Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Take Talk Ep 4

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Brett Whitefield (@BGWhitefield) and Steven O'Rourke (@callmesteveo7) preview Week 2 NFL action. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Hello everyone and welcome to episode four of the Take Talk podcast. Week one is in the books. What happened? We are going to talk all about it. I am Stephen O'Rourke, and as always, I have my co-host, Brett Whitefield. And we got a great soundbite from Gino Smith this week.

Brett, talk a little bit about it. Yo, so listen, you know me, like, I'm kind of like a, what's the word? I'm really big into like the motivational speeches and the one-liners and leadership. I mean, shoot, I'm known to give the team here, the charting team, a raw-w-row speech every Sunday. know. That's something I like to do. I like to spend some time curating those moments and really trying to amp up the team. So I'm a sucker for good one-liners like this. And Gino Smith dropped one the other day after the game. If you guys missed it, post-game interview, he said, quote, they wrote me off. I ain't right back, though. That's kind of a banger. And I saw a lot of

people discussing this on Twitter saying that really doesn't even make sense. Kind of cool, but doesn't really make sense. I think it passes the smell test because I think what he's saying is, listen, like there's this distraction. People wrote me off, but I ain't paying any attention to that. I'm keeping my head down. I'm working. I'm getting better. And that's all Geno Swift can really do. So to that, I credit him. I think it's a good quote. But, Stephen, there's been way better quotes, right? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Right. And so I thought it would be cool to take a couple minutes, hopefully not too long, and just go over some of the best one-liners we've seen in the football space. And I've got five other candidates that I think are awesome.

So I'm going to go through really quick. Let's do it. All right, let's do it. One, JJ Watt, this is a great quote. Success isn't owned, it's least, and rent is due every day. I love that. That's a banger of a quote. That's a good one.

Right. Like if you didn't wake up with the intention of getting after it this morning, you're going to miss rent. Yeah. And that success is going to pass you by. I love it. Jerry Rice had one. Today, I will do what others won't so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can't. Boom, mind-blum.

I like that one too. I like that one too. Right. Very similar to Watts, kind of the same angle there. Bill Belichick had one, totally different. kind of vein or style, but it says, when you live in the past, you die in the present. So true. That's an insightful one right there.

Right. That's like just life in general, man. Like that's a great one. Like if you, I have a famous speaker. I forget his name. I'm kind of, you know, I read a lot of these motivational books and whatever. A lot of books people get made fun of for reading, but I like them. There's a, there's a quote in one of them I read and it said, if you,

similar to bills and it was basically like if you if you've already accomplished all of your dreams and you're already already dead right basically so keep keep dreaming never stop dreaming anyways never stop dreaming ever stop dreaming paul brown when you win say nothing when you lose say less my coaches growing up drilled that into our head non-stop paul brown famous cleveland brown's Cincinnati Bengals head coach back in the day. Those are great quotes. But my personal favorite, Steve, and I think the best of all time, came after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Buffalo Bills in the playoffs last season.

Yep. On that crazy last drive where they just marched right down the field and just handed it to the bills. Andy Reid said, when things are grim, be the grim reaper. That's right. I remember that one. That is the best freaking quote. quote of all time, bar none. I apply that to life every day.

Like I compete and do jiu-jitsu. I think I probably talk to you about that a lot, but maybe not on the show. I train a lot, you know, four-ish plus days a week. Football season a little bit less, obviously. And there's a lot of moments in jiu-jitsu where things are grim. And that quote has stuck with me, man. And when things are feeling grim, I flip the switch and I say, it is time to be the grim reaper.

And I go out and I get it. So I love that quote. Stephen, what do you think? I just think that football in the NFL, it just brings out just the most carnal emotions in a lot of people. And it just always makes for such amazing sound bites. Yes. Like it just, it's so, like I said, it's so carnal and barbaric to that, like,

you just go into this instinct. You don't really have time to think. You just say. And I think that that always brings out just some of the best quotes and some of the best moments that we get week over week during the NFL season. It's awesome. I love it. Yeah. I mean, even Gino's comment, which started this whole conversation, it's similar.

Because like, in the moment, that quote hit me. And I was like, whoa, that was awesome. And then the more you think about it, you're like, well, does it actually make sense? Well, yeah, that's the funny. But that's the best part is that like it is so reactionary and it's not like, you know, it's not like they get time to think out a script of what they're going to say. You know, it's not like, you know, a pregame presser or like a post practice presser where it's like, okay, I've had a time.

I've had a second to settle down. Let me think about what I'm going to say. This is so much just like, hey, you just, this just happened. Go. Say what you're thinking. Exactly. It's off the rip, off the top of the head. And it is.

It leads to a lot of, like, things that are, like, sayings that are motivational or supposed to be motivational by nature. But when, if you take too long to sit and think about it. Right, right. Like, if anything you're taking away from it, if you think about it too long. Like, of course. For sure. Of course it doesn't make sense.

He just played a game in front of tens of thousands of fans. and like gutted out a win in a close game like no of course it's not going to make sense don't try and make it make sense just enjoy it because like if you think about it you understand the gist of what he's trying to say yeah but that's i mean that's the best part of it is that it is off the top of the head so you do get it you do get these like really cool but also mildly funny sayings or like clips right Right. And I mean, shoot, that's why the Andy Reid one is so awesome. The level of savage that came from that is incredible. Like, think about it. The Chiefs were down. What? It was, they have a minute left. No, it was less than that. They had 13 seconds. There was 13 seconds left. Depends which point you want to talk about in that game. Because the last minute, like, was it the last like minute 30? There were three lead changes. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. But 13 seconds left. They are down in a playoff. football game. It doesn't get more grim than that. Right. They had what two timeouts, I think, 13 seconds and two timeouts to work with. They marched down the field to force overtime. So Reed coming out and just shooting off when it's grim, be the grim Reaper. Zero percent chance that was

ever rehearsed, practice, or ever even heard before. Like that was just straight emotion, just just absolute savage. I love it. Right. I mean, like, think about like the, um, the one of the most famous ones it's not really like a motivational or anything but the post game reaction from richard sherman in the playoff game after he stopped crab tree oh yeah that's the perfect example of it right that rant was so passionate and it was just awesome right yeah that's a great one well sweet cool i i think we we covered it did you have any other coach you want to throw into the mix or did i did i get the best ones you got the good ones i didn't have any off the top of my head that just that richard sherbin one kicked in of like thinking about that which is the pure emotion right on well sweet let's let's

dive into week one there's so many observations to be had there's zero percent chance we actually get to all of every observation that we had we also want to touch on week two as well i know this steve when i sat down and was like you know what what do i really want to hit on the take talk podcast this week i feel like every gut reaction i had to that and things that i wrote down are are like what the heck moments. Yeah. Like there was so many weird coaching decisions or like everything I have on my sheet right now is actually some type of like Nathaniel Hackett. What was he thinking?

Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Let's just start with that. That was where I wanted. That's where I wanted to start this week because I know when we were talking yesterday that you had said that you have some passionate thoughts about that. Yes. Yeah, I mean, dude, first of all, like, I don't even want to get into the red zone play calling. I mean, and obviously, heck, it can't stop his running back from fumbling twice in the red zone area.

I mean, that's one thing. But before that, even, they were getting down there and settling for field goals. And it was just, it was too much. You have Cortland Sutton, Jerry Judy, KJ Hamler, legit space creators in their own right. You know, Sutton's more of a, you know, a win. contested catch guy, but Judy's a great separator. Hamler's a good separator. Zero reason you can't scheme these guys open in the red zone.

I don't understand it. And they looked lost every time they got down there, legitimately lost. What does that game look like if Judy doesn't break the long touchdown? It looks ugly. I mean, it looks really ugly. Right, right. At least from a scoring standpoint, like in between the 20s, Denver moved the ball pretty well. They had 450 yards of offense, basically.

Right. Like the first drive or two of Russell, you could tell that Russell was a little bit impacted by, you know, the moment. I'm sure there are a lot of emotions and a lot of feelings going into, you know, going back and playing your first game with your new team against your old team in your old stadium. You just walked out and got booed by the, by. by the stadium. I mean, I'm sure it takes a second to settle it. I get that. After that, he looked fine.

Yeah. He did. I didn't think Russ played too bad. It really came down to play calling to me. And then the turnover is late. Really screwed them over. Although, I will say this. Like, I love Giovante Williams.

I'm a huge Javante guy. Right. I'm sorry, 12 targets for your running back, who's in a timeshare, by the way, is egregious. Yeah, that. Like, listen, if you have to hit the track down to keep things moving, that's fine. Go ahead and do that. But if it's happening 12 times, then something is going wrong. The fact that they put up 16 points with 300 or, sorry, 450 yards of offense or near it or whatever, that's just crazy to me.

But ultimately, what I really wanted to get to with this game is, is what was Nathaniel Hackett thinking at the end of this game. So you already mentioned how the Broncos could move the ball at will between the 20s. Well, they were between the 20s when that decision was made. For those of you who missed it, fourth and five from what amounted to be, it ended up being a 64-yard field goal. They had about a minute left, fourth and five. They're down one point to the Seattle Seahawks.

Nathaniel Hackett, not only chunked to basically a minute off the clock for no reason without using his timeouts, he then decides to kick a field goal from 64 yards away in a notoriously hard stadium to kick in with a kicker who's never made anything longer than 61, which most kickers don't breaking news. I just thought you have the highest paid quarterback in the NFL, or maybe not the highest, but really freaking close to the highest, you have a plethora of weapons on offense, you are moving the ball well. It's such a bad decision for so many reasons.

If you get one more first down in that game, Steve, I think I saw a PFF may have tweeted it. 86% chance of winning that game if you get one more first down. And then instead they just, you know, they expect it happened. Kicker misses the kick. Three kneel downs game over. I don't care that Brandon McManess said that's his distance point. That's the hash mark he wants to be on. I don't care.

Why? Like, that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that you want to like just settle for that. Like, why? I mean, it's like, I'm sure a bunch of people saw it, but like the clip of, um, the Manning cast was Shannon Sharp, Eli Manning, Payne Manning. It's the, it's, it's. Yeah. Like, all of them.

