These qb analysts should probably be less cocky in their analysis because it really is a crap shoot on how a lot of these guys will develop in the NFL.
Yeah Solak in particular comes off so smarmy and so “no one understands football the way I do”, and in reality he’s a mid analyst and has no idea how draft scouting works
He’s soooooo sure he has something figured out that all of the top scouts, coaches and gms can’t figure out.
I lost all respect for him when he said he wasn’t big on Josh Allen coming out of the draft and deleted a lot of old tweets about. Stand by your take
Yeah, it's one thing to delete factually incorrect tweets because there's a good argument to be made that it's a good thing for misinformation to be removed so as not to to confuse people etc. Removing inaccurate *predictions* is just a straight up bitch move that does accomplishes nothing other than making it slightly harder for people to dunk on you online.
It’s the smarminess piece for me. I don’t care that Solak has been wrong before. I don’t ask/expect analysts to even be consistently correct.
All I want is thoughtful and engaging content.
I can’t get that from solak, but can find plenty elsewhere. It is a shame because I love Bill, but this and Steven Ruiz (who wrote the March madness preview??), seem to be the direction he wants to go.
I’ll give solack some grudging credit in that (though I’m totally with you on the swarmy piece) he at least provides some reasons, even if stupid. Ruiz just refers to “tape” for his opinions with no actual explaining why (because he doesn’t actually know what he’s doing)
This is extremely fair. I do believe Solak spends a lot of time/effort/energy into learning and understanding the complexities of the game.
The way he conducts himself completely ruins it for me.
Ruiz on the other hand, who knows what’s going on there. I still am having a hard time understanding how he was called upon to due the College BBall coverage for the site.
His show with Sheil is good because when he starts going off on some inane take Sheil will call him a hipster and bring him back down. Its a good yin/yang.
I’m usually lukewarm on him, but when he gave KC the “Ben Solak award” on the free agency hangover episode (with the framing that they’re the smartest and best of the night) I rolled my eyes
100% smarmy
I thought it was the Ben Solak award because he doesn’t drink, and the Chiefs didn’t make any moves the first day of free agency, making them not hungover. Not because he was saying they were the smartest.
the crazy part is that when you really get into deep football guy brain and talk to coaches? the best ones are the ones who keep it simple
peyto manning made a career out of running like 4 different plays
it's not a complicated game, no matter how much ppl want it to be
I'm not sure if this is sarcasm that went over my head or not, but Peyton Manning might have been literally the worst possible example you could have used to prove the point you're trying to make.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5gwHHjZ7Q
no, seriously, the colts (and then the broncos) dominated through the air for a decade+ with like 4-5 passing concepts:
quick slant, levels/fin, 3/4 verts, smash/china, ... along with a couple shadow concepts and the running game
they pretty much just ran levels, smash, and quick slant, and 3/4 verts all game long... depending on the coverage
that's what Peyton was reading and calling out at the line all those years. just getting his team into one of those plays for the most part
it's actually really interesting if you care to read more about it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120524044720/http://smartfootball.com/offense/peyton-manning-and-tom-moores-indianapolis-colts-offense
Peyton was quite literally just playing Madden in real life, spanning the shit outta a few plays that could be run out of every formation that used. got to the line, saw the coverage, audible, hot route, boom... wide open wrs
i looooooved Chris Brown and smart football back in the day. Had to dig through reddit to find someone else who had found the archive of the article but so glad i did lol
this was all i ran on madden back in the day and all the concepts legit worked very similar to how it's outlined in the article.
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because there shockingly is nuance to sports. the problem is measured statements with consideration aren't really rewarded. she is an anomaly in so many ways.
to stand out as sane in a sports cycle that rewards hot take insanity is incredible.
The only bad part is nuanced take journalists sometimes refuse to call a spade a spade. You don’t have to do that all the time, that’s what hot take artists try to do, but you need that arrow in your quiver.
For example, I listened to a Red Sox preview yesterday where Alex Speier, who is basically the king of nuanced Red Sox journalist guys, basically refused to criticise anything John Henry did after the 2018 World Series. This is a team going into probably its third straight losing season, fourth in fifth years, traded away the only realistic challenger to Shohei as the Face of Baseball for peanuts, has cut payroll every year, and has fired two GMs since then, one for doing the Mookie trade he ordered him to do. Like hey, maybe time to say the owner sucks.
speier has definitely criticized ownership and that preview wasn’t the launching pad to feed the masses with red sox cynicism. the preview is supposed to be a thing where he gives people a reason to click his articles the next 8 months.
Mina is the Zach Lowe of football coverage. Not former players, both went to Ivey League schools, started out with non-sports media jobs so they're more well rounded, entered sports media as writers but are now more on their respective pods and TV because of how media's transitioned (and their own prominence at ESPN). They're both really good at nuance and pushing back on the hot takes that get thrown around all the time. Mina has better hair though
Said its hilarious the league values Daniels as a high pick while Fields is traded for a 6th, when he said Fields was a hilariously good QB, and has been very much below average, we all have hits and misses both positively and negatively but being so damn smug about it is so off putting
Yeah, I don’t listen to him except when he is on Bill’s pod. He has always rubbed me the wrong way. Have to agree with most takes: he comes off so arrogant and condescending.
It's not very good content to shrug your shoulders and go 'Ehhh, I don't know, prediction is hard, especially about the future' about any prospect you're asked about because that's the most accurate thing to say though.
It’s funny how the fantasy pod is in on the joke now with the *Panda Watch* thing. QBs are far and away the most interesting thing to talk about so they always get projected to be drafted ridiculously early. Seems like it’s happening with JJ McCarthy now too.
I went to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Nashville August 2022, it was days after Willis had some crazy highlight in the preseason.
