Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Take Talk Ep 8

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Brett Whitefield (@BGWhitefield) and Steven ORourke (@callmesteveo7) review Week 3 in detail. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. 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 the Take Talk podcast. This is episode eight. I'm Stephen O'Rourke and as always I'm here with my co-host, Brett Whitefield. And Brett, I wanted to kind of put you on the spot and pose a question for. you. Oh. I know that this year, a lot of fans and analysts, I've seen people saying that this

year has not been as exciting. It's felt flat. And I wanted to just ask you, why do you think that is? Why do you think that we're not getting the gratification that we thought we would get through these first three weeks? Yeah, I think, man, this is, first of all, that's a great question. definitely put me on the spot here. But honestly, I think there's a couple things that play here. One, I think football fans in general are slowly becoming more and more educated about the game. I think Twitter helps with this a lot, right? So like, even the layman has a higher understanding of where the game's at today versus the layman 10 years ago.

And so what happens is we get pickier with what we like. we get more critical of what's happening because we understand more. And this leads for people's expectations to never be met, basically. And so I think that's a huge problem or a huge thing going on. I've also seen this on Twitter a ton, by the way.

I also think some of the loudest voices are probably some of the snobbiest voices, like myself included. I've been critical of the season so far. Right. A lot of the primetime games have been junk, even the ones where we thought they'd be decent matchups.

They just have kind of been me. But the biggest problem, Steve, and I think this is really what it comes down to, is the quarterback play has been horrendous. Yeah. If you think about it, especially the guys that you expect to go off and ball in or ball out day in, day out, those guys have kind of let us down this year.

And we'll get into some of them later on the pod as we kind of review what happened to week three. But, I mean, just think about it. like Patrick Mahomes doesn't look like the same guy. I've been sounding the alarm on this for a while, but it's, it's, I actually saw a great comparison on Twitter. Somebody said, and I didn't want to do this now, but since you put me on the spot, we will. Somebody said that he looks like Alex Smith, his, during his tenure in Kansas City.

Wow. That's, I know. That hit me in the gut. That was a gut punch. And I actually had to think about it. And I'm like, dang, you're right. He does. This is not the Patrick.

Patrick Mahomes, we grew to love. Now, by no means, I'm saying he can't get that back. The fire will come back. The big plays, all that stuff. I have no doubt somehow they'll rediscover themselves. It happened last year. We got the resurgence later in the year. It did. And the cupboard's a little bit more bare right now for him. Maybe it takes a sky more developing. Maybe they have to acquire another player in that receiver room. I'm not really sure. But he does look like Alex Smith at the end of Alex Smith's tenure in Kansas. So that's really interesting. But also Josh Allen, like this guy lit it up the first night of the season. Kind of been me since. Yeah. Had a really bad game this week. Yeah, this week was tough.

Right. So, I mean, there's another one there. Matthew Stafford, not the same guy. That offense is not playing near the same level that did for the entire season last year. No, not even close there. Right. So I think a lot of the exciting moments, we just haven't had them, and we haven't had them in big spots.

But I was just talking about this with Chris, maybe yesterday on a call, Steve. It's like maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that we just don't know enough about how this season is yet. Maybe it's because the exciting moments have actually been happening with Jacksonville and Trevor Lawrence. And we haven't been paying attention because who's watching freaking Jacksonville?

Right. Maybe it's because Jalen Hertz is the king this year and no one's really watching Philly yet. Maybe it's because Lamar Jackson's playing out of his mind. And you'd expect him to be good. But my point being is I think maybe it's because a lot of the things we expected, we expected Herbert and the Chargers to be awesome. We expected Russell Wilson and the Broncos to be awesome.

We expect Mahomes to be Mahomes and Josh Allen to be Josh Allen. And none of that has happened. Justin Herbert's hurt. Russell Wilson looks like Gino Smith. If that. I mean, it's honestly crazy, right? So I think people's expectations for what this season was going to be have been dramatically wrong so far. And that leads to people feeling overwhelmed, people feeling disappointed.

I mean, there's a lot of X's and O's you could get into about all of that. But I just think that's in the most simplest version of what you're asking. I think that's what it is. Quarterback play around the league is down. And a lot of the guys you expected to be awesome are not awesome. and a lot of the players that needed to take a step forward maybe have, and these are the new guys that we need to be watching. Right.

Oh, Burroughs another one. I didn't mention him, but he's another one who's been just a complete disappointment so far, although they kind of got off the Schneid a little bit this week. A little bit. Yeah, I definitely think that when you mentioned it, the primetime matchups have played a factor, because if you think about it, that kind of is like, those are the few games where during that time,

everybody's talking about that game because it's like the only game on or whatever. And I think that just with the totally underwhelming primetime game so far, that it just has led to a lot of people, instead of talking about football, talking about like what in the world are we watching, what's going on. And then that's kind of your, like those are the moments and the instances that kind of get locked in your brain. For sure. And now all of a sudden, like you said, instead of talking about like a dominant performance by Jacksonville, or Lamar Jackson, we're stuck talking about how the last game we saw was just a stinker,

and we all put up with watching it and didn't get what we wanted. Or it was exactly as we expected, and we're wondering why in the world that primetime matchup was even there to begin with. I mean, dude, just the primetime games this week. Let's go through it real quick. Mitch Trubisky versus Jacoby-Berset. Jimmy Garoppolo versus Gino. I mean, Russell Wilson.

Cooper Rush versus Daniel Jones. These are trash matchups. And I actually got, because I was tweeting about this, I think either Sunday or Monday night, probably Monday night because Sunday night, I have zero time. And I actually got a DM from somebody saying, dude, chill. And, you know, three months from now, you're going to wish you had San Francisco versus Denver on a Sunday night. You're going to wish you had, which is true. I mean, that is a decent point. Right.

But I mean, these matchups are trash. week we get what we get Miami Cincinnati tomorrow which is great yeah Kansas City Tampa Bay Sunday night that could end up being great and then Rams 49ers are always a good game hopefully Jimmy's on his best so that can actually be a game much better slate this week in the primetime matchups man it's been it's been brutal going in the prime time so far so especially this week it's really really bad but that and I just feel like defenses are smarter They look faster. They look way more.

Like, there's less offensive explosion. It seems to be more, like, working the ball down the field a lot. It's not a lot of the dash big plays. And I, because I think a lot of defenses are, you know, trying to shield against that more and more. Yeah. Especially for the guys we've talked about, right? Like, Mahomes, Allen, specifically, like,

we're just going to play too high and make them take five yards of play until they make a mistake is the goal. Right. Miami did a good job of that, too. But, yeah, I mean, it's actually pretty wild. Just looking at the quarterback numbers this year. There's just really nothing super exciting. Like, Brady and Rogers also kind of just, eh.

Meh. Yeah. Like, super meh. And, like, yeah, and other than, like, Lamar and Jalen Hertz, and then that one game from Tua, it hasn't, like, nobody's really, like, emerging as, like, holy cow, this is, like, this is the guy from that group that we wanted there to be a guy to emerge from. And like you said, we're just getting different people.

And it's taking a little bit of time for people to adjust to that fact. Because, I mean, Lamar Jackson has 10 touchdown, 10 passing touchdowns. I think he's like, he's responsible for, I think I saw a sad it was, like, he's responsible for more touchdowns himself than like over half the league has touchdowns. Well, why don't we get into that? Like, let's just start going through the games, the ones we want to talk about. Baltimore, New England's a great one. Yep. I actually don't even necessarily want to spend a ton of time talking about that game because Lamar just utterly dominated.

Yes. I want to talk about Lamar Jackson, though, because he's done some things this year that have really, I mean, he's making me eat some crow. Yeah. He's, let me go through some numbers really quick, all right? This year, 20. 22. 82% of the balls he's throwing are catchable. Okay, that's not a phenomenal number, but it's middle of the pack. So he's throwing a catchable ball and 82% of his throws. And last year, he was down around 78% and he was like 27th, 28th, something like that.

Okay, not great. So huge improvement. A big enough improvement that he's jumped, you know, 10 to 12 spots. as a guy who's been very critical of him being an efficient passer and a guy who can move the sticks with his arm and routinely deliver the ball accurately, that's a huge plus for me because you still have his legs. Another stat. He leads all quarterbacks right now in what we call wow throw rate at 11.4%. So while throws are, and it's not even close actually. He's smoking. everybody. Wild throws, the way we chart them are the top level of throws, like super highlight worthy, the crazy throws in either tight windows or throws that legitimately beat coverage, throws that maximize the result of a play. Think, I mean, think in terms of like super tight

windows in the red zone or throws far down field. That's typically the highlight throws or the wild throws. He's first in the NFL in wild throw rate this year. Last year, his while throw, so at 11.4%, by the way, last year his while throw rate, Steve, was 5%. Wow. Which rank, yeah, which that's actually not even a bad number. That's still a pretty good number, but that ranks 12. Right. Because right now, most, a lot of, like, most of the other quarterbacks in the NFL are hovering

right around 5%. I'd say for while throw, no, they're, I think they're like closer to like three and a half. I could be wrong. No, I guess as you're looking at it, it does lean more toward about three to four than it does four to five, five to six. But yeah, I mean, that's crazy improvement. So not only is he putting the ball or throwing a more accurate ball consistently, he's making ridiculous throws at an insane clip, almost an unsustainable clip before being honest. And then here's the third one, Steve.

And this one is probably the most important one. His turnover-worthy throw rate is down this year. year. Last year was 5.2% of his throws were turnover worthy, which was the 11th highest mark of all qualifying quarterbacks. I think there were 40 something in our metrics. This year, he's down to 3.4 percent, which ranks significantly better. He's almost shaved 2% off that number. So his while throw rate compared to a turnover worthy throw rate is exceptionally good. It's a huge. It's a huge. It's a huge bonus. And the Ravens, I mean, they look great offensively.

