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You need Indeed. Good afternoon, everybody. I am Bart Winkler.
Welcome into the Winklerverse. Wanted to check in with you fine folks this week. We will get back to Paul and Grant next week.
And they're on assignment. Paul's out. Grant, nah. Me, nah.
But we'll do that next week, which we'll have a good Super Bowl preview to give you on that one. Plenty to talk about otherwise, so I did want to jump on for a little bit. We got to check in with old friend Toby Altheiser, who's out in DC. You knew him as a DC guy. He's been here.
He went back. He's enjoying this. You know, he has never seen. They haven't been the commanders or whatever version of that team. Hasn't been to a NFC Championship game in 33 years.
This is the first in Toby's life that they will be this far. And they're doing it with a team that maybe hasn't even scratched the surface of what they will be. It's almost like if Jordan Love got his Packers to the NFC Championship game last year. We'd be like, whoa, the good times are coming.
Then, obviously, they lost. Been talking to a lot of Packers, just trying to figure out what's going on with them in the NFC North. I think one thing that I'm wondering and that I brought up the other night that I would like to maybe throw your way is what's the standings going to be next year in the NFC North? Because you've got the Lions who are not going to win 15 games again and they're losing both coordinators.
So, we'll see what hit that has. They're just not also going to win 15 games again. You've got the Vikings who will not be winning 14 games again. And then also, what's the quarterback situation like? You've got the Bears who have a new head coach to work with their young quarterback. So, it feels like everybody's going to be excited about a Ben Johnson-Caleb Williams pairing and how many wins that will bring them, but are they going to rank them ahead of a possible Kevin O'Connell-JJ McCarthy pairing? We're going to get all excited for a good young head coach and good young quarterback in Chicago, but we're not in Minnesota?
We're just going to assume McCarthy is worse than Sam Darnold? No, again, I don't think they're going to win 14 games. I think the NFC North was able to beat up on some bad divisions this year.
The NFC West was down, the AFC South not good, and then the Bears weren't great even though they beat us. But they're not going to have the schedule that they had a year ago, I don't think. They're going to have the tougher quarterbacks coming in, the tougher teams to play out of the AFC.
So, it's going to be harder for sure. So, everybody's going to be lower than what they were a year ago probably. Packers, that's the wildcard. What's Packers going to be? What are we going to do? Are we getting Devante Adams?
It seems like he wants to maybe come back, although if Rodgers and Aaron Glenn find some kinship in New York, Devante would probably stay. I don't know how that's going to settle out at the time of this posting, but I just wonder how things are going to shake out. I wonder how things are going to look, and I'm very, not concerned, but intrigued in the Chicago aspect. I had a text from my sister-in-law who's a Bears fan, and I think this is the most accurate way that I can put the feelings on the Bears.
She said, I want to know if I can start saying, wait till next year and actually mean it. I said, Bears fans have every reason to be excited, yes. Ben was the best available hire and exactly what they should have been looking for, but can he overcome decades of ineptitude from the franchise? Remains to be seen, but reason to be optimistic.
She said, that makes me very happy. I said, the other side though, is that if they don't figure it out, they never will. If they don't figure this out with Ben Johnson, they never will. And I want to welcome Ben Johnson into the Bears Failure of Press Conferences Hall of Fame. What he did at his press conference is the one thing that I plea with Bears fans not to do. Now there's a little more leeway on how it went down.
He didn't come right out like some of these other guys and say, we got two goals. We want to win the Super Bowl and we want to beat the Green Bay Packers. But he did use the Packers as some sort of rallying cry to get a mic drop at the press conference and I always tell the Bears, I don't even tell Bears fans, I tell the Bears and their coaches, stop doing this. Your organization is the Chicago Bears.
You've been around 100 years. You've won a Super Bowl. You've had success before the Super Bowls. Quit worrying about what the Green Bay Packers have to say. Quit thinking about us. Here's Ben Johnson.
He took the bait on Wednesday. I know this is the toughest division of football right now. There's three teams that made the playoffs this year. I've got tremendous amount of respect for the coaches and the players in this league. Haven't competed against them for the last six years. Dane Campbell, Kevin O'Connell, you're talking about two guys that are up for Coach of the Year awards as the season ends here.