I think Shannon Sharp had the quote where I think it was Peyton Manning that said, well, I think they're going to, I think they're going to try and kick it. And Shannon Shep says, kick what? Yeah. Which is exactly that. Like, kick what? I understand that Brandon McManus has a boot on him. But like you said, you're not at mile high.

You are not at home. You're in one of the toughest kicking arenas in the league. Why are you trying to make it as hard as possible? It's five yards. It's five yards. I mean, the reaction from those guys, the fact that, so you had Peyton, Shannon Sharp, and Eli Manning on the screen. Collectively, I think, what, 45, 50 years of playing experience between the three guys? Something like that.

Something ridiculous. At least two Hall of Famers, probably a third. Shannon's in the Hall of Fame, right? Yes, he is. Okay, thank God. Eli, I don't, we don't have to get in that debate. But anyway, potentially three Hall of Famers sitting there. And the fact that not one of them even considered the fact that a field goal was an option just says everything to me.

It wasn't just like Peyton didn't think so. Literally all three of them were like, wait, wait, what? They were so confused when they saw the kick team run on in the field and when the clock was running down. That speaks volumes to me, especially Shannon. Shannon's a Broncos fan, right? Like, it's a former Bronco himself. It seems like on the Mannycast, he was really excited. excited about the future of the team and Russ, and he's talking about that.

And so even as a Broncos fan, this guy was like, wait, what the, what just happened? Why did they just throw that game away? And they had three timeouts. Yeah, exactly. And in the second half, their defense settled in and was starting to hold the Seattle offense. There was about a minute left. You kick that, you kick the field goal, or, like, you go for it. Sorry, you go for it.

You don't get it. You still have about 49, 52 seconds left with three timeouts. Like, you're still not technically out of it there if you get three stops, but you know what you are out of it? If you kick the field goal is you lose a timeout, again, letting the clock run down all the way. Like, what are you, like, what is he doing? It was obscene.

I don't think. So if you actually look at the drive as a whole, Seattle punts with four, basically Denver gets a ball back with four zero two left from their own 22. So I understand the idea of, hey, we don't want to go right down the field and score and give Seattle time. So we're going to try to play a true four-minute offense, but with scoring involved. Right. So, yeah, they take it slow at first.

Gordon gets a run. They let the clock go all the way down. so there's 325 less left you know you get to the two minute warning once a two minute warning hits they're still in their own territory they're at their own 40 yard line that's when i feel like you got to start picking up the pace a little bit right no they short pass to jvante williams out of the two minute warning they let the clock run all the way down to a minute and 24 seconds okay still fine whatever you have three timeouts not going to get mad it is what it is here's the question i i seriously wonder steve they run a play a minute in 24 seconds russell wilson

throws, I believe it was a flare route to the left side of the field with Giovante Williams, he gets rocked for minus four. Right. If you remember, a Seattle defender got hurt on that play, and Seattle had to take a time out to stop the clock at 113. Right. I wonder if Hackett lets the play clock go all the way down again right there. It's a serious question.

So I can't believe no one in the media asked him afterwards, because the way he was running the clock, man, they could have been looking at second and 14. with 40 seconds left in the game and their backs against the wall, basically. But long story short, after they get to the third and 14 play where they pick up nine yards to make it fourth and five, they had a minute, what's their minute five left and they let that run all the way down? Yeah. Yeah. It just doesn't make any sense.

Why pay your quarterback if you're going to nerve him like that and not even make him available for a play? It's just, I don't even know. Like, hopefully he has a come to Jesus moment. And I mean, it looks like he already came out and said, like, oh, I probably shouldn't have done that. I probably should have went for it. No kidding, dude. Yeah, he did. At least he's got the humility to admit that because a lot of coaches wouldn't.

That's true. But now will he learn from that? I just, yeah, and all their red zone tries, I think I saw one, I saw one play that I liked. They used the, they had the little shovel to the tight end that Kansas City likes to run. They did that down there and they scored, but it was called back. Other than that, it was just completely unimaginative, unimaginative play calling in the red zone. And like you said, you have three receivers that should be the guys that you key in on there. At the very least, those three guys have unique skill sets that you can exploit defenses with, at the very least.

Here's a thing for me. Denver, well, first of all, the whole let's let Russ Cook thing when he was in Seattle. So he comes to Denver, that's why people were excited, right? Oh, let's let Russ cook. This is great. New opportunity. We're going to see it happen. And then first possible chance the coach has to let Russ cook.

He cuts his feet off on national TV. It's kind of concerning, especially for a team that we were thinking, this team could compete for the division. Probably not for first, but definitely a playoff contender, and they crap a game away like that. Looking forward to have Houston this week at home. Yeah. Could be a different story for them.

I know Houston played reasonably well this past weekend, all things considered. This should be a good bounceback game for Denver, though, right? Right. But as a segue, person that did cook this week, Patrick Mahal. Let's go. What a game for him.

This was about exactly what I wanted to see. He was in complete control of his offense on Sunday. He absolutely picked apart the Arizona defense. He got a lot of his receivers involved. I can't get over how good some of his passes look. and his offensive line looked really good. I'm excited to watch Kansas City this year. The running back usage was about what we thought.

I think we touched on it last time. They were kind of all over the place with it. Yeah, it was a three-hour rotation. Patrick Mahomes was, he stood in the pocket a lot more than he had last year. Like compared to the beginning of last year, looked a lot more comfortable in the pocket. and he, I mean, he was throwing some darts out there. Smith Shoes, it's like a great fit in the offense. Travis Kelsey still, you know, still garnered his usual target share.

He had nine targets. Had on about 28 routes. So, like, when he's on the field, he's about looking, he's looking to get the ball. But this kid, like, from week one, I, like, in that. gauntlet of an AFC West division, there was a clear separation of two teams. And Kansas City was one of those that separated themselves in that division early on. Yeah. I'll say this about Mahomes and the Chiefs.

And actually, I got a couple requests. You know, our fans send us things. They'd like us to talk about, Steve. And somebody messaged me, actually, not just one person. A couple people messaged me and said, you know, could you address on the show, my homes is PFF grade because you know it was I think it was eighth best in the week it's like a 74 or something like that yeah I don't really I don't really want to touch too much on that and they're I know what they're doing they know I used to work there blah blah blah they want me to

you know use past experience to kind of dissect that right I'll just say this about mahomes in the scheme and it kind of pertain it'll give you what my answer is about the grade which ultimately I think the grade's fine mahomes didn't have have to do a whole lot. The scheme was working. He had a lot of open throws in this game. I mean, shoot, three-hast touchdowns were wide open. Yeah. I mean, both the Clyde touchdowns were literally wide open, uncovered. The one in the flat was way uncovered. The other one was a trick play. They hit the shovel pass to him. Literally walked in the end zone. He didn't have to do a whole lot. And he made the one ridiculous sort of Travis Kelsey. And outside of that, it was just Mahomes running the

offense. And he didn't look bad or he didn't look great either. He just, looked like Mahomes. It wasn't a special performance. The box score lied to most people. You look at 360 yards, five touchdowns. You think it's this incredible performance. Oh, my gosh, how could he be great at his eighth-th-st guy? But really, he wasn't asked to do a whole lot. I mean, the scheme was working. He hit his open targets. He missed a few throws. He had a couple really bad throws. Let's not forget. There's at least two, one of them, Travis Kelsey had to turn into a defensive back in the end zone to knock away. We chart that as a turnover really throw for sure. Right. I mean, that should have been an interception. Honestly, if Travis Kelsey

doesn't turn into a safety there. So some good, some bad, but ultimately, it was just the Chiefs offense doing what they do and what Reed has done his entire career in the NFL. And that's really good scheme, really good play design, really good play calling. And Mahomes ran it almost flawlessly, but he wasn't asked to do those high-end plays he normally is. So I think the performance is good. But long-term, I think it speaks to the fact that. that maybe if people weren't feeling confident about this Chiefs offense losing Tyre Kill, that you should be very confident in what's happening because it looks good. That's what I was going to say is that it's a good sign that he didn't have to

completely go full world beater to like to produce what he produced. Like you said, he just stood in there. He took what was available to him and the offense move the ball. I am concerned with Arizona's defense after watching what they did. Obviously, I know it's Kansas City offense, but like it should not be a concern. Like, if anything, this is look out NFL because if Patrick Mahomes can just operate in the offense and produce those numbers and not do anything crazy, wait till he had, wait till the moments when he can take over and he does need. to make a big, big play. 100%.

Like, that's frightening that he can, that, yeah, produce over 300 yards passing on just what I would say is just run-of-the-mill quarterback. Like, or in the sense that, like, he didn't have to, he wasn't, you know, scrambling outside the pocket. He made, like, one, he made, I think one throw that I saw where he scrambled outside the pocket through against where, through the opposite direction of where he was running. And it looked good.

I mean, it was a good throw. But he didn't have to do that four times a game. He wasn't playing pockets constantly. He was not, he wasn't trying to force the ball anywhere. He just was taking what was there. And it just goes to show when you give a quarterback like Patrick McHolmes, the opportunity to just take what's there, it's going to look good. I said it last on our last episode that I wanted to see what we saw

from Josh Allen from Patrick Mahomes, which is taking what's available, not forcing it into issues, and just letting your receivers win. And he did that. It's a great side. Again, I think that Arizona's secondary is not good. I think that this is a great way to open up to kind of have a defense that I felt like they were going to get open against a lot. And they did. But what, I mean, what a warm.

up for the season. I, you know, take, take things from week one with a grain of salt sometimes. Like, I don't think it's worth overreacting to a lot of things, but for sure. I don't think this is an overreaction. This is just Patrick Mahomes with a lot of just average receivers outside of Kelsey. Right. It could could be worse than Patrick Mahomes of Tyreek Hill in some situations. Listen, I guess first for NFL defenses, I should say. Yeah. When we talked about Mahomes last week, we, you know, we kind of pointed out some of the, I don't want to say processing issues he was having, but just the weight and pressure on an NFL starting QB, especially when you're at Mahomes' caliber, has got to be extraordinary. And then when the team's not playing well, that just ramps up and increases and you feel like you've got to be Hercules on every single play. That got in Mahomes' head last year. We talked about there was a stretch of games where he was constantly bailing from clean pockets, putting his offensive tackles in bad situations. And it really just stalled the offense out kind of. They'd have games where it's like they put up 28 points and it would look bad.