And Lamar Jackson is the reason why. They can't run the ball with the running back, by the way. No, they can't. It was a little bit better this week. A little bit better this week. But still, it's not what that offense is used to. And just in, I'm sure you were going to touch on this, but Lamar throwing from the pocket.

No, no, laid on us. He's not scrambling. He's not bailing pockets like we've kind of known him to do. And what had become really frustrating about the Lamar Jackson experience was that he's so exciting. But there were so many moments that a lot of people were kind of getting upset that he's bailing pockets and, you know, putting himself down to half the field because he's scrambling. out to one center or the other. And he was at times a little bit too reliant on his legs, which, you know, I obviously,

I understand he can run the ball like anybody, like nobody else can. But just his ability to stand in the pocket this year and deliver throws from the pocket into tight windows and leaving the entire field open to himself, all of his receivers are available to him when he's staying in the pocket. I just think that like that has helped him so. much. And like, you know, his wild throw percentage rate is 11.4. His deep throw percentage is 11.4%. So that means that basically like, whenever he's taking a deep shot, you can kind of anticipate a wow throw to be to, to happen. Yeah, they've had some really big plays, obviously thrown deep. The passing from the pockets of is really

important, though. I think we have him charted for five runs on scrambles this year. That's it. All of his other runs are designed QB runs. That's fantastic. Right. And that's what, because contrary to popular belief, I know over the last few years with the advent of Lamar and Mahomes and Allen and all these, these same group of guys we talk about all the time, we've seen some crazy plays from outside the pocket, out of structure.

So it's, it's given everyone this false idea that playing out of structure is like the thing to do when the reality is a lot of quarterbacks actually really, really struggle with it. That's when things go bad. Right. Now, you love the fact that your quarterback can extend plays if he has to and make plays if he has to, but you don't want him relying on that to be his sole outlet for production. Lamar has completely changed that this year. He is not scrambling around.

He's not running when he's dropping back the pass that often. Only five times. I think golf has done the same, which is crazy. Jared Goff. Yeah, so I love it. The running efficiency, too, is crazy. Ravens lead the league and yards before contact per attempt, but it's only when Lamar's running the ball. It's 3.7 yards before contact per attempt. When the running backs are carrying the ball, they fall all the way down to 1.1 yards before contact.

And it's not like people don't know Lamar's going to run the ball. They're one of the only teams in the league that run true inverted concepts. You know, you will see GT counterbash or inverted power set up for Lamar to be the primary ball carry. They're one of the only teams that do that consistently, and they're still getting 3.7 yards before contact per carry. So I think, you know, all signs pointing Baltimore up here, they, you know, they, shoot, they kind of beat the pants off New England, I felt like. I know the score was a little close there at the end, but it really didn't seem that close to me. No, it never felt in doubt with that game. It always. felt like Baltimore was in complete control there.

Yep. Yep. Mark Andrews, too, is a beast. He, let's see. He's second in the entire NFL and threat rate. So threat rate's a great stat. I love the stat because what it does is it takes into account when a player is pass blocking or screen blocking.

So a lot of times you see just target share. It's like the amount of targets they get for the routes run, which can be useful. or so target rate target share can be useful but i like threat rate because it also tells me how often this guy's targeted when he's just on the field in general right i want to know if you're pass blocking a lot like especially for famously purposes like that's not super valuable to me i don't want my tight end pass blocking a lot i want him out there getting targeted and so mark agers a second in the entire NFL and threat rate right now with a threat rate of 33.7 percent jalen wattle is the only one with a higher mark. And it's crazy. If you want to find the next tight end, you got to go 26 receivers

down. Chris Wecht tweeted this yesterday. So from Mark Andrews to the next tight end in threat rate, there's 26 receivers between them. That's how dominant Mark Andrews is and how much he owns the tight end position right now. And everyone knows he's one of my guys. I've been talking them up since he was, you know, since preseason. He was one of my dark horses for offensive player of the year, even though if he didn't win it last year, he's probably not ever going to win it. But I just love the guy. So Baltimore, though, their offense looks freaking exceptional. If they can figure some stuff out on the back end, Steve, with that secondary, Kyle Hamilton,

they can be dangerous. The crazy thing is, like, I think Kyle Hamilton, this, I think through three weeks is the highest graded rookie safety for PFF right now. Is he really? I would venture to guess it's because some of those buses. coverages since we're you know they're not technically in the huddle they're probably not assigning blame to one guy right so i would you know but there there's one that yeah there's in the miami game there were two at the end of that game one i think one was pretty clearly kyle hamilton's

fault the other one you could definitely make an argument for for marcus williams in there maybe even one of the corners as well so but point remains i mean that that is crazy that he's the highest graded rookie safety. I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean anything, though, if they're all graded badly. I have no idea what his grade is. I don't know what the grades are. I just know that he was the top one. He has looked, I mean, when he's come down into the box, I think he's looked good

as a box defender, which I think that a lot of people kind of anticipated a little bit. But, yeah, there have been a couple lapses on the back end. But he's, I will say he's farther ahead than what I thought he was going to be when we were seeing some of those training camp videos coming out. Sure. Like how slow he looked, just speed-wise, how slow he looked, decision-making-wise, he's still ahead of the pack, ahead of where I thought he was going to be, but this defense still has, like you said, some stuff to figure out in the back end.

Yep. Yeah, it's communication-driven. Like, they have talent there. We know that. I know they are being up. Peters has played through some injury already. But, I mean, they just, once I figured out, they'll be fine. I mean, they did pick off Mac Jones three times this week.

Well, what I, that, and that I think lends to the predictability of this New England offense. Like, this New England offense is, honestly, I think Mac Jones should be talked about better than what he's talked about. Because I'm pretty sure that this New England offense is super basic and not that well evolved. because they're like if if they're under center they're going to run that's almost like I didn't chart it specifically but I would wager to say it's like over 80% that if they're under center they're going to run and it's probably one of the higher percentages in the league and then even when they go shotgun they're passing most of the time they they definitely filtered in a couple more runs from shotgun this week compared to the previous two weeks but I mean, they're just not, there's no, there's little to no motion. It's so stagnant. It's just line up. Let the defense match up and then run the play, which, I mean, their receivers are playing well.

Like, their receivers are up there in some of the, like, yards per route run rate. Like, they're up towards the top with, um, with some of their guys. but it just looks and feels so predictable when you're watching it. Yeah, for sure. So for people that aren't super familiar with some of the things we get into, but we look at tendencies a lot. So I know generally speaking, everyone wants balance. They think balance, you know, good run-pass blend is what sets you apart as far as being unpredictable,

but it's not that simple. The fact of the matter is that the Patriots, they run from certain, looks and they pass from certain looks. So whether they're tipping their hand with personnel groupings or shotgun under center, there's a lot of tendencies that they do that tip their hand. And personnel is a big one, right? So they come in, they'll go under center with 21 personnel. It's like, yeah, this is a run.

Everyone keys run. And it's usually a run and it gets stopped. Right. It's super weird case study because they had one of the most dominant run games in the NFL last year and it was a real man gap heavy scheme. They used a lot of polers. but it was tons of duo, you know, tons of gap, power, counter. They kind of slowly started to go away from that.

Patricia talked about wanting to implement a lot of zone. They added zone this year, especially like outside zone, which they didn't run a lot last year. Their outside zone carry so far, they're averaging like just over two yards per carry on them. It's like, good job, Matt. Way to add that to the scheme here. Great, great play.

Like, you guys are so adept at running that. Really bolstering that offensive efficiency. Yeah. This week they went back to a little bit more of what they were doing last year, and it kind of worked. They ran the ball. They had their best game running the ball for sure, right? Yeah. Am I mistaken of thinking that? No. No, they had 145 rushing yards. Yeah. Much more. Yeah, so that's really interesting, too, but it's just it's the tendencies, man, where they just, you're just tipping your, you're not doing yourselves any favors.

And then, Steve, you mentioned Mack Jones looking good this week or, you know, when given the opportunity to throw it down field, he's looked good. probably his entire 10 year in the NFL. But I lost a lot of respect for him this week, and I got to put the guy on blast. I know where you're going with this. Dude, the ankle injury, like, listen, we've all hurt our ankle badly. I probably haven't gotten hit by a 325-pound NFL defensive line.

But I've played a lot of football. I train a lot of jiu-jitsu. I've hurt my ankle so many times it's unspeakable. Shoot, I have a hurt ankle right now, Steve. Shoot, I've stepped in a hole and turned my ankle wrong. Everyone, like, it's flimsy. Everybody, like you said, everybody feels the ankle turns. Good to bad.

Right. I snapped my shin playing football. And I didn't even muster, like, hardly said, ow. Yeah, it hurt, but like, I dealt with it. Mack Jones's response to his ankle hurting, having multiple people carrying him upstairs, yelling, oh, it hurts, it hurts. I just lost respect for it. the guy.

I thought we, like, when I saw the additional reaction, I was like, well, he's done for the season. I don't know what he did, but he's done. Exactly. When you react like that, you better be done. And listen, I don't ever want to say someone's not like manly or anything. I'm not saying he's not manly. He obviously has a low tolerance for pain. I tweeted yesterday, my wife, who's now delivered four kids, was more calm delivering a child

unmedicated than Mack Jones was after he heard his ankle. Now, my wife is also a savage. She is a very strong lady, very high tolerance for pain, a very alpha type personality. So, you know, but point remains, Mack Jones, I lost a little respect for you with the way you reacted to an ankle injury. I'm sorry. It was just a bit much. Like, again, I think it's what ends up being like a high. high ankle sprain was what they diagnosed it with.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, high ankle sprain. And now there's, now there's the debate coming out of, or like the internal team debate of Mack Jones is saying, he's not going to be ready for six to eight. New England's saying, no, it should be four to six. And now they're disagreeing on that.