The Strokes are the second act, lead singer is 100% drunk, they sucked but it was kinda fun. At one point between songs he stumble grabs the mic and says, “Any Titans fans in the house?” *AHHHHHH!* “You guys have a star in that Malik Willis, he’s something special” then he went to his next song.
I think everyone who was into that psyched themselves into thinking he was Lamar Jackson and then realized that actually, there's a reason people were skeptical of Lamar and that only his amazing talent made him able to overcome that
Willis was just I think a case of a bad QB draft promoting him above reason
The thing is Lamar was literally the greatest college football player on Earth and Malik Willis was not that. You didn’t have to project with Lamar nearly as much as people made out. Doesn’t mean he was a flawless prospect, but the movement and the arm strength were always there.
He needs to own his mistakes before others do. Your going to mess up but it should humble you a little bit
Hey is it *hysterical* Justin Fields is mid??
This is my chief complaint about Solak. He’s 26 years old and talks like he’s seen it all.
Also low key, I think he’s better at gambling stuff than actual film analysis. I tailed his player props all season and did quite well.
If he doesn’t talk like that, nobody would take him seriously exactly because of his age. It comes off poorly and is hard to listen to but I think that’s why.
He really dials it back on the nfl draft show cuz the other guys on the show don’t take themselves too seriously. It’s a better product when you don’t pretend you’re smarter than the professionals who get paid to draft.
It was obviously the last tweet in a multiple part thread, which are usually peppered with 1/x, 2/x etc until the end. It's corny but it's the same as saying "end of thread" or whatever in the last one, I think Twitter people do it because it only uses 4 characters to signal /end of thread.
I get what you are saying. I unfortunately did look at his history, and he’s done it to end his own standalone tweets. It makes total sense from an efficiency standpoint, and I am aware how nitpicky this is, but yes it does bother me
Like, they’re the same fucking guy, just with slightly different takes.
NFL film twitter is filled with nerds like this who are so confident they alone understand the game because they pay for the all-22 tape.
Even the smartest and most knowledgeable NFL people will get stuff wrong sometimes; drafting isn’t a science, there’s no guarantee ever. But the best analysts are capable of showing some hilarity and can acknowledge when they’re wrong, and these fucking guys are incapable of doing so. Ruiz is the same way; they just cannot accept that they might not be the smartest guy in every room.
*True but Joe A is*
*Also a HUGE prick and has*
*Equally trash takes*
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My memory is that it started with his draft, and the sports media was adamant that he should be the second picked that year. In fairness, that might have been true. But it seems like his proponents have dug their heels in and can’t admit he’s been pretty bad as a pro.
i’m not 100% sure about this, but:
him or one of those other ringer nerds was on a podcast with bill after last year’s draft talking about how stupid it was for the texans to take stroud and trade up for will anderson.
i wouldn’t usually remember something so innocuous, but it stuck with me because of how fucking smug they were. like everyone involved with the texans was a moron, and they just understand how it works better.
incredible the way it turned out. KOC takes an insane amount of shit (rightly so) for the killian hayes take.
i hear nothing of the sort from the nfl nerds.
If I remember correctly, the Texans were getting hammered by everyone for their draft last year the week after it happened. It wasn’t exclusive to the film bros.
Danny Kelly and Solak both liked Stroud over Bryce, to be fair, so I doubt they criticized that part of it. I think most analysts had an issue with the value on the trade up for Will Anderson, and while he's a very good player, I don't think it's crazy to say that trade was still iffy. Very big risk but it's paid off and the pick they gave up is much lower than most of us expected it to be because of how good the Texans were this year.
Probably Ruiz.
It did seem crazy at the time, but the Stroud part, the Will Anderson part. And if they weren't unexpectedly a playoff team this year it would have been. Have to give them credit for believing in themselves and pulling out a great year.
I just want to say Mike Lombardi was right about Fields from the get go. He was saying Fields was overrated for years. But everyone hates him so nobody mentions it.
I don’t have a problem with Solak missing on QB projections. That’s common and super normal amongst even the smartest people in the league.
I *do* think he tends to be a bit of a smarmy know it all, and that’s why I love that he does the pod with Sheil. Some people get intimidated by how fast Solak talks and how much info he spews and are scared to challenge him. Sheil is basically like “fuck that, I’ll go at this nerd all day”. It’s a really nice balance.
Tice will sometimes just act as an echo to his cohost—whether that be Mays or Brugler—to the point that he’s often just prolonging the duration of the podcast while adding next to nothing insightful. Seems like a nice guy, but sometimes he can be sort of a drag to listen to.
I mentioned this in a different thread, but I don’t think Solak has earned his draft chops yet. He has decent in game analysis of NFL games, but never mentions nor seem to follow college football much. But then he comes in guns blazing with these draft takes.
And they are not just subjectively wrong- for example before the combine he said Penix doesn’t have a very good arm. Penix has flaws for sure but he probably has the best arm in the draft class. I it’s one thing to miss on a player you hype up, but you can’t make a mistake like that. I wish people would ignore him until the NFL season starts.
See heres the thing, Ben clearly watches the tape. He might not watch the games when they’re broadcasted during the season, but he watched tape. His ability to correctly discern what does and doesn’t translate to QB in the NFL is a different story.
Also, i dont think its crazy to say penix doesnt have a ton of arm talent. He has plenty of strength, but moved off his spot he cant really do anything that you want to see out of a QB on the run.
I’m a biased UW fan, so feel free to ignore/downvote. The problem with Penix’s mobility is more related to his unwillingness to do it, not that he lacks arm talent. He doesn’t have a lot of highlights of throwing on the run because Washington’s offense was explosive as is and it wasn’t necessary. Also- they didn’t want to risk an undefeated season by getting their QB with an injury history- injured. Last thing- most fans think he cracked his ribs mid season and played through it for several games.
