The Football Film Room Show Transcript with All-22 Highlights

Episode #24 - Can a Wide Receiver be the Missing Piece?

Below, I’ve posted the transcript of the most recent Football Film Room podcast and included clips of the plays I talked about in the episode.

Feel free to read the transcript on it’s own or use it (and the plays I included) to follow along with the podcast to get more context for what I’m talking about.

In this episode, I discuss the following:

• Odell Beckham Jr. and A.J. Brown getting the Rams and Eagles over the hump

• The Broncos’ holes on offense

• What Jaylen Waddle brings to Denver

• How Mike Evans helps the quarterback

• Why the 49ers signed Evans

Here is a direct link to the podcast, and below that you can find the transcript and plays:

The Football Film Room Show - Episode #24 Transcript

Welcome to the Football Film Room Show. I’m Nick Kehoe. We’ve got another great episode for you today.

Can one player make a difference?

It’s a discussion you often hear around the NFL, right? Oh, if only we had signed this one player, we’d be Super Bowl champs! If only this one player hadn’t gotten hurt, we would have won it all!

Shoot, I talked about it a couple weeks ago, bringing up the Green Bay Packers from 2020 and 2021. That was a team that was knocking on the doorstep, and instead of making that one move for that one player, whether it was a receiver, to complement Davante Adams, or a defensive player, an impact player…

Instead of making any of those moves, the Packers sat on their hands and did nothing. And of course, failed to reach the Super Bowl.

So you obviously know my feelings on the matter. Yes, one player can absolutely make a difference.

Now, that’s not necessarily true for every team, but there are a handful of teams that are competing for a championship each year, and very often, yes, they are one player away.

And in the context of the wide receiver position, which is where we’re going to focus today, you don’t need to look very far to see examples of premier wide receivers being added to a Super Bowl-ready team and putting them over the top.

Odell Beckham Jr. and A.J. Brown Getting the Rams and Eagles over the Hump

Just go back to 2021 with the LA Rams. Remember midseason they signed Odell Beckham Jr. after he was let go by the Browns?

Gave that passing game a lot of flexibility. That pairing of him with Cooper Kupp, Matthew Stafford throwing to them, Sean McVay calling the plays…it really was tough to stop down the stretch.

And Beckham was a key contributor in the playoffs. 21 catches, 288 yards, 2 touchdowns in the three and a half games he played. I don’t know if you remember, he tore his ACL in the Super Bowl, but had already scored a touchdown at that point, and many thought he was on his way to winning the Super Bowl MVP before he got hurt:

So he played a huge role in helping the Rams get over the hump.

A year later, you had A.J. Brown being added to the Eagles. They acquired him by a trade during the draft.

Now the Eagles to that point, they were a running football team. In Jalen Hurts’ first year as a starter, the Eagles, well, they couldn’t really throw the ball that well. They were in the bottom-10 in the league, but they were the number one rushing offense in the NFL.

A lot of people look back on the Eagles and they say, oh, Saquon Barkley was the player that put them over the top. But I don’t know if I agree with that. The Eagles have had a good running game with or without Barkley.

I don’t want to diminish what he added to them, but he came to a team that was, what, number one in rushing in 2021, top five in 2022, still top 10 in 2023, had a great offensive line, were running the ball well when Miles Sanders and Kenneth Gainwell were the backs:

No, this offense took off when A.J. Brown was added in 2022, and that passing game went from the bottom of the league to the top 10.

What Brown was able to do schematically fit the Eagles so well. He’s one of the best outside receivers in the game, one of the best at winning one-on-ones and making contested catches, and that was perfect for what the Eagles like to do. It was perfect for Jalen Hurts.

As I’ve discussed multiple times on this podcast, Hurts does not see the field well, doesn’t operate in the middle of the field well, so he wants to throw the ball to the outside.

So having receivers like DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown to both sides, where you can pick and choose when you get one-on-one matchups (and you get a lot of one-on-one matchups because the Eagles run the ball so well), that was transformative to that offense.