Yep. Yep. They're probably, they're in bad shape. They're in bad shape. but they were i mean they were already running a little bit on fuse with mac jones they were and now bring in hoyer hoyer or um zap that baby zap like this offense is going to sputter and sputter fast because i think mac jones like i said i think given the situation that mac jones has been in with the play calling and everything he's you know played decent

well and he doesn't have like these incredible receivers i mean agelor meyers devante parker looked good this week he finally looked like he's going to be a part of that offense which i think was a good is going to help or was going to help if mac jones was in there but really like it's just the identity of them to want to be to want to be a run team but completely messing with what made their run game so potent and work last year is something they're going to have to figure out going forward because you know you're not going to endure a lot of three interception games from your quarterback and win right right right mac jones has been slinging it this year too he he uh his a dot it's like 10 10 6 10 5 something like that there's only a few quarterbacks above him james who we already know likes

to throw deep whenever he can Lamar jackson and marcus mariotta those are the only guys you know consistently throwing it down the field right further than mac jones which is pretty nuts so because i know you know jones is kind of i think everyone kind of has his perception that he's a dink and dunker type run the offense game manager no man he's he's got that gunslinger in him so i do like that about him but let's move on let's go let's take a look at another game there wasn't a lot of games necessarily i want to talk about but there's like individual performances that kind of lead us to talking about games. But yes, let's go Jacksonville Chargers.

This game was fascinating to me because one, the Chargers just got absolutely mollywopped. And they're kind of in a weird spot, Steve. Like, Jackson, I mean, Herbert played Hurt. We do know that. Which, it was one of the weirdest games I've ever seen because you could tell he was hurt for 90% of that game,

right? And then all of a sudden, he would uncork a missile that looked like Zeus throwing a lightning bolt. He did the same thing against Kansas City, like literally back-to-back plays. He does the scramble out to the right against Kansas City and just the little like, you know, like barely could barely get it past the line of scrimmage and he was two yards away from the line of scrimmage to the next play he's unhearling a missile right down right down the throat of the defense. Like, I've never, I've never broken ribs like that, so I don't know, you know,

what that pain feels like in there. I mean, maybe it's just like a positioning thing of like, felt it out of position there. I can't do this to the next one. Like, you kind of got it where you want it and you can let it go with that play. I don't know how, I don't know exactly how that feels as a quarterback. But it is, it is a little bit bizarre how he, It's just so, like, Jekyll and Hyde of, you know, some plays he looks totally like, why is he even out there? In other plays, it's, oh, okay, he's totally fine.

What are we even talking about here? Right. He threw, I mean, the bomb he threw to, was that Guyton, 15? Yeah. That thing went 60 yards in the air, and it was a missile. And I think he was getting hit, too, when he threw it. That's a crazy thing about Justin Herbert. deep balls compared to like so like even mahomes or Aaron Rogers and some of like some of those

other quarterbacks Josh Allen when they throw a deep ball that art the arc on that thing is like yeah Russ is famous for that right like he throws like tear drop right like their launch angle looks like it's coming out at like mid 60 70 70 degrees angle launch angle and it just like hangs up there and they let the receiver go get it Justin Herbert puts his deep balls on a frozen in rope. Yeah. Like those things are coming in hot and heavy and like. Reminds me the young stafford actually.

Right. It's like it's like a launch angle where you can't really tell he's throwing it deep. It's just all of a sudden it just pops out of his hands. And instead of going 20 yards, it's going 60 yards. That is what I love. And that's like I feel like one of the very endearing things about Justin Herbert that a lot of people like is that arm strength is so exciting. And he can put a ball.

at a launch angle into a window that, you know, maybe one or two other quarterbacks can do. Yep. Well, in some total, this Chargers team, though, with the injury to Herbert, I don't know how long that's going to linger. I don't know if he's going to play, you know, as up and down as he did this week every week, but it looks like that's probably true. But, man, they could be in some trouble. If this division wasn't underperforming that the way they are right now, I would be really concerned about the charges

because the thing about it, they just lost Boza for some time. Yep. It just lost Roshan Slater. They lost him for the year, right? Yep. So that's two premium players gone. Rayshan Slater is probably the biggest loss. Oh, I know.

Stormwater. One of the biggest losses, arguably in the NFL. Slater played so well last year and he looked so good this year. He's a true, like, anchor left tackle. You can lean on, you don't have to worry about him, think about him at all. He can match up against anyone. And losing him is going to be a lot bigger than I think some people are ready to admit. Yeah, you saw it right away too.

As soon as he leaves the game, Storm Norton comes in, plays left tackle, who he was already one of the worst right tackles in the NFL when he played last year. Yeah. And if people don't know, Storm Norton is infamous between me, you and Chris, with the amount of times that we get the opportunity to talk about him. I think Max Crosby beat him like 18 times in one game last year, pass rushing. It was insane. But you saw it right away. I mean, Josh Allen, not quarterback, Jacksonville edge rusher, who's turning into a very good player himself, absolutely destroyed. him up until the point you know when when slater was still in the game alan he was having a decent

game but he was not beating slater the way he came in and just destroyed like storn norton is definitely having nightmares he has PTSD from that matchup there's no doubt he shredded him and that's going to be a problem for them especially in a division where you have good pass rushers on the edge mean they will play it's all that division is yes pass rushers yep so this is um so yeah like when they play the raiders i mean shoot that's that could be super ugly they might have to actually like like you said depending on how that um how that rib heals with the injury to slater i think that there's a conversation that needs to be had of like do we need to let herbert heal for like even just a week like give him two weeks rest yeah because i don't

know with like with a broken rib or rib issues and your top left tackle out and your right tackle already not looking that great i don't know that could be it could be dangerous you're like you're running the risk of re-injuring or making it worse when you trot out like guys like that and it's unfortunate but i honestly think it might be true to a degree as well yep so also i went through and just charted pass-rush pass-pros on that game so we could talk about it. Yep. From the moment, Roshan Slater left the game, Josh Allen beat Storm Norton for nine total pressures and a couple other, three other pass-rush wins from basically, I think Slater left, beginning

of the third quarter. So from beginning of the third quarter to end of the game, he basically had four. What did I say? So 12 pass rush wins against Storm Norton. That's going to be a problem for them all year long. Like that's, that alone could take a season if they don't find something else to do there. But then you talk about also losing Bosa for some time. Like most teams can't handle losing one elite level player, not like let alone losing two now.

Keenan Allen's already her. He is supposed to come back this week. We do know that. It's just that's an injury bug. It seems like the charges are always dealing. with this too. I feel bad for them. Always. Yeah. And they still have players on that defense that you're watching every play

and like at the finish of every play, hoping that nothing bad happens. Yep. But you know what, Steve, we buried the lead. We buried the lead at this game. It's not. It's not about the Chargers. It is not at all. It's about just Trevor Lawrence led Jacksonville team. We touched on Christian Kirk on Friday. I'm not going to go over the Christian Kirk stuff again. He looks phenomenal.

but Trevor Lawrence, I think it might be safe to say the dude has arrived. Now, he's not a superstar yet. He's got a long way to go. I'm going to get into some of the numbers here, things that are impressing me and things that match the tape. We went through kind of Lamar's progression from last year to this year. Lawrence has seen a lot of the same thing. So his catchable ball rate, I'm sorry, his high level accuracy rate is up 8.5% from this time last year.

So last year he's down around 45%. So that's high level accuracy. So these are throws that are we would consider on the money, basically. Not just catchable, but actually high level accuracy. 8.5% more of Lawrence's throws are at that high level accuracy. He's in turn, because of that, too, he's now getting about 6.5 to 7% more yards after the catch. So we know that as a fact.

We've done studies on it. The more accurate to throw, the more you maximize yards after catch. It's not hard to figure out why that is. It's because you're hitting guys in stride. They're able to run with the other. So he's being more productive just by proxy of throwing a more accurate pass. So he's gone from just catchable to now I'm throwing balls on the money. Right.

So that yards after catch has gone way up. His adjusted completion percentage is up almost 10% from last year. That's a massive improvement. It's only three games, but it's a massive improvement. Catchable ball rate last year was about 78% down where Lamar was. It's way up to 82, 83% this year. Wow. Another huge improvement.

So he's gone from like bottom end of the league last year to now he's up comfortably into the middle of the pack. That's a huge improvement. He's done all this despite his Adi. not really dropping. I think we have him 7-7-1, something like that. Last year it was 7-5. It's not like he's taking a ton off.

He's still putting the ball in roughly the same spots. They're still attacking the intermediate parts of the field the same, still throwing roughly the same amount of deep balls. Things haven't changed that much, and he's still been able to increase his efficiency by that much. But here's the biggest one. Last year, his turnover-worthy throw rate was 5.6%, which was God-awful.

Right. You put the ball in harm's way all the time. It almost looked like he had no idea what he was doing at times. He's cut that number down to 3.6%, which still could be improved a little bit, but it's more middle of the pack, top 12-ish, you know, where you would expect the first overall pick to be. This improvement's been awesome, and the Jags are winning because of it. Their first place in their division outright, and they actually look the part. They look good.

Yeah. Like Trevor Lawrence, like you said, you're seeing the things that came in flashed. last year to be more consistent. Like there were a lot of times last year watching watching through film. Like there were every five to 10 passes, there would be one throw that you're like, that's the guy. That's the person

that Jacksonville took number one overall. Like you would see it. He would identify the window. He would put it in the perfect spot. It would be right over a defender's shoulder. I mean, his ability to get the ball on the outside of the numbers is elite. I mean, I think he has his great. arm strength and his great ball placement.

