Friday Free Mailbag: Your Questions/My Answers

We go all over the sports world today to field some of your finest questions possible.

We are back!

Free Friday Mailbag is our (sort of) weekly tradition of getting everyone who is a paid subscriber here at #SturmStack a chance to crack our (sort of) weekly “Group of 10” questions to be answered.

Lots of responsibilities and jobs around these parts that pull me from place to place as well as trying to be the world’s best dad and husband (swoon), but the least I can do is put 100 minutes on the clock and give 10 different subscribers each week (sort of) 10 minutes of my time and then make it a (sort of) weekly piece that everyone can read whether they are a subscriber or not.

It’s the least I can do and all I ask is that perhaps you consider joining us here at our little start-up newsletter to keep us going!

Ok, before we get to our “Group of 10” that were selected from this week’s bag, here is one feature that I always want to put at the very top of these mailbags.

It is called, “this week’s thing I discovered that I want you to know about”:

It comes to us from this week’s episode of HBO’s Hard Knocks:

This week, amongst other things, they took us through the Miami Dolphins practice and how they use Go-Pro cameras to help them prepare and to process play-calling. I thought it was very cool and then to see the footage from Tua’s helmet was just very enlightening on how it all looks from his perspective.

The whole series is great, but if there was a clip I would want to show you, this is the one. I love this content, HBO and NFL FIlms. Well done.

Ok, here we go. 100 minutes and 10 questions. In the words of Dak Prescott, “HERE WE GOOOOOOOOOOO.”

– From Josh Peterson: Reliable skill guys on offense going into the postseason would seem to be Dak, CeeDee, Cooks, and Ferguson. Which player (a) needs to step up most to join those four and (b) is most likely to?

I think you are probably referencing the skill positions, but I will freelance here and tell you that for me, there is no more important position group in the playoffs than the offensive line. We saw this in 2021 when the offensive line chose the San Francisco playoff home game as their worst performance of the year. The offense had no chance and it was because they lost the battle with the Niners up front by a healthy margin. So, yes, Tyron, Tyler, Tyler, Zack, and Terence have to be reliable. In particular, since I never worry about the Smiths or Martin (provided they are healthy) is always going to be about Terence Steele. He has had a very rough 2023 and has played while recovering from an ACL. We could argue the Cowboys unwisely hurried to pay him like they did with Michael Gallup to get a “recovering from injury” discount. I understand the strategy, but I don’t like the risk and the Gallup deal is a clear loss. Now, I fear that they may never view the Steele contract as a great one unless he shows up next year and is much better. This version of Steele is not an $85m player. He must be better, especially in the playoffs.

Meanwhile, if we do use offensive skill players, I think the whole thing is about the RB position with Tony Pollard and Rico Dowdle. The run game must be a factor, but also the pass protection and the reliability as receivers in the flat on passing downs where nothing is available down field. They clearly missed Dowdle – he had a very big game against the Eagles and has been a non-factor since – so getting him back will be huge.

– From James Bankhead Looking ahead to the playoffs, which teams are good matchups for the Cowboys and which are worrisome to you?

Well, the two most likely 1st round opponents will be Green Bay or Los Angeles and given that they already routed the Rams, I would probably lean that way as a better matchup, but they surely are a team that is much improved from whatever that was in Week 8. Green Bay is a dangerous matchup because they are too young and too dumb to know what they are not capable of. When Green Bay is on their game, they are a dangerous group. Of course the Cowboys should beat them, but this new version of the Packers plays really well in dome situations and fast tracks. Not sure I would want to see that matchup if you can avoid it. But, look, either way, those are both games they should win by a touchdown (at least). A rematch with the Lions in the Divisional Round at the scene of the crimes of Week 17 would be most nerve-wracking of them all before you might get to go visit the 49ers again.

From John: Rangers win WS. Stars made final four. Mavericks made final 4 2 years ago, and are probably top 10 in power rankings now, Cowboys look to be a 11-12 win team and a 2 seed. Is this the all time high water mark of DFW sports? Is there a stretch where it was better?

Once upon a time, I did a project where I tried to find this objectively, but given I am on a ticking clock this morning, I have been unable to figure out what year and for what publication I did that. I guess I may have to bring it back and do it all over again now that we have our new “forever home” here.

