The hopeful stories teams are telling themselves this season
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
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Summary
Every year, a handful of teams have to convince themselves that a certain story they've been telling themselves all offseason will turn out to be true. Their success for the coming season hinges on it. One example for 2025...Ben Johnson is exactly what Caleb Williams needs. So what are the other stories that teams are telling themselves as we approach the beginning of training camp? Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen get into them on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Hosts: Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen
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. |
| 0:35.6 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:38.4 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:39.6 | We've got a fun show for you guys today. |
| 0:45.5 | Something a little bit different as we are deep into the darkest part of the off season here. |
| 0:48.4 | I've noticed this over the past few years. |
| 0:51.6 | I actually touched on it when I was on Bill Barnwell show a little bit earlier this week. But I think when we get to July, we start looking |
| 0:56.2 | forward rather than backward, right? Fan bases start talking themselves into how this can all work out |
| 1:01.9 | because they're far enough removed from the disappointments at the end of last season. |
| 1:07.3 | It's not as fresh that shortcomings of your team. And now it's a lot easier to sit in |
| 1:12.9 | why these moves are going to work out, why it's all going to come together, why your team's |
| 1:17.8 | plan this offseason was actually the right plan. And so that's what me and Derek are talking about |
| 1:22.3 | today. We are digging into some of the stories that teams have had to tell themselves this off season and have to tell |
| 1:29.2 | themselves going in to this year in order to sleep well at night. |
| 1:34.9 | Like all this stuff that we did, these big swings that we took, this is why they're going to |
| 1:39.8 | work out. |
| 1:40.6 | So that's what we did today. |
| 1:41.8 | We picked like six or eight stories that teams are having to |
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