But now you're seeing it more. Now it's every five to ten throws, there's, you're like, you're like, okay, that's the guy from last year. That's the guy that hasn't taken the step forward. And it is more of like the consistent getting it to his receivers, where only they can win, getting it to his receivers to optimize the act.

And that was what, that's what everybody wanted and everybody thought that Trevor Lawrence was going to be coming in. Yep. I will say this, his offensive. line has done a better job, not a good job yet, but a better job of keeping him clean a little bit. He's hanging in the pocket, delivering the ball from the pocket well. The only thing I really want to see from him is I need more of those crazy, freaky throws that we know he's capable of.

Those, we've already talked about it, the wow throws. We need more of those. I need that wow rate to come up. I think right now he's what, 3.6. Yeah, 3.6%. Yeah, so he's like right on the cusp. mid-pack, more bottom third of the league, but right at the top of the bottom third, I just need that to come up a little bit.

A couple more just, you know, wow throws, and I'll feel a lot better about him, but we know he throws crazy seven routes. Like his, the way he throws corner routes is crazy. Yeah. You can throw those deep outs with insane precision. I need to see him hit a few more deep balls, though, and I'll feel, I'll feel like this dude is really ticking. Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see.

I think that a lot of this feels like a lot of the beginning of this. season felt like kind of building Lawrence's confidence, getting him into getting him into the swing of things, kind of like giving him some bunnies and giving him some some winnable throws. And then I wonder now that like now that he's seen the team win, he's seen himself put up decent numbers. He's, you know, operating much more fluidly, looks better in the pocket, is not having to operate on a structure as much as he did last year, like looks much more confident. if we start to see them, you know, filter in more, more deep throws and more opportunities to go along

and give him those wild throw percentage or wild throw chances. Because he's only thrown a deep, his deep throw percentage is 5.4%. Yeah, that's low. That needs to come up. Like, legitimately, it's probably, it looks like, just look at the numbers. It's bottom five, bottom five to seven in the league.

It's actually crazy, Steve. His A dot is where it is, considering that. Because he's at 7, A dot, which is pretty mid and pretty mid. Right. So that just means they're routinely attacking the intermediate part of the field, which is good. Actually, I think that's my favorite spot of a defense to attack. But, man, yeah, let's get those deep throws up. That also stretch, if you start hitting those, stretch the defense out a little bit more,

maybe make them change the coverages they're giving you. And then you can attack the intermediate part even more, which is great. And just as important as Trevor Lawrence's development is now, through three games, it feels more solid, but their defense. Their draft strategy of getting the longest, fastest

guys in your front seven is working. I mean, they look, they, they look so fast. And just their defense looks fake. It almost looks like

created, like someone went in to create a player mode and started like pulling these guys out of their fictional out of a fictional lab and putting him on the football field like devon lloyd looks big and fast and he's long travon walker i i swear every time i see him on the field he he just um he's so long and just crazy and so you're you're flagging me you want to say something so i have receipts on devon lloyd yeah no you i see i saw you starting to whip those out yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, I have receipts on Devin Lloyd.

This guy, I knew he was a baller. He, he was my number eight overall player coming to this draft. I tweeted a couple times. I don't know how he's not a consensus top 15 player for everybody. Which for an off the ball linebacker to be, for someone who understands the value of an off ball linebacker very well. Yeah. To have him valued at number eight is saying a lot. says a lot about Devin Lloyd as a player.

For everybody he doesn't know, Brett is very firmly of the belief of, you know, linebackers for a defense are about as valuable as running backs for an offense. They're kind of the mirror image of each other. Unless you find a special one. If you can play, you know, a lot of times if you can plug in functional guys, they're going to operate just as well as, you know, an upper guy. But like you said, if you find a guy who's a freak, and is like that, you know, and I'm saying this, I'm not saying this as a comparison or saying

that he is, he is these people, but like if you can find a guy like a Brian Erlacker, a Derek Brooks, some of those guys who, you know, transcended the position a little bit more, the value then shows up. Yep. Dude, Devin Lloyd was so good in college. It still blows my mind. He wasn't consensus top 15. And even NFL people I talked to, Steve, they, not all of them were sold on him. And it blew my mind. He actually, you know who he reminded me of coming out a little bit? Was Michael Parsons? Really?

I mean, similar, like, size profile, right? Similar size profile, similar utility in the fact that they were asked to do whatever their defense needed them in the moment. There was a game in college where Devin Lloyd, who primarily played off the ball, his entire career. They were playing UCLA. He played for Utah, for those that don't know. Utah, I think their top two edge defenders get hurt, either before the game or during the game. And they were just like, yo, we're not going to win this game unless we can get pressure

on the quarterback. Devin, what you got? They lined him up at defensive end for every snap the rest of the game. And he shredded UCLA's offensive line. Not just pressures, dude, like insanely good pressures. Right. Where I actually questioned, like, maybe this guy's an edge defender, but he's a little under, he's not quite as big as Micah. Micah's a big dude and big strong dude.

Devon's a little bit smaller than him, not quite the same length either, but it really had me considering like, man, maybe this guy's a sub-packaged pass rusher. And you can play him off the ball on first and second down. But, I mean, whatever they're doing, it looks great. He's been insane against the run. His ability to stack, shed is great, but he doesn't have to do that either. He can defeat blocks with his athleticism and getting to the point of attack faster than the offensive linemen can get there. Faster than the lead blockers can get there. He looks great.

And he's been good in coverage too. You expect most rookie linebackers to struggle in coverage. It's just fact. I mean, look at even Rodrigo in Detroit. Like he's balling out, but the plays he's gotten caught on have been in coverage. Yeah. You expect the same. But he's still held up pretty good.

I haven't seen a coverage rep yet where I'm like, ugh, that's gross. And they've been in coverage a ton. because they've actually been winning games, which is interesting. Yeah, as a whole, like their past defenses look good with not this crazy unit back there. They've looked very strong. And like I said, I think it helps that they have just mutants all over their defense that are just long and disrupt passing alleys and everything. thing. But I mean, Jacksonville feels for real. This doesn't feel like a fluke. I mean, there one Carson Wentz comeback away from being three and oh. Yep. Ew, by the way.

Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be, if they continue, if they continue to move up, that's going to be a loss that we're going to kind of go back and wonder what in the world happened. What did Wentz end up with this week? Passing, passing yards? wise. I got to, we got to put tracker. Yes. I almost need a Carson Wentz passing tracker like on my Twitter. The mooch tracker. I, yeah, cars like, we, me, you and Chris all kind of said it this week that we expected Carson Wentz to have more of a, uh, come back to come back to life and by life, I mean, do exactly what we always imagine. Oh, yeah, the real Carson's.

showed up this week. So 211 passing yards. He had under 50 at halftime. I do know that. Oh, yeah. His yards per attempt dropped to under five this week. So he's back. There was that one point where they had, the Eagles had about 300 yards of offense and the commanders had negative one. Oh, wow.

Is that real? Yeah, they flashed it on the broadcast screen at one point. Good God. It was, it was bad. Carson Wentz was getting lit up in the backfield constantly, which you saw, which you saw start to happen against Detroit. And again, it's one where I'm, like, surprised that Jacksonville was not as heavily on him as they could have been. But, yeah, Washington, your quarterback has arrived. Yes.

I saw a few people that were starting to Carson defenders, people who clearly have stood by his side for years and years and years. After two weeks, they were starting to, they were starting to victory lap a little bit and turn the page and say, like, see, it's not Carson's fault. He's putting up the numbers. He can do this. Just got to give him a chance to win. And now we're getting a brush up.

a breath of fresh air with him. He's doing, he is exactly who we thought he was. Yeah, he, man, what a, what a roller coaster they're going to have there. I mean, they finally play a good defense and he kind of falls apart. Yep. I mean, that, that's the long and the short of it. I don't want to spend a ton of time on that game because it was pretty mad. And it's just, I more want to put the focus back on Hertz again.

This is going to be a theme on the pod, but he's playing so good right now. So good. Unbelievable. He's the only quarterback in the NFL who's played who hasn't thrown an turnover worthy throw. Not one. Think about that, Chris, or Steve. I just called you. I just called me Chris. Think about that. I know I woke up late this morning, but you didn't have to write me off that quick. Yes. You almost did get written off, actually. I did. It was close. It was close. Just for one. That was the nice thing about, Friday, though, Steve, is what it showed me is that the bench at fantasy points goes deep.

And next man up can be a thing. I know, it's got me. That's why I woke up nervous. I was like, I got to come in and perform. I can't be, I can't be, I can't be, I can't be Wally Pipped. Yes. Yeah, Hertz has been awesome. His turnover where the throw rate is actually zero because he hasn't thrown at any.

But he's also delivering just ridiculously accurate throws. his high accuracy rating is 61.4%, which is nuts. That's fourth in the NFL. So there's only three quarterbacks consistently thrown a more accurate ball than him, which was kind of what he struggled with last year, Steve. Yeah. And then the other big storyline is you can see what this offense is capable of with two stud receivers.

Because Devante Smith just decided, oh yeah, by the way, I'm also that guy. And I'm just, I'm going to shred you. He started to do it last week and it was like, okay. Yeah. This is like, maybe this is what we're looking for. And then this week, it's just a complete, like, step to the stage moment. I mean, he looked utterly, utterly uncoverable.

