This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Very excited about today's show. This is a piece

I read every year, have read it every year since it came out. It's a staple for me. It's an

offseason staple for me no matter what company is running it. And now it just so happens

that I work at the company where it runs. Mike Sandoz's quarterback tiers and here to talk about it is the man himself. Mike, thank you very much for doing this. I'm really excited to dig into this with you. Oh, me too. This is going to be fun. Rob, appreciate the praise. And it's really, it's two ways on that. Love working with you. You do great work and great podcast. Let's roll. Let's get going on this thing. So I want to talk about the methodology a little bit first for people that are unfamiliar with the piece. If you guys are, I highly encourage you to check it out. Again, this is something I've read every year since it came out. I believe you've been doing it since 2014. Is that right? Yeah.

So just walk me through both how you do it, how you actually gather the information and then

what the tiering system actually means. What does tier one mean? What does tier two mean? Just for people

that don't have a huge background with this. Yeah, well, we'll start out with the tiering part.

And so basically a tier one quarterback is the best kind of quarterback, needs the least amount of help, can handle the most difficult situations better than the others. So, you know, historically Aaron Rogers or Patrick Mahomes, those are guys who not only can put up great numbers. A lot of guys can do that. We'll talk about that. But, you know, in a pure past situation, okay, suddenly our play action game is not there. We're down in the game. You know, we just have to throw it more than normal. The situation becomes harder. That guy handles it really well, all the way down to tier five, which would mean, hey, I don't even think this guy's a starter. And in between is sort of, If we look at tier three, think maybe over the course of his career in Andy Dalton.

He's a starter. And in between is sort of, if we look at tier three, think maybe over the course of his career in Andy Dalton.

He's a good pro quarterback, but really he only won when they were pretty stacked on offense and since he and had a good defense.

He's a good quarterback in that context.

Might go to a pro bowl.

But we can tell, the people in the league certainly can tell he's, even if he has a great year where his stats are similar to Mahomes, we don't confuse the two, okay?

Because we know the context that goes into that.

Methodology-wise is I will talk to 50 people in the league that are general managers, head coaches, coordinators, position coaches,

other front office type people, evaluators, executives, those types. And I will go through

each quarterback with every one of those people individually, privately. And I will say,

if you're Coach Mays, I would say, all right, coach, I've got these arranged in alphabetical order by team. We will start with Arizona, okay? Kyler Murray, where would you put him? What tier? And then Coach Mays would say, you know, I think he made the step to a two. I think he's a two this year. I'm excited about Kyler. I think he's got a chance to become a one. I mean, he hasn't earned that yet. I think he faded a little late last season. Still have some question marks about him. I mean, I think if you're an undersized player, you have to have that sort of Russell Wilson mentality and work ethic to overcome it and become great.

We'll see if he has that.

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