Right. The thing about this game is like Mahom just got back to just doing the simple things right and just constantly doing, making the right read, making the right throw, taking what's there, like you said, and it just looked good. And I think when the time comes where Mahomes has to now make those plays, he's going to be fresh and his mind's going to be right and he's going to be ready to perform at that level we know he can. And guess what?

They're going to get that test this week, aren't they? Yes, they are. Yes, they are. What a great way to kick off into week, too. It's this, oh, I don't even know where to start with this. Both quarterbacks looked great. They actually both had like identical, or not identical, but like two throws or one throw a piece,

where it was just an amazing throw. It was the Patrick Mahomes to, it was Travis Kelsey where he just put it right over the, right in between the corner and the safety. Ridiculous throw. Easy throw. Justin Herbert had a very similar throw in his game. And it was like almost like I just like flipped the reverse,

the mirror image of it where the receiver was running. I think it was a corner route. on the, I think it was either a post corner or a corner, corner around on the opposite side. And he just pinned it right over the corner's shoulder right into his receiver's hands. Like that's, it's going to be a fun matchup to watch this week. I think that like the Chargers as a whole on Sunday looked really good. Devante Adams ate up Asante Samuel a little bit, which I was kind of surprised that they had. They had Asante Samuel just shadowing him the whole time.

He, I'm pretty sure, like, if I watched, I watched the game and I went and charted most of the game. And I'm pretty sure that Asante Samuel matched up with Devante Adams almost every snap. Yeah, that's super interesting. Which, obviously, Devante Adams had a great game, but that's also without the Chargers having J.C. Jackson. And that just goes to show how much the Chargers trusts us on. with Sante Samuel Jr. It just shows you how, like, the ridiculousness of their talent level is crazy. Yeah, like that defense is...

They're shadowing with their number two corner. Like, when Jackson comes back, they're just going to play side. They're like, I'm curious to see what happens. But that's, I mean, they gave Derek Carr fits. That was probably Carr's worst game in three years. Yeah, it was awful. It was bad. It was bad.

Oh, my gosh. Zero feel for pressure in the pocket. Made a ton of bad reads. He was so locked in on Adams. It's like I'm actually a little concerned. Like, are we going to get this all year now that we've reunited the boys, Carr and Adams? Like, Renfro didn't get targeted until what?

Like late in the second quarter or something? Yeah. He had one target going in a half time. Waller had like one or two going in a half time. Adam had 17 targets. Yeah. Which, hey. Like, I get it.

It can work, but he locked in and he threw a couple of picks thrown to him as well. Right. So that, I mean, that, that's, That's going to be a fun matchup on Thursday. I mean, I'm really excited to watch that game. I want to see how Mahomes reacts to that pass rush. Because we talked, I mean, I just talked about it again, how last year he struggled sometimes bailing from clean pockets.

I want to see how it reacts when he doesn't have clean pockets. Right. Kind of the opposite of that. And when the secondary has guys that should be out on the field. Yeah. Yep. And I think J.C. Jackson is going to give it a go. Did I see that correctly? I know he's back at practice at least. I think I saw that J.C. Jackson is at least working to get back, whether he will or not, I don't know.

But I know from what I've seen, he wants to be there. And why not? It's, you know, those are the two, those are the two teams that separated themselves in that division on Sunday. What looks like an absolute gauntlet looked like it's, it's a race against the chiefs in and the Chargers with the Broncos and the Raiders battling to figure out who can keep up. Yep. One other thing on the Chiefs, too, before we move on, there was a lot, a big deal made of the scheme reverting back to Reed's norms. You know, when it was Mahomes and Hill, they got to a little bit more of a spread offense game. And, you know, they were going to go back to 21 and 12 personnel this year.

And they did do that a lot. Those backup tight ends really performed well. Yeah. And guess what? Not at the expensive Travis Kelsey, like some people in the industry kind of suspected what happened. No, he still got his. Just the, instead of relying on a number one receiver, number two, number three receiver, they got a lot out of Fortson and 83. I forget his name, Gray. He looked good as well. I think he only had a couple targets, but he looked like he was moving very well and he's going to be a threat. So it's kind of cool to see the scheme completely different. homes working from a different look, loving the 12 personnel from them, especially because it's not like the receiver room is so good that it's costing them anything. Right. And honestly, 12 personnel is probably my favorite personnel grouping to throw out of. Because in the NFL, there's still teams that are putting three linebackers on the field,

three off the ball linebackers on the field to combat 12 personnel. Yeah. Which means you're going to get a mismatch, especially if you have good athletic tight ends like Kelsey, like Forkson, get those guys on the field together and then play the matchup game all day long. I'm in. I'm sold. I like it. Very excited about tomorrow night's game that is going to be a doozy. And probably, I haven't looked ahead of all the Thursday night football games, but they're traditionally pretty bad. So the fact that we're getting Chiefs Chargers right off the rip is super exciting. We had Bill's Rams last year. Like, what a start to the season. I know. I do want to pivot, though. I already mentioned, man, like most of my notes for this week's are kind of like, what the heck moments. I got a number. I got a number. another one that has to be addressed. Lovie Smith. What are we doing?

I mean, are you, okay, I'm just going to, I'll start from the beginning, tell everyone what happened. Tie ball game. Houston has the ball into opposing territory with, how much time left? 26 seconds left. They're across the 50. They're like right at the 50, but they're at least across the 50.

It's a tie ball game. in overtime. And Lovie Smith decides, you know what, I'd rather go for the tie here than try to win this football game. Fourth and three from the Indianapolis 49, he sends out his punter and literally just punts the game away and takes a tie with 26 seconds left, had zero confidence in his offense to get the first down

and then eventually kick a field goal and win the game, which is the goal of football, Stephen. The goal of football is not the tie. And you cannot convince me that where the Houston Texans are at and their rebuild. And where Lovie Smith is at as a head coach, that that tie means a freaking thing to that football program, that football franchise.

It's against a division opponent as well. I don't understand it. It was so agreed. I thought that was the worst decision of the weekend. Worse than Nathaniel Hackett's. I was furious watching that game. I was furious for those players. Yeah.

You literally just said, I'm okay with a tie here. I'd rather, I'd rather tie that I'd rather play to not lose because if we don't get the first, there's a chance, the Colts score in the next, you know, remaining 20 seconds. egregious. I was very mad about that. Trust your players.

Trust your players. Let them go make plays. Especially when you have nothing to lose. Right. You're a team in a rebuild against a divisional opponent. Right. Go spoil their fun. Right.

The Colts want to win the division. They think they're Super Bowl contenders. Take it to their ass. You know? I just really don't understand. He is a veteran coach, too. And I was kind of shocked when he made it back to the NFL, to be quite honest. Yeah, I was too.

And this is probably kind of why, because stuff like this happens with him. But, man, if I'm Davis Mills, I'm going up to my coach and I'm saying, dude, you're never doing that again. This is my offense. I'm just running to play next time. If I'm any of the decent players, how do you even, like, really, really, really. react to that. I don't know. It shows a complete either lack of trust in your entire team because you're not trusting the

offense to go get a first down. And then you're not trusting the defense to make a play if you don't get the first down. Like it's the NFL. Like why there's not, this isn't the MLB season or the NBA season where it's like, well, you know, it's one game, you know, we can. it's fine. We can play for this. There's 17 games.

It's a division rival. Like, show a little bit of care. I agree. It was like a complete moment of complacency just took over his brain. He said, wow, you know what? We didn't expect to compete in this game. So I'm going to settle for this tie right now. It's a coward's approach in a loser's mentality.

I hate it. I hate it. Like, how does that happen? And then you, and like, how can Houston the ownership group any of that group justify getting rid of Coley when you have your coach making this choice? I know. And Coley was all about the players. Right.

And he got that terrible team to overperform last year, actually. Absolutely. They were supposed to be the first overall pick and they won a few too many games on accident because they were competing week in and week out. Well, anyways, I don't want to. You know a situation where like that becomes a lot. a trend because you don't want to see a T. That's how you get players to quit on you is when you pull crap like that.

It is. It is. I don't want to spend too much time on the Houston Texans, though. There's plenty other good things about. Can we talk about Dallas real quick in the Tampa Bay game specifically? Yeah. First note, when I watched that game a second time, and then I actually went through some of our charting data.

Micah Parsons, I mentioned this last week, Steve. I was going to be mad if I saw that dude playing off the ball. Yep. I told you straight up. I was going to be mad. And every snap he lines up off the ball is a wasted down. And guess what? Micah Parsons lined up off the ball on 23 of his 64 snaps this week.

One of them outside corner because he followed a running back out there in man coverage. What a waste. Imagine putting Mike at Parsons, what? 27 yards away from where the ball is being snapped because you're in man coverage and he's an off the ball linebacker. What an absolute freaking waste. And you saw what that dude is capable of when he's rushing the passer. That's the first player

I've said. It's the first player that I feel like we've seen in a while consistently get to Tom Brady from the outside. Yeah. Like that's how good he is. He like he can win those matchups. He can get to

Tom Brady, a person that notoriously, we've all said it where it's like, only way you can meet Tom Brady. is if you pressure inside. Well, Michael Parsons kind of broke that that game. He was winning from the outside and he was getting pressure on Brady from the outside.

That would be like, what would we think if we saw T.J. Watt line up on a running back? It's happened and I've complained about it the same way. Right. Oh, dude. It's 23 wasted downs right there. And I'm not saying a bad thing happened on all 23,

but when you're the Dallas Cowboys and you've already faced the adversity they have and you've got more now with DAC missing time. Right. Which pretty much makes this team irrelevant for being honest. Yeah. But man, when you're in that situation, you cannot afford to play your best player out of position. And let's be very clear here. Michael Parsons is the best player on that team.

