The Chargers, Commanders and Steelers kick off the annual TAFS Most Interesting Teams of the Offseason Series
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 68 minutes
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Summary
Combine week brings together the entirety of NFL media, including The Athletic Football Show crew and The Athletic NFL beat writers. That's all the excuse we need to sit down with our beats and to talk about the most interesting teams of the offseason. On this first episode in the three-episode series, Robert Mays welcomes Daniel Popper on the Chargers, Nicki Jhabvala on the Commanders and Mike DeFabo on the Steelers.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
3:00 Los Angeles Chargers
33:09 Washington Commanders
52:11 Pittsburgh Steelers
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Host: Robert Mays
With: Daniel Popper, Nicki Jhabvala and Mike DeFabo
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. We are coming to you from |
| 0:08.5 | Indianapolis, Indiana, is the 2026 scouting combine. But remember my favorite points on the NFL |
| 0:15.1 | calendar every single year? Like, it's just become so routine to be back here at this time of year. |
| 0:20.1 | Not the same sort of trip for me in this year. We talk about it with Popper. I got had a flat tire on the way here, which is a fun way to start the week. But other than that, it's very old hat. It's very comfortable. The places here, I'm very used to being here this time of year. I always look forward to the conversations. And one of my favorite parts about coming to the combine every year is that all of our NFL |
| 0:40.6 | writers are here. And so that's typically how we've treated this week from our coverage |
| 0:45.4 | perspective. And we're going to be doing the exact same thing again this year. The next three |
| 0:49.6 | days on the athletic football show are going to be dedicated to nine teams that we are deeming, the most interesting teams of the off season. The criteria for this is all over the place. It could be teams with a lot of cap space. It could be teams that are experiencing a lot of turnover. It could be teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to talk about today that have a dozen draft picks this year. So it's a big tense, the most interesting teams of the offseason. |
| 1:11.6 | The three that we're starting with today, the Steelers, the Chargers, and the Commanders, |
| 1:16.9 | just a bunch of different reasons that those are three that we wanted to hit. But a lot of teams |
| 1:21.0 | with a bunch of capital this off season, the Steelers are at a point of transition. We hit the Steelers |
| 1:25.8 | with Mike DeFabo as our third conversation today. |
| 1:29.0 | Kicking things off, Daniel Popper digging into the Chargers, their pursuit of Mike McDaniel. |
| 1:35.0 | This is a team with maybe upwards of $100 million in cap space to throw around this year. |
| 1:39.3 | Now, we also chat with our Commander's writer, Nikki Javala, about the Washington commanders |
| 1:44.1 | team that is very much |
| 1:45.6 | in flux. |
| 1:46.6 | Potentially like a dozen new starters for this team, they could have like 80-ish million dollars |
| 1:51.0 | in cap space, two new coordinators. |
| 1:53.3 | So a lot to dig into with those three teams today. |
| 1:56.5 | Let's get to it with each of those writers right now. |
| 2:05.1 | Yeah. let's get to it with each of those writers right now. Joining us now, to kick off our most interesting teams of the offseason series from a |
| 2:11.5 | conference room in Indianapolis, Indiana. |
... |
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