Monday Mailbag: The dustbin of history, coaches getting over the hump, and the idea of identity
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
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Summary
We've got ourselves another loaded mailbag episode of The Athletic Football Show. Among the questions answered by Robert Mays, Dave Helman and Derrik Klassen: Which potentially great teams from previous seasons have been forgotten due to nothing more than bad luck? How do coaches break through after spending six-plus years with one team? Can we really define team identity? And more!
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Senior Producer: Katy Duffy
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @RobertMays
Follow Derrik on X: @QBKlass
Follow Dave on X: @DaveHelman_
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. It's another mailbag Monday here in the |
| 0:05.3 | offseason. Sincerely appreciate, as always, everyone who sent in their questions, whether it be |
| 0:10.4 | via the Discord, whether it is to our email address, Athletic Football Show at gmail.com, if you want to |
| 0:15.7 | keep sending in those questions, we're going to be doing these pretty much every single week other than draft Monday. |
| 0:22.3 | It's really the only time over the course of the off season. |
| 0:24.5 | We won't be doing it. |
| 0:25.5 | So if you got them, just keep sending them in because we're still going to check them. |
| 0:29.6 | Today, it's me, Dave Hellman, Derek Classen, and our producer, Michael Bauer, reading the questions. |
| 0:35.3 | So let's get to it right now. |
| 0:47.1 | Music producer Michael Beller reading the questions. So let's get to it right now. It's another mailbag Monday here on the athletic football show. We got the whole crew ready |
| 0:53.0 | to roll today. So Michael Beller is back, |
| 0:55.7 | reading us the questions. It's not wasting any time, I'll just get into it. |
| 1:00.2 | All right. Let's get into it with a question that was almost in last week's mailbag. |
| 1:03.8 | And was such a good one. We brought it back for this week. Ross Schiller. Ross says the Lions have |
| 1:09.4 | suffered some terrible injury luck, particularly on the |
| 1:12.4 | defensive side of the ball over the last two seasons, causing them to fall short of their potential. |
| 1:17.8 | Obviously, the Lions aren't alone in this. I feel like luck plays a bigger role in season-long |
| 1:21.5 | outcomes than is often discussed, and teams on the wrong side of that luck are frequently |
| 1:25.3 | forgotten about. I imagine the number of coaching and playing careers that have been altered because a team was just unlucky. With that in mind, what is the best team we never talk about because they got unlucky? Injuries, retirement, refereeing decisions, whatever it might be, plenty of bad luck to choose from. What teams might have been great but are now forgotten because of their bad luck. Robert, take us away here. |
| 1:46.5 | I have two answers to this. |
| 1:54.1 | On the injury front, the Niners multiple different times over the last like seven or so years, |
| 1:57.5 | just have had entire seasons wiped out and then moments wiped out. |
... |
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