Absolutely. Yeah. And you're going to play him out of position because what? Because what? It doesn't, if Michael Parsons is the best off the ball linebacker in the NFL, it doesn't matter when he could be a top 10 pass rusher in the NFL. And he is that. That's the thing is you're moving him from one of the most impactful positions to one of the least impactful positions as far as like how a guy can go and affect the play down in, down out. Moving him to off the ball linebacker, like, what's the best case scenario that he gets a three-yard stop on a run?

Yeah. Come up. I know you trench play fanatics out there. Like, you know all about the psychological warfare. That's the whole game. And having the lineup across from Micah Parsons on 64 snaps is intimidating. And that sucks. Because you know there's a good chance you're losing that rep every single time you see the guy.

I cross from you. Right. And the Dallas defense let Tampa's offense off the hook 23 times. They said, you know what? You don't have to worry about him 23 stance this game. Don't worry about it. 30% of his time. We got you covered.

We're going to block him for you. Here. Yeah. You don't worry about him. You just, we won't even set him after you. It's like when it's like playing, it's like playing a game against your little brother or sister. Like, all right, I'll pull up for you because I've been beating you too bad. for a while.

Like, no. Again, it's the NFL. Keep coming after him. Put your best players in the best position to win the game. And they needed that. They looked terrible. Like, it was a bad game from Dallas. Indeed.

Indeed. What did, um, would you think about the Buccaneers' offensive performance in this game? I honestly did not get a huge chance to watch the Buccaneers. year's offense. As far as their effectiveness, I think that Julio Jones looks good. That's a fun target. He does. He looks like he still got the juice, bro. Leonard

Fornett is Leonard Fornett is impactful. I like him. He's still getting some of the target share that he got last year. Yeah. I thought Brady looked pretty good.

You know, he was pressured early in that game, but definitely made the most of it when it counted. Mike Evans was a beast. Tristan Worf looked great as well. Even Donovan Smith got hurt in that game. And the guy they brought in, Josh Wells, I thought he looked pretty good, especially in the run game.

Pass blocking not so much. He got got a couple times, but in the run game, he was moving some bodies. How did you feel about the interior of their offensive line? I know that that was a mild concern for us, It's a mild concern for a lot of people going into the season with the injury. Yeah. So, I mean, Mason was fine.

Hainesi was fine. It was the rook Godkey. He had some poor reps, especially in pass pro. I'm not really sure, you know, if that's something that will come along. You oftentimes see rookie struggle in pass pro, especially interior offensive linemen. So I thought all five of their guys were, we're, fine in the run game. There was no massive blunders. Definitely some losses here and there, but I thought they were all pretty good. And then, you know, pass pro was, it held up, except for

when Parsons was shredding guys. I mean, Parsons shredded Donovan Smith a couple times. Parsons can shred anyone, though, to be fair. Yeah. I mean, Smith only played 23 snaps. And, shoot, I can remember, just off the top of my head, a handful of pressures. He got. gave up. So it definitely helped the Buccaneers, though. Their defense, however, looked freaking great.

Yeah. I mean, their defense did their defense look great. They shut down the Dallas offense. Yeah. The receivers for Dallas. Oof.

Oof. That, without Dak Prescott for the next, I think they said, like, I've seen four to six, six to eight. I think the 4 to 6 was put out there as a way to keep fans interested. I think that from a lot of what I've seen, that it is going to be more towards 6 to 8. Gosh, that's going to be a bad team.

Like I think you said at the beginning, they're going to be irrelevant for that. Yeah, I think the Eagles are too good. The Eagles are too good, which we saw Sunday as well. but Dallas, I just don't see a way they overcome it. If he misses six to eight weeks, that's just, that's too much, too much time. They're done. I mean, they were probably done anyways, right? With DAC?

I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. That defense inevitably was going to is and was going to regress this year just because of their turnover luck last year. And gosh, that offense just looks anemic. And it's not going to get better without Dak Prescott. I can almost promise that.

Stede, I mean, he already struggles to beat man coverage, in my opinion. Most of our charting suggests the same thing. Now he doesn't have an Amari Cooper with him. I know he's going to get Gallup back soon, but he doesn't have Gallup out there right now. And who knows what the Alba look like when he does come back. And they're having to have CD play on the outside. It's really just not a good situation for him either. I don't, he's in trouble.

He's in trouble of having a really stinker every year. And that Buccaneers defense, too, I mean, Carlton Davis and Jamel Dean, like, these guys, I think they, I think we charted them, they gave up five catches on 16 catchable targets, which is really good for like 42 yards. That's like shut down extreme. So the two guys that the Buccaneers, they really didn't get them on the field a lot together last year.

These guys are healthy and playing together. They look great. Shaquille Barrett showed up and played really well, rushing the passer. Levante David is his usual Hall of Fame self. I think this defense is in a much better situation right now than they were last year. Absolutely. Even if that Tampa offense kind of slightly regresses, I think that defense can carry them until, you know,

there will be a moment where that offense figures it out and they start shredding everybody. Absolutely. As you, as Godwin works his way back to 100%, Julio Jones, having Mike Evans, Leonard Fornett. Russell Gage is your fourth receiver. Right. Leonard Ferdat continually kind of being underrated, but also producing. Like, Brady doesn't have to do a lot. He doesn't have to be incredible.

He just has to put his players in positions to win because, like you said, I mean, in the year of their Super Bowl run, that defense looked really good. True. And that secondary was scary and the defensive line performed. And their linebackers are just so fast. It's going to be a recipe for success this year of just having that defense pave the way and just needing the offense to put up enough points, which, I mean, for Tom Brady,

that's about the dream this late in your career. Yep. That is. When you look at some of the things they're doing on defense, too, I mean, it was all, they're rotating a lot of safeties. They were mixing up, you know, a good amount between man and zone coverage.

They're playing a lot of six, cover six, which, you know, I, I feel like that coverage keeps getting played more and more where it's, it's based six, for those you don't know, it's basically a split coverage look. You have, you know, quarters to one side, cover two to the other. And it's, DAC was having a really hard time with it, even when he's in the game. And obviously Cooper Rush isn't going to fare much better. But I love, I love the safety rotations where you're, you know, showing, you know, closed

or open pre-snap and then rotating down to the opposite post-snap. It just, all it does, Steve, is it just makes. the quarterback think for an extra, you know, four-tenths of a second, which a lot of times is enough to get the pressure you need to affect the play, whether it's just a win or just for him to feel a little uncomfortable. A lot of times that's all it takes. So you obviously can't do it every play because then you become predictable, but I love that Tampa was really willing to rotate those safeties in and out. Yeah, Todd Bulls is, he's a great defensive coordinator. Yeah. I mean, now he's the head coach, but I'm, he obviously still.

has his hands very, very on that defense. And I mean, when you have players like he has to move around in the backfield and that back seven, like you can create fits and you can allow those pass rushers. Like you said, that extra little time to get home. You know, the guy like Shaquille Barrett, that's all he needs. Yep. Huge. Well, let's die a ball on that one.

And I do want to stay in that division with Dallas because I think we saw a pretty good Eagles performance this week. And I want to kind of jump into the Lions Eagles game. Mostly to talk Eagles because I think you saw what that offense is capable of with AJ Brown. And I know the Lions' defense isn't awesome by any means. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. But when the quarterback has the athleticism and athletic ability that Jalen Hertz does,

and when he's making good throws, he was on target most of the game. I know his actual completion percentage was like 50-something. something. But his adjustment completion percentage was around 80%. So the box score lied. He was much more accurate than the box score suggests. Right. He had a good amount of drops in there, some other stuff that went on, throwaways, spikes,

whatever. Hurts was, I thought, phenomenal this game. And to me, I might be biased because I'm a huge Jalen Hertz fan. And I really do think this guy has what it takes to be good in the NFL, with obviously his physical tools and then his mentality. He's a hard worker. To me, the accuracy. he looked improved. He was throwing the ball. But when he's playing at that level, when he's hurting the... So right off the bat, if you remember, he came out and he hurt the lions with his legs a couple times. The lions were rushing pretty well, and they got, like,

Hutchinson missed a sack and whiffed on a sack in the backfield. I think Smitsky also with one of the backfield. Yeah. The loss contained a couple times, and Hertz was really starting to gash them with his legs early in that game. Later in the, you know, second half of the game, he didn't have to run as much, but this is what that offense does. It puts you in a bind, because they start running all these RPO's. And every single run play, Steve, except for maybe two, had read option attached to it.

So Hertz is making a read. They're leaving a guy unblocked. And because he was so effective really in the game with his legs, it totally foobarded the lion's defense. Those boxed off-the-ball box defenders were completely gridlocked. They were put in such conflict that now you have AJ Brown on those backdoor slants, even if he's got the best corner on him, like, shoot, you're not, you know, you're, you're not going to have a lot of success with the guy like AJ Brown.

No. And the lines were even trying to bracket a little bit and even play. They doubled, they straight up doubled Brown a couple times. But when you're gridlocking those second level defenders with the RPO game, with the read option, because those plays were working early, it's really hard to defend that. And even when Hertz stopped having a lot of success running the ball, it went to Sanders. And then Sanders started shredding the Lions defense. And then they were thrown the backdoor slants to Brown that eventually the bomb to Brown. It's just like the Lions defense was put

in conflict all game long. And I don't care how good of a defense you are. When those successful plays happen early, it messes with the psychology. It messes with your keys. It is really hard to recover from that. And I think the Eagles can do this to a lot of good teams as well, not just the Lions. Yeah. I mean, if you have anybody other than, you know, Jalen Hurts, and the couple other running quarterbacks there are in the NFL. If anybody else was in there at the beginning of the game, they would have gotten eaten up. Destroyed.

They would have gotten eaten up. Lions got good pressure at the beginning of that game. It waned off at the end because they started doing a little bit more of the, a little bit more of Coutain. Eagles also didn't throw the ball as much in the second half. True. They definitely came off the gas pedal a little bit. And the run game was working.

