Jadarian Price is Right? Previewing the NFC West

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
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**Mina Kimes** (0:31)
Welcome back to The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny, only NFL podcast. One of the hosts thinks Arroyo is the sound he makes when he tries to bark and I close his mouth with my hands. That's Lenny, The Mina Kimes.
Elijah Arroyo plays for the Seattle Seahawks. Who are we talking about today? Is he talking about the NFC West? That's Danny Kelly, my friend, one of the hosts of the Ringer Fantasy football podcast, which is knee-deep in ranking hot NFL players right now.

**Danny Kelly** (1:00)
Oh, yeah.

**Mina Kimes** (1:02)
You're like kidding. You guys are almost at the end, right? How far are you?

**Danny Kelly** (1:05)
We are. Well, let's see here. We're doing the sweet 16 We're doing the top 16 We just did the first four. We'll do the next four next week.
I hear that you already have some strong opinions, man, on how it's going.

**Mina Kimes** (1:18)
I've seen some. You sent some of the list to our group chat. I'm in multiple group chats with you and you're roundly criticized. Yeah, I might hop on to weigh in, give my 10 cents.
I do think like when we do, because it is ranking seasons generally, and ESPN has been putting out these like Jeremy Fowler surveys, executives are on the league. Oh, right, right. They're the top 10s and everybody goes nuts.
Which it is also like everyone was like, how could ESPN rank this? It's literally a survey, guys, of executives. But I always see criticisms of the list. It's like you put one in, you got to take one out. So I just want to be clear, if I come on and I'm critiquing your list, I will be moved. There's no, this guy should be higher only. You got to knock someone down. Totally. You got to criticize the list. We are going to rank the NSC West at the end of this, which is very difficult because the NSC West is a hellscape of a division. I've been doing these power hours every Monday, and I think actually the Niners fell in the last one. But in the first one, I think the Seahawks went like Rams, Seahawks and the Niners were like seventh or sixth. You've been covering the Seahawks for a very long time. Is this the strongest NFC West that you can remember?

**Danny Kelly** (2:34)
I think so. Just because there's three teams. Like usually in the NFC West, I feel like there's always two really good teams, then kind of an upstart and then one bad one. But you could make the argument, these are three of the top like five NFC teams, maybe even three of the top four NFC teams.

**Mina Kimes** (2:52)
Yeah, definitely.

**Danny Kelly** (2:55)
I think it's one of the best. If you go by DVOA, especially considering how good the Seahawks were last year and the Rams, according to the DVOA rankings, I bet this is probably the best NFC West we've seen in a very long time, if ever.

**Mina Kimes** (3:10)
I think also just because of the coaches.
I had them at the top three coaches in the NFL. That's so crazy. They're all the same division. Four Mike LaFleur, who could be great, but jeez, dude.

**Danny Kelly** (3:25)
Yeah. Can you imagine coming into this division when you have two of the top, I think, offensive minds in this generation of coaches, and then a guy in Mike McDonald who is, I think, starting to get the reputation as the Sean McVey of defense, the guy who could be the defensive schemer slash wonderkin, genius who's going to try to figure out how to stop some of these offenses. And so, yeah, it's a hellscape of a division for LaFleur to come into. I can't imagine doing that.
But yeah, it's going to be tough sliding out first for him.

**Mina Kimes** (4:02)
Well, I promise we're going to talk about the Cardinals fans. Obviously, the point of this season is different for you guys.
No, but like there's actually, there's a lot. I think I'm just talking about some of the young players who, you know, like, can they get a young core on both sides of the ball? We'll get to that. But let's start with the reigning Super Bowl champs, our account, the Seattle Seahawks. I thought it would be I'm actually very interested in talking about the offense because the defense is largely running it back with a few player changes. And we'll get to that. That's where they kind of had the most losses in free agency. But this offense is a little bit of a mystery because you've got a first time play caller in the very cool name, Brian Flurry. And I think it's really interesting, Danny. Like I've been trying to read interviews with him or about him, or people talking about him to get kind of read the tea leaves. He has a really interesting resume, coached defense at one point, coached tight ends, comes from San Francisco. So, you know, I think there's an assumption that the offense is going to look pretty similar to what we saw under Clint Kubiak. Right. But I've started to spin little inklings coming out of Seattle that there might be some changes. So let's dive into it. Like, what do you think of the hire? Do you have thoughts about it? Are you excited about it?