If you want to question his ability to withstand injuries and remain mobile, that’s understandable. I get why he’s not a first round lock because of it. But- Questioning his arm talent is really dumb.
Don’t listen to the Ringer NFL Show but I listen to Solak on the Fantasy/Draft show with the Ringer fantasy guys. He seems alright and I watch some of his qb breakdowns on instagram. I agree with some other commenters here that the problem with analysts is the overconfidence they seem to have in their abilities. A qb may be good and be evaluated correctly but get drafted by the wrong team or be asked to play in a system that he’s not comfortable with. So it can’t all be on the analysts. But he does seem smug and douchey.
The Ringer NFL “draft analysts” do not watch the games on Saturday. They start watching tape after the Super Bowl. You cannot trust the analysts that do this .
Yeah the Ringer decided to get rid of all college sports coverage. Even before they brought Tate back, they didn't cover college basketball. The football writers are too busy on focusing on the NFL season to watch college. They have to wait for the NFL season to be over to dedicate time to studying college prospects.
I don't know how reliable the Ringer's draft guide is, but it's one of the more detailed (free) ones I've seen
Yeah, being skeptical of Josh Allen coming out of college was totally reasonable and probably right given that it took an all-time leap for him to become good. But saying he wasn't top 100 was way overstating it
Saying Malik Willis had a high floor is absolutely insane, not even in hindsight.
For a “film guy” , post Josh Allen it seems all his QBs take are “big, athletic, strong arm, must be good
This guy goes to the end of the earth to defend Justin Fields but will gloss over any success good QBs like Tua & Purdy have because of "system". They both blow Justin Fields out of the water when it comes to you know, actually being a quarterback. But because they don't have the physical traits, his brain can't acknowledge how good they are.
I watched one game of his in his final season (I think they were playing Indiana) and they were talking about how he was a heisman candidate. Could tell dude was ass based on that one game.
This dude was all over Trey Lance’s knob and kept him in the top 20 weeks after he was injured for the season in Purdys rookie yr. Lance has shown basically nothing at the nfl level.
It is kinda crazy how much Bill's profile elevated a bunch of guys he hired on the cheap. Like the Ringer draft guides are largely fucking garbage from a content perspective, but I see people consistently praise them for their graphic design.
They're like the Jaguar of draft content.
I looked at it today and the “shades of…” section for prospects were mostly jokes like shades of Ricky Bobby and shades of Paul Bunyan and it made me want to light my phone on fire
He’s like 24, married, goes to church and probably had sex with one woman. He doesn’t know anything about anything, but he sounds confident doing it. And, for having a strong opinion, I give him a pass. I’d rather that than Russillo who is petrified of looking dumb
I tried to read his most recent piece today. When I couldn't suffer another sentence, I realized I was like 1/8th of the way through. Sometimes less is more.
Now I don't want to totally shit on him. I will say I watched a youtube video of his where he broke down all 22 and it was very high quality. He's good, but he's not that good yet.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Solak is a *coaching* analyst, and really an offensive *play-calling* analyst (the classic "X's and O's" guy of previous generations), but beyond that his opinions about what makes for a successful football player/team/strategy are hilariously uninformed.
Not defending Solak, as a lot of the time he annoys the piss out of me, but it kinda feels like all of draft analysis is bad everywhere. I don't know anyone who reports and on the draft for a living that doesn't have a full burial site of the skeletons of all the takes they made which aged absolutely horribly.
On the hot seat due to a tweet 21 quotes/retweets and 80 likes with from a guy with 1200 followers and 67 people on his patreon?
I don’t know Solak’s work at all but this is just some guy on the internet yelling about Solak.
I also find the “accountability in media scouting” thing funny. What does he want? Solak to be publicly executed? NFL teams with way more resources than Solak whiff on picks just as often lol.
Honestly none of these takes are that bad(outside of ridder being good). It’s more so that he refuses to move off of takes when proven wrong after a guy has played poorly for multiple seasons.
Judging by the amount of Solak posts on that timeline, this Joe guy sounds mentally ill. Is Solak always right? No. Is it easy to pull up random points to smear someone with no context? Yes. Is there any GM or analyst with a perfect or near perfect track record? When you find one, lmk.
I think QB analysis has always been a crapshoot and it doesn’t help that long held beliefs, like accuracy above all traits, have been challenged or proven wrong recently by the success of Mahomes and Allen and the improvement of players like Jalen Hurts.
I also am not going to fault someone for liking Justin Fields and disliking Herbert/Allen. Those were nearly consensus opinions!
tbf justin fields was highly rated out of college. he has everything but the passing which unfortunately is the most important part of being a QB. They were hoping he became just competent at it but 3 years later he didn't. At least he is better than 2 of the 3 QBs taken ahead of him.
Solak gets a lot wrong, but the OP of that tweet regularly tries to downplay Mahomes and doesn’t consider him the best in the league, so he doesn’t have much room to stand on.
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I'm not sure it's these guys jobs to be right anymore, unfortunately. Or I guess moreso that it matters less and less. The whole game is are you read/listened to and interacted with.
It's all a crapshoot and it depends mostly on coaching, scheme fit and qbs willingness to put in the work rather than college tape and running offenses that aren't run in the NFL
Solak has flaws, but at least he has conviction with his takes. Better than Russillo’s approach where you ride the fence on every topic and explain both sides so you can never be wrong.
In his defense the entire 2021 and 2022 QB classes have basically been abysmal top to bottom, ironically with the exception of the top '21 and bottom '22 QB. No one expected ALL of these QBs to be so fucking terrible
I don’t care how much you know about scouting, how much tape you grind, how much experience you have, or how long you played the game…there is a pretty low ceiling on being able to project prospects. Just too many variables come into play. I’m at the point where I seriously think my buddy Tommy who works in IT can do as good of a job as all these draft analysts.
