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Learn more at vertexinck.com. This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show, presented by YouTube and YouTube TV, the new home of NFL Sunday ticket.

I'm Robert Mays.

Joining me today.

It's my good friend Nate Tyson.

How you doing, buddy?

I'm doing very well.

Where are you right now?

I am in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Hence why you said, what you said on the pre-show.

That makes a lot of sense.

My neck in the woods or my old stomping grounds.

That's fantastic. Probably weather's okay right now. Maybe the temperature is going to be a little bit. It was okay. Today, it's supposed to be 100 tomorrow during practice. So very much looking forward to that. They have joint practice with the Cardinals this week, which I'm missing. I just didn't really plan it out that well. So I'm heading to Green Bay after this.

I'll be in Green Bay on Wednesday, and then I will be with the Bears on Thursday, and then my travels will be complete. So we'll be 20 teams, 21 teams by the time it's all sudden done. So I think 19 stops, 21 teams is the total when it's all over. get the we should get the with the Indiana Jones when he would travel. It's just like the old playing lines going from one stop to another. We should get one of those done. Kent, what do you got, Kent, Alex? I don't want to see it all. I don't want to see it all compiled that way because I don't just make me tired. But it's been great. It's been so worth visiting with all these teams, having these sorts of conversations. Three of the four teams that we're going to talk about today, we managed to go to those places, have conversations with coaches, players at all of those spots. And it just makes such a huge difference. So I appreciate this time of year. It's fun to be around all these guys talking football. And we were talking today about, I mean, arguably right there with the AFC East is the best division in the NFL. Every single one of these teams has a chance to make the playoffs. Every single one has an elite unit or potentially two. These are really, really good football teams in the AFC North that we're going to dig into today. Good teams, good players, good units, good coaches. It's back. The AFC North, man, I feel like my entire adult life, they've been a relevant division. There's never been one of those like, hey, the 8-8 team makes the playoffs here. I hope I just didn't get that wrong.

There's one that I'm completely forgetting about. But it's always just been like just a hard-nosed division. I don't think so. At least Baltimore or Pittsburgh has been a elite team or a double-digit win team every single year over the last like 20 years. Yeah, exactly. That's what it feels like. but just that's what it feels like that. The Steelers have never had a losing season under Mike Tomlin,

so there's no way that it could have just that's what it feels like that. The Steelers have never had a losing season under Mike Tomlin.

So there's no way that it could have been with those eight nine seasons that won the division.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, exactly. So they're guaranteed to get that. Process of elimination. Thank you, Robert. That's pretty good. And then when they added the seventh playoff spot, like it was like the Steelers were the team that would have benefited the most.

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