The jump ball he had on that deep post where he had corner and safety, he comes up, takes a massive shot. So I, like, if you were worried about his size, his you know somebody used to call him skeletor i think yeah what is slim reaper slim reaper yeah Derek brown always calls him slim reaper which is funny um if you were worried about a size at all and you go see him make a play like that i mean jeez man it he just he's playing bigger than he is and you love to see it he's just one of those guys that has just insane body control insane and you can see it on every jump ball a lot

of like passing attempts where it might be a little bit out of his grasp he like the way he can contort his body and bend his body i think it's what is what is a huge part about how you know we have like you said everybody talked about him you know is he big enough is he going to be like how is he going to take NFL hits well when you have a guy like him who can contort his body the way he can those big hits don't happen right like it's it's some guys just having an in an in an ability to prevent themselves from taking those big hits. And he's one of those guys. He just, the way he can bend and move and he's just so slippery, like, he's such a good

route runner. And I think that, like, now we can shift it and say, like, holy cow, look at Jeff Akuta's development and not so much as like a lot of people were getting on Devontas Smith after week one saying, like, was this who it was going to be? Is he taking a step backwards? Are we going to loot? Like is it going to be like this replacement where now he goes to the wayside and AJ Brown just steps in and gets all the targets? But that got wiped away.

Jalen Hertz is spreading the ball around great. I mean, he is not keying into one receiver at all. He spreads it around so well. He does. And DeVontz Smith as a number two receiver is showing that he's dangerous. Yep. I think another thing with actually, great point on the contact stuff, by the way. That's so oftentimes when we're evaluating running backs, you talk about that, but you rarely talk about it for a receiver.

Right. But like here's a thing. If you're knock on a receiver is going to be that he's tiny, he's underweight, needs to thicken up. Well, you better be evaluating that part of his game because you're right. He does do a great job of that. He always has. But yeah, he sets up angles so he doesn't take it, especially when he has the ball in his hand. And then, you know, his ability to just have ridiculous body control and toe tass.

and all that stuff. It ends up shielding him from more hits than probably people realize. Right. Because I do think there's such thing as too small if your play style doesn't do you favors, but his play style does. Yes.

So he caught multiple deep balls in this game too. The first one was just as crazy as the other one. We're down the right side line. I mean, he kind of, it was a great ball by Hertz and the fact that it was away from the defender, literally put it only where his guy could get. it. And Devonta had to extend a little bit for he kind of went down and it wasn't quite a dive, but it was a toe tapping. There's a toe tap while he was falling out of bounds, 55 yards

downfield. Like, catchers don't get much better than that, to be honest. Right. I mean, 12 targets, eight receptions, 169 yards on a touchdown. Yeah. Like that's, that, that's the type of stuff that A.J. Brown adds to that offense without having to do anything. That's true. Another thing Smith has been really good at is he's not getting stuck on press like you would think a smaller guy would. Some of that's because he's so quick. I mean, but the other thing is like he he threatens that vertical speed enough. He's actually not really getting pressed. Even when they show press, they're not really looking to put their hands on him and get.

It's more of a, they're more running a press bail technique than they are straight up press. Yeah. They're immediately, immediately trying to get in phase because they know, they know the speed is coming. Right. It stinks we didn't have a 40 on him. I mean, I knew he was fast. If you didn't know he was fast, then I don't know what football you were watching. It's just that wealth of Alabama slim, fast receivers.

Right. There's been, yeah. That's the other funny thing, though, too, right? Like, a lot of these guys, like, Smith was abnormally small, but there's been a lot of lot of them that were small as well like wattle was pretty small yeah rugs was had a really really low bMI if you're into that kind of thing judy had a really really low bm i like there's a lot of them they all played together but ultimately this this eagle's offense man they got her it's playing the level he is but he's also he's got a j brown devonthe smith dallas goddard what a trio of weapons

it's just all and they're all ball winners and they all play different they all play a little bit different styles. Very different styles. That's the crazy thing is that like it's such a array of body types and abilities that like, again, makes it so much harder to defend because if you're, you know, like if you're a defense that doesn't have a corner that's traveling with a guy and you have to one snap go up against A.J. Brown, the next snap go up against DeVant Smith.

and then another snap you might get lined up against Dallas Goddard. Like you have to play each guy so much differently. Right. Well, and they're willing to move those guys too. Right. That's what I mean. It's like if you line up in the same spot, you can get again, like you can go against any of those three at any moment.

Yep. And they have all come play in the slot, they all split out wide. And that puts the cornerbacks in such a conflict because you're then having to adjust, you know, adjust play technique, a little bit just to mirror and match who you're up against because, you know, with Devonta Smith, you're, okay, you're worried about more of the speed. So you have to, you know,

you have to be a little bit more cognizant of bailing and getting deep. With AJ Brown, you, you know, you have to play a little bit more of a bully ball technique because he's going to, a lot of the times he's going to win inside, win in the middle, win on short routes and look for yak opportunities. Like, it just, and then Dallas Goddor is just a big target that, you know, can prop himself up in the middle and bake himself a available to Jalen Hertz. And that's another thing. Jalen Hertz is targeting the middle of the field much more.

Yes. That was the big thing that everybody was talking about. And we've touched on it, I think, a little bit in the first two weeks. But like, he's the anti- Russ. He's completely, which is crazy because he was Russ. He's completely flipped it. He's targeting the middle of the field a bunch. And like we said, it's opening up the offense completely.

It's making those outside throws more than the-al-lawful. Exactly. Literally opening up the offense because defense starts shrinking a little bit. They realize they have to cover the middle of the field now, which is imagine that. And now those sideline shots to Brown and Smith, they're open. They become more one-on-one opportunities than two-on-one or one with a shade. Like you're getting more true one-on-one opportunities on the outside, which, you know, when you have two of the best one-on-one receivers.

Yes. It's going to help your offense a lot. It is. All right, let's move on. By the way, by the end of the season, people are going to be so sick of us talking about Jalen Hertz. Well, when they're making a Super Bowl run. Yeah.

I feel like it's not going to, I feel like the noise of Jalen Hertz isn't just going to be coming from us, but we're just going to be able to stake a claim to getting to it the earliest. Yeah, we're the earliest. I think. Anyways. All right, let's do another game. So one topic I want to talk about, because Scott Barrett had sent me some tweets.

He wanted me to dive into the San Francisco Denver game. I want to talk about that Denver backfield a little bit. The running backs? Yeah, the running backs. So Scott, let me see if I can find the initial tweet. really quick. But Scott Barrett, one of our fantasy points, he guys, he's probably one of the best in the fantasy community at taking data and building models with it and easing success. And he relies on me to an extent to kind of, you know, well, for one, we're providing him with all the data.

Sometimes he'll pull a stat and he'll be like, hey, this stat stuck out to me. Why is it this way? So here's a stat that stuck out to him. He tweets, percentage of runs where the running back was first contacted at or before the line of scrimmage. I'll fast forward a little bit. Javante Williams ranked sixth on that list at a rate of 54%. So 54% of Javante's runs are being contacted at or behind the line of scrimmage. Number 42 on this list, way down, was Melvin Gordon.

Only 27%. They've had roughly similar workloads. Javanti's carried the ball 38 times. Melvigort has carried the ball 34 times. So Scott's question to me is, can you help explain this discrepancy? Because this is crazy. They do play in the same offense, right?

Like, I'm not making this up. And they don't run, it's not like they run different concepts with each one. They're still running like the wealth of concepts. To an extent. To an extent. This is part of what I wanted to get into. So, yes, inside zone is inside zone.

Yeah. Man duo. it's man, it's duo, power's power. But the look that they give is very important. And while they are using the same concepts, it's pretty even distribution across the board

as far as percentage of carries. So Duvante's percentage of carries that are inside zone roughly are equal to Melvigortons and et cetera down the line. But there is a little bit of a difference in the way they're deploying those concepts

in the way that they are surrounding them with personnel groupings, the way they're using offensive flow and things like that. So just a couple quick data points I want to go through. Javante Williams sees a seven man or heavier box. So seven guys in the box or more on 87% of his carries. Melvin Gordon only sees seven guys or more. on 70% of his carries.

Now, it's only week three. So sample sizes are small. Yep. Part of that discrepancy Scott wants answers for is explainable just via small sample. There's flute things that happen. It's three weeks, whatever. But there's actually utility to looking into this. So there's a 17% difference right off the bat between Giovante and Melvin and how often they see seven guys in the box or more.

That equates to a few carries. So now if you just assume it's harder to run, against a heavier front, you are correct. I looked at the tape a lot of the time that this is true. When both of them are getting contacted in the backfield or at the line of scrimmage, it's from a heavier front. This is true for both of them. And so since Giovante has more carries in said situations,

he by proxy is going to have more, a higher percentage of his runs will have contact in the backfield or at the line of scrimmage. Okay, moving on. there were also instances where Javante not only saw 7 plus, but he actually saw 10 guys in the box. There was an instance on the goal line where he saw 11 guys in the box. So that's true. Melvin didn't see either of those fronts at all.

Both of those runs resulted in getting hit in the backfield, by the way. Six guys or less, Melvin Gordon. Let's see here. Nine carries. Javante Williams, five carries. So there's another discrepancy here. So not only is Giovante seeing seven plus more than Gordon. He's also seeing six or less, less than Gordon, which makes sense, right?

Right. But he is carrying the ball more so there's a chance that it's not that way. So a much higher percentage of Melvin's carries are coming with six guys or less in the box than Javantes. Relatively speaking, though, they see, most of you see seven guys in the box. but it's point being there is some extremes on both ends that favor Melvin Gordon a little bit. Yep. Someone that has to do with personnel. So they do a good job of using Melvin with 11 personnel more than Jamonte.

It's minuscule. It's just a few percentage. It's like 10%. 10% of Melvin's runs more came from 11 personnel. So what does that mean for the layman listening? It's like when you put an extra receiver on the field, usually the defense is matching with a corner. And now conversely, usually that receiver, a slot receiver, is lining. up away from the tackle box.

Away enough that that slot corner is not considered a box player. So it's a lighter front. It's easier to run against those fronts, especially if you have a good offensive line. And then lastly, Giovante in Melvin have a discrepancy with how often the offense is using motion when they're in the game. So motion is a really good way to change the box count right at the snap. Yep. So when Melvin's in the game, Denver, it's probably not even on purpose.

