How much better—or worse—is each NFC team after the first wave of free agency?
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
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Summary
Most of this year's free agent class is now spoken for, and all 32 teams in the league have made the biggest move they'll make, outside of the draft. So how much better—or worse, as the case may be—is each team now that free agency is mostly behind us? Robert Mays, Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman answer that question for the 16 NFC teams on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
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Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the athletic football show. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:06.8 | Rolling on with our How Much Better Are These Teams Really series? |
| 0:11.1 | We hit the AFC yesterday with me and Derek looking at the halls for all 16 AFC teams and asking, |
| 0:18.4 | as the dust has started to settle a little bit from free agency, |
| 0:21.7 | how much better are these teams really? |
| 0:24.1 | David back with us today to hit all 16 teams in the NFC. |
| 0:28.8 | Some of them spent very little time on. |
| 0:30.9 | The Rams are better, just if you're curious. |
| 0:32.8 | Like the Rams are better after trading for Trent McDuffey. |
| 0:34.7 | With some teams, the answer is a little bit murkier, so we spent more time on packing it. |
| 0:40.0 | Really enjoyed this conversation. |
| 0:41.9 | So let's chat about how much better the NFC teams are after the first wave of free agency with me, |
| 0:48.4 | Derek, and Dave. |
| 0:53.7 | Did the AFC yesterday, today, it is time for the NFC. |
| 0:58.5 | We are running through every team in the NFL and asking a seemingly simple but I think |
| 1:04.6 | sometimes hard to answer question. |
| 1:06.4 | How much better are they really after the first wave of free agency is over. Dave, you were not with |
| 1:14.5 | us for the AFC yesterday. You get to join us for the NFC. I'm curious how many you have today |
| 1:20.6 | that Derek had yesterday where it's kind of like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm neutral. I don't |
| 1:25.8 | know. There was a lot of that yesterday, which I think is totally fine as part of this exercise. I knew we were doing this, but like you said, I wasn't on yesterday's show, but I listened to y'all this morning. And the whole time I was like, oh, I kind of hate this. Like, it sounded really fun in theory. And then when you start applying it, it gets |
| 1:46.0 | really stressful. And that's so, and then I spent most of my day leading up to this, prepping for |
... |
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