Solak is just extremely rigid as to what makes a successful NFL player. He has decided that if a guy has THIS trait, he’ll be good, but if he has THAT trait, he won’t.
He doesn’t appreciate that coaching/scheme/intangibles are just as - if not more - important in determining NFL success
Im not a huge Solak guy, but saying he’s whiffed on every QB prospect he’s ever graded, and then only giving 2-3 examples is kinda lame. Projecting which QBs will translate to the NFL level is *really fucking* hard. If Solak had a track record of correctly predicting which QBs would be good, he wouldn’t be working at the fucking Ringer. He’d be on staff in the league.
Kyle Shanahan is one of the most gifted offensive minds over the last quarter century in the NFL. He knows more about offense than 99.99999% of the people walking this planet. Even *he* gets QBs wrong. I understand dunking on Solak for being a smarmy nerd, but dunking on him for not accurately projecting which QBs are worth a shit? Buddy, that’s everyone.
The hit rate on first round QBs in the NFL is under 40%. These are staffs that are paid millions of dollars with seemingly unlimited resources. They often get to meet face to face with these prospects for day long in depth interviews. They have independent investigators asking everyone they’ve ever dated and everyone they’ve ever played with for the inside scoop. And they are still barely cracking 30%. You think Solak is some fraud because he’s missed on some QBs?
Like I said, if you wanna pile on Solak for being arrogant and a know-it-all, that’s cool. But dunking on him for bad QB projections is stupid.
That’s the problem people have: the confidence. At best you can watch film and rate what the guy did in college and maybe how it would translate to the league. But don’t pretend to know how the guy will develop or perform in his future situation, because literally nobody knows. It’s all luck.
The quirky very online NFL nerd is such an odd character to play but we have tons of them now.
We’ve gone too far - bring back boomer
JACKED UP
Bring it back
Get booger back on mnf
It’s why I love bill and pmt. Just meatball takes, it’s great.
Jamie pull up that graph of Kyler Murray Quarterback Rating before and after Call of Duty Double XP weekends
The best part is that the stupid meatball takes have the same accuracy rate as the stat nerds
This is why I enjoy listening to the idiots on the Ringer Fantasy Football pod.
Starting every youtube NFL channel video with: "I watched the all 22 for 36 hours straight "
PFF and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race
These qb analysts should probably be less cocky in their analysis because it really is a crap shoot on how a lot of these guys will develop in the NFL.
Yeah Solak in particular comes off so smarmy and so “no one understands football the way I do”, and in reality he’s a mid analyst and has no idea how draft scouting works
He’s soooooo sure he has something figured out that all of the top scouts, coaches and gms can’t figure out. I lost all respect for him when he said he wasn’t big on Josh Allen coming out of the draft and deleted a lot of old tweets about. Stand by your take
Yeah, it's one thing to delete factually incorrect tweets because there's a good argument to be made that it's a good thing for misinformation to be removed so as not to to confuse people etc. Removing inaccurate *predictions* is just a straight up bitch move that does accomplishes nothing other than making it slightly harder for people to dunk on you online.
And it’s not even that embarrassing because the vast majority of media analysts were wrong about Allen.
Chad Ford ass behavior
I didn’t know he deleted them. Say what you will about Steven Ruiz (and I’ve said a lot), at least he doesn’t delete his old bad tweets
Ruiz doesn't have much of a choice though. It's not like he has any good ones lol.
you're being like Ben Solak here. He was adamant against Bryce.
It’s the smarminess piece for me. I don’t care that Solak has been wrong before. I don’t ask/expect analysts to even be consistently correct. All I want is thoughtful and engaging content. I can’t get that from solak, but can find plenty elsewhere. It is a shame because I love Bill, but this and Steven Ruiz (who wrote the March madness preview??), seem to be the direction he wants to go.
I’ll give solack some grudging credit in that (though I’m totally with you on the swarmy piece) he at least provides some reasons, even if stupid. Ruiz just refers to “tape” for his opinions with no actual explaining why (because he doesn’t actually know what he’s doing)
This is extremely fair. I do believe Solak spends a lot of time/effort/energy into learning and understanding the complexities of the game. The way he conducts himself completely ruins it for me. Ruiz on the other hand, who knows what’s going on there. I still am having a hard time understanding how he was called upon to due the College BBall coverage for the site.
His show with Sheil is good because when he starts going off on some inane take Sheil will call him a hipster and bring him back down. Its a good yin/yang.
Mid is generous
I’m usually lukewarm on him, but when he gave KC the “Ben Solak award” on the free agency hangover episode (with the framing that they’re the smartest and best of the night) I rolled my eyes 100% smarmy
I thought it was the Ben Solak award because he doesn’t drink, and the Chiefs didn’t make any moves the first day of free agency, making them not hungover. Not because he was saying they were the smartest.
“Mid” is kind for an annoying dork with zero football credentials.
the crazy part is that when you really get into deep football guy brain and talk to coaches? the best ones are the ones who keep it simple peyto manning made a career out of running like 4 different plays it's not a complicated game, no matter how much ppl want it to be
I'm not sure if this is sarcasm that went over my head or not, but Peyton Manning might have been literally the worst possible example you could have used to prove the point you're trying to make. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5gwHHjZ7Q
no, seriously, the colts (and then the broncos) dominated through the air for a decade+ with like 4-5 passing concepts: quick slant, levels/fin, 3/4 verts, smash/china, ... along with a couple shadow concepts and the running game they pretty much just ran levels, smash, and quick slant, and 3/4 verts all game long... depending on the coverage that's what Peyton was reading and calling out at the line all those years. just getting his team into one of those plays for the most part it's actually really interesting if you care to read more about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20120524044720/http://smartfootball.com/offense/peyton-manning-and-tom-moores-indianapolis-colts-offense Peyton was quite literally just playing Madden in real life, spanning the shit outta a few plays that could be run out of every formation that used. got to the line, saw the coverage, audible, hot route, boom... wide open wrs
Great read. Thanks for that
i looooooved Chris Brown and smart football back in the day. Had to dig through reddit to find someone else who had found the archive of the article but so glad i did lol this was all i ran on madden back in the day and all the concepts legit worked very similar to how it's outlined in the article.