I highly doubt they even realize they're doing this because it's week three, sample sizes are small. But when Melvin's on the field, Denver's doing a better job of motioning a player away from the tackle box, which in turn takes a guy out of the tackle box. Or that or distracts him enough that he's now focused on the guy motioning across the field and not necessarily keying his run lane. which makes it softer, easier to run against, easier to get past a line of scrimmage. So there's like a lot of factors in play here. Then the last thing is watching all, I watched all their carriers this morning for Scott,

so I could give them a response about this. Javante, for whatever reason, and this is where the small sample sizes get really impacted, he's dealt with an obscene amount of early penetration into the backfield. I was actually blown away, how often one of his offensive linemen gets absolutely whooped. On run play. It's almost like when Javante's in the game, they just assume the run play is coming.

I'm not really sure, but his, whether it's a guard or a tackle, bowls got whipped on a couple, the left guard, escaping me who that is right now, got whooped on a bunch. And it literally six yards deep. So people, I know people want to criticize Javante's vision. There were a lot of responses to this tweet of Scots talking about, oh, it's Javante's vision in decision making. He's not good back there. That could be true, but that's not why this is happening.

In many situations here, Steve, he has literally no time to make an adjustment or cut it back or whatever. On top of that, don't be still image guy, you know, don't be the guy who tweets a photo of a still image. It says, look at this hole. This one went for minus three. It's a still image. I can't do anything with that, you know, but don't be still image guy. There's a lot that happens very quickly in the NFL and in a solid. still image literally does nothing for me.

So yeah, all the, like, all people do use that is to just like change the narrative or, you know, get it perfectly to fit what they want. Like half the time, it's like, yeah, but did you see point one seconds or point one second before or after the play because this hole wasn't there or whatever? Yes. And I made all of those points about Javante and Melvin to say this, Steve. okay i just spent 10 12 minutes talking about giovante williams and melvin gordon

and why they're being contacted at the line of scrimmage or in the backfield right that's a boring conversation to have which is exactly what this game was it was it was 11 to 10 so i just made you relive this game by listening to that diatribe of of nonsense i know the fantasy listeners will enjoy it but not necessarily that was that was legitimately another game where I looked at it, I just was like, me like Denver has been so unimpressive. Like totally unimpressive. San Francisco with Jimmy G. There can be some excitement there,

but it's still San Francisco with Jimmy G. There's a reason everybody was trying to run him out of town. He's not an exciting. He's not an exciting quarterback. But it was just another game where I was like, you know what? I'm going to watch this game three times over. Like, I'm not, I don't really feel like tuning in for the whole thing or like being totally present for it. Like I had it up. But again, it was just another one where it's like, and this goes back to what we opened the show with of just like, these are the type of matchups that are just like pulling people away from paying attention because you get 11 to 10 snooze fest where both offenses look completely like pretty out of sorts. Like Denver just looks out of sorts. Russell Wilson, like, doesn't, like, he looks like Gino Smith and bad Gino Smith, not even the good Gino Smith.

It's actually pretty crazy how just bonk he looks. How much and how much of this is Russell Wilson and how much of this is Nathaniel Hackett? Yep. Because Nathaniel Hackett has been wildly unimpressive to open his tenure with Denver. to have the offense that he has there and to have the defense that he has there and to have them, I mean, have them performing the way they're performing. They're still two and one.

Yep. Which means, which honestly feels like it means nothing. I feel like two and one means absolutely nothing right now. When you look at some of the teams that are two and one and how we expect this season, like, again, expect or like you see it playing out.

Because like you have the giants at two and one, you have the bears at two and one. and you have Denver at two and one. All of which teams that, all teams that like, I don't, like, I could see them not cracking over seven wins this year. Oh, I mean,

for sure Chicago. Like, I don't even know how Chicago got here. And but Chicago and Denver, like at this point, like reevaluating, I feel like Denver's looking at a seven wins season, like staring down the barrel of a seven win season right now.

Here's the problem, Steve, is they get the Raiders. this week, they could easily win that game. They could be three and one. All it's doing is buying them time to figure things out before they panic. And that could happen. Their defense allows it.

Their defense looks good. That secondary is strong. That Randy Gregory and Bradley Chubb are good opposite each other. Like their defense is the only reason they're even in this position right now. True. Honestly, a position where they could have had to play at 3 and 0. But it's just like one of those teams where you just don't feel confident in it going forward. Yeah.

At all. Yeah. So among, this is a good stat for Denver too. And it's contrarian to Russ and how bad he's been. But so among wide receivers who have run, what, 75 routes on the outside, only these guys have a higher yards per route run than Cortland Sutton. And it's A.J. Brown. in Chris Olave. Yep.

So Corlin Sutton's playing well. Yeah. They really need to make him the focal point of the offense because Russ is not getting it done without him. Here's a, oh my gosh, Russ. Dude, have you seen Russ's checkdown rate? Gosh, what is it? He's checking it down 12.5% of dropbacks.

That's like in company with Gino Smith and Joe Flacco. I called him Gino. Oh, my God. He's Gino, Steve. He actually is. You know who else? Honestly, some of these guys that are up there. So listen, I expect guys that perform out of the pocket to have a lot of checkdowns

because that's usually what happens. They extend the play, then they find their checkdown, blah, blah, blah, blah. But for pretty stationary dudes, which Russ is at this point, Gino is at this point, Flacco definitely is at this point. It's pretty crazy that their checkdown rate is that high. that's obscenely high but um i feel like i had one more point on denver i wanted to go at and i don't remember what it was we can move on if you can't think of it yeah let's move on either way Denver overall like russell wilson is going to like it's going to have to get figured out and like you said

i think they need to make courtland sutton the focal point of that offense and just have that offense run through him because he seems like the one guy that can consistently win on that team and it seems like the one receiver that Russell Wilson actually has a decent connection with yep and it's it has been hard for Judy because even I know you missed some time but even when he's on the field he plays in the slot we know Russell doesn't like to throw over the middle of the field which sort of limits what they get out of Judy not that Judy's great over the middle, but he is a slot receiver. He's by proxy closer to the middle of the field. He's going to have to run some routes over the middle of the field. And where he tore it up in college is a lot of

those deep overs. I want Judy on a deep over as many times as I can get it per game. I'm scheming it. I'm running dagger a bunch. I'm running Yankee a bunch. I'm trying to get Jerry Judy running across the middle of the field with that just crazy speed, that crazy burst and acceleration out of the break. That's what I'm trying to do. And they, Russ won't do it. I mean, I think one of Judy's explosive plays this years have been on a crossing route, but it was one. So we're not, we're not celebrating one bro. Anybody. Other than that. Yeah. It's really limiting what Judy is, is capable of delivering this offense,

because basically, if he's not running an outbreaking route of some sort, Russ is just not going to throw him the ball. I went through his targets on the season. I think like 80% of them we're outside the numbers or something higher than that. It was actually pretty crazy. So this is a big deal. I do think we should move on though. Russ, just last point,

Russ is not doing anything terrible. He's not making like ghastly decisions, but he's also not doing anything good. He's just been as average of a quarterback as you could find. Yeah. And he needs to play better. I mean, turnover worthy throw rate is at 1.9%.

So super low, but as well throw rate is at 3.8%. Also super low. Right, right. All right. Well, we've talked about a lot of games I want to talk about. How about you pick one, Steve? I want to go into Kansas City, Indianapolis.

Except for that one. Don't talk about that one? I'm kidding. I was like, did I find the one game that it's like absolutely not. Yeah, let's talk about that. So Kansas City looked like they should have won that game 10 times over. Indianapolis gets a little bit of breath of life into their season. I honestly, this did feel like one of those games that I was looking at it.

And I'm like, you know, this just feels like somehow Indianapolis is going to win this game. You know when you get a feeling about an NFL game and you're like, I just feel like it's going to go opposite what everyone thinks for whatever reason. But again, it's just, it's Mahomes not being able to make these insane plays and the big plays that everybody's looking. for and the heroics that they've needed. Yeah. I feel like that's a big part of it. It's just, like, Mahomes just not being able to unleash the otherworldly inhuman

throws and opportunities that he gets. And I just, I don't know. Like, the Indianapolis defense played well. I feel like so, like, they are, they were really the primary. of what we've seen so far this year of just making Mahomes throw the ball shorter and not giving him big play opportunities. And I feel like Indy has a good defense for it. Their safeties are fast and rangy.

And so they, in a too high position, they're allowed to, they take away a little bit more of the field than other teams. but it's Kansas City is going to they either need someone new at receiver just someone a little bit better, someone who can win a little bit more, or they're going to have to figure out how to work those, work more into the middle and get guys, scheme guys open a lot better because I don't know, like, Mahomes is amazing and he's going to lead him to the playoffs. But yeah, there have been clear chinks in the armor. Yes.

For this team. Yes, there has been. I think your idea with getting another guy in there is probably something that makes a lot of sense. I know Sky Moore's a young player and he's developing and they're hoping they get something out of him. I just don't, I don't know if it's enough for this year and this team's too good to, and Mahomes is too good to waste a year, in my opinion. Right. The guy I'd be looking at, a buddy of mine actually, Josh Liskwitz from P.F.

F. Messaged me this last night. And I think it's actually a really good idea. What do you think it would cost the chiefs to acquire Chase Claypool? I bet you. I mean, I would say like a fourth, fifth.

I mean, if it's that cheap, the deal should already be done. I was thinking more like maybe a third, but... I was saying between a third and a fifth with maybe a late round kicker. The problem is,

is if you do make a deal like that, and then he plays about, you're going to have to pay him at the end of the year. Right. But I still would look into doing it. But there's also other guys of that Claypool archetype that if you see that he's a guy that can win in your offense, you can always pivot too. Yeah. Well, we've talked about it at nauseam about how they've gone back to the basics.