And to be quite frank with you, I kind of enjoyed beating Matt Lefort twice a year. I'll say what everyone's saying. It's giving Adam Gase. I think the Bears have every reason to be optimistic. And I know that he was asked about the NFC North. He's just making a nice little joke, but it's the same mistake all these Bears coaches have made. Does it mean that the whole Ben Johnson era is going to be a failure?
It shouldn't, but it probably will. You got to stop invoking the Packers at these press conferences. Say something nice about Lefort. OK, you beat him twice. Yeah, all right. Yeah.
Then you got to end with him. You say, oh, Matt Lefort is good. Kevin O'Connell, Dan O'Connell Coach of the Year. I'm excited to get to these guys on a one on one level. And I got to say, remember how I did this in the mirror today. It's going to be nice.
It's been nice beating Matt Lefort twice a year. Please laugh. Stop doing it, Bears. Are they going to be bad? Are they going to be good?
It remains to be seen. The Bears have more reason to be optimistic than they've ever had, at least since I can remember. But when does the pressure start to mount?
When do they start to say? Like, if you like the Ben and Caleb pairing next year, but you only win six games, are you happy? When do you need to see a playoff appearance? When do you need to see a Super Bowl?
Very optimistic in Chicago and you should be. But let's not crown Ben Johnson before he takes the field as a coach. We don't know how it's going to work. We don't know how it's going to look. A lot of crowning going on once again.
And he beat Matt Lefort twice a year. Looking forward to the weekend games, Commanders and Eagles. Again, we'll talk to Toby Elthizer about that in a little bit. Chiefs and Bills. I think the Bills can do it.
I think the Bills can do it. I think you got to win on the margins. That's what the Chiefs do. They win on the margins.
They win on the edges, which is code for saying they've mastered how to be luck. Are the refs in the tank for Kansas City? No. Does Kansas City know how to exploit the referees?
Absolutely. Mahomes, you go watch that play where he's dancing around a little bit before he gets the two Texans to bonk heads with each other. He knows what he was doing. He could have gone out of bounds twice.
Then he sees two guys come at him and he's like, oh, I'll just lay on the ground and they'll hit and it'll look like I got hit. That's not luck. They practice that. They know what they're doing. The Bills have as good of a team as they've ever had against Kansas City at this point, I think. If this is going to be the year, it's going to be the year. Otherwise, who only knows? I just don't want an Eagles-Chief Super.
Actually, you know what? I don't really care about the Eagles. I'd like to see the Commanders get in for my guy Toby, but I don't really care. I just don't want to see the Chiefs again. I just don't want to see it again. It's a repeat. This weekend's a repeat. Seven AFC championships in a row.
Six of them have been in Arrowhead. The Super Bowl. Media Day will be a repeat. The stories will be a repeat. I don't want to see a repeat. The same old, same old thing. I want to see something new. Give me something fresh.
Give me, give me, give me, give me something new matchup. I think Bill's Washington will be a nice throwback to when they met in the 90s. That'd be cool. That'd be all right. Bill's Eagles would be a good game. That'd be fun.
But even Chiefs-Commanders isn't like enough to like get me, I mean, yeah, it's a Super Bowl, but yeah, come on. Come on, man. I want to see a little more. Brewers news. They've done very little. As you would expect. Oh, Jets hired Aaron Glyn as I'm talking. That's good. So now as of posting. Brewers news.
That's fun. The Dodgers. Here's what the Dodgers are up to. The Dodgers have one point three billion dollars in deferred money.
One point three billion dollars. They signed the guy over the weekend, Tanner Scott, who was apparently an All-Star, who most people have never heard of, and they gave him seventy two million dollars over four years and deferred like twenty five of that. Then they go and get Kirby Yates, another two time All-Star, who people are maybe a little more familiar with. They're you know, like how we the Brewers usually have like a guy in the bullpen, like a Sam Freeman, just some guy who's like up here for a week and a half.
Then he gets sent down and we never hear from him again. The Dodgers version of that is Kirby Yates. And they got all this deferred money. And every you know, when everybody used to make fun of Bobby Bonilla day, oh, the Mets are still paying a guy who is not here. The Dodgers look at that. You guys all laugh at that. The Dodgers look at that like what a brilliant strategy.
Seventy million dollars now is not going to be the same as seventy million dollars in fifteen years. We're actually saving money on this. The Dodgers strike again.
C.C. Sabathian in the Hall of Fame. That's good Brewers news. I'm still pleading for him to get his number retired.
