How long can an NFL team sustain an elite defense?
5/4/202649 min
t's May, dear TAFS listener, and you know what that means: The real NFL offseason is here. We kick it off by opening up the mailbag, and you all delivered once again. Robert Mays and Dave Helman answer questions on the durability of elite defenses, hypothetical teams built entirely of one draft class, possible trades involving non-star players that could move the needle for 2026, and a whole lot more.
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Senior Producer: Katy Duffy
Social Producer...
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRobert Mays· Host0:00
Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert May. It's another Mailbag Monday here in the off-season. Been a couple weeks since I've done one of these. Very excited to get back to it. As always, sincerely appreciate everyone who sent in questions, either via the Discord or email. Speaking of the Discord, as you may know, we launched a merch store back in February. We've heard many opinions from our Discord members on the merch, and so we have good news for you that we'll be able to share soon. So be sure that you're in the Discord if you want those merch opinions heard, and maybe more than just heard. So there's a link in the Discord in the show description. In the meantime, go check out the merch store that you can find online with The Athletic Football Show. For now, let's get to this week's mailbag with me, Michael Bower, and Dave Hellman. Let's get to it. [upbeat music] It's another Mailbag Monday here on The Athletic Football Show. We are now in the teeth of the off-season. This is our first Monday post-draft. I haven't been on one of these in a couple weeks now, Dave. You guys handled the one right before the draft, and then we had the draft last week, so it's fun to be back in the mailbag world.
Dave Helman· Host1:09
I'm gonna say it's, it's good to have you back.
Robert Mays· Host1:11
Bower, you're gonna be reading the questions as normal. We've got about eight of them today. As always, sincerely appreciate everyone who took the time to send one of these in. Let's just get to it.
Dave Helman· Host1:20
Let's get to it. It starts with Sam Butler. Sam says, "With the draft going on, I was thinking about a hypothetical. If you took the first player selected at each position in any