They're running more 12 and 21 personnel. Claypool can fit into that because I know he's not technically a tight end. But out of 11 personnel, he's been playing the slot role in Pittsburgh. he can come in. He can kind of be a hybrid tight end slash slot guy. He still gives you something in the run game because he can block. But he's so explosive. They need that explosive element.

It's funny because all their receivers are explosive except for Juju, right? Right. But they're not skilled enough technicians where the explosiveness necessarily matters. Claypool is way further along in his development than Martez-Valdes-Cantling or Mikul Hardman. Right. Or any of those guys. So I think he would be a huge win. And he doesn't only have to play a slot either.

You can line him up outside. He had success before Ben's arm completely rotted off. He had success outside. Yeah. But you can play him. You can hit the trick play scene with him. You know, the end rounds, the jet sweeps, all the pop pass, the orbit motion and swing pass, the screens, the smokes. You can hit all of that with him and add an explosive element.

Plus, we know he's got crazy body contortion skills. Yep. You can get downfield and make plays. I'm not a huge chase Claypool guy, but I think if I'm Kansas City, I'm trying something. I'm not just going to let this happen all year long. It's a lot of one-dimensional receivers that they have. And I think this is something that a lot of us talked about going into the year. Right.

Like what made that offense with Tyreeks so dangerous is that Tyreek can do so many different things. He can win in the middle. He can win short. He can win deep. A lot of these guys now, you're like, they just they can do one thing and not even necessarily do one thing really well but they do like one thing like juju is juju smith is a possession receiver smithsher's more of a possession receiver he's not a deep ball guy he's not going to give you a ton of yak he's you know he's more of your short

middle you know short area throw type of guy and then you have me cole hardman and valda scantling who are more of the burners. I mean, everybody's still waiting for me, Cole Hardman, to be Tyreek 2.0. It's never going to happen. It's not going to happen. He can mimic some things he does. Right. It was clear early on that it was never going to happen,

but there's always the people that, you know, believe that it's coming. And then, you know, Hardman's actually been semi-productive. He looks better. You're wrong. He looks like much better this year, but he's still not, you know, He's not a number one.

No, God, no. He's not a number one. And then Travis Kelsey looks good. He's looking a little bit older. And he missed a couple catches in that game that would have completely flipped the flip the game on its head. But it's just, it's a lot of one dimensions. And that offense moves so much differently when teams are keying in on Travis Kelsey

and operating their coverage around Travis Kelsey and stopping Travis Kelsey compared to the holes that opened up for Travis Kelsey when defenses were operating their secondary around Tyree Kill. Right. The other thing, sorry, go ahead. I was just to say those lanes down, those passing lanes in the middle have clogged up a lot more than they did last year, in years prior for Kansas City. For sure. The other thing that they could try, and I don't know why this is so hard for Andy Reed to figure out. or Eric B. Enemy, whoever's scheming slash calling plays.

An RPO. For God's sakes, try an RPO. Yeah. They haven't ran a single one this year. None. At least not that we've charted. I mean, having watched almost every Kansas City offensive snap, actually it might have been every offensive snap.

It's just, yeah, there's no element like that in there at all. We know San Francisco will never run RPAs. It's not what they do. They don't need to. Right. They have this robust run game, all these cool motion looks. That's kind of their version of the RPO. Right.

New Orleans isn't running any RPAs either, but everyone else does a little bit. It sounds stupid, right? Because it's just a few plays. It's just 5% of your plays is all I'm asking for. Or even 3.5% of your plays. Right. You add the element to what you do. It gives the defense of something else to,

think about. You give Mahomes some layup throws, or you're giving your running back softer boxes. They're not running the ball well at all. They're getting cremated running the ball, actually. This week, if you take out Mahomes' four scrambles or whatever it was, Jerich McKinnon, seven carries, 20 yards, Isaiah Pachetcho, however you pronounce it, three carries, nine yards. Clyde Edwards Hillare, seven carries for zero yards. And let me say, Indies run defense is really good. Grover Stewart. Grover Stewart and Buckner in the middle. I would put them as a top three interior duo.

They have good linebackers. They have good ends. I'm okay with that. That production is damning. It doesn't matter how good that defense is. To not get any production from running backs. Dude, I don't know what's worse. running the ball 23 times for two and a half yards of pop or being the play caller that called

23 runs when you're averaging two and a half yards per pop right that's terrible you're not changing anything you're not adjusting anything about how you know how you're running things there was no like introduced different like introduced different motions or you know run different schemes or do different things it's just they kept going to the same well yeah like it's not like there was anything crazy about it. And like now, now that we're three weeks into the season, think about like the opportunities that could open up for an RPO with Patrick Mahomes. Right.

I mean, he's like Patrick Mahomes is an athlete. He can scramble really well. I mean, why not? I don't even need read option RPO's. I just want RPO's though. Like I just want run pass option. If you see the linebacker dropping in, like RPO with the backside slant. If you see the RPO or the linebacker.

dropping into the throwing window, you hand the ball off. It's one less guy the front seven has to account for, or not the front seven, but your offensive line. Make, you know, naturally creating softer boxes. It'll help get the run game a little bit invigorated. It'll help maybe give Patrick some easy throws to put the offense in more favorable situations, to keep the confidence high. Yeah.

And then if you do want to add read option tag at the end of that and let Patrick keep it sometimes, that's fine too. I don't necessarily want my quarter. back keeping the ball a lot unless he's special. Not a lot. Yeah. Even just like, again, just getting the defense to think. Giving them a wrinkle.

Yeah, giving them a second to make them think can help and open up so much for a team that, again, does not have receivers that are going to, that like, are massive separators or do a bunch of things well. That's, like, kind of what you have to do to get one dimensional receivers. open is give them easy wins, give them easy windows. If you can get a guy open, Mahomes is going to find him. It's just that like right now it feels that it feels like a lot of his receivers aren't separating and it's making those passing windows just a little bit tighter. And I don't care how good you are. You know, he's he is amazing.

But like the more the more tight windows you have to throw into, the more likely that your completion percentage, all of that is going to start to dip a little bit. Yep. All right, let's move on. So I've probably one or two other games. I want to briefly touch Cincinnati Jets. Okay.

And then we'll wrap it up talking Green Bay, Tampa Bay. Green Bay, Tampa Bay. Just briefly, I want to touch Cincinnati versus the Jets because Cincinnati kind of came alive a little bit. A little bit. We saw Burroughs yards per attempt go out. best of the season. His ADOT went up too, which has been stupid low all season long. Right. I think his ADDOT was, what, almost nine this week. So he's getting the ball down feel a little bit better.

Wasn't sacked as many times. He did have some turnover worthy plays, though, still, Steve. This is where I'm just a little concerned. I don't know what's going on between his ears. Five and a half percent for the game. Okay. I think we charted him for three, right? Or was it two? That. I don't know.

It doesn't necessarily matter, but. Yeah, two. Yeah, he did look better, though. He had a couple ridiculous throws, which is good. We've been waiting for that Joe to show up. Yeah. So I feel a little bit better about Cincinnati. I know the Jets aren't very good, but they've been playing pretty good.

And Joe, I'm sure, the first throw he made off the trick-pillar. play. Uh-huh. Was that, uh, yeah, that's right. Chase dropped it.

So it was a trick play. It was like a throwback. So running back gets the pitch, then he throws it back to the quarterback, and then Burrow cuts it loose downfield. Yep. I don't know how Chase didn't catch this, but he,

he won this route. That should have been a touchdown. Phenomenal throw by Joe. We've been waiting for that throw. Um, he had another one in the red zone. The, um,

the Higgins jump ball in the corner. Oh my gosh. Ridiculous throw and ridiculous catch. The ridiculous catch. I saw a lot of people say it, but I agree. Just for the cool factor they need to just have that be a touchdown, just for everyone's sake. Right. Yeah.

And then he had another one to Higgins down the right sideline that was dropped in the bucket right between corner safety. It was beautiful. It was a cover three look. Deep safety gets over the top. Burrow put it right in. It was awesome. It's just, like you said, finally we saw what made that Cincinnati offense so good. Yes. Finally, we saw him cut it loose, let his receivers go win more.

He's had time. I mean, mainly it's because he had time to let it happen more so than he had had in the previous two weeks. There's definitely truth of that. And I think it obviously helps not having to go against Premier Pass rushers like T.J. Watt and Michael Parsons this game. This is a little bit more of a wear you down defensive line more so than it is, you know, guys that are going to win play in, play out. And so that benefited Cincinnati. But just like, you know, I mean, just finally getting the ball to guys that can win. And I mean, Tyler Boyd had a great game. Yeah.

That just shows how good this offense can be when they're clicking. Like we said it before, Tyler Boyd is the number three receiver on this offense. He would be, he could and would be number two for sure. And, you know, even in some places a number one receiver. Like, but on this offense, he's surrounded by so much talent that he's number three. And this talent level is way above a number three. And like, this is just, this is what this offense is. can be when things are moving on task and Joe Burrow isn't running for his life the entire game.

Yep. And I don't know. I don't know what is wrong with him and Chase still, though. They're just not hooking up. But I got to think if Burrow and Higgins are going to be on the same page, it's eventually going to open things up for Chase again. Right. Man, like his eight out's been obscenely low all year. I know it went up this week.

He did get some deep targets. But still, what did he have? six catches for 30 yards. Yeah. I mean, they can't get him the ball intermediate deep. Credit to the rookie sauce Gardner who. But this is three games in a row now, though, it is.

No, it is. It's not, they're not, no one's doing anything super special to them. Yeah, he gets bracketed occasionally. Like every good receiver in the league gets bracketed. Like, contrary to popular belief, your favorite receiver is not getting double teamed on every play. No. It doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen. He'll see some bracket. Maybe he gets a double tag once in a while. But for the most part, no one's doing anything super special to take him away. They just are not on the same page. Or their vision for how they want to use him has changed. It's one of the two. Six catches 30 yards.