I know it won't happen, but I do want the significance of what he did to be more acknowledged. He came here just like with Toby. He hasn't seen, you know, the commanders in NFC championship. I was twenty four before I saw the Brewers in the in the playoffs for the first time in my life.
And C.C. put his body on the line, knowing he's got a big contract coming to get us in there. And so, yeah, he's going to go in as a Yankee and he spent a lot of time in Cleveland. But the Brewers have that special relationship with him. And, you know, like Trevor Hoffman, we can kind of claim a little bit and he got the record save here. And, you know, it was fun when he was here.
But C.C. was a whole different animal. And to retire 52 is an acknowledgment of the. I think sometimes it can be a little more into a number retirement.
Ryan Braun, number eight, two different eras of Brewers baseball. It's OK to like give acknowledgment to that via a number retire. Maybe you're not just retiring it for the guy, you're retiring it for the era. Although I still think you should retire it for the guy.
But I had a guy on my Facebook page say, oh, C.C. was just a rental, just like all these guys. He didn't care about Milwaukee. My brother, he put his body on the line for Milwaukee. You don't have to be somewhere a long time to have a big impact. The more you know. So good to see C.C.
get in on the first ballot. Ichiro, not unanimous. It is true.
Half of it came in Japan. But also, I think what happened was somebody wanted to protect Mariano Rivera. That's why I don't think the guy who didn't vote for Ichiro doesn't think he's a Hall of Famer.
I think he's protecting Mariano being the one unanimous guy at this point. Is that dumb? Absolutely. I feel like a lot of times the dumbest answer is the right one.
When I'm trying to figure out why people do what they are doing. Little Bucks update. They're supposed to have a game Wednesday night, the 22nd in New Orleans.
They will not. If you ever thought a game between Milwaukee and New Orleans would be canceled because of weather conditions, you wouldn't have think that it would have been in New Orleans, at least not these weather conditions, as people were playing hockey on Bourbon Street last night. Bucks now got to try to figure out a way to get home and play Miami on Thursday, which is going to be a chance to see Jimmy Butler. I know some Bucks fans are trade machine fanficking Jimmy Butler here. Are they playing Bradley Beal now? I don't know. Here's the thing where I am with that.
Just tell me what happens. If the Bucks are going to do some move where it's Jimmy Butler, if somehow they get Bradley Beal, if they punt on Chris Middleton, which I don't want to do, but whatever the Bucks need to do to get national pundits to give them more credit, I think they can win a championship with this team. I don't know, but I think they can. But ESPN will give us a better chance if we have Jimmy Butler and Dame and Giannis. So we might as well do it so that Kendrick Perkins can talk better about us.
Because that's what we ultimately crave is the love and admiration of the national media. Toby's coming up in a little bit. We're brought to you by Happy Place Hemp. Remember the promo code is BART, 25% off each and every order at HappyPlaceHemp.com. The seltzers, the gummies, the tinctures. 2025 has been a more CBD, THC, seltzer-y kind of year for me trying to wean off the other stuff, booze. So it's been good. The seltzers are really, really good.
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And scene. We are joined by our good buddy, Toby Altizer, who stops back into the Winklerverse. Are you at one of the stations or both? I don't quite understand how it works in D.C. I generally work with 106.7, but I do some work with 980. It kind of just depends upon what we're doing.
It just kind of depends. So there's two stations, but they're like friends. Correct. I mean, we're literally like right across the hallway from each other. We can see into each other's studios. So, yeah, we're working. It's not as much of a competition.
It makes everyone stronger. Yeah, we're collaborative. I mean, we routinely have 980 guests or 980 hosts on 106.7, have 106.7 guys on 980. So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of working together. Unlike here, where we've reverted to the tribalism of the BCS. I think it's hilarious that D.C. has two stations essentially working together and Milwaukee has four, three, four working against each other. I know.
I mean, it is the worst market in sports today. Pretty fun. I don't mind continuing to say that.
You guys doing pretty well. Toby. Toby right now is where I was in 2008 as a Brewers fan. Because in 2008, I'd never seen the Brewers make a playoff appearance. And Washington has done that in your life, but not of any significance.
No. Now, for the first time in 33 years there in the NFC championship. I mean, I don't think you've aged up to 33 since you've been here. So this is the first time in your life that you're seeing this.
Did you give them a shot or like how much of a shot did you give them? Because I kept texting everybody I knew during that game. How is this happening? I was I was legitimately stunned and I don't think I was trying to downplay Washington. But I was just so like I thought Detroit was going to score like 900 points. Yeah, I mean, I thought as the week went on leading up to that game that they had a real shot just because of the fact that, you know, people, you know, we talked about it all week long.