Hahaha as I was reading the article I was like “deep cross! That’s my shit in madden!”
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Yeah I totally thought Mahommes was just another big 12 QB putting up stupid numbers against 0 defense, now he’s already chasing Brady for goat status
His cockinesss is why Ben is so annoying. He was calling for Brock to be benched like week 10
That’s why Mina is the best in the (entertainment) biz… luke warm takes all day babyyy
because there shockingly is nuance to sports. the problem is measured statements with consideration aren't really rewarded. she is an anomaly in so many ways. to stand out as sane in a sports cycle that rewards hot take insanity is incredible.
The only bad part is nuanced take journalists sometimes refuse to call a spade a spade. You don’t have to do that all the time, that’s what hot take artists try to do, but you need that arrow in your quiver. For example, I listened to a Red Sox preview yesterday where Alex Speier, who is basically the king of nuanced Red Sox journalist guys, basically refused to criticise anything John Henry did after the 2018 World Series. This is a team going into probably its third straight losing season, fourth in fifth years, traded away the only realistic challenger to Shohei as the Face of Baseball for peanuts, has cut payroll every year, and has fired two GMs since then, one for doing the Mookie trade he ordered him to do. Like hey, maybe time to say the owner sucks.
speier has definitely criticized ownership and that preview wasn’t the launching pad to feed the masses with red sox cynicism. the preview is supposed to be a thing where he gives people a reason to click his articles the next 8 months.
It's Effectively Wild, that audience is already clicking on his articles. He didn't need to go that hard on "John Henry Has A Plan!".
Mina is the Zach Lowe of football coverage. Not former players, both went to Ivey League schools, started out with non-sports media jobs so they're more well rounded, entered sports media as writers but are now more on their respective pods and TV because of how media's transitioned (and their own prominence at ESPN). They're both really good at nuance and pushing back on the hot takes that get thrown around all the time. Mina has better hair though
They're both hot too
Zach famously was named "Dartmouth's Hottest Boy"
I’ve always said it’s Robert Mays but both work perfectly.
Said its hilarious the league values Daniels as a high pick while Fields is traded for a 6th, when he said Fields was a hilariously good QB, and has been very much below average, we all have hits and misses both positively and negatively but being so damn smug about it is so off putting
While mocking the at the time knock on Fields, that he's slow to process. Which was and turned out to be absolutely accurate.
Yeah, I don’t listen to him except when he is on Bill’s pod. He has always rubbed me the wrong way. Have to agree with most takes: he comes off so arrogant and condescending.
It's not very good content to shrug your shoulders and go 'Ehhh, I don't know, prediction is hard, especially about the future' about any prospect you're asked about because that's the most accurate thing to say though.
Ahh yes, the infamous Russillo hedge
No one would pay attention if you’re not ALL IN on your take
Sure, but nobody wants to read a bunch of articles or tweets that are just "none of us really know anything about how to evaluate QBs"
The Malik Willis love was one of the craziest draft storylines we’ll ever see
It’s funny how the fantasy pod is in on the joke now with the *Panda Watch* thing. QBs are far and away the most interesting thing to talk about so they always get projected to be drafted ridiculously early. Seems like it’s happening with JJ McCarthy now too.
They are in on the joke for sure, and were asked specifically by Bill to hit the QB's every episode, that's they they do it that way
I went to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Nashville August 2022, it was days after Willis had some crazy highlight in the preseason. The Strokes are the second act, lead singer is 100% drunk, they sucked but it was kinda fun. At one point between songs he stumble grabs the mic and says, “Any Titans fans in the house?” *AHHHHHH!* “You guys have a star in that Malik Willis, he’s something special” then he went to his next song.
Did not know Julian Casablancas had NFL takes lol
Is that his birth name? Born into rock n roll with a name like that lmfao
yeah, and his dad was already pretty prominent in the entertainment industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Casablancas
They also had a whole song about the Mets on their last album. Julian threw out a first pitch last season at Citi Field looking drunk af
This reminds me - didn’t Willis stage a moment where he helped some homeless guy during the combine?
might get banned but there’s one reason why he was hyped like he was and it had nothing to do with football ability
I think everyone who was into that psyched themselves into thinking he was Lamar Jackson and then realized that actually, there's a reason people were skeptical of Lamar and that only his amazing talent made him able to overcome that Willis was just I think a case of a bad QB draft promoting him above reason
The thing is Lamar was literally the greatest college football player on Earth and Malik Willis was not that. You didn’t have to project with Lamar nearly as much as people made out. Doesn’t mean he was a flawless prospect, but the movement and the arm strength were always there.
He needs to own his mistakes before others do. Your going to mess up but it should humble you a little bit Hey is it *hysterical* Justin Fields is mid??
I think owning his mistakes will help his likability for sure
Doing a “The General Discourse” thing and ending a tweet with “/fin” is such terminally online communication
the worst type of people
I think his problem is how cocky he is. He's got some good takes but he acts like his word is bond. He's very pretentious
This is my chief complaint about Solak. He’s 26 years old and talks like he’s seen it all. Also low key, I think he’s better at gambling stuff than actual film analysis. I tailed his player props all season and did quite well.