Sanders shredded the lines defense at the second half. Yeah. And that's just what Jalen Hertz offers as a quarterback. And if he's going to be, like you said, if he's going to be this accurate with a guy like AJ Brown and having a guy like Devontas Smith on the opposite side, it completely changes, it completely changes the game. Like, you are forcing linebackers to think more. You are allowing the pass rushers to pull up more, giving you more time to throw.

Like this, it's a good offense. Here's a good data point for you, Steve, not to cut you off. Oh, go ahead. Philly ran inside zone with read option attached to it 14 times in that game, and they averaged 5.9 yards of carry. That's a good sample. I mean, for one game to run the same concept 14 freaking times and have that level of success, it's crazy.

Here's the other thing, too. the yards before contact per carry on those attempts was over two yards. So the offensive line alone was generating over two yards on every one of those plays. Which just shows like the linebackers are frozen. The offensive line is matching hats to hat with the defensive line. And the running back is basically meeting the linebackers at their read point. Yes. And then from there it's make a play, make a guy miss.

Yep. Which, again, that is so valuable. Because then like you said, now you introduce the read option with the backside slant. Your linebackers are completely buckled. Right. Packers don't know what to do. You have AJ Brown, I mean, like on a slant route, like good luck having the safety. Like unless you're going to completely cheat the safety down, which, you know,

obviously an offensive C. Like a slant route is one of the most, like for a guy like AJ Brown, like one of the most winnable routes. Oh, yeah. Especially when you're taking that underneath defender out of the play, like with the IPO read auction game. Like those underneath defenders, those linebackers are completely frozen in time. And they were playing off a little bit on Brown because they didn't want them to take

him deep, which ended up happening at the end of the first half. And so not only do you have a corner playing a little bit off now, giving them a little space to work, which opens up that, throwing window for the slant. Now that underneath the funder is completely frozen. Right. And it's basically an automatic play, which we saw. It was throw and catch for Hertz and Brown for most of that game. One thing that I thought was weird about the game, I want to

point out is Jordan Davis usage. There's been some talk about it on Twitter also, but there's an observation you and I both had is he, they basically only used him on the field when the Lions came with some type of heavyish personnel. So he played 21 snaps. 19 of those snaps featured either 12 personnel, 21 personnel, or heavier than that. So like the Lions were bringing in Matt Nelson as like a third tight end slash extra offensive linemen.

Right. And those are the only snaps Jordan Davis got. A lot of those plays also featured Jamal Williams. So it was like they were matching Davis with the Lions personnel. and when you consider how bad Cox and how bad Hargrave have been against the run, I just, there's not really an excuse for that. Like I know he's a rookie. I know it was his first game, but not only does he need to play more snaps,

but I want to see him play on non-specific personnel groupings. Like, let's get him out there on just first downs in general and see where it goes. I don't care if it's 11 personnel or spread. Like, let's get him out. out there early down and see what happens. He's probably also a better pass rusher than Cox at this point. Cox looked a little old to me. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, he got, I mean, Markrave and Fletcher Cox got pushed around a good amount. Yeah. When Jordan Davis was in, he was able to, he was able to at least worst case scenario pin up an offensive line and prevent

them from moving up to a linebacker. When Jordan Davis was in, it freed up the Eagles linebackers to make a lot of plays and move into the holes and stop runs, which that's the goal of a guy like Jordan Davis and a guy like Fletcher Cox. And if Fletcher Cox can't be the guy to do that, bring in Jordan Davis and let him do let him do that. And like, yep. Like the lines bring in Jamal Williams.

He's, you know, at no point are they expecting him to break a run like D'Andre Swift. Like they would expect D'Andre Swift to break a run. Why wouldn't you want to eliminate that, like, bounce outside that Swift showed a couple times? Because you have linebackers that are able to fill those holes and prevent the bounce, like the bounce outside in the long runs. It'll be interesting. Hopefully it is that the Eagles are trying to get Jordan Davis comfortable. And maybe on like, you know, those heavy personnel plays, you're kind of a limited. Jordan Davis from having to think.

And it's just like, hey, clog it up, free up your linebackers. Well, it's weird too because it's not like they shied away from rotation. Like Marlon Tuapaloto, how do you say his name? Sorry, guys, Tuapulotu. One of the reserved D-Lyman played more than Jordan Davis did. Milton Williams played, what, 33 snaps himself? So there's snaps to go around.

It's not like it's just we're going to play Cox and Hargrave. Right. And that's it. They're actually five, six deep there and they're rotating those guys. And I just, I got to see Davis get some more snaps. Right. But the Eagles going forward in a weak division are going to be a scary team. Again, especially if Jalen Hertz is going to be this accurate thrower.

And if they are going to utilize A.J. Brown the way he should be utilized. Like give him opportunities to, yeah. Like that's where he, that's where he thrives. For sure. They, you know, we both picked them to win the division this year. And I think we both said probably easily too, unless Dallas has some type of revelation. But. Is it Dallas?

A lot with an injury had whatever the opposite of a revelation is. Yeah. They stuck their heads in the dirt. Right. But the Eagles get Minnesota this week on Monday night football. Minnesota just played a better game than I think anyone expected. So maybe this is a good matchup for the Eagles, maybe better than what the Lions will give them. I know the game ended up being close, but you didn't ever really feel like the Eagles were in danger losing the game against the Lions.

I don't know. Did you feel that way? Not really. No. It, you know, there were, it looked a lot. It looked very similar to Lions week one game last year, Oh, God, it did. The team goes up, the opposing team goes up early.

Lions score a couple of garbage time touchdowns to make it make the score look better. Now, I think that there are completely different takeaways from that last year compared to this year for the Lions. But either way, that's to say that the Eagles had this game pretty well in hand the most of the time. Yeah. The Lions defense just. just looked like they had their hands full in that set of the secondary i mean i don't have we don't have to dive in too much into this or at all but all i'm saying is that the decision like

it's too bad that okuda had cramps when he did and that will harris had to go out and get back one-on-one against a j brown on that deep route that's worst-case scenario like the minute the minute both trotted out there you knew something bad was going to happen i mean i know that the lines lines were touting Will Harris has moved to corner at times in training camp, but he clearly is the third behind Oroirier and Okuda. Like, oh, that was, it was that, that play in that throw and that throw and catch changed the, change the game a little bit. Oh, 100% changed the game.

Like, and it was so obvious, too, when, when Harris came in, they immediately, Oh, they knew right where they were going. I mean, Brown ran most of his routes from the left side. And they immediately put him on the right side. It was like legitimately immediate. Yeah. I got to go back and look. Did Will Harris struggle against him last year maybe?

Like, how did they know? Because Will Harris is a convert, safety to corner, had a pretty good training camp. You know, he was actually, they were kind of thinking he'd make the starting lineup for a while. And then Akuta just ended up going berserk at the end of camp. Well, I think it's just that like, Like, okay, we see, like, I don't know. Who does? See Will Harris, we'd have to dig in last year, but we'd have to dig into that.

But I think that's just a case of seeing like, okay, their third corner is in. AJ Brown go win. Yeah, exactly. Which is why you go get AJ Brown. And that's why I'm excited about this offense because Siriani sees and knows where and when to put his players in positions to succeed. Yep. Oh, and they did the damage they did with Devante Smith catching all of zero passes.

which is crazy. Completely shut out. He did have one catch on the sideline that was negated by a hold. And I don't even, I'm not even saying he looked bad, but it's like, they didn't even need production from him. AJ Brown just carried the whole team, basically. No, he didn't look bad. That was more of a, that was more of a compliment.

It's more of a compliment to Akuta than it is a dig on Devonza Smith, probably performed. But, yeah, look out for the, Eagles this year, especially in a division where, again, it's just they're going to be able to ideally pick apart, pick apart that division. Yeah. Well, they get an opponent this week in the Vikings who, like, for all intents and purposes, beat the brakes off the Packers.

Yeah. Like, just eviscerated them. Yeah, wow. I mean, that game actually won me some money because I played a showdown lineup with, with that built into the cake that, hey, maybe the Vikings do, you know, destroy the Packers. And so I built my lineup accordingly and it paid off because I actually took down first place in a small, small-sized tourney, showdown tourney, which is nice. But anyways, beyond my personal success, the Vikings had a lot of success.

And, you know, I felt like offensively there really wasn't a ton that wasn't working. They ran the ball pretty well. I think Kirk averaged almost nine yards an attempt throwing the ball. Against a defense, Steve, that we thought was top tier, S-tier defense. Right. I was thinking top-secondary that we thought was this tier. I still think is. I'm not going to, I'm not writing them off after this game.

But holy cow, Justin Jefferson is who everybody hoped he would be this year, at least in week one. Yeah. Any quarterback. It's going to look good when your receiver's running that open on a lot of routes, especially a receiver of caliber of Justin Jefferson. Can we talk about the elephant in the room? Yeah, go ahead.

I mean, Jair Alexander just didn't get to cover him. That wasn't part of the game plan. Yeah, what I do? The Packers didn't consider maybe we should put our best corner on the best receiver in the world. Maybe we should do that? Nah, we shouldn't. I thought that was crazy. right? I mean, how is it that the Packers, it always seems, no matter who's there,

like, at the end of the day, we almost always end up talking about their blunders in the coaching game. How does it always happen? What did Aaron Rogers do to get this? Because, yeah, like, I don't know. We, I mean, hopefully this is just a smack in the face a la last year against the Saints for the Packers and that they, you know, things out. Again, it's still Aaron Rogers. Their defense, despite what happened, is still good. And, you know, I don't anticipate this to be, you know, the trend for this year. But the Vikings looked how I hoped they would look.

Looked how I hope they would start out this year and looked what I hope they continue to be. Hats off to you, you were higher on them than I was, for sure. I thought they were more of a rebuilding team. You thought maybe they're close to ready to compete, but, you know, somewhere in that purgatory range probably, like good but not playoff good. And they looked, I mean, I don't want to overreact to week one, but they looked playoff good to me.

Defense showed up, offense played great, can't really ask for much more out of a week one performance from a new regime, completely new regime, new look offense. Honestly, I thought it was just incredible what they did. What do you take away from the Packers offense? Yeah, something I wanted to get in here because, like, shoot, we saw Christian Watson drop the bomb right at the beginning of the game. And listen, Steve, I'm like a stickler for leadership. And we already talked at the beginning of the pot, how I read all these motivational books.