And the question was, you know, what gives you confidence? Why do you think they can do it? And I go back to week three in Cincinnati and multiple times this season where every time they touch the ball, they scored. So it's kind of hard to lose football games if essentially every time you have the football you score and they did a little bit of that. And also when the other team makes a mistake or two, you make a stop, you come up with five turnovers like you do with Detroit. More often than not, if your offense is going, you're going to win that football game. Your defense doesn't have to be spectacular to win when you put up 45.
Right. So that's kind of where I was, where if they could score, which I thought they could with Detroit, it's not often that you go into a playoff matchup against the number one team in your conference and you're not scared at all of one of their units, whether it's an offense or defense. And going into that matchup, there was nothing scary about Detroit's defense because they made Sam Darnold look like a pumpkin. But you just blitz Sam Darnold and he can look like that. Jayden Daniels is a different animal. He's playing like one of the best quarterbacks in the league right now. So you can blitz him all you want.
He's not Sam Darnold. They did that and he was able to overcome it and play really, really well. And so I wasn't scared of their defense. They scored enough points and came up with enough opportunities in place to win on the defensive side of the ball. So I felt I don't know that I expected them to win forty five to thirty one, but I did expect them to have a really good shot to win.
So now that they've gotten here, what do you think about going into the weekend? Yeah, I mean, I think with Philadelphia, you're familiar with this opponent. Right. And both of the games have been close. You know, everyone goes backs and looks at that Thursday night football game.
The first time they met in week 11 and Philadelphia ends up winning that one. Jayden Daniels was still banged up and he was really Jayden's looked really, really good since he kind of came out of his funk the first three halves of the season. I didn't think he looked good. Week one, he didn't really throw the football well. And then the first half against the Giants in week two, he didn't look great. From that second half of that Giants game in week two on, he looked really good until he had that rib injury against Carolina. And there was a losing streak in there.
There was a little bit where he just didn't look the same. Philadelphia was a part of that and that Thursday night game. And if you remember, it was really close until the end of that game.
There was a decision that Dan Quinn made. I can't remember exactly what it was, but there was a fourth down decision where he didn't kick it and it ends up costing them the game because he went for it. They didn't pick it up, but there was a chance for them to have a lead with under 10 minutes to go in that ball game. So it's not as if that one was a blowout. Obviously, they come to Washington to lose with Jaylen Hertz being out for the entirety of, you know, the three quarters after that spectacular first quarter by Saquon and the Eagles.
And they come back and win that one. So it's a divisional foe. You know how these matchups go.
You can throw out the records, all that stuff. They're familiar with each other. Both the matchups have been close when they've met this year. Is Philadelphia the better team on paper?
100 percent. But I don't see any reason why they couldn't go to Philly and win this thing when, you know, it's not like their offense has been clicking on all cylinders in Philadelphia and Washington's for the most part has. So this has been quite a ride for Washington and their fortunes have turned around the last couple of years. Obviously, the football team to the commanders, to the new owner, to a new coach, to a new quarterback. I feel like from afar and I might have told you this, but it seems like.
But commanders is here to stay and this cements that. But I think that. I would think that that like. It's appropriate like this is this is a completely different era and teams shouldn't have to be switching their names every time that it's a new era. I'm not saying that, but I think like after going through all the different name changes and having a professional team called a football team, which, you know, in one part of the brain, I'm like, that's pretty cool.
And then the other, I'm like, stupidest thing I've ever heard. But this gives the commanders like a new identity. And I think it's a fun identity. And I think people are really. I mean, I don't know what percentage of fans are rooting for anything other than a commanders build Super Bowl, but this gives the commander like they're the commanders.
These are the commanders. Yeah, I think they needed something to kind of cement it. And this sort of season does that right.
And also just having a guy like Jayden Daniels and the moments that they've had this season kind of do that. Right. I mean, no one here.
I wouldn't say no one. A lot of people thought the black uniforms were cool, but they didn't feel like your football team. Right. To be like, you know, the Packers wearing black or something like that. It's just it doesn't feel like the team that you grew up rooting for. They look like the Pittsburgh Steelers. But then you have the Hail Mary in the black uniforms. And so that moment is going to be immortalized in those black uniforms. So suddenly those are cool. Now, Jayden Daniels makes them cool. And the uniforms, they still don't necessarily love them. We don't necessarily love the name. But everything that's happened this season makes it so much that you're like, well, that was this season. That was all under the commander's name.