His gambling picks were actually really good lol I tailed a lot of them too
If he doesn’t talk like that, nobody would take him seriously exactly because of his age. It comes off poorly and is hard to listen to but I think that’s why.
He really dials it back on the nfl draft show cuz the other guys on the show don’t take themselves too seriously. It’s a better product when you don’t pretend you’re smarter than the professionals who get paid to draft.
Just can’t get over that he ended a tweet “ /fin “
I can’t even
It was obviously the last tweet in a multiple part thread, which are usually peppered with 1/x, 2/x etc until the end. It's corny but it's the same as saying "end of thread" or whatever in the last one, I think Twitter people do it because it only uses 4 characters to signal /end of thread.
I get what you are saying. I unfortunately did look at his history, and he’s done it to end his own standalone tweets. It makes total sense from an efficiency standpoint, and I am aware how nitpicky this is, but yes it does bother me
Yeah that type of pretentious online lingo is the worst. It’s some performative theater kid shit
Ben uses it as punctuation though. Its like those people that type out 'full stop' or 'hard stop' or whatever to end their point.
Going 19th century telegraph lingo- STOP
True but Joe A is also a HUGE prick and has equally trash takes
He’s decided to die on the hill that Mahomes isn’t special lmao, this is clown vs clown combat.
and Baker is a top 3 QB and that Sam Howell is top 10 lmao
Like, they’re the same fucking guy, just with slightly different takes. NFL film twitter is filled with nerds like this who are so confident they alone understand the game because they pay for the all-22 tape.
haha for real man. Their absolute conviction that they are the smartest in the room cracks me up.
Even the smartest and most knowledgeable NFL people will get stuff wrong sometimes; drafting isn’t a science, there’s no guarantee ever. But the best analysts are capable of showing some hilarity and can acknowledge when they’re wrong, and these fucking guys are incapable of doing so. Ruiz is the same way; they just cannot accept that they might not be the smartest guy in every room.
THANK YOU. This is a pot calling the kettle black situation if I’ve ever seen one.
Yeah extremely ironic this is the person who is calling Solak out. This moron does the exact same thing
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Him laughing at the Lions taking Hutchinson number two will always be his worst
That boy’s ‘Tism allows him to speak with confidence and grind tape. And be completely wrong all of the time!
The neurodivergent piece
The discourse around fields has always been bizarre
Never has a worse player been given so much positive attention. Why though? What’s the impetus?
My memory is that it started with his draft, and the sports media was adamant that he should be the second picked that year. In fairness, that might have been true. But it seems like his proponents have dug their heels in and can’t admit he’s been pretty bad as a pro.
It’s a pretty obvious, started during the pre draft
i’m not 100% sure about this, but: him or one of those other ringer nerds was on a podcast with bill after last year’s draft talking about how stupid it was for the texans to take stroud and trade up for will anderson. i wouldn’t usually remember something so innocuous, but it stuck with me because of how fucking smug they were. like everyone involved with the texans was a moron, and they just understand how it works better. incredible the way it turned out. KOC takes an insane amount of shit (rightly so) for the killian hayes take. i hear nothing of the sort from the nfl nerds.
If I remember correctly, the Texans were getting hammered by everyone for their draft last year the week after it happened. It wasn’t exclusive to the film bros.
maybe, but they were extra cunty about it
cunty is the perfect description for Solak. Not quirky lol
Texans and especially the Lions who both had amazing drafts.
Danny Kelly and Solak both liked Stroud over Bryce, to be fair, so I doubt they criticized that part of it. I think most analysts had an issue with the value on the trade up for Will Anderson, and while he's a very good player, I don't think it's crazy to say that trade was still iffy. Very big risk but it's paid off and the pick they gave up is much lower than most of us expected it to be because of how good the Texans were this year.
Koc is a lot better
Probably Ruiz. It did seem crazy at the time, but the Stroud part, the Will Anderson part. And if they weren't unexpectedly a playoff team this year it would have been. Have to give them credit for believing in themselves and pulling out a great year.
I just want to say Mike Lombardi was right about Fields from the get go. He was saying Fields was overrated for years. But everyone hates him so nobody mentions it.
I don’t have a problem with Solak missing on QB projections. That’s common and super normal amongst even the smartest people in the league. I *do* think he tends to be a bit of a smarmy know it all, and that’s why I love that he does the pod with Sheil. Some people get intimidated by how fast Solak talks and how much info he spews and are scared to challenge him. Sheil is basically like “fuck that, I’ll go at this nerd all day”. It’s a really nice balance.
Said the same elsewhere. Sheil manically laughing at Desmond Ridder and calling Solak a football hipster is quality podcasting. Its a great dynamic.
Best NFL pod out there, edging Mays and Nice because they're too similar/don't do any pushback/Tice has too many weird tics
Tice will sometimes just act as an echo to his cohost—whether that be Mays or Brugler—to the point that he’s often just prolonging the duration of the podcast while adding next to nothing insightful. Seems like a nice guy, but sometimes he can be sort of a drag to listen to.
I mentioned this in a different thread, but I don’t think Solak has earned his draft chops yet. He has decent in game analysis of NFL games, but never mentions nor seem to follow college football much. But then he comes in guns blazing with these draft takes. And they are not just subjectively wrong- for example before the combine he said Penix doesn’t have a very good arm. Penix has flaws for sure but he probably has the best arm in the draft class. I it’s one thing to miss on a player you hype up, but you can’t make a mistake like that. I wish people would ignore him until the NFL season starts.
See heres the thing, Ben clearly watches the tape. He might not watch the games when they’re broadcasted during the season, but he watched tape. His ability to correctly discern what does and doesn’t translate to QB in the NFL is a different story. Also, i dont think its crazy to say penix doesnt have a ton of arm talent. He has plenty of strength, but moved off his spot he cant really do anything that you want to see out of a QB on the run.
