TAFS Goes Camping: Conversations with The Athletic's Seahawks, Falcons and Ravens beat writers
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2025
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robert Mays began the previous week in Seattle. He ended it in New York, by way of the southeast and mid-Atlantic. So, yeah, he's been around a bit. Robert checks in with Michael-Shawn Dugar, Josh Kendall and Jeff Zrebiec—the Athletic's beat writers for the Seahawks, Falcons, Ravens and Eagles, respectively—on this edition of the Beat Writer Notebook. What's the ceiling for the very good Seahawks defense? What are the expectations for Michael Penix in his first season as the starter? How do the Ravens finally get over the hump? Learn the answers to those questions, and a whole lot more, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
4:27 Seattle Seahawks
41:36 Atlanta Falcons
1:07:14 Baltimore Ravens
Host: Robert Mays
With: Michael-Shawn Dugar, Josh Kendall, Jeff Zrebiec, Brooks Kubena
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Michael Beller
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Transcript
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| 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. |
| 0:35.7 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:37.8 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:38.9 | It is our next beat writer notebook here on the feed today. |
| 0:42.3 | We actually have two of them coming your guys away today, one today, one tomorrow. |
| 0:46.0 | We had so many conversations. |
| 0:47.3 | We're going to have so many conversations coming over the next couple of weeks that |
| 0:50.2 | felt like it was just easiest to split this into two shows. |
| 0:53.4 | Today, three conversations, three great conversations with a few of our beatwriters. |
| 0:58.2 | First off, it's Michael Sean Dugar, our Seahawks writer at the Athletic, who does a phenomenal job covering that team. |
| 1:03.3 | I really love talking to Michael Sean about football. |
| 1:05.7 | And that team has a ton of intrigue, new quarterback, new offensive coordinator, how the scheme will affect the offensive line, whether that can hold up its end of the bargain with an ascending young defense. |
| 1:15.2 | Also chat with our Falcons writer at the athletic, Josh Kendall, about what the Michael |
| 1:18.9 | Pennix era may look like, a new defensive coordinator in Atlanta, whether they can get the most |
| 1:23.5 | out of some of their young defensive pieces. |
| 1:25.9 | And we also chat it with our Ravens writer at the athletic Jeff Zbeck. Ravens are a tough team to talk about this time of year. You're talking nitpicky type things when it comes to their personnel. Who's the third safety going to be? Who's going to win the left guard battle? This is a team that has been one of the best teams in football over the last couple years and just struggles to break through at the end. |
| 1:44.9 | So what are we looking for at this time of year and what is Jeff focusing on as he's |
| 1:49.4 | thinking about how the Ravens can potentially get over the hump? |
... |
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