Good Years/Bad Years: Where Are These Players Headed?

**James Weaver** (0:01)
Welcome to the Off The Charts Football Podcast. I'm your host, James Weaver, and today I am joined by a few members of the R&D crew, Alex Vigderman and Bryce Rossler, to break down some of the players that are coming off some good years, and some players that are coming off bad years. And we're gonna break down to see what we think of them heading into 2026
Before we get started, Alex, how are you choosing to spend your off-season time here in the middle of June?

**Alex Vigderman** (0:34)
In the middle of June, a decent amount of like little off days and holidays and stuff. We have Juneteenth off as a company, and then with Fourth of July as well, just a lot of opportunity to take some time, really get into the space of, man, it would be nice if we had three-day weekends.
Not necessarily doing anything bigger bombastic, but having just time to like hang out and appreciate when the weather isn't horrible. That's the biggest win you can get this time of year.

**James Weaver** (1:06)
I agree 100 percent. It's definitely been nice to get outside, take some walks in the middle of the day, think about Ponder Life and think about some of these players and how they're going to attack a week 14 game in November.

**Bryce Rossler** (1:19)
All right, we get it. You guys are able to go outside between June and August. Cool.

**Alex Vigderman** (1:24)
Yeah, for a little bit of context, James and I are in Pennsylvania, Bryce is not.
So how's it going down there? It's hot. Yeah.

**Bryce Rossler** (1:35)
I have a double coated dog who doesn't care to be outside for more than five minutes at a time during the day. And is very high energy and therefore has a lot of a lot of pent up energy during these months that she she unleashes indoors rather than outdoors. So dealing with that, someone's got to figure out.

**Alex Vigderman** (1:57)
I mean, I've seen the sort of like cat hamster wheel. Someone's got, I mean, that's a little more unwieldy for a dog of Freya size. But I feel like you got to figure out something of that caliber.

**Bryce Rossler** (2:10)
It would just, it would probably just be a regular treadmill. Actually, I don't even know if she'd fit on a regular treadmill because those are for a line.

**Alex Vigderman** (2:17)
Yeah, like so. So quadruped treadmill.
I'm intrigued by the business model. It's a pretty small market, but high margins per unit.

**Bryce Rossler** (2:31)
Just like everything else.

**James Weaver** (2:33)
Cost-benefit analysis, got to figure that out. All right, let's jump into some of the players that we have come up with that have had good years to see if they can repeat that in 2026
First player we want to talk about is New York Giants defensive end Brian Burns. Coming off a season where he had 16 and a half sacks and only 58 pressures, good for second in the league. But his pressure above expectation, plus minus, was a little less than 1 percent. So really took advantage of a lot of production numbers, a few set, fewer pressures, and not exactly getting the amount of pressures that he should have been given his situation with the team.

**Alex Vigderman** (3:16)
And to give a little bit of background in terms of our conversations around him. So this year we had him on our stats list of top 10 defensive players. He was just outside and in the past, he's been a top 10 player for the Scouts list but was not this year. So right on that cusp in terms of one of the 10 best defensive players in the NFL. And I feel like I want to start with Bryce just because he's got the...
He's been sort of blowing the horn, pounding the table for him in the past.

**Bryce Rossler** (3:48)
Yeah I think there's two dimensions to this. The first is the sacks are a bit outsized given the pressure numbers, but the pressure numbers are still good. And then the second thing I think is that Burns is not necessarily a high pressure volume guy.
He's definitely a pass pressure first and foremost. But when I think of his calling card, it's how quick he generates pressure. And if you were to look at his numbers in terms of snap to pressure times throughout the years, he's always near the top of the leaderboards. And in terms of how quickly he generates pressure, I would expect that to continue. I don't know that I expect him to be a 16 sack a year guy. And I also don't really think that given his skill set, that one would say he has like a knack for converting pressures into sacks at a high rate.