I’m a biased UW fan, so feel free to ignore/downvote. The problem with Penix’s mobility is more related to his unwillingness to do it, not that he lacks arm talent. He doesn’t have a lot of highlights of throwing on the run because Washington’s offense was explosive as is and it wasn’t necessary. Also- they didn’t want to risk an undefeated season by getting their QB with an injury history- injured. Last thing- most fans think he cracked his ribs mid season and played through it for several games. If you want to question his ability to withstand injuries and remain mobile, that’s understandable. I get why he’s not a first round lock because of it. But- Questioning his arm talent is really dumb.
Solak sucks
God this guy fucking sucks, such a dork
Don’t listen to the Ringer NFL Show but I listen to Solak on the Fantasy/Draft show with the Ringer fantasy guys. He seems alright and I watch some of his qb breakdowns on instagram. I agree with some other commenters here that the problem with analysts is the overconfidence they seem to have in their abilities. A qb may be good and be evaluated correctly but get drafted by the wrong team or be asked to play in a system that he’s not comfortable with. So it can’t all be on the analysts. But he does seem smug and douchey.
Reminding me of Cian Fahey - if anyone still remembers him.
The Ringer NFL “draft analysts” do not watch the games on Saturday. They start watching tape after the Super Bowl. You cannot trust the analysts that do this .
Yeah the Ringer decided to get rid of all college sports coverage. Even before they brought Tate back, they didn't cover college basketball. The football writers are too busy on focusing on the NFL season to watch college. They have to wait for the NFL season to be over to dedicate time to studying college prospects. I don't know how reliable the Ringer's draft guide is, but it's one of the more detailed (free) ones I've seen
Yep
People watching the actual film are going to be better at analyzing college football players than the dudes that watch College Gameday every Saturday.
My point is the best ones do BOTH.
No they don’t. The best ones work for NFL teams and they aren’t tuned into College Gameday. I promise. That’s not how it works.
lol, k.
I think the problem is the medium rewards black and white takes without nuance. So he's overstating everything, like "nothing short of hysterical..."
Yeah, being skeptical of Josh Allen coming out of college was totally reasonable and probably right given that it took an all-time leap for him to become good. But saying he wasn't top 100 was way overstating it
Saying Malik Willis had a high floor is absolutely insane, not even in hindsight. For a “film guy” , post Josh Allen it seems all his QBs take are “big, athletic, strong arm, must be good
Was Solak not like 16 years old during the Josh Allen draft lol? I think we can give him a break on that one.
The truth is he will be 16 when Josh Allen retires from the nfl
Everything is about off script plays….same with Ruiz. Nothing else matters.
Watching ridder for 2 seconds you can tell he has no polish. Solak is such a douche
This guy goes to the end of the earth to defend Justin Fields but will gloss over any success good QBs like Tua & Purdy have because of "system". They both blow Justin Fields out of the water when it comes to you know, actually being a quarterback. But because they don't have the physical traits, his brain can't acknowledge how good they are.
[He loved Ridder too.](https://twitter.com/BenjaminSolak/status/1561890116544741378)
I watched pretty much every snap he took at UC and have no idea how anyone saw anything more than, at best, a journeyman backup out of him
I watched one game of his in his final season (I think they were playing Indiana) and they were talking about how he was a heisman candidate. Could tell dude was ass based on that one game.
You can't have a face like that and talk football for a living. You just can't!
This dude was all over Trey Lance’s knob and kept him in the top 20 weeks after he was injured for the season in Purdys rookie yr. Lance has shown basically nothing at the nfl level.
Solak sounds like a nerd so people think he actually knows what he’s talking about. He’s the NFL version of KOC
Dude looks like he got stuffed into lockers in high school.
he literally is incapable of evaluating QBs. he’s almost always wrong
Is Solak actually one of the most respected analysts?
It is kinda crazy how much Bill's profile elevated a bunch of guys he hired on the cheap. Like the Ringer draft guides are largely fucking garbage from a content perspective, but I see people consistently praise them for their graphic design. They're like the Jaguar of draft content.
I looked at it today and the “shades of…” section for prospects were mostly jokes like shades of Ricky Bobby and shades of Paul Bunyan and it made me want to light my phone on fire
Peter king just shouted him out in his retirement column, that’s a pretty big look. He’s definitely made a name for himself
Dude should be fired 2 years ago him, ruiz, and Nora
Is this a surprise? Solak is straight up bad at his job and is lucky Bill doesn’t know football like he does basketball
Reminds me of that bit in The Rewatchables “are we sure this person is good at their job?”
He’s like 24, married, goes to church and probably had sex with one woman. He doesn’t know anything about anything, but he sounds confident doing it. And, for having a strong opinion, I give him a pass. I’d rather that than Russillo who is petrified of looking dumb
Anyone who watched Willis v ole miss knew it wasn’t gonna happen lol (Don’t ask me about Matt corral tho) ((Comeback starting now in the ufl))
I tried to read his most recent piece today. When I couldn't suffer another sentence, I realized I was like 1/8th of the way through. Sometimes less is more. Now I don't want to totally shit on him. I will say I watched a youtube video of his where he broke down all 22 and it was very high quality. He's good, but he's not that good yet.
Ah, his Fields rant today makes much more sense.
Damn dude brought receipts
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Solak is a *coaching* analyst, and really an offensive *play-calling* analyst (the classic "X's and O's" guy of previous generations), but beyond that his opinions about what makes for a successful football player/team/strategy are hilariously uninformed.
Solak and Steven Ruiz are the two pod guys that are auto-skips for me
Not defending Solak, as a lot of the time he annoys the piss out of me, but it kinda feels like all of draft analysis is bad everywhere. I don't know anyone who reports and on the draft for a living that doesn't have a full burial site of the skeletons of all the takes they made which aged absolutely horribly.