But, without actually looking carefully and just riffing, there is a reasonable possibility that all four teams can be called either “Champions”, championship contenders, or fringe contenders right now. For instance, in their sport, the Mavericks are probably the furthest away from the top spot in their league, but we expect they will make the playoffs and we also know they can win just about any series and make their conference finals without shocking the world. The Stars and Cowboys are above them and are both (at worst) a top 3 most likely team to make their conference final. And the Rangers are the World Champions of baseball right now which is crazy but true.

So, if we base it on that simple criteria, I think we would have to concede that there has never been a time where this was all true since we have had four teams.

When the Stars arrived, the Mavericks were garbage. When the Mavs got Dirk and got good, the Cowboys and Rangers were both horrid. When Tony Romo and Dirk were both good, the Rangers were still stinky and the Stars were entering bankruptcy and then when the Rangers won their pennants in 2010 and 2011, the Cowboys could not even make the playoffs at all. By the time the Stars got back to being good, the Mavericks were tanking and the Rangers were bad again. So, based on this arbitrary run through that has seen the Rangers win it all in 2023, the Mavericks in the 2022 Western Finals, the Stars in the 2023 Western Finals, and the Cowboys likely to be the 2-seed in the NFC playoffs in the 2023 NFL season, I am going to say that, yes, this is the high-water mark of DFW’s 4-team era. Congratulations, everybody!

From Eric Smith Looking at halfway through the Premier League Season - what’s wrong with United and Chelsea?

Well, the answer could obviously fill a book and probably has filled several, but the general question seems to be about the constant trials and tribulations of two of the biggest football clubs in the world.

I started following the premier league in 2000 and have been obsessed ever since. The first champion I ever knew was Manchester United who won the whole league in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2013.

In 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson retired and just like they became a giant when he arrived in 1986, they ceased to be a championship club when he left. For those who love the club or hate the club, there is no question that he was their Vince Lombardi or Bill Belichick. He had a cultural grip on that club that demanded excellence and a squad that played in his image or did not play for him. He was loathed by rivals and properly worshipped by those that appreciate greatness. And they have never come close to replacing him. Which, of course, they can’t. Where do you go find another Vince Lombardi? You don’t.

They have endless resources and they still can field quality teams, but this year is yet another downturn in the cycle. They have had six different full-time regimes since Sir Alex has retired and each one has moments of optimism and patience granted, but in the end, there seems to be no unified philosophy in player acquisition and playing styles vary because every two years they try something different. They are, like so many great franchises, chasing the past and no idea how to find the future. They sit 8th right now, but with 9 losses in league already and having been bounced from the Champions League in record time, they look lost without a compass. They have one less defeat than Everton and we are in January.

Chelsea, on the other hand, is even more lost at sea. Last year, they finished 12th and then spent a record amount in 2023 in rebuilding their squad and buying everything that moves for every price listed. They sit 10th and are tied on points with Wolverhampton.

They haven’t a clue and haven’t seemed to have one in some time. How everyone feels about Manchester City, that is how we once viewed Chelsea. This team that buys the entire world and has assembled a squad that feels almost unfair. With Drogba, Terry, Lampard, and that crew that was dominant 15 years ago under Jose Mourinho, it seemed it would last forever. They won the league in 2005, 2006, 2010, 2015, and 2017.

Their issues are simple instability and impatience. They fired Mourinho in September of 2007 and since then, their average manager has not lasted even a year and I’m not joking. They have had five managers since January of 2021. Seriously. They have had 19 managers listed (albeit a few were interim) since 2007. They have all the money in the world and continue to spend it freely with the biggest squad imaginable and yet they never seem to have the pieces to the puzzle. It is likely quite frustrating to be a supporter of their club, but to the rest of the football world, it inspires us to know that chemistry and stability and a unified process is shown to be the only way to find success for an extended period of time.

Look, every club has issues and it might be the toughest league in any sport on the planet, but those two clubs should never be running 8th and 10th in the league with their history and resources. And I definitely gave that one answer more than 10 minutes. Haha.

From Dave: What else (if anything) does McCarthy still need to achieve for Jerry to resign him? What could still be a dealbreaker at this point?

