it in 2024.
04:28Let's go make a play.
04:29Let's go make room for a throw and more time for receivers to get open,
04:35or let's go make a play with our legs.
04:38He is exceptional as a dual-threat quarterback.
04:42He's exceptional as a designed run quarterback.
04:46I don't think we're going to see any of the designed runs this year.
04:49We talked about that a week ago on the show.
04:52The story in The Athletic, Jonathan Jones wrote, and there was some very interesting stuff from Jaden Daniels in there,
05:03about how he sees himself as a runner in 2026.
05:08The designed runs are gone.
05:10They're not in the playbook.
05:12You're not going to see quarterback counter, quarterback off-tackle, quarterback sweep,
05:19where Cliff ran those plays because 11-on-11 in the run game is a major advantage in the run
05:26game for an offense.
05:27And when you have a quarterback that is capable of being a running back as well,
05:32you like to get some of those 11-on-11s, especially when you're third and two, third and three,
05:38or in a very condensed portion of the field, the red zone.
05:43But he's not Josh Allen.
05:45He's not Cam Newton.
05:46He's not built that way.
05:47I hated those plays.
05:49They're apparently out, thankfully.
05:51But will the dual-threat aspect be there?
05:54Because he certainly showed he can be that.
05:57And then the other parts of quarterbacking at an elite level.
06:02How is he as a leader?
06:03Well, all you can go by is what everybody says.
06:07And his teammates absolutely looked to him and looked to him as a rookie quarterback.
06:13What about the clutch gene?
06:15I think he answered that over and over again his rookie season,
06:20starting with the Cincinnati game week three,
06:24continuing with an outrageous Hail Mary throw to beat the Bears.
06:29A little bit of luck, obviously, but the creation, remember, of the time that it took to get those guys
06:36down there.
06:37And then the throw really first-rate all the way around.
06:41I mean, that is much better than Bryce Underwood's first shot at a Hail Mary on Saturday night at the
06:47Big House.
06:48We will get to some college football today on the show.
06:51How about the Philadelphia game, the play that we came in with?
06:55I mean, when you beat the best defense in football, in football that particular year,
07:02and playing their best, putting up, you know, five touchdown passes in comeback fashion,
07:0822 points in the fourth quarter to win 36-33, clutch gene.
07:14How about the drive in overtime to beat the Falcons in comeback fashion?
07:18Absolute clutch gene.
07:20Same thing in two straight playoff games on the road against Tampa and Detroit.
07:25He checked off every single box of the elite quarterback list in 2024.
07:35If you want to say that his decision-making as a runner was immature,
07:41that would have been the one thing that I would have felt and did feel was a fair critique.
07:49He treated first and 10 in the first quarter of a 0-0 game the same way he treated fourth
07:55and five in the fourth quarter down six.
07:58They are two totally different situations.
08:00It's the area in which we still need to see the most growth from him.
08:05He's got to protect himself.
08:07First and 10 in a 3-0 first quarter, trying to get an extra two yards and taking a hit
08:13is stupid.
08:15But fourth and five, down 23-17 with 38 seconds to go, you got to go get it.
08:25I don't see anything at all that I can find that would get me off of Jaden Daniels is an
08:36elite level talent.
08:393-0-1, 2-3-0, 0-9-80.
08:423-0-1, 2-3-0, 0-9-80.
08:44This is not about Drake May versus Jaden Daniels.
08:48This is not about your fear that he may end up being injury prone.
08:53I just want to know if anybody else believes, as my friend Doug does, that Jaden Daniels isn't an elite
09:00level talent.
09:01It's a simple question.
09:03Is he an elite level quarterbacking talent or not?
