Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. What you're about to hear today is actually a mailbag with Derek Classen and Dave Hellman that we recorded on Friday. But we had some fun news in the NFL world this weekend. So we wanted at least a couple thoughts on the Dexter Lawrence trade before we got into today's show. This was a fun one. I had a bunch of different levels. There's so much to dig into here. The 10th overall pick for Dexter Lawrence is an incredibly aggressive move by a Bengals team

that doesn't really make a lot of splashes like this.

And so a few thoughts about that and kind of what signal I think it sends.

We're in a place now where teams have more money to spend than they can on quality outside

free agents.

As the cap keeps growing,

there are going to be more players retained by their original teams and just fewer impact players

that end up hitting the market. Really the only way to ensure that you're going to get one of

those difference-making guys is by trading for them. And I think the Bengals being the team that's

willing to do this and get in on the act and the way that some other teams have been over the last couple years is really a signal that the tide has shifted a little bit.

But even in that environment, the 10th overall pick is a lot to give up. You look at analogous deals. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the prize tag for a divorce Buckner several years ago, but Buckner was two years younger, just heading into his second contract. Dexter Lawrence is 28. Buckner was 26. Quinn and Williams went for a lot at the deadline last year, even if it wasn't the 10th overall pick. Let's just hypothetically say that 2027 first from the Cowboys is 20th overall. You combine that with 44 this year. That still,

according to the trade charts, is a more valuable asset than the 10th overall pick was.

Williams is 20, was 28, the same way that Dexter Lawrence is. So I think the question's going to be,

has Lawrence really taken a step back as a pass rusher? Or is he still in that upper echelon of players?

And if he is, then I actually do think the price tag isn't that much different than some of

the other trades that we've seen recently. And I also think one of the other things to consider

here is that it's important to move beyond the 10th overall pick in a vacuum, because part of

this is focusing on the 10th overall pick this year.

The prizes at the top of this draft just aren't what they have been in some other years.

And that's before you even game out how the top 10 could go for a team like the Bengals.

When we did our second on the clock show a couple weeks ago,

I thought it was illuminating to play out how easy

...