Great question. I assume he will be extended, but I also don’t see a huge hurry. Let’s see how the next month looks, but yes, if you have a coach that wins 70% of his regular season games and puts you in the playoffs three straight years – first time since the dynasty – and has your QB playing the best ball of his career, then you keep the coach. I know this will anger the legions of folks who are sure he is a bad coach, but an objective look at Mike McCarthy reveals that he knows how to build winning teams and he knows how to steer those teams to the playoffs regularly. And no, he does not need Aaron Rodgers to hold his hand to do it. He did it before Rodgers and now he is doing it after Rodgers. You have to hate it when the narratives are proven to be hot air.

I am not telling you he is going to win a Super Bowl for the Cowboys because A) I have no idea and B) no coach has ever won a Super Bowl for two franchises, but other than that, the Cowboys are much better for having hired him. Like I promised the day they did it, this was a very good hire.

From Glen G: Marshall Faulk gave an interesting theory recently about the Cowboys' road woes.; he said he thought McCarthy seemed to be restricting the freedom Dak had at the line of scrimmage to get in and out of plays pre-snap. He said if you looked at Dak during home games, you can see he's making lots of adjustments pre-snap and doing a mostly great job at it. But on the road, there's less pre-snap motion, less apparent freedom for Dak to make adjustments and audibles. He doesn't seem to be 'seeing' things as well once the play snaps either, possibly bc he's not allowed to make the changes pre-snap. Do you think there's merit to this argument? Surely crowd noise isn't a good enough reason for this is it? That didn't keep Aaron Rodgers or Peyton Manning from running their offenses on the road.

I think every QB in the league can do less at the line of scrimmage on the road and, yes, it is because of the crowd noise. Less motion, less audibles, and less cadence. It is a fact of playing on the road. I am sure Marshall is right and I will tell you that it is true with the Cowboys and every offense I have seen. If Kyle Shanahan’s offense and Mike McDaniel’s offense is the exact same regardless of location, I would be shocked. In fact, I watched Miami and Baltimore and I didn’t think I was seeing the same thing. There is a reason teams tell their home fans to quiet down when they have the ball.

Now, I wanted to look at this with the StatMuse folks breaking down the career home/road splits of the three QBs we have mentioned. Let’s look:

Aaron Rodgers has drops in completion percentage, YPA, TD% and Passer Rating when he goes on the road with an increase in INT%.

Peyton Manning has drops in completion percentage, YPA, TD% and Passer Rating when he goes on the road with an increase in INT%.

And now, Dak Prescott…

Dak Prescott has drops in completion percentage, YPA, TD% and Passer Rating when he goes on the road with an increase in INT%.

Now, it looks like Dak’s splits are a bit more significant, but I think we now see that regardless of QB, this will be true and it is definitely because running offense on the road is just more difficult.

Jalen Hurts has drops in completion percentage, YPA, TD% and Passer Rating when he goes on the road with an increase in INT%.

Now, I did find two notable exceptions:

Patrick Mahomes actually has better road splits than home! Wow!

And then this guy:

Tom Brady looks like an almost identical player wherever he plays. Wild.

I am sure offenses want to be the same offense wherever they go, but I imagine doing anything in silence versus with 80,000 people screaming at you will yield different results. Reading, balancing your checkbook, doing math, juggling, putting from 3 feet, anything. It is why we fight for homefield advantage. Because it is worth it.

From Anthony: Do you think getting a better striker would address Arsenal’s issues with finishing, or does the problem go deeper?

Well, losing to Fulham is enough to make everyone question everything. But Arsenal have come a long ways in a short amount of time and have hit a plateau that is frustrating, but also part of the chase. They are still in a good spot but there is a malaise from feeling like the league was theirs last spring and they collapsed under the pressure of it all – which is a pretty normal reaction to contending for the first time in a while.

Clearly, they are a team that is not generating enough offensively and when they do they do not have enough clinical finishing. They rely so much on Saka and that is not sustainable. I imagine we will see something big in the transfer window here in January, because they do look like a frustrated bunch at the moment. A better striker would help, but they need to go back to moving the ball and generating more volume from the midfield, in my non-expert opinion. I still like a lot of what the Arsenal have going right now. They just need more through the dog days of the season.

From Mark P: Why do you think so many recruits seem to be fleeing A&M since Jimbo got canned? Is Elko that uninspiring?