It kind of sticks. And so, you know, it's it's a weird iteration because the Redskins won three Super Bowls. The commanders have not won anything yet.
And they're still rolling. Maybe they will win a Super Bowl in there a couple of years in as the commanders. But this kind of does cement it were, you know, I know some people wanted the name to go back. They won this net. I don't see anything happening.
Even the owner, I don't think necessarily loves the commander's name. But at this point, I think they were worried about other stuff. They're working on trying to get a new stadium built. They're working on obviously fixing the name again.
I don't think they're going to. And especially with this sort of season, I think they're just going to stick with it. And, you know, as time goes on, I mean, heck, there's another team in town that changed their name. And no one loves Wizards like, you know, Washington Wizards. People were attached to the Bullets name as time goes on. You just get used to it and get over it.
You don't necessarily have to love it. It just is what it is. Yeah. The thing with Jayden Daniels, you mentioned the Hail Mary game like and you've seen more and maybe there's more impactful games. But I feel like the big games that they've had this year in terms of putting themselves like on the map, not only did they happen, but they happened when it was already like being watched on a national scale. That Bengals game where people started to take notice on Monday night. The Hail Mary game ended up being in the late window and it was like, you know, it got flexed to that. And then people got to see that happen.
Then you had the game against Atlanta at the end of the season and now obviously the playoffs. And so people are seeing like the greatest hits of this version of this team. And I'm looking at Jayden Daniels and I'm just I'm like, I don't know. I I try to, you know, not crown quarterbacks too quickly, Brock Purdy. But Jayden Daniels, like he seems.
I guess I wonder where you would rank him right now. I like I've told people out here, it's like you're not going to put him over Mahomes or Allen or those guys yet or maybe ever. Right. Those guys are all timers.
But at the same point, there's not a quarterback right now that I would take in this playoffs other than Jayden Daniels, especially in the NFC. Right. Like you've got the best one Sunday. Yeah.
Like you feel good. And that was the other thing going into that Lions game is like they have better everything else, essentially, except quarterback. And so when you've got the quarterback, you've got a shot and he's just playing so well. You know, I don't you don't want to get too hyperbolic because we've seen guys have really good rookie seasons and then fall off a little bit.
What now we've seen in Washington. Right. But there's no one that's been like Jayden where RG three was a runner that could pass. Jayden's a passer that can run.
And what I thought was so unique and really this is what sold me on it. Their second matchup with Philly and everyone points out the Jalen hurts injury and what happened there. I get all that and definitely played into it. But they scored 36 points in a game. They turned the ball over five times. And Jayden was spectacular where, you know, for the most part of this season, I think he had shown that he can be a really, really good quarterback, but hadn't yet shown that he can be Superman. Like you see Mahomes do like you see Josh Allen do like you see Lamar do in big spots where they essentially are the offense and they go win it. And I'm old school Bart.
I'm old school. I like running the football nitty gritty. But in that ball game, I think it was like the second quarter. I'm yelling at my TV telling Cliff to stop running the football and just put everything on Jayden's back and he was able to do it. And then he did it again in Atlanta and then he did it again in the playoffs.
Right. So I think you're even seeing him grow just these last five to six weeks to a point that I don't think any of us could have imagined. And so I think he puts himself under that tier when you get those guys like the top tier dudes that can just simply turn into Superman and win ball games. Jayden hadn't he'd been really, really good, but now he's reached a level that is in that tier with those guys these last couple of weeks. And that's why they're in the NFC Championship because I saw stats a day part that six dudes have made the six rookie quarterbacks have made the championship game in their conference.
And all of them have had top five scoring defenses except for Jayden. They're 18. Their defense isn't good. I was I was talking trash to a buddy after the Falcons game.
I called them. He's a Rams fan. You know, there's a potential they'd match up with the Rams in the wildcard round. And he's like, dude, I'm not scared. You've got Jayden and Terry.
And I was like, yeah, that's it. They have some all pros on defense, Bobby Wagner and Frankie Louvou. And but you don't feel great about their secondary. You don't feel great about their defensive line. You don't feel great about a whole lot except for Jayden.