I try to, you know, lead the team, you know, with a lot of raw-wrath speeches and stuff like that. So I pay a lot of attention to quarterbacks when stuff happens. I want to read their body language. When Christian Watson dropped that pass, the look on Aaron Rogers' face was just utter disgust. Like, he looked at Christian Watson like he had leprosy, bro. Like, this dude is not allowed to play with me anymore. If there's one thing. I kind of...

Go ahead. There's one thing you don't do with Aaron Rogers has drop the ball. I understand that. But still, Watson is a young kid. They invested a high draft, very high draft pick in him. He's a very talented kid who's probably got some confidence issues because he missed most of camp.

The hands have been an issue dating back to college. I want to see a little bit more leadership out of Aaron Rogers. Was that his first target of the game? Yeah, first target of the game. And it changes the game if he catches it, by the way. It was a 75-yard touch. down easily. He torched Patrick Peterson. And then they never went back to it because, you know, Rogers is petty. So from a leadership perspective, I want to see Rogers embrace the rookie and say,

dude, you got this. That is not, that drop isn't who you are. Let's go out. Let's get after it. I'm getting you another one next drive. We're going to go get it. Like, look at the way Tom Brady would handle that. That's exactly what Brady would do. You juxtapose the two guys, you know, Brady is perpetually great. Rogers dabbles in greatness. maybe that's something that's held back Rogers' whole career. Maybe there's a reason Devante Adams wanted to go play in Vegas. And it's not with him. I'm just saying, like, that attitude, and I like Aaron Rogers, don't get me wrong.

That attitude, though, I just, it stinks to me. Like, Kyler Murray does that crap. Kyler Murray's always got pouty face when things go bad for them. Right. I don't want to see that for my 40-year-old star quarterback who's been around the block 300 times. I don't want to see that. There's a difference between. you know, a veteran guy that has shown that consistent hands issue.

And that happens. And between that and a rookie with his first target in the NFL off of a shortened training camp. In a route that he won easily. Like, easily. That's his open. Like, that's about as open as you can get on a go route on a corner. That's not a bust. out of busted coverage like there's something to be said about that he's clearly a guy that can win

athlete like that can win in coverage and so like everything about that route was sexy too the release the hip sync the explosion outside of patrick peterson and then the top end speed to just freaking leave him in the dust everything about it was sexy all the way up until yeah yeah well again i wasn't just like they i don't think they will but hopefully it's not not just like they, Aaron Rogers writes him off and that's who he thinks he is. Well, is he already that frustrated that he's got to be that big of a jerk? It's week one, bro. Like, come on.

Like, yeah, week 16, and you've been dealing with that all year. I get it. You're going to throw up a stink face out of a drop. Right. Also, come on, man. Like, you can't tell me Aaron Rogers didn't know this was going to happen. You lost your best receiver. Your second best receiver, or now you're in.

theory best receiver was hurt this game you were kind of thrown to a little bit of a hodgepodge of young guys and retread vets like right i'm sorry but you kind of have to expect a little bit of this to happen for sure not only retreads like retreaded retreaded vets like wakkins and cob man those guys have seen some battle like oh man hey i got a question for you about this packers offense. Steve, who is the best player not named Aaron Rodgers on the Packers offense? Best skill player. It should be Aaron Jones. Right. How many, how many touches did Aaron Jones have this week? What do you get? Like 12, I think? No, not even. Less than 10. God. Eight touches for Aaron Jones this week. He had three catches for 27 yards and five attempts, rushing attempts, for 49 yards.

A.J. Dillon touched the ball 15 times. I think A.J. Dillon's a fine player. He's good in his role. I got to see Aaron Jones get the ball way more. Yeah. The route participation was good from Aaron Jones. It was about... Sure, but he didn't get the ball ever, so it didn't matter. No, I know, I know, but I'm just saying, like, their offense looked about what I, the usage of their two running backs in the sense of participation, not touches,

looked about what I anticipated it would. look like. Yeah. Those are two of the better players on their offense. And they wanted to get them both on the field. And they did at times. But you have to get Aaron Jones more involved. Yep.

He needs to be a guy that helps you win games. You can't just, you have to, like, even if you have to scheme it, it needs to happen. He needs a guy that, he's a guy that you need to get the ball in his hands. If you're going to win as this Packers offense, because it's a Packers offense, that needs guys to make plays because they don't have a ton of top-end talent outside of Aaron Rogers. You need to get in like, Aaron Jones is one of those guys who has top-end talent.

But guess what? He can't use it if he doesn't get the ball. I mean, I thought Nathaniel Hackett left. The Thaneal Hackett left and Javante Williams gets 12 targets. Maybe that's the missing link there. So I don't know. Listen, this might speak to a long-term issue for the Packers this year.

We already knew the receiver core was bad. But when the strength of your offense is in running back, which isn't really a position that moves the needle a whole lot, probably not good. Your two best players are Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon. Might need to rethink the way you're built next year. Just saying. It's just, it's going to be something to watch this year is,

like, what does that passing game look like week in to week out? Who is on the field? Who are they playing? Who are they targeting? Because right now, I don't think anybody has the answer to that. We learned nothing. Or at least you hope we learned nothing and that this isn't a trend. Because if it is, like, Aaron Rogers might be gone by the deadline.

Because he's not going to stand in there and work with this. he already tried to force his way out at the beginning of the season, or in theory. Yeah. But if it's going to look like this, expect to hear some stuff out of Green Bay because I don't think Aaron Rogers is going to sit in and take playing games like this week in and week out. Right. True. Good point. And before we move on, too, we do have to note that the Packers were without David Bakhtiari.

They were without Jenkins, the other tackle. So probably the best tackle duo in the league, they were without both those guys, and then they were without Rogers' number one receiver and Alan Lazzard. So definitely a lot of room to improvement. You add those three guys of the offense. Maybe it looks entirely different. I'm guessing that's probably the truth is probably somewhere on that side of the spectrum. Yes.

Looking forward, though, I mean, I didn't really want to touch a whole lot on the Packers' Bears game necessarily, but we did want to hit Fields. Yeah. Justin Fields, you know, kind of crazy win over, over San Francisco, who we, you and I kind of predicted San Francisco was going to be in the gutter a little bit to start the season, but it really looked like they were in the gutter. I think we predicted San Francisco to walk away with that game handily. Well, that, that is for sure. That is for sure. Like, we thought that was a throw, we thought that was a throwaway game.

Now, granted, that weather there was wild. Tsunami. Like, you can't even, like, I. I don't know how people are taking, like, trying to take as much away as they're trying to take with both quarterback performances from that game. Yeah, the problem, man, you know what it is, Steve? It's like the three, like, so Fields had what I would call three egregious decision slash throws. Right. The problem with it is it just confirmed what we already knew.

They weren't, like, I don't think the weather affected the decision making on those throws. Maybe the first one, because he did have to, he was getting pressure, he did kind of lob it up, maybe the rain and the moisture affected the trajectory that passed, but it was a bad decision. And then the next two, man, awful decisions. Like, what in the, like, he threw a guy literally quadruple covered. Yeah. Like, you never see that.

There was literally four guys there that could have picked that ball off. And then the third one I'm talking about was just, I mean, shoot, you had a corner squatting on the hitch route and you hit an underneath the fender. He tries to fit the ball in anyways and gets picked off. I mean, listen, it is just, I don't know. Actually, I don't think he caught it. The defender didn't catch the ball. I ended up not being a pick, but egregious decision nonetheless.

I just felt like Fields, a lot of the issues we knew he had kind of remained through this game. And I know the weather probably impacted it a little bit, but I don't think it impacted a ton. Same could be said for Lance. Yeah. Lance looked poor as well. He made more plays with his legs, I think. But, man, he made sense a couple of bad. He definitely did make more plays with his legs, which was what a lot of people talked about.

And I think what we talked about, he might look like in year one, and especially in the beginning or year one of starting. And especially in the beginning of the beginning of the year. Yep. But yeah, the game was. just ugly. It was, it was ugly. I think it was the second ugliest game I watched all week. But, yep, I just, yeah. We talked about earlier, like, rotating safeties and how it affects the quarterback and makes them think for an extra second. Yeah. The bears kept doing this to Lance, where they'd start with, like, an open, middle of the field open look, like a split safety look,

essentially. So when you see split safeties, you're thinking cover two, cover four, cover six. Yeah. A lot of bracket, something in that family. And then the bears were basically starting pre-snap with that look. And then they were closing the middle off by dropping a deep safety. And then rotating one of those safeties up and towards the box. They were doing this to Lance all day and it was giving him fits. In fact, the pick he threw was Eddie Jackson rotating to like a hook-cler position.

Yep. And just completely robbing that ball. But it was a bad decision. The field just never saw him. Literally just didn't see him coming. You mean Lance. sorry Lance yeah yeah and that's i mean that was that's the issue with lance is his processing yep what does he look like when he gets some foreign looks when it's not just straight up

and he's gonna i mean he's gonna have to learn it don't it don't expect san francisco to trade jimmy garoppolo now after that performance uh for sure for sure hopefully be foolish to like try and make a change at any point, but it's also a roster that's built to win right now. This is true. Presumably they get an easier game this week with Seattle. So maybe that gets them on track. I don't think Seattle's defense is very good, as we saw. You know, if they didn't get rescued in the red zone a couple times the other night, they gave up a 40 bomb at least, or not a 40 bomb, but mid-30s.

Yeah. Probably anyway. So I think maybe Lance has a decent bounceback game. I would hope so. Hopefully playing it in a better weather. Yeah, a little bit better weather with a pretty poor defense. Yep, that's, I don't know, any other thoughts on that game? Not really.

It was just, yeah, just the weather, everything just looked pretty ugly from that game. The hodgepodge of receivers field has to throw-do is... Yeah, I mean, poor guy. Even if he wants to make plays, like, who is he making plays with? Yeah, like, I think Mooney's a fine player, but, dude, he had, like, Equanimia St. Brown. Dante Pettis. I didn't even know he was still in the league. I know.