You may be shocked to read this with that question posed that way, but I am actually very pleased with what Mike Elko has going right now. The secured portal signings of this week have really addressed some needs and I think their roster is not nearly as picked over as many are claiming. Of course, it is college football, so propaganda rules supreme – both positive and negative – from supporters and rivals, alike.

But – and this is probably a much larger essay that I should write here in the spring – the culture at A&M has been very poor over the last few years and Elko’s number one job is to keep those who are on board and push along those who were there for a giant payday. The SEC rosters are basically now NFL rosters with a fund to pay your players and it is finite. So, when you are dealing with a roster of Jimbo’s 5-stars, they are now open for bidding as is going on all over the nation right now. If they are staying, they are probably trying to renegotiate. Well, I will tell you, paying guys to be in your culture is part of the problem. If they are only there because of the check, then there is no buy-in when losing happens. Then you have independent contractors and we are back to what we were talking about with Chelsea and countless other places where there is no internal unity or pride.

A&M allowed things to get way out of control and now Mike Elko’s No. 1 job is to get “his guys” and “his culture” going, even if that means a step down in the 24/7 rankings for 4-star and 5-star population. I just don’t think there is a real correlation between stars and program excellence. You still have to play football and play it together to weather storms and success alike. Elko can start over and he should. If that means losing a bunch of Jimbo’s guns for hire, then so be it. They need to be less glitz and glamour and more “guys who take this loss personally and are ready to do what they need to fix it.”

In other words, I think he is going about it the right way right now, in a “what would Dan Campbell do” sort of way.

From John Bicknell: Any idea what is going on with Bland? Through 11 games, he was outstanding. Using PFF coverage grades as a benchmark, he was graded over 80 in 5 games and over 90 in three of those, below average (60) in only one game. Since Seattle and Metcalf (45.6), his top grade is 66, and he’s been below average in every other game. He doesn’t seem injured but he has seemed a little more tentative.

I will say this as nicely as possible. Regression is real. DaRon Bland was never close to the best corner in the NFL, but he had a 2-month period where his grades seemed to suggest he was in the mix. I am happy for him and he has already exceeded expectations for his entire career. He has proven he is a starter in the NFL and that is probably the ceiling of possibilities when he was drafted in Round 5.

But, here he is as a name in the NFL record books for most Pick 6’s in a season EVER. That is so crazy that it makes the Rangers winning the World Series seem normal. He is a very nice player but what we have seen in the last month is teams attacking him because he can be attacked. They are judging his abilities on 1,000 snaps, not five (like we do when we watch highlights) and they know he has some issues with elite speed or elite size (or in DK Metcalf’s case, both).

Then, when you get burned a few times, you lose your confidence and you get tentative. But, in all, he has been a great discovery, has a bright future, and is a credit to this front office and coaching staff. That said, no, I do not think he will ever be a guy that you have to pay “elite” money to keep. He is much closer to a league average starting corner than he is to Deion Sanders or even Trevon Diggs in ability.

And now, we end with this one…

From Drew I have a dumb hypothetical. If you took a group of five random dudes and had them play an average NBA team, how many points would you have to spot the dudes and have them hang on to win. Let’s assume the NBA players are actively trying to win. 200? 250? More?

Hahahaha. This is incredible. He actually followed it up with this:

From Drew I assume they’d struggle to get the ball in bounds if the NBA team didn’t want them to. It might just be steal-dunk over and over again, in which case the question is simply what’s the maximum number of points a team can score in 48 minutes. My friends and I were also thinking what’s the lead you’d need to have to finish off the final three outs against an MLB team. Because I think eventually they’d fly out at the warning track or whatever. Could you hold a 20 run lead? 25?

Ok, this is definitely going to be a segment on the Hardline very soon – maybe even today. But, the “guys at the office” versus either an NBA team or an MLB team is now all I am going to be thinking about between now at 5:50 today when we do this (tentatively).

I am going to say, yes, 240 is the number I think of in basketball (60 points a quarter sounds about right). Now, this same group of guys from the cubicle area have to get three outs and that includes pitching. Could we hold a 25 run lead in the 9th?

It reminds me of this all time great video of 100 kids versus 3 pros in soccer. The pros won comfortably.

This is the best. Hahaha. You made me smile, Drew. See you guys next week.