meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL

TAFS Goes Camping: Conversations with The Athletic's Lions, Chargers and Cowboys beat writers

The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL

The Athletic

Sports, Football, Nfl Draft, Robert Mays, Nfl, Football,

4.63.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2025

⏱️ 92 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Robert Mays' Homeric tour of the NFL world is underway, with stops across the previous week in Detroit, Los Angeles and San Diego. While there, he spoke with Colton Pouncy, Daniel Popper and Jon Machota, The Athletic's beat writers for the Lions, Chargers and Cowboys, respectively. How will the Lions handle the brain drain? Where can the Chargers find more juice on offense? How do the Cowboys feel different under first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer? Learn the answers to those questions, and a whole lot more, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show


Host: Robert Mays

With: Colton Pouncy, Daniel Popper, Jon Machota

Executive Producer: Michael Beller

Producer: Michael Beller

Subscribe to The Athletic Football Show...

⁠Apple⁠

⁠Spotify⁠

⁠YouTube⁠

Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social

Follow Colton on Bluesky: @coltonpouncy.bsky.social

Follow Robert on X: @robertmays

Follow Colton on X: @colton_pouncy

Follow Daniel on X: @danielrpopper

Follow Jon on X: @jonmachota

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

Two Titans of Silicon Valley, one prize, dominance in the world of artificial intelligence.

0:07.0

Supremacy is the real story behind the struggle to own our digital future and potentially the very nature of human experience.

0:16.0

Supremacy by Parmy Olson, described as a riveting tale by the new scientist, winner of the Financial

0:22.6

Times Business Book of the Year, and now the Waterstone's nonfiction book of the month.

0:27.5

Listen to the audiobook of Supremacy Now.

0:35.5

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Our beat writer notebooks are back this summer.

0:42.1

We've done these in the past. I always enjoyed doing them. Obviously, at the athletic, we have a huge pool of writers who cover these teams day to day. And as I travel around the country for training camp, it's just great to check in with them and take the pulse of where these teams are. I'm in Los Angeles today. This is Friday. I'll be covering the

1:00.1

Rams, be with the Rams tomorrow. I'll be in Seattle with the Seahawks. So we're going to be doing

1:04.9

about 20 or so of these. I think that's about how many writers we have at the stops we're going to make.

1:10.0

We're going to be releasing them on Saturdays over the next month or so. Really looking forward to all of those discussions. Just insight, you're really not going to be able to get in a bunch of places. We ask the big questions, you know, why is Micah Parsons unsigned? What's going on with the Lions coordinator changes? And that's what we're going to be doing over the next month or so. The first three of these are three of my first stops on the training camp tour, kicking it off with our Lions writer, Colton Pouncey. You really enjoyed talking to Colton about a Lions team very much in transition. Then we're in San Diego, where the Chargers were having camp for a couple days with our Chargers writer Daniel Popper who just does a fantastic job covering that team. I love watching Daniel work.

1:48.5

Chargers fans are so lucky having somebody as engaged and curious as he is covering that team

1:53.9

day to day. And then we rounded it out with a trip to Oxnard, California, to chat with

1:58.2

our Cowboys writer John Moshota about the Brian Schottenheimer era,

2:01.8

what's going on with Micah Parsons and what are some reasonable expectations for this Dallas

2:07.5

Cowboys team in 2025. So let's get to it right now.

2:16.3

Joining us now, it is our first be writer conversation of the off season our first stop on the

2:23.8

training camp travels it's our lion's writer colton ponsie colton how you do man um i'm great i'm honored

2:28.2

to be the first thank you for making to me for this i know it's all me and no one else not the team

2:31.8

or anything so i appreciate it i appreciate the lines getting started started early because Detroit is weirdly inconvenient to get to on the training camp tour because it's only close to Cleveland. Like you think it's close to Chicago. It's like a five hour drive. And so it's always like a little bit further than I want it to be. So having an excuse to come here first and then fly somewhere else, it's worked out very, very well. It's also a very exciting, intriguing team. So that also helps. Yeah, and the weather was nice today. Yes. The fact that we are one day in and I didn't sweat through all my clothes is a huge win. So things are pointed up in the right direction for me. We're going to get into actual Lions talk on this show, but we're going to start with

3:07.8

the biggest point of contention from day one of Lions practice. And that is Jemir Gibbs's

3:13.1

switch from 26 to 0. You are supportive of this, which I find to be a completely indefensible

3:20.0

position. Try, try to maintain, like, try to defend yourself a little bit here. How is zero

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

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 2026.