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Here's Mike Lupica, Mitch Album, and Bob Ryan. I'm Mitch Album of the Detroit Free Press. I am Mike Lupica, MLB.com, and the New York Daily News.

And I am Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe and ESPN, and we welcome you to the Thursday morning

edition of the Sports Reporter's podcast. We are with you each Monday and Thursday. And gentlemen,

it is the official beginning of the so-called off season for the National Football League.

And let me just preface my

anything else where I'm going to say by that with this, there is no such thing as an off

season in any sport now. There are only two phases of all seasons, of all calendars. You're

playing games or you're not playing games. And when you're not playing games, the

coverage has become as extensive or even more intense than when you are playing games, which brings me to a very interesting aspect of the National Football League, which is next year when the season starts, you won't be able to tell your quarterback without the program.

The quarterbacks might be on the move, guys, and already we've had one exchange

of quarterbacks. Quarterbacks, quarterbacks, that's all you're hearing about right now in the

beginning of the new offseason, NFL quarterbacks. It's interesting because Mitch and Bob,

we all just watched the Super Bowl game, and we watched a kid who might someday be called one of the

greatest quarterbacks of all time.

And for all of the importance and all of the intention and all of the money they make,

how did it work out for Patrick Mahomes last Sunday when nobody blocked for him?

Okay.

He looked.

No, there were times when it looked like he was going to run all the way across the bridge to St. Petersburg to maybe get a half a second to throw the ball.

So, yes, it's the most important, you know, it's become a fallback, default position, the most important position in sports.

But that game was less than one. If you can't protect him, it doesn't matter who he is.

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