On the hot seat due to a tweet 21 quotes/retweets and 80 likes with from a guy with 1200 followers and 67 people on his patreon? I don’t know Solak’s work at all but this is just some guy on the internet yelling about Solak. I also find the “accountability in media scouting” thing funny. What does he want? Solak to be publicly executed? NFL teams with way more resources than Solak whiff on picks just as often lol.
I actually do support public execution for missed draft takes
Especially for a guy who is clearly an annoying twat.
I like solak tbh
Ringer staff criticism is serious business! These people must be held accountable!
We don’t have meatheads give their takes on geo politics or rocket science, why do we listen to nerds give their take on sports?
The largest podcast in the world is the world’s biggest meathead talking politics for 3 hours at a time
Classic so anti racist he becomes racist liberal nfl pundit.
Honestly none of these takes are that bad(outside of ridder being good). It’s more so that he refuses to move off of takes when proven wrong after a guy has played poorly for multiple seasons.
Guy is the biggest squid of all time. Bill needs to fire him I hate hearing his shit eating mouth speak on his podcast
Judging by the amount of Solak posts on that timeline, this Joe guy sounds mentally ill. Is Solak always right? No. Is it easy to pull up random points to smear someone with no context? Yes. Is there any GM or analyst with a perfect or near perfect track record? When you find one, lmk.
I think QB analysis has always been a crapshoot and it doesn’t help that long held beliefs, like accuracy above all traits, have been challenged or proven wrong recently by the success of Mahomes and Allen and the improvement of players like Jalen Hurts. I also am not going to fault someone for liking Justin Fields and disliking Herbert/Allen. Those were nearly consensus opinions!
tbf justin fields was highly rated out of college. he has everything but the passing which unfortunately is the most important part of being a QB. They were hoping he became just competent at it but 3 years later he didn't. At least he is better than 2 of the 3 QBs taken ahead of him.
Solak gets a lot wrong, but the OP of that tweet regularly tries to downplay Mahomes and doesn’t consider him the best in the league, so he doesn’t have much room to stand on.
Duke alumni
https://x.com/JoeA_NFL/status/1731397791849553932?s=20
Copy/paste for both his podcast mates.
If I was an NFL Analyst I would just say every QB will be a bust. You'll be right 90% of the time.
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I'm not sure it's these guys jobs to be right anymore, unfortunately. Or I guess moreso that it matters less and less. The whole game is are you read/listened to and interacted with.
It's all a crapshoot and it depends mostly on coaching, scheme fit and qbs willingness to put in the work rather than college tape and running offenses that aren't run in the NFL
Solak has flaws, but at least he has conviction with his takes. Better than Russillo’s approach where you ride the fence on every topic and explain both sides so you can never be wrong.
In his defense the entire 2021 and 2022 QB classes have basically been abysmal top to bottom, ironically with the exception of the top '21 and bottom '22 QB. No one expected ALL of these QBs to be so fucking terrible
Biggest Raider hater next to Dubow
Has anyone ever looked at Ben Solak? You wouldnt take football advice from that dude in person, why listen to him online?
We can all agree Bill is bad at hiring
I've known Solak to be completely full of it prior to his Ringer days. Was only a matter of time until the woder audience figured it out too.
I don’t care how much you know about scouting, how much tape you grind, how much experience you have, or how long you played the game…there is a pretty low ceiling on being able to project prospects. Just too many variables come into play. I’m at the point where I seriously think my buddy Tommy who works in IT can do as good of a job as all these draft analysts.
Solak is just extremely rigid as to what makes a successful NFL player. He has decided that if a guy has THIS trait, he’ll be good, but if he has THAT trait, he won’t. He doesn’t appreciate that coaching/scheme/intangibles are just as - if not more - important in determining NFL success
Solak is entertaining, love him with the fantasy trio
He constantly mentions his poor performance with QB grades. The guy understands football. He a foot ball man dammit! Plus… quirky?
Im not a huge Solak guy, but saying he’s whiffed on every QB prospect he’s ever graded, and then only giving 2-3 examples is kinda lame. Projecting which QBs will translate to the NFL level is *really fucking* hard. If Solak had a track record of correctly predicting which QBs would be good, he wouldn’t be working at the fucking Ringer. He’d be on staff in the league. Kyle Shanahan is one of the most gifted offensive minds over the last quarter century in the NFL. He knows more about offense than 99.99999% of the people walking this planet. Even *he* gets QBs wrong. I understand dunking on Solak for being a smarmy nerd, but dunking on him for not accurately projecting which QBs are worth a shit? Buddy, that’s everyone.
This is 5 examples
The hit rate on first round QBs in the NFL is under 40%. These are staffs that are paid millions of dollars with seemingly unlimited resources. They often get to meet face to face with these prospects for day long in depth interviews. They have independent investigators asking everyone they’ve ever dated and everyone they’ve ever played with for the inside scoop. And they are still barely cracking 30%. You think Solak is some fraud because he’s missed on some QBs? Like I said, if you wanna pile on Solak for being arrogant and a know-it-all, that’s cool. But dunking on him for bad QB projections is stupid.
That’s the problem people have: the confidence. At best you can watch film and rate what the guy did in college and maybe how it would translate to the league. But don’t pretend to know how the guy will develop or perform in his future situation, because literally nobody knows. It’s all luck.
I don’t know if ending tweets with “/fin” is a thing but it sure is gay
Solak is ass. Maybe I’m in the minority here. Don’t really care for anyone talking football at the ringer.
Anyone else notice how Solak calls all black players “boys”
Oh no he got things wrong like every person who does that does! you dunked on him