Duval in the Family: Previewing the AFC South

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Mina Kimes** (0:34)
Welcome back to The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny. Only NFO podcasts. What if the host sounds like Vaishal Tooten when he eats garbage? That's Lenny. I'm Mina Kimes. He's Tooten.
Vaishal Tooten plays for the Jacksonville Jaguars, the team we're going to talk about today. Because it's time to discuss, to preview the AFC South. Brett Kollmann is my guest. He is a Texans affiliate. Did you grow up in Houston or what's your...

**Brett Kollmann** (1:02)
No, my dad worked in Houston when I was growing up, and I didn't have any affection for any of the California teams because I lived in Orange County, and so rooting for anything like San Diego or LA didn't make sense. I was like, well, my dad lives in Houston, so I'll root for the Texans. Then he moved to Chicago for work. I was like, okay. I'm also going to take the Bears as an NFC team.
I've resented him ever since. It's like he couldn't move to Boston or some place else more.

**Mina Kimes** (1:27)
But now it's an exciting time. Maybe we'll find out after our conversation today. The Houston Texans, I feel like they're like the sneaky hipster Super Bowl pick at the moment, which makes me a little bit nervous.
Although we do have some optimists around them. I did, I told you before, I went on Bill Simmons' podcast, we're taped this morning and I ended up on an impassioned defense of CJ Stroud after preparing for this podcast and going back and watching the Texans. We will get into that. We will get into my beloved Jags, SVP's beloved Jags. I don't know if you heard that. I had no idea.
Camp Ward, very fun rewatch. The Colts, Daniel Jones is alive. This is a fun division. I'm really excited to get into it. Before we start, where can folks check out your work, Brett?

**Brett Kollmann** (2:06)
Boy, you can find me all over this season on my own channel, as well as on the Bootleg Football Podcast. We do two shows a week over there. Although right now, we're doing four shows a week because we're doing 60-90 minute previews of every individual team with their own episodes. Ironically, we're recording the AFC South this week as well, so I've done a lot of prep for this show.

**Mina Kimes** (2:26)
Okay. We are not going to be doing 60 This is not a four-hour podcast, but we will do our best if you're a fan of one of these four teams or just want to learn a little bit more about them to dive in. Let's start with the Texans, the favorites, the, as I mentioned, hipster Super Bowl pick.
I don't feel like we really have to spend much time talking about the Texans defense. We can talk about them for a little bit. But nobody really needs to hear us say over and over, they're awesome. We can get it to it. But let's start with the offense because this is where this thing will sink or rise. Last memory is pretty tough, very difficult playoff performance for CJ. Stroud, statistically one of the worst, all time. And it's a shame because when you actually go back and take a look at his stats, and we'll get to the film in a second, over the course of the season, he was actually quite good. I wouldn't say he wasn't his rookie year level, but he was 11th in QBR.
He was, when you splice it up, top 10 to 15 in pretty much every meaningful quarterback stat. He was good on third down. He was good under pressure. He improved on some things over last year that I think are worth noting. His time to throw came down a little bit. He took way fewer sacks. That's relevant because I don't think the offensive line did him any favors. And Brett, that was kind of my number one takeaway, going back and watching the regular, forget the postseason, which we should talk about that, but watching the regular season, what struck me was how hamstrung the entire operation was by the fact that the offensive line was so bad. The passing game under Nick Kaley tried a bunch of stuff, but when you look at all their tendencies, it's all things that offensive coordinators do when they have to, because the offensive line sucks. Max Protect, putting an extra line in on the field. They were second in quick game rate behind Aaron Rodgers, of course.