Can this season's failed, would-be contenders bounce right back in 2025?
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2024
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In another world, the Week 14 Monday night game between the Bengals and Cowboys could've been a Super Bowl preview. In our world, it was just another game between a couple of teams that won't make the playoffs. Where did this season go so wrong for the Bengals, Cowboys and three other teams—the 49ers, Jets and Dolphins—most of the football world believed could be contenders? And can they turn things around in short order? First, Robert Mays is joined by The Athletic's Paul Dehner Jr. to discuss the Bengals, then Derrik Klassen hops on to tackle the other four teams on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Rundown
- Cincinnati Bengals
- Dallas Cowboys
- San Francisco 49ers
- New York Jets
- Miami Dolphins
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Host: Derrik Klassen
With: Paul Dehner Jr.
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Michael Beller
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show, brought to you by Thursday Night Football only on |
| 0:07.4 | Prime Video. I'm Robert Mays. We've got a fun one for you guys today. A little bit of a through |
| 0:11.4 | line with the midweek show today. We're doing what is kind of a Monday Night Football recap, |
| 0:16.4 | but mostly we're using the Monday Night Football game as a jumping off point to start a discussion |
| 0:21.2 | about some teams that had definitive playoff aspirations heading into 2024, but ultimately |
| 0:26.6 | fell short and why they fell short and what that means for their long-term outlook. |
| 0:31.3 | To kick off that conversation, we chatted with our Bengals writer at the Athletic Paul |
| 0:35.2 | Daniel Jr., about the Monday night game between |
| 0:37.8 | the Bengals and the Cowboys, but also about what this season has looked like for Cincinnati |
| 0:41.6 | and what the big questions are for this team as they head into the off season. |
| 0:47.1 | After that, Derek Klasson hopped on with me to talk about some of the other teams that are in |
| 0:51.2 | this situation, the Cowboys, the Niners, the Jets, and the Dolphins. So these five teams who, we all thought were potential, if not contenders, then playoff teams in 2024, but ultimately didn't get there. We talked about why that didn't happen, how much faith we have in their ability to fix these things with the guys in the building. And if not, what sort of changes we need to see from those teams this |
| 1:11.5 | offseason to get back to where they want to go in 2025? So very excited to get to that. |
| 1:16.5 | Let's chat with Paul and Derek. |
| 1:23.9 | Joining us now, it is our esteemed Bengals writer here at The Athletic. |
| 1:27.9 | It's Paul Dana Jr. Paul, how are you doing, man? |
| 1:29.8 | What's up, Robert? How are we doing? |
| 1:31.4 | Doing okay. You had another appropriate Bengals game last night, is how I'm going to frame this. |
| 1:38.1 | As we got deeper into the fourth quarter, and it looked like Andre Yoshavaz was going to fumble that ball, give it back to the |
| 1:44.8 | Cowboys in minus territory. I was like, all right, here we go. Another game where Joe Burroughs |
| 1:49.7 | going to throw for 370 and three touchdowns. Jamar Chase looks like the best player in the NFL |
| 1:54.6 | and the Bengals are somehow going to lose. That gets overturned. Then they get a punt blocked. Unfortunately, the Cowboys touch the |
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