Our surprisingly intrusive NFL thoughts
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From genuine interest in the Steelers offense to enduring power of the league's evolutionary instincts, Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen find themselves thinking certain things in mid-May that they didn't necessarily anticipate. They dig into all those things on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen
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 Robert on X: @RobertMays
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
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:02.0 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:03.4 | Today, me and Derek are talking about just some things we can't believe have come across our minds over the course of this offseason. |
| 0:12.0 | Now that we're into May and June, just deeper into the off season and everything has been settled, you know, we had so many kind of stray thoughts about the trends around the NFL, |
| 0:23.3 | certain positions being valued, about specific teams. |
| 0:26.7 | And so we're going to kind of consolidate some of those thoughts today down to the ones |
| 0:30.9 | that have just been a little bit surprising. |
| 0:33.4 | Like you've been sitting back and taking a look at the league and be like, man, I can't |
| 0:36.6 | believe that this happened. We're going to hit about eight of those today, just things that for whatever reason have either snuck up on us or just have been a little bit hard for us to wrap our arms around. The thing that inspired this was kind of me talking about the Cowboys earlier, like last week and talking about the Cowboys off season and just being a little bit struck by how |
| 0:54.2 | optimistic I was about the Cowboys. |
| 0:56.3 | So our thought was how many of those are there? |
| 0:58.6 | Like how many surprising thoughts or opinions have we had either about teams, players, or the league in general over the last couple months that we can talk about today? |
| 1:08.1 | So really enjoyed this set of conversations with me and Derek. |
| 1:11.8 | Let's get to it right now. |
| 1:23.1 | This show is a product of a few different things. You and I were talking the other day, Derek, just about some ideas, things we wanted to do over the next month. |
| 1:30.8 | And we were talking about just how struck I was during the conversation we were having about the Cowboys in the Buy or Sell show, in the Buy or Cell segments we were doing. |
| 1:39.8 | And I almost couldn't believe how bought in on the Cowboys I was, given my personal experience |
| 1:46.5 | with them over the last couple years. |
| 1:48.2 | And so I wanted to do an entire show now that we're this deep into the off season and |
| 1:52.8 | we can get away with shit like this about some of the things as the off season has gone, |
| 1:57.8 | as you know, we've moved through the entire free agency period, the draft, |
| 2:00.9 | the combine, everything. And now we're in the quiet time. What are some things that have come |
... |
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