I saw that jump off, and I was like, I'm bad. He led the team in receiving yards on one catch. Yeah. Byron Pringle, Ryan Griffin, these are not threats in the receiving game. Like he said, Cooney's a good receiver, but he's not a number one. Right.

Also, it was interesting their usage of Cole Kamat. I think a lot of people thought that that would look differently, but was not utilized in the passing game, hardly at all. Yeah, he was on the field for what? 17 of 23 dropbacks or something. But was he asked to pass block a lot or what was the deal there? Yeah. I don't even really remember.

He did not have a very high route participation in there, which is interesting. Well, he ran routes on 17 of 24 dropbacks. That's not bad. How many targets did he have? I think one. Yeah. I mean, that's the problem. one, but like weather conditions and then only 24 dropbacks.

That's a big thing. That's a tiny number. Yeah, that's true. Remember what I said last week? I said I would bet the under on 25 for both of these guys. That was obviously not knowing the weather was going to be what it was. Lance ended up getting over that mark, but Fields was, Fields only attempted 17 passes. Was sacked two times, then scrambled another five, six, whatever.

Yeah. Like I said, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, kind of reserve making a judgment on either guy until I can see them in a game that isn't half covered by rain on the camera and stuff like I think that's a smart decision so yeah just an ugly game San Fran that has some things to figure out with Trey Lance though for sure the only other game I really wanted to talk about and I don't know where you're at but the Cincinnati game, dude. We got to talk about what in the world was going on in that game.

Yeah. Joe Burrow looked awful. I mean, we talked about processing with Lance and Fields, but man, Burrow was, what the heck? Their offensive line in ass blocking did not look good. They actually looked okay in the run game. Like, better than they had last year. I like their yard.

I don't have it pulled up, but I would bet that. their yards before contact were a lot better in that game compared to last year, which is a good sign for them. But, yeah, Joe Burrell, it looked like you dropped in the offensive line from last year because he was under pressure a lot. And then- You checked, what, seven times? Yeah, and then also did not look great processing.

No, that first interception he threw was like, like we what i i don't think i've seen him make a decision quite that bad since he's been in the league to be honest yeah um and i know he threw what four interceptions i think one one of them what was for sure wasn't his fault but the other three were pretty bad one of them was one of them was the tipped ball by t j watt right yes yes yes and then a couple so sex seven times i I think I did chart that game when we look. Yeah, I think I pinned two of those sacks on Burrow himself. Yeah.

So the offensive London played great. I think he was pressured a good close to 20 times. He had a lot of dropbacks, though. Honestly, for the amount of dropbacks he had, the pressure wasn't too extreme. It felt like it came in waves. Yeah. The Steelers would dial up pressure. pressure in waves and then, you know,

Brill would go five, six, seven dropbacks with a clean pocket, and then all of a sudden he'd get pressured a bunch again. And then obviously when Watt left a game, that changed the dynamic as well. But I don't think anyone expected this game to go to overtime, let alone the Steelers win. No, I think that this, like, if you, if you looked at the game beforehand,

you would have thought that Cincinnati should walk away with this game pretty handily. Yeah. Because outside, I mean, outside of the, outside of the pressure like Cincinnati's receivers were winning yep

like Cincinnati's receivers were getting open and making plays I think Cincinnati still had kind of an absurd amount of offensive yardage on the game but yeah it's just like I think Joe Burroughs

like Joe Burroughs feeling seeing ghosts up in like up on that offensive line. Like, it's a little bit of a concern if they can't keep that pressure off of him. Yes, very much so. The bright side for the Bengals is like, man, they turned the ball over five times. Quarterback got sacked seven times. I still almost one.

Right. Yeah. I mean, the defense held the Steelers' offense to, what, less than 300 yards of offense. I mean, honestly, that's, that's. That's the thing to take away is like this Bengals team almost played as worst of a game as they could possibly play and they still almost won. And guess what? Man, their schedule coming up is, I hate doing the schedule look ahead because we still don't know a lot about these teams. But man, it's cake.

It is absolutely cake. They got Dallas this week. I mean, shoot, that should be an easy doubt. We've already broke that, broke down why. They get the Jets after that. They get Miami, which could be a tough game. And they're at Baltimore. But man, Dallas and the Jets to kind of bounce back from that performance.

That's nice. Hopefully get that offensive line a little bit back in sorts. Yep. But I did want to touch on one thing. Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle might save Tua's career. Oh, yes, preach. I wanted to hit this too. Good call.

Like, what a smart call by the Miami front office to bring in Tyree Kill and match him with Jalen Wano because, boy, are they going to make Tua look good when he doesn't really look good? You're not kidding. There were a ton of plays, I feel like, where Tua under threw a guy, underthrew Tyreek, and Tyreek came back, caught the ball, made a play. boom you've got positive yardage and you're moving forward. I like,

it was kind of scary of like, okay, if Tyree Kill goes down, not that I anticipate this to happen, but like Tyree Kill is going to make Tool look good this year. And if they didn't bring him in, I don't know if Tua has a job after this year. But like what a, like, way to make a business. bet on it though.

It's so, it was so smart to get those two guys because they had, they had New England's secondary running scared. They were just, I mean, they were just running all around, getting open, allowing Tua to put the ball wherever he wanted, and they would make a play on it. Yeah. To his feel in the pocket this week was terrible. Yeah. It was really bad.

He just, all around. I'm like like legitimately I don't think that Tua played that great of a game. Oh no, he didn't at all. Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle played a great game. Yeah. But hey, that's, you know, sometimes that's all you need. Bro, did you see the pass to him made when he was, he was rolling right, which for him is the wrong way because he's a left-hand quarterback? Are you talking about like the first pass of the game?

No, this is in the fourth quarter. Oh, okay. I think it was a second and short. He's trying to hit, well, we don't really know. He's got, I believe it's, who's 81? That's not Smyth, is it? No, it's Hunter Long, maybe? Anyways, 81 tight end coming across the middle.

And then he's got Waddle coming back on like a comeback route. Tua's rolling out and just airmails pull over both of their heads right to two New England defenders. It gets dropped, but it's like one of the worst misses of the, the week by far like the ball wasn't even close to either guy yeah complete complete overthrow it was just it was a it was a hilarious playoffs it was really like i said i'm pretty sure it was the i'm pretty sure it was the first first one of the first few throws of the game where two a to a to a rolls out and then just skips the ball like in the middle of like i think it was like you had you had one receiver running a corner think you had a guy running an out route i think

you had a guy on a stick route, and then there's just this open space. Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. He just skipped it right through him. It didn't come near, didn't come close to any receiver. Bro, no, you're not doing the play. It's justice. The best part about that play is, I believe, is that Tyreek that's out there? Open.

Yeah, the corner covering him falls down. It's like, it's either cover, yeah, it's cover three. In the corner, for whatever reason, he goes to play the flat and just falls down. Tyreek is literally wide open. All too has to do is put a little air on this and it's a touchdown. And he skips the ball like halfway between him and Tyreek. I don't know what Miami's going to be this year, but they're going to be fun to watch. Because it's going to be just, it's going to be a lot of highs, a lot of lows,

not much in between. And let's just see what happens. Yeah. Great call, though. I do think Tua and Jalen Waddle make his life easy. They're going to develop a ton of chemistry as well between those two guys where they can all kind of do the same things. So you can run all your place to either guy. And they're going to get a ton of yards after catch. And giving McDaniel those weapons to scheme around is so much. So, I mean, it has to be exciting for him because. He's a smart scheme.

He can scheme well. And with guys like that to just break defenses apart, like, it just comes down to Tua making the plays. Yep. One other note about the Dolphins, so they did not run the ball well at all. No, not at all.

I think they're running backs collectively averaged, what, two yards of carry or something like that, or two and a half yards of carry? Not great. Yeah, but I mean, they didn't run the ball well last year either. They were pretty, they were pretty poor, like towards the bottom of the NFL in yards before contact per attempt. And I know they brought in, they brought in two new offensive linemen, but they're going to have to get that figured out. Yep.

Because if you're going to allow defenses to be able to pin their ears back a little bit because they know you can't run the ball, that's going to be concerning. Yes, sir. Also, the Patriots just looked awful. Which we expected. Yeah. I don't even, I don't want to spend any time talking about them until they change my mind. Well, then Patriots fans don't expect to hear a lot, I don't think. I didn't say you couldn't talk about them.

I just said, I'm not. I mean, I have no interest in talking about them. Ever, arguably. When they're playing a game that matters, we'll talk about them. For sure, for sure. Let's see. Let me look at the time. You got anything else you want to talk about?

I think we, I mean, we kind of got into all the good games next week already. One thing I did want to ask about, just because I thought it was, I mean, it was an interesting game, at least. Not too great teams. do you have any takeaways from tennis or for Tennessee going forward a lot of people are like I know Brian Tannahill looks pretty good he did I just I mean they're they're just an I just think they're an interesting team going

forward and I don't know what it's it I have a feeling it could turn bad yeah I mean we've been waiting for this team to regress for years. I called it last year and I was wrong. They were the number one scene in the AFC. Right. But this team isn't that talented. I think it's a credit to Vrable.

He's a great coach. Oh, absolutely. 100% of credit. Cretive Rable. Tamahill this week, too, he just did, he didn't do anything spectacular. All he did was run the offense. Kind of like what we talked about with Mahomes.

He just made the throws that were there. He was pretty darn accurate all game. You know, had a miss or two, didn't put the ball in harm's way, all avoided getting sacked i truly believe sacks are a quarterback stat at this point there in today's NFL there's no way with scheme with whatever protections there's no way you should be able to avoid getting sacked and he did a great job got the ball quickly when he needed to when he had time he took the time and used it well he just looked comfortable um they don't have any weapons other than

kyle phillips like i'm not sure well phillips got a lot of targets yeah nine target he he looks great I knew he'd be a good NFL player. Robert Woods only had two targets. I think that was probably the most concerning thing for me as far as that offense goes. You were really hoping Woods would be the number one. And then some combo of Phillips, Burks, and Nick Westbrook, Ike, those three guys are kind of chipping. And they have the heavy run approach.

