Minter of Discontent: An AFC North Preview

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**Mina Kimes** (1:04)
Welcome back to The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny, the only NFL podcast. One of the hosts thinks Pittman and Bernard sounds like a show about crime-fighting dogs. That's Lenny at Mina Kimes. We got a few dog named receivers. We got Boston also in this division.
We also have Jon Ledyard here to help me preview the AFC North. Jon, the last division of my division previews. How are you feeling? How are you feeling with the season barreling towards us?

**Jon Ledyard** (1:33)
I feel great, I think all things considered. Preseason tape round one, pretty much in the books for me, ready for preseason tape round two.
Excited about that whenever we have new tape to watch. This division, am I excited about this division? I think I will, let me answer that after we unpack it throughout the course of the show, because I really don't know how to feel right now. I'm excited for the uncertainty that it brings, I think.

**Mina Kimes** (2:00)
We do rank the teams at the end. This one, I feel better about ranking. I just did the NFC North. I don't know if you caught it by any chance, but I literally had a panic attack trying to rank the teams in the NFC North, and I still don't feel good about it at all. This one, I think I've got a better feel for.
There's a reason why I pushed this off to the end, because the preseason tape was essential, because we have got a quarterback competition. It seems like it might be over, kind of reading the tea leaves on Cleveland, but we'll get to that. We'll talk about them. We'll also talk about the rest of the Young Fun Browns roster. I legitimately believe that. Browns fans, I promise you, there's some optimism here, because outside of that particular position, which happens to be the most important in football, your team's actually drafted pretty damn well lately. So we're going to talk about all these teams to length. I figured we would start with the Steelers, a team you know very well, a team that I haven't talked about that much, because I've talked about the Ravens a ton, the Bengals, top 10 offenses pod, talked about the Bengals earlier this week, but I feel like I haven't given the Steelers much of their due.
As I was working through this, I had a couple of feelings. I regretted not putting the Steelers defense in my top 10 after doing this, so I'm excited to discuss that with you.
I also found myself feeling some optimism around the moves that they've made on offense. Of course, Aaron Rodgers remains the limiting factor. I feel comfortable saying that to this offense to some degree, but they have added around him. In addition to DK Metcalf, now you've got Michael Pittman Jr., Wide Receiver III is a battle between Jeremy Bernard and Roman Wilson. They've got Ben Skaronik. Titan remains the same. We got Fryermuth and Super Size Washington. Running back is different. Gainwell is out, Dowdell is in, and then the offensive line has been reshuffled. So we've got now Troy Fautano is kicking over to the left side. McCormick, Frazier, right guard battle, and then Dylan Cook, and a tour hasn't played. All right. So let's just start off. I want to start off with the receiver group because that's the biggest change.

**Jon Ledyard** (4:05)
Yeah.
The biggest thing that I think is up in the air right now is that wide receiver three spot, obviously, as you mentioned. Jeremy Bernard comes out as a great first preseason game, has been very like really pro ready in practices, and I think impress everyone. It takes a lot to get Aaron Rodgers to not hate a rookie wide receiver, and he is so far not hated. Jeremy Bernard, that's improvement. He hates Roman Wilson less than he's hated him in the past, so that's an improvement. So it seems like it's like what you want. If you were going to drop this competition and say, what do you want it to look like an ideal sense? This is probably about as ideal. Both guys playing pretty well. They seem like they might be 4D. Pittman's been hurt and missed a lot of practice time. So it seems like it's moving in the right direction, and certainly both of those spots actually are going to matter a lot in Mike McCarthy's offense, whereas in the past, we barely cared about who the Steelers wide receiver 2 was in the last couple of years. But this is a real offense. This is a grown person offense. And so I am excited to see what that looks like in Pittsburgh because it's been so long. Mina, we saw completion over the middle, two, three even in the first preseason game. It was crazy.