Welcome to the athletic football show. I am Dave Helman. Robert Mays is out today, but never fear.

Derek Klasson and I have you covered for this week's edition of the Monday morning hangover.

And it is a hangover type of day in multiple NFL cities coming out of conference championship weekend.

Super Bowl celebrations ongoing in Seattle and

with the New England Patriots after their big wins and the sad type of hangover for the LA Rams

and the Denver Broncos as their seasons come to an end. That was the focus of this week's

post-mortems. Derek and I breaking down where the Rams and the Broncos go from here.

What can improve? How can they improve it heading into 2026? We also touched on some coaching news,

some head coaching hires happening since the last time we talked to y'all. Very loaded show.

Let's get into it.

Well, Derek, it feels pretty fitting that we call these post-mortems, because I don't

know about you. I feel like I'm in a slight bit of morning right now in the wake of these

conference championship games. I'm very excited for the Super Bowl,

but it's still two weeks away. And much like these teams that lost on Sunday, I really feel

myself coping with the end of football season. I mean, there's one more game left, but it's not

quite the same, you know? And I'm really, I'm grappling with the end of all of this for nine more

months. And with these two teams, right? Like, I think some of these other post-mortems we've done, it's like, you know, when the Jaguars lose or the Niners lose, it's like you were pretty good teams, you were probably never going to win the Super Bowl anyway. And I think it's a little bit of a different thing with teams like the Broncos, especially it having ended for them, like not being

able to have Bo Nix in this game.

And then you don't really get to play like a real fourth quarter at the end of your AFC championship game.

And then the Rams on the other end being like toe to toe with the Seahawks as the best team in football for a lot of this season and really being the only team in offense and quarterback that could really give that Seahawks team hell the way that they did for those two teams specifically to be playing no more football. It does really feel like I'm going to miss not being able to see these teams, specifically the Rams in their offense and then with the Broncos, their defense. I'm a little sad we're not going be able to get any more of them this year. And we'll get into it, but the Rams are obviously pushing in a very

unique way with the timeline that Matthew Stafford is on. And like you said, I mean, it's just a different

circumstance with the Broncos where the team that got you to 14 wins is not what you had there for that final game. And so,

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