So you don't necessarily need three good receivers, but you need two. Right. And Henry looked okay. He looked explosive at times. but, I mean, for the most part, they didn't do well running the ball. No. So ultimately, though, this team isn't, this, they could be in trouble. I mean, I mean, that run defense got gashed, right?

Yeah, the AFC South in general could just be. Yeah, zero wins from that division this week. A nightmare. And they played each other. Yeah. You had a tie and then. Oh, and one, 01 and two 0-1-1s. Jeffrey Simmons is a gamebreaker.

I just, like, Jeffrey, Simmons could. I could see him making a play for defensive player of the year. Really? He's that good. He, like, he showed up constantly in that game. Like, he was disrupting the quarterback constantly. Yeah.

I'm looking up. So if you guys don't know, we chart every game and we chart pretty much every aspect of it. So we do pass rush, pass pro. I'm trying to see. I'm looking up how many pressures I charted him for. So I think I had him for, let's see here. I had him for eight pass rush wins on 28 patch rush snaps. Yeah.

Which is pretty good. I mean, Daniel Jones only threw the ball 21 times, and Jeffrey Simmons alone had eight wins on that. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty significant. I don't know if there's going to be a lot of. reason to watch Tennessee games. I'm interested to watch their offense going forward because, again, the Giants aren't that great of a defense. They should have won that game if their kicker doesn't

be a field goal. But I don't know if there's going to be a lot of reason to watch Tennessee. They could still win that division if Indianapolis falters, but people should go and watch Jeffrey Simmons. True, very true. Because he's- And Frable's going to coach his team up. They might regress, but they'll still be in the mix. And a weak division. Yep. They should. They, you know, they'll probably be in the conversation unless the Colts flip it around and blow things out of the water.

True. But, you know, I feel like, you know, if the Colts are play middling throughout the year, like they didn't week one, then Tennessee will absolutely be in the conversation. And if they are, like put Mike Frable up for Coach of the Year. This is true. One other thing, so last thing before I feel satisfied with this podcast. Do it. Is that Carson Wentz is currently on pace for 5,300 passing yards. Yeah.

He had to drop back to throw, what, 50 times to do it. It was a classic Carson West. game. I'll tell you that. He had... Just looked terrible, but racked up the stats. He had some good throws. Yes, he did. He had some really dumb throws. Yes, he did.

Jacksonville couldn't tackle for crap. I don't have it in front of me, but those Washington receivers had to have just an absurd amount of yak. I can look that up while you talk. Curtis Samuel

was making their corners and their safeties look ridiculous. I don't like Jacksonville was a great, it's great because Carson Wentz goes out and gets everybody excited. Four touchdowns. I do like, I like Washington's receivers. They're a fun group. McLaren did, like, McLaren didn't even do a ton, did he?

He had a good game. Well, two catches 58 yards and a touchdown. They really spread the ball around. That's what I mean is you have a guy like McCorn and you only had to get him two receptions to win the game. Like they have a fun group if Curtis Samuel stays healthy. They utilize Antonio Gibson in a way that you should utilize Antonio Gibson. I just like it's a fun. It's a fun group around Carson Wentz.

It's just a matter of, you know, He always has a game like this. He always has a game like this. I feel like he almost starts to season out like this every year, too. Looks good. Yeah. Maybe there's something better in store, but... Probably not.

Still is Carson Wentz. I got the data for you. Yeah. So of his 313 passing yards, almost 200 of them were after the catch. And the Washington pass catchers forced six missed or seven mistackles after the catch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is not great. No, it's not. For Jacksonville, anyways. Not great for Jacksonville. Great for their weapons. I do, we mentioned it before. Steve, I do really like what they've done with the skill players here. Yeah, absolutely.

McCoran, Samuel, and Dotson is more than reasonable for a starting receiver trio. Honestly, Logan Thomas, if he's healthy, man, he's a very athletic player. Yeah. I like their ability. And those guys all separate. All guys that are athletes. can make plays after the catch, like get them the ball in space and let them go. Yeah.

Even Gibson, that's probably what he's best at. Right. Right. And so, I don't know. Hopefully, it'll be interesting to see as they play a not, I mean, better. It's a better defense in Detroit. This week, it'll be, you know, we'll see what does week two look like for Carson Wentz. but, you know, if you can give them the opportunity where it's like, hey, just go get these guys the ball in space and let them do it.

Like, you're taking a lot of the potential error out of Carson Wentz's game. So, yeah, I don't know. I still, I mean, Washington's, I think, a middling team. They're, you know, I think they're going to, I think they're going to be a team that, beats teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars and loses to the good teams. It's a cliche, right? Win the games they should, lose the games they shouldn't. Or no, I said that backwards.

Dwight, did I? I mean, wins the games they should, lose the games they should. Yes, there it is. It's like, you expect them to perform kind of exactly how you expect them. Like don't expect anything crazy. Don't expect anything terrible. well, actually, they're bound to be one Carson Wentz game where he, I don't know, turns around and throws it backwards over his hat or something. Well, in the grass of five defenders.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, other than that, I also feel good. I feel like we've wrapped week one pretty well. Yeah, and we've taken you into week two nicely. We didn't get to every previewing every game, but we got the ones that are excited. We will see you guys next Wednesday. Real quick, any hot takes you saw. You know, I need people to collect these for us.

I see them and I never write them down because for those you don't know, when Steve and I, when the work week starts for us, which is basically Thursday night football, essentially we work nonstop. I mean, I slept for two hours Sunday night. I slept from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. I think. I slept for four hours Monday night.

Let me press. if it's this with, I am not complaining in any way, shape, or form. We are incredibly lucky to what we do. And you not take this as complaining. It's just, it's just the nature of what we do. But, yeah, I think between Sunday night and Monday night, I think I got five hours of sleep is what I caught at. Last night, last night I laid down at six o'clock, just,

to relax and I fell asleep until 8 o'clock and then I went to bed at 9 o'clock. So, you know, it's, it's busy. But again, not complaining. This is incredible and we're incredibly lucky to be able to do this. But a lot of people starting to kind of victory lap a little bit with Traylon Burks. What? I saw some. I saw some people who are like, you know, pulling out targets per route.

run statistics um just like after one game when he played 14 snaps yeah well you know hey in those 14 snaps he you know caught a couple passes and they were wide open and he went after the catch after one game when he ran 14 routes i again like i said i've seen it a little bit of like look out wait till he plays more will he play more i don't know will he let's do it Will he always get two wide open overrouts with the, with like nobody around him and the ability to run as far as he wants after the catch? I don't, I mean, I just don't think that'll happen. Let's break this down really quick, Steve. Yeah.

Let's break it down. His first target, because I remember these targets vividly. I have what they call on like a photographic memory almost. When I, and this is what makes me good at my job. I recall plays like Tom Brady recalls play. Okay. Whoa. His first target,

Whoa. His first target was an uncovered drag route. He literally ran across formation. Nobody picked him up. Yeah. Uncovered. Yep. His next two targets were vertical routes that were well covered and he had zero separation on.

And not only that, he fell down because that's what Traylon Berg's does as he falls down. He looks like a baby deer when he runs. And he was running down field and just fell down. And I know someone who said, oh, the ball was overthrown. He was diving for it. No, he just tripped and fell. That's what he does. And he was well covered.

It doesn't even matter. The fourth target he had in one of his catches wasn't underneath route. The same play they used to hit Jonu Smith on. He's actually, I'm not being sarcastic right now or satirical. He actually was lined up as a tight end on this play, Steve. He was lined up in the same spot, Janu. If Johnny was on the team would line out. You're learning.

At tight end left in a two-point. point stance and he runs underneath the formation and catches a ball again uncovered in the flat his fifth target he's lined up out wide and it's a wide open over route that literally is not covered so in summary yeah we have looked like the field the field open like the red sea it's just like yeah like the like i if i remember correctly like watching the game there wasn't even a there was not another player in view. Yeah, Paul 22 looks a little different.

Like there is a safety playing over top, but he's just playing over top and he's 10 yards away from Berks when he catches the ball. Right. But in summary, we have wide open drag route, two vertical routes in which he doesn't get separation on, an underneath route. So basically, like a tight end screen is what it amounts to. And then an overrout that isn't covered by the defense. So he got three receptions on those five targets.

on 14 routes ran. Yeah, Traylon Burks, Future Hall of Famer, Victory Lab that guys. Congratulations on that. I think we should just, we should turn that into a segment. What did Traylon Burks checking? Yeah, what did Traylon Burks do this week? My skepticism at this point is so out of control. Honestly, I need to like reel it in.

Like, it's crazy. It makes me sound like a Burke's hater. I'm not even a Burke's hater. What I've hated is the hype surrounding the guy. It's never been warranted. And so that makes me sound like a hater because I'm just combating the hype is all I'm doing. And I'm just. I wish Traylon Brooks all of the success in the world.

And I'm pretty sure, listen, listen, I'm pretty sure that every like almost everyone now, I'm just like stirring the pot. Just trying to stir and stir and stir. But it's always fun to get you a little bit fired up. And I know that that, I knew that that would. And on that note. Yeah, on that note, we're going to go. We're almost two hours deep, which is.

perfectly fine because we love doing this. We love you. We love the thousands and thousands of listeners. Oh, by the way, guys, we did fix the audio, right? I mean, like last week was a lot better. Yeah. Hopefully it's a little bit better. I got an even newer mic.

I've been told to ignore the subject by people. They're just like, dude, you shouldn't talk about the audio. It's just ignore them. And I'm like, no, no, no. The loyal listeners need to get updates on where we're at with the audio. And I feel like we're in a good spot. We're going to always continue to try to improve. That's what we do.

But it's much better than the first two episodes. And for that, I'm very thankful for. And we can also leave you feeling confident that the quality is on the upswing here. The content's always been great. Of course, it's Steve and Brett. But the quality of how that content's produced is getting better and better. And we're super excited about things to come. So with that, I'll bid you guys a farewell.

Week two, here we come. Week two, here we come. I'm Brett Whitefield. My co-host is Stephen O'Rourke. And we're out. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoint.com.