Analyze This: Talking Through the More Confusing NFL (and Fantasy) Storylines

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Mina Kimes** (0:19)
Welcome back to The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny, Only NFL Podcast. One of the hosts thinks instead of saying pound the rock, we should start saying adopt the rock, and give it a forever home. That's Lenny, I'm Mina Gives.
We don't say pound in this house. Lenny's never, I don't know, maybe he has been to a pound. I don't know. I adopted him from a shelter, but do we call shelters pounds anymore?

**Robert Mays** (0:38)
We got Frankie from the Chicago, I think you'd call it the pound. It was like the Chicago, like yeah, pound I think is fine. I think it's a city run thing. It is a pound. That's not a rescue.

**Mina Kimes** (0:52)
You're impounded. It just sounds weird. It's like calling like a prison like the clank or I don't know. Anyways, that's our race. Dog Adopter, Dog Lover, a host of the Athletic Football Show. So gracious to join me so close to the NFL season. Doing something different this episode. It's going to be a two-parter. Later, I am going to be joined for the first time by the fantasy footballers to do the fantasy version of what Robert and I are going to do, which is something I am tentatively calling football therapy. It's really last minute football therapy. Robert and I have done dozens of podcasts and previews. I don't know if you've done previews yet, but you're going to do previews. You're getting there. Digging in now. You've done a ton of off-season content.
And my thought process here, Robert, was throughout all of this, as we try to discuss, predict, project what things are going to look like in the coming season, what are the things that are keeping you up at night because you just can't figure it out? The things where, in the spirit of football therapy, you need to talk it out with someone else who can help you, if not arrive at a concrete prediction, at least feel a little better. That's my goal here today. I'm going to do that with fantasy players later in the second half of the show. We're going to talk real football here.
When you sent me yours, it was a lot of ones that I've been struggling with this season too. I feel like we're all struggling with the same things.

**Robert Mays** (2:12)
We know certain things are going to happen.

**Mina Kimes** (2:14)
Right.

**Robert Mays** (2:15)
Just because it's how every season unfolds. There are certain units that come out of nowhere and surprise us that kind of define the season in a certain way. But I think this year, it's really hard to pin down which of those units it's going to be. And so that's where I'm at.
I remember talking to Barnwell a couple of weeks ago on his show. If I could fast forward and know 10 things about the season, what would they be? And I think I've consistently gone back to this idea of certain units underperforming or overperforming. Because if I knew the answer to that, I think I'd have a much better ability to predict how the season is going to go.

**Mina Kimes** (2:45)
Yeah.
It is a similar way of thinking of it. The things we actually have to see play out because it's impossible. Because there are things we already know. We already know that the Seahawks and the Rams are going to be great. We already know that certain coaches are going to be really successful, blah, blah, blah. One of the teams that neither of us picked, I could have done, I mean, this is the team that's given me a ton of angst, is the Colts. We were talking before we started recording about Alec Pierce, who might be back at practice this week. Everybody says Daniel Jones looks great. You've been there. You said he looks great. Literally everybody I've talked to says he looks great. Like I just can't, I just got to see it, right? First and not just see it in person and I need to see it in action. So I could have added the Colts to this discussion quite easily.

**Robert Mays** (3:30)
They're one of the teams at the top of a list like this. And in part because they're one of the weirder teams because the best version of the Colts looked incredible last year. The best version of the Colts was the best offense in the league over the first half of last year. But the Colts are one of those teams where even if you're talking yourself into an optimistic version of the Colts, so many things have to go right for them to feel like they're one of the real contenders in the AFC.