Yesterday morning, former Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall woke up and chose violence. I’m not sure exactly what prompted him to throw down the gauntlet like this, but I’m glad he did because this is a really fun discussion to have:

Let’s just get past the obvious racism here. A lot of people are hung up on that part, but I think that misses the mark: it seems like Mendenhall’s comment came from a place of resentment, possibly even deep-seated resentment, but it’s not like this is a mainstream viewpoint by any stretch. And the guy probably has CTE so cut him some slack.

I thought JJ Watt had the best response:

Exactly. Can we just relax here? Mendenhall is obviously off his rocker, whatever.

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t raise a very interesting question–one which we’ve all probably wondered about at some point in our lives:

Would a team of all-white NFL players actually stand a chance against a team of all-black NFL players?

So I went ahead and put together my ideal rosters for this scenario.

Before we get into the teams, there were a few questions that had to be answered.

The first is, what do you do with the mixed race players? The obvious name here is Patrick Mahomes, whose dad is black and mom is white.

Who gets Mahomes?

Darius Butler on the McAfee show had a compelling argument that mixed race players should be treated the way they were treated back in the days of segregation, the infamous “One drop” rule–“It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry (“one drop” of “black blood”) is considered black (Negro or colored in historical terms).”

Obviously this was used to discriminate against black people with the underlying assumption that “black blood” is inherently bad and makes you a second-class citizen.

But in this case, it’s the exact opposite.

I don’t think we should use this standard, for one thing because it’s just wrong and obviously has no place in society today, but also because I don’t think any white players or coaches today would espouse these beliefs–in other words, the white team would not want to exclude Mahomes just because he’s part black.

So I just didn’t include any mixed-race players on either team. If you wanted to come up with a rule for who goes where, you’d probably just have to have a coin flip to see who gets first pick of the mixed-race players, and then alternate from there. So basically it would be a coin flip for Mahomes, and then whoever loses the coin flip gets the second pick among mixed-race players.

But since we’re not actually doing a draft and this game isn’t actually happening, it’s kind of a moot point so I just didn’t include the mixed-race players on either team.

Then there’s also the question of Polynesian players, who have a fairly sizable representation in the current NFL–guys like Tua, Vita Vea, Hufanga, Penei Sewell, etc. I didn’t include them because they’re neither white nor black.

Okay, so with that out of the way let’s take a look at the teams I came up with:

Special teams: the black team would have a punter, Pressley Harvin. But to my knowledge they wouldn’t have a kicker, and possibly not even a long-snapper, either.

Team white would definitely have the edge in special teams.

There is one black kicker that’s pretty famous, although he isn’t in the NFL: YouTube star Deestroying. The black team could definitely go ahead and call him up, which I think would be fine since we’re letting the white team call up Cooper DeJean, who also isn’t yet in the NFL (and who is also hurt right now, but since this is a hypothetical scenario, we’ll just imagine he’s healthy and ready to go.)

For the head coaches, I went with Mike Tomlin for the black team. He’s obviously under some fire lately but he’s one of the longest-tenured coaches in the league, he’s won a Super Bowl–he’s clearly the man for the job.

For the white team, I had to go with Bill Belichick. Yes, I know the Patriots suck this year, but if anybody knows how to win with white players, it’s Bill Belichick. I mean, come on. I’m pretty sure the guy won multiple Super Bowls with almost all white offensive skill players, or at least pretty close to it. I could’ve gone with Andy Reid or Kyle Shanahan, but Belichick is the obvious answer here.

Okay, so now that we have the teams established: can the white team actually win?

Well, the white team definitely has a lot of good players, especially at the defensive end and tight end positions. In fact they have a surplus of talent at those positions. On offense, you’re going to be running a lot 12 and even 13 personnel because there aren’t really a ton of great white receivers, but there are a ton of great white tight ends.

The problem for the white team is that they literally do not have enough defensive backs to have any hope of containing Team Black’s receivers. I chose Tyreek Hill, Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase for Team Black specifically because of that–I just went for speed, speed and more speed. It’ll be a lot of deep passes, and I don’t think Team White’s corners have much hope against those guys. Bill Belichick will come up with some genius defensive gameplan, sure, but at a certain point, you’re limited by your personnel. Coach can scheme up the best gameplan imaginable, but if he doesn’t have the players to execute it, it’s worthless.

Team Black just doesn’t have a real weakness like that. Sure, they’re a bit thin on the interior of their offensive line, but that just means they don’t have great depth and they may not have All Pro-level players there. But they have players. The white team will probably try to send a lot of inside pressure right through the middle of the Team Black line, but it’ll have to get home almost every time in order to disrupt that deep passing attack.

The issue with that is, if Team White’s pass rush fails one time, Team Black is probably hitting a deep shot for 7. Plus, if Team Black uses Lamar Jackson, flushing him out of the pocket doesn’t really work–it almost plays right into their hands.

Look, Team White is really good, but there are some glaring deficiencies. Team Black really doesn’t have any–they’re elite across the board.

So for that reason, there’s just no way I can pick Team White to win this game.

Until white people start playing cornerback, I just can’t see it.