Lingering questions, episode 4: The Steelers' non-QB shortcomings, the Bears' defensive personnel, and the Falcons' pass rush drought
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 June 2025
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If this is indeed the end of the Lingering Questions line this offseason, then we definitely got to indulge our intellectual curiosities. On this fourth, and potentially final, edition of Lingering Questions, Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen ask, and attempt to answer, the following questions: Have the Steelers been held back in recent seasons by only their quarterback situation? How good are the players on the Bears' defense, actually? Are the Falcons simply a pass rush away from being a competitive defense?
Hosts: Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Michael Beller
Subscribe to The Athletic Football Show...
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @robertmays
Follow Derrik on X: @QBKlass
Theme song: Haunted
Written by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love Songs
Courtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the athletic football show. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:06.1 | It is the last show we think in our lingering question series that we've done this offseason. |
| 0:11.9 | We reserve the right to have another one if we want to, if we feel like we need to, you know, |
| 0:17.1 | pop the cap on an idea because, you know, when you're doing four shows a week in the off season every |
| 0:21.3 | once in a while you need to tap into something unexpected but for now this is us closing the door |
| 0:26.9 | on our lingering question series i love doing this there's just so many things that you don't have |
| 0:31.5 | the time or bandwidth to really address or think about or even watch in the back half of the season |
| 0:37.0 | so that's what we've done over the first three shows. |
| 0:39.5 | If you've not listened to them, encourage you to go check those out. |
| 0:42.4 | We've had great conversations about Baker Mayfield, the Chiefs offense, the Niners. |
| 0:46.7 | All of those shows were fun. |
| 0:47.9 | I encourage you to go back. |
| 0:49.1 | They're obviously Evergreen. |
| 0:50.5 | You know, nothing has changed from the end of last season until right now. Today, mostly focused on defense. |
| 0:57.4 | Kind of on purpose, kind of not. |
| 0:59.4 | We're going to talk about the Steelers and what they look like outside of their quarterback |
| 1:03.3 | because the quarterback has taken up so much oxygen this off season. |
| 1:06.5 | And then the defensive expectations for both the Bears and the Falcons as teams that for the most part, |
| 1:12.2 | we've spent a lot more time thinking and talking about their offenses over the last year or so than their defenses. |
| 1:18.0 | So those are the teams that we're hitting today with me and Derek Klesson. |
| 1:21.9 | Let's get into those lingering questions from last season right now. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 12 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.