Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays. It's NFC Supporting Cast Day. We did the AFC last week, me and Derek

Kasten, we're digging into the NFC today. We did this exercise last off season. I really enjoyed it.

I wanted to bring it back. If you did not listen to the AFC show, I just want to very quickly run

through the methodology for this.

So the way that we're talking about supporting casts and trying to build these rankings,

taking into account a few different factors. First one, first bucket, just kind of calling it

play caller slash infrastructure. Who is your offensive play caller? And just what does the ecosystem

for that offense look like? Is this a group that's consistently

maximizing its talent? That point, I think, is an important one to consider for this show

specifically because there are a lot of teams in the NFC, a few at least, that have really,

really good personnel, but a new play caller. And I think me and Derek treated that slightly different. And you guys will hear what I'm talking about as you listen to the show. Second bucket, pass catchers. Pretty simple, right? What does your wide receiver and tight-end group look like? You can throw running backs in there a little bit if you have a guy that you feel like is a plus receiver and really adds to the passing game. But that one's pretty simple to understand.

And then the last one, offensive line.

And with offensive line, I think you can put run game in there as well.

Like a team like the Panthers, their offensive line, part of the value is realized when

they can kind of click in and run the ball on their terms because of how the offensive

line is built.

And even if that, no quarterback isn't directly related to that, the ability to rely on the run game does make a quarterback's life easier in a bunch of different ways. So those are the three main buckets. That is how me and Derek tried to come up with this list. The NFC was really difficult. Like, it's a better group than the AFC is.

So we're going to have teams at the back half of this

that neither of us feel good about.

And I think you guys will enjoy the conversation we had

about the top five.

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