And somehow he's overcome all these things. And that's why they're in the NFC Championship. So you don't sound very optimistic that they're even that good, like this is a flash in the pan kind of year or that they're building towards something and they might accidentally mess around and do something this year. That second part, right, like they're going to have so much cap space. Obviously, a first round draft pick now is you're picking twenty ninth. Right. Or 30th. You're not picking early, maybe 32nd if things go right.
Like it doesn't matter about that. They have a lot of cap space. This is the worst roster that Jayden is going to play with. So they're going to get better.
It seems like as long as Jayden continues to play at the level, maybe not record wise, because it's kind of hard to surpass 12 and five when you face a tougher schedule and some of those things. But regardless, this seems like the floor now. It's a little bit crazy because they're in the NFC Championship. Right.
You can't say that that's the floor. But the way that they're playing, you know, I think this is a credit to the coaching staff where they've got everybody playing to their max potential. They've maxed this team out.
And the thing is, the max of this team, even though it didn't seem like it was going to be crazy high, it is. And it's one that they can beat the teams that are left. Not saying they're going to be favored against anyone. Not saying that they're definitively better than anyone.
But if they go play their A game and the other team doesn't bring theirs, like you saw in Detroit, they can win. And that's enough right now. So what I was thinking when I was watching that game is I'm watching Jayden Daniels.
And you know, the Bears are in conversation a lot right now. New head coach. They got quarterback. And I thought they should have taken Caleb.
I was fine with that. But I'm watching this game and, you know, you don't know what the future is going to be. But in what I've seen of Caleb, I don't see Caleb playing that way. I don't I don't know that I see Caleb playing the way that that Jayden did on Saturday. If if things were switched, if Jayden was in Chicago. If Caleb was in Washington, do you think a lot's different or is Jayden really like has he gone up another rung on the ladder of kale?
Like this is not whoever was going to be here, rookie quarterback, we're going to do. This is a lot of Jayden Daniels specific. I think it is Jayden specific. I think that guys would have had success here because I think that Cliff Kingsbury has done a really good job of building the offense around his strength. So whether it was Caleb, whether it was Drake May and full disclosure, I was a Drake May guy, but Jayden has fully surpassed anyone's expectations.
So I think they could have been successful because I think Cliff has done a good job. But I think the part about Jayden that makes him special, that has been different from those other guys, not saying that they haven't been good leaders, but Jayden's leadership as a rookie has been spectacular. And a guy that's early on, even in training camp, you're hearing this dude's getting in early early to get work in. You know, there was reports that Cliff Kingsbury has been getting to the building around three thirty in the morning and the next dude in probably is Jayden at five.
And so those dudes are working incredibly hard together and building these things. And so, you know, even in training camp, Nick Allegretti coming over from the Chiefs. So he's understood success, right? He's coming over saying, I thought I was an early guy getting in and Jayden's beating me by an hour and a half and Luke McCaffrey and other rookies coming in at that time to get routes run with Jayden and all these things. And so I think those sorts of aspects are things that outside of the football ability, outside of his ability to scramble and throw and all these things, I think those are differentiators between a Caleb Williams and a Drake May. Not saying that those dudes aren't working their tails off, but what Jayden has been able to do is just special. And then you throw in the aspect, too, that we've talked a lot about recently because people are writing articles and tweeting about it now is this VR stuff. He's kind of at the cutting edge of this VR thing where essentially he can get in extra reps against a real like defense where they can plug in what they're going to do. He turns the speed up to 1.7 times, so they're moving even faster and what he's looking at than what he's going to see on the football field. And I think as the season's gone on, you've seen the effects of that where the game never seems too fast for him.
The game seems like it's slowed down for him already as a rookie, and I think that's why. So I think those sorts of aspects are the differentiators between him and the other guys. So how much better is he than Jordan Love? Well, so before the season, I said that there was a chance that Jordan Love could be the best quarterback in the NFC.
And right now, I think the best quarterback in the NFC is Jayden Daniels. I won't say where I have Jordan Love ranked. Thing is, Jordan Love is one of those guys. I mean, you know, I think I think Jordan Love is better than Matt Leflore thinks Jordan Love is.
I think that's the problem. Yeah, I mean, I saw a lot of people saying like, oh, they went out and got Josh Jacobs because they don't trust him. Oh, Jake, I love Jacobs. There's stuff that's going to happen on the football field with Jordan Love where you go, what the heck?
