Eight potential out-of-nowhere units on offense and defense
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
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Summary
Last year at this time, no one was expecting much from the Commanders offense or the Broncos defense. By the end of the season, they were among the units that defined 2024. Which units can pull off the same feat and come from out of nowhere to carry their teams this season. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen point to eight candidates—four offenses and four defenses—on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
4:52 Cowboys offense
13:33 Titans offense
24:43 Raiders offense
34:31 Panthers offense
46:35 49ers defense
52:52 Cardinals defense
1:04:50 Colts defense
1:11:20 Patriots defense
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Host: Derrik Klassen
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Michael Beller
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Two Titans of Silicon Valley, one prize, dominance in the world of artificial intelligence. |
| 0:07.0 | Supremacy is the real story behind the struggle to own our digital future and potentially the very nature of human experience. |
| 0:16.0 | Supremacy by Parmy Olson, described as a riveting tale by the new scientist, winner of the Financial |
| 0:22.6 | Times Business Book of the Year, and now the Waterstone's nonfiction book of the month. |
| 0:27.5 | Listen to the audiobook of Supremacy Now. |
| 0:35.2 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:37.5 | I'm Robert Mays, doing something we haven't done in the past today. |
| 0:41.5 | Instead of doing a top 10 defenses show where I think a lot of the teams are going to be ones that we often talk about, |
| 0:47.1 | we're going to pick what my favorite element of those top 10 shows were and just do an entire show composed of that. |
| 0:57.8 | We're going to take teams that finished outside of the top half of the league last year in offensive or defensive efficiency. |
| 1:00.0 | You pick your metric, DVOA, EPA per play, whatever. |
| 1:03.2 | And we're going to try to find the ones that can be the out of nowhere top 10 units |
| 1:07.4 | for this season. |
| 1:09.3 | There were several of them last year, right? |
| 1:11.4 | Who is this season's Denver Broncos on defense? |
| 1:14.2 | Who is this season's Washington commanders on offense? |
| 1:17.1 | We tried to identify like eight-ish candidates to take that sort of leap and really |
| 1:24.3 | surprise some people as top 10 units on both sides of the ball. |
| 1:28.0 | So let's get to that conversation with me and Derek Klesson right now. |
| 1:36.8 | It's out of nowhere offenses and defenses today, Derek. |
| 1:41.0 | We're not doing top tens this year for a few different reasons. |
| 1:44.0 | I just wanted to kind of drift away from that. We've done doing top tens this year for a few different reasons. I just wanted to kind |
... |
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