But there's also stuff that no one else can do. You don't know which Jordan Love you're going to get, and that's where it's tough, right? But you also have a Hall of Famer that won a Super Bowl there that was the same way and Brett Favre, right?
So you just got to get hot for a run. I mean, the quarterback is the differentiator, and when Jordan Love is hot, I mean, maybe you just need to have Toyota-thon all the time. Yeah, you know, when we broke the fourth wall on that, that was the problem. You know, when he started to get a partnership, you can't risk that kind of stuff.
Just an outside perspective on that. I was trying to last night rank how I thought the NFC North would finish next year. And because I think, you know, Ben Johnson did a line about the Packers at his press conference. He had to, right? I mean, it's which means he's going to fail.
He's going to write a passage that means he's going to fail. I don't think they'll take last the Bears. I don't the Lions aren't going to win 15. The Vikings aren't going to win 14. I don't have any Packers could go anywhere from six to 14. How what is your prediction on that right now?
That's tough. Well, Minnesota is the one that could change the most because you don't know what's going to happen at quarterback. And, you know, before the final two games of the year, I would have said you keep Darnold because you don't, you know, you won 14 games. You don't make a change there, even if it's something where you just see what happens with him and McCarthy down the line. If the dude can't play in big spots, then what are we doing?
Right? Like it's just a big waste of time if you're going to bring this dude back to when you 12 13 14 regular season games only to disappear in the biggest spot. So I don't know what's going to happen there. I don't know how good JJ McCarthy is going to be. I'm intrigued with him with Kevin O'Connell, but they could go anywhere. If Brian Flores leaves is their defense is good.
I could see them ending up being the bottom of the division. I'm not sold that Ben Johnson just going to go there and be this galvanizing figure that suddenly fixes everything in Chicago. Because, you know, Jared Goff, I think, is perfect for what Ben Johnson was trying to do. Jared Goff essentially did what Ben Johnson called Caleb Williams. What's his biggest issue doing what's called? So is he suddenly going to play in structure and throw the ball to DJ more in a 10 yard in when that's what's called for?
I don't know that he's going to do that. I personally I like Caleb Williams, so I want him to do well. Yeah, I also hate Ben Johnson, so I hope he sucks. I think it's a Bears fan should be optimistic. Here's Bears fan.
I'm not going to tell you not to be, but I think it's more. Michael, 55, 45, but I think it's more likely it doesn't work than it works. Yeah, I don't know if I don't know which way I would put that, but you got the best dude, right? Like the most qualified, but also when you look at what the Lions have. I mean, Jamir Gibbs, they don't have Jamir Gibbs. They don't have Montgomery. They don't have an O line, probably the most important thing.
And we can talk about these skill position guys. They don't have the O line. I mean, look at how good that offensive line is for Detroit. If they were to somehow get a stout O line in the offseason, maybe it's different, but I don't know.
I'm not sold. And then you look at the Lions. I mean, let's be real, the Lions were rebuilding before they had Ben Johnson.
They weren't good. They got rid of Ben Johnson now or Ben Johnson's gone now. Is Jared Goff going to go back to being Jared Goff or is he going to stay at the really, really good potential MVP type quarterback?
I don't know. So I don't. It's really tough because especially if the Lions lose Aaron Glenn, too, I would take honestly. And I know it's going to sound Homer-ish because I'm on a Wisconsin pod. But if I had to choose a spot right now, you would take the Packers, right?
I mean, that's kind of where you'd be. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted you to say. So I appreciate that.
Absolutely. We'll talk on the Infinity Sports Network show and I'll have to read more into that VR because I had no idea about that. So I'm glad we did this. Yeah, it's a really cool thing.
I'll find a tweet or something and send it to you. See, it's really cool. It's like the other cool part about it, Bart, is this team has never been a analytics driven or at least not until recently till ownership change.
It's kind of been almost anti analytics. And then this VR thing that they're doing, you know, I have a VR football game. It's not that it's even more advanced. It's like cutting edge from this German company. So they're like on the cutting room floor building this thing where Jayden's helping develop it in a lot of ways where he's telling them what he likes and whatnot.
And he brought it from LSU and something that was kind of like a prerequisite that he needed when he got drafted. And whatever they're doing, keep it up because it's awesome and it's working. Toby Altizer, it's always good to have you on this podcast. You were on the first episode of this podcast, which miraculously is still going on. So I appreciate you when you come back on. We'll talk again. Thank you all for stopping into the Winklerverse.