I mentioned the deep targets. It's just weird. We saw magic from them on the LSU championship run. We saw magic from them again last year. And then it's just where is the magic? I mean, yeah, he had 123 air yards, Jamar Chase. So like the A dot and that was up, but they didn't connect on any of it. No.

I have to believe it's coming, though. I can't believe, is down on the Bengals as I've been, and I've been one of the few that have been really down on them, is down on them as I am. I can't believe that this connection will stay like this all year. I do think there's got to be a chase breakout looming. I mean, who knows? We could see it. We could see a progression through the season similar to last year just in an honest. I mean, just flipped where, you know, last year, Jemar Chase blew up at the beginning of the year, and then T. Higgins kind of was brought into the offense more and started winning more because Chase winning was opening things up. I could see that happening because T. Higgins is starting to

really coming, like finally coming to his own this season and like developed to be the number one right now. And so hopefully, you know, hopefully that would open some things up for Jemar Chase, like you said, going forward through the year. But I just feel like so many defenses, like are the defenses that they're playing. And really a lot of defenses around the NFL playing against a lot of these explosive offenses, they are so, so focused on preventing the big play.

Like big play prevention this year, I feel like has been towards the best it's ever been. Like defenses do not want you to be. beat them over the top. Yeah. I mean, there's been a weird number of busts, but yeah, other than the busted coverages, it's been pretty, pretty locked. Right, but yeah, you haven't seen a ton of like crazy go balls that are like caught

tight in coverage, I feel like this year. Yep. Just because there is as many of the, there is not as many of the one-on-one go balls and deep routes as there had been in prior years. You see a lot of safety help over the top, which changes offensive. quite a bit and can neuter an offense that, you know, was kind of predicated last year on winning those deep balls and having the, having the offense kind of move around big shot plays. Yeah.

For sure. On the other side of the ball, Steve, we've talked about him a few times, but Garrett Wilson just continues to impress me. If I were to ask you on the spot without you knowing anything, maybe, because maybe you saw my tweet. Maybe. I don't think I saw Garrett Wilson one. Okay. So if I were to ask you on the spot, where do you think Garrett Wilson's getting most of his targets from? What alignment? What would you reply? I mean, actually, I did see it. So my gut, but my gut would say, my gut would say even inside from what I've seen. Yeah, the slot, right. The slot. Right. I think everyone's assumption is that because he, he profile as a slot receiver coming out. And he played me.

mostly spot at Ohio State. What if I told you that actually that's not the case? And 20 of his targets have come when lined up on the outside. How many total targets does he have? Total. I can pull that up faster, but keep going. I think it's like maybe 39 or something. I know it's over 50% of his targets that are coming when lined up outside. So I'm over, I know for sure it's a majority, which is crazy, right? And I just think about 32, he has 32 total targets. 32 total targets. 20 of them are coming when he's lined up outside.

I don't think anyone saw that coming. No. Now, you could say maybe Elijah Moore, also a smaller type of slot guy, maybe they have to mix him up, get, you know, they're both sharing the slot a little bit. Definitely true. But I'm fascinated by the way they're using Garrett Wilson and getting him the ball on the outside.

And some of it's just traditionally lining up as an outside receiver and he's winning that way. But they're also doing a lot with scheme that I really, really like. And we've seen this in San Francisco too. It's obviously the same coaching tree. They're calling a lot of the same plays. But man, they're doing a lot of really cool stuff with motion. So they'll line up, you know, Wilson initially in the slot, but it'll be up on the line of scrimmage. And then they will motion the receiver outside of him through, which then leaves him, you know, with a very reduced split, but he's the outside guy. But what does that do? It gives Garrett Wilson who has elite speed and elite quickness, a literal ocean to operate in outside now.

Because he's the furthest outside guy, but he's tight to the line of scrimmage. That's a corner's worst nightmare, man, because you have to be concerned about the inside release. You have to be concerned about all the ocean to the outside that he now has access to freely. And you have to be cautious of the seam. It's honestly, that's frightening. It reminds me of a lot of the ways we saw Kansas City use Tyree Hill and how they got him into space and how Miami is currently using him, which again is the same coaching tree with Mike McDaniel. But man, it's really cool to see. They are getting him free releases to the outside and he is shredding corners.

They're getting him, you know, the ball over the middle of the field. They're getting the ball on the outside. They're finding ways to get him, like if you're a heavy zone team and you play cover two, the jets are going to find a way to get Garrett Wilson one on one of your safety. Yep. That's not a good day for you. Sorry. So I just wanted to note that. I know we've talked about Wilson a few times,

but I wanted to hit a little bit more schematically what they're doing to make that work. They're also feeding him some scheme throws as well, which I love it. It's a really mixed bag, though. He's getting the ball from the slot, getting the ball outside. They're using some creative scheme to get him free releases where he can utilize that just raw speed and athleticism. And then they're also, you know, getting him the ball on. created throws, like screens and whatnot.

So I just wanted to note that before we move on. I think the last game we're going to hit here is the Tampa Green Bay game, which we don't have to spend a lot of time on because it was me. It's, it went, I mean, honestly, it went exactly how I thought it would be going into this week.

Now, if you said that at the beginning of the season, I would have called you crazy. But like after two weeks of season, of seeing both of those offenses, this is about what I expected. Just. It's, Steve, it's crazy. I could watch an entire football game.

And my takeaway is that I feel bad for a seven-time Super Bowl champion. He was thrown to nobody. And that's how I felt. Nobody. Brashad Perriman and Scotty Miller and Cole Beasley off the trash heap. Like, guys, right out of his living room. And onto the playing field. And you could tell.

Homeboy was tripping over his feet like every other snap, bro. It was like, oh, Jalen Darden had the one catch. But it's just like, what is this? I don't forget what year it was. But Brady had a year like this in New England where Edelman got hurt, Gronk was hurt, and he was throwing to like. Oh, yeah. Brandon Lafell and Chris Hogan.

And it was just like, oh, my God. These wide receivers that like, it's, it. I feel like every week it was this wide receiver who it's like he came from the couch and now he's starting for the New England Patriots. Like what a story. And then he'd be out and then the next week it'd be the next guy in. Like they were playing with just like crazy combinations and it's happening again here. I got to feel like Scotty Miller's time in Tampa has to be coming to an end. He's gotten this opportunity so many times to thrive and just does it. In the moment he can't do it.

He can't rise to the occasion and perform. And it sucks for him because he's so freaking fast. I would put money that he's the top 10 fastest wide receiver in the league. Really? I would, yeah. He's that fast, but he cannot get off press. If he sees any contact whatsoever, he's a sunk ship. Like legitimately.

It sucks because that's an archetype of receiver that Brady has messed with so well in his career. Like, I mean, obviously Godwin is that. guy for him but like scotty miller have the chance to be that guy too but he like you said he just he drops a ton of passes he looks only he you know he does not she like terrible body control in my opinion like takes a lot takes a lot of hits like just looks frantic all over the place at times and if then like there's one thing that brady hates it's that you know a guy that that can't operate perfectly in structure. And Scotty Bellar is can't do that.

But, you know, just so many, like, bleh, receivers. Like, they're just trotting out this crazy lineup of guys that you forgot, like, you forgot we're in the NFL or rightfully forgot because they weren't in the NFL up until Monday of this week. Right. Like, or love last week. And any game you have to target Russell Gage 13 times and you've probably lost. Right.

Just saying. And that's, I don't mind Russell Gage as a player, but the idea for him was to be the third or fourth wide receiver. Right. Not a 13 target guy. I mean, geez. Yeah. And the run game still does not look to be all the way there for the box. It's not even close.

they were terrible this game. Yeah, like, Fernette was getting hit in the back. Like, I feel like he had no room to operate. Yep. When he did, like, on the couple of plays that he did, Fernett looked very good. Like, he looks really good in the run game when he has an opportunity. It's just that his opportunities are so few and far between.

He had a couple of one-yard runs that you're like, holy crap, that was awesome. Right. But it was like, oh, one-yard. Cool. And I know. I know. And then Green Bay, on the flip side, Green Bay's offense looked to be humming at the start.

Yep. Like I thought, okay, we might, like, this might be a better game than we anticipated. But again, another quarterback that just doesn't have the receiving talent there for him. No. Like both, like, I mean, not the Bucks. I take that back. The Bucs, like, they're just injuries. also the Bucks had a ton of fumble

they had like two or three fumbles this game that happened while they were driving the ball which like killed them killed their momentum a couple times but like it's injuries for the Buccaneers they have a wealth of receivers that they can use if they have guys available to them

but Green Bay again it's this thing where it's like why are we like I know Aaron Rogers is good but why Why don't we like, why does he not have receivers that are good alongside him? Like, why are we relying so heavily on Aaron Rogers to create everything? Instead of getting him guys that can create and all he has to do is put the ball in their hand and like get them the ball. Well, they have that guy in Watson, but he's missed most of camp now.

He finally got healthy, played in the game, dropped the 75 short pass, then got hurt again. Right. So he's way behind. Dubs looks good. I mean, yes. in a lot of ways he reminds me Devante Adams maybe even a touch more explosive than Adams is

which is kind of crazy to think about yeah but somehow Dubbs has learned how to get off press which was my number one knock on him coming out that's like the one thing that separated him from the tier where I think maybe he should have been in for me but I kind of dropped him a tier

as like I think I either had a late day two grade on him or early day three but regardless of that you know he he wasn't good at getting off press. Even at the senior bull, he was just getting nuked at the line of scrimmage. It was crazy. Now, all of a sudden, he looks good getting off press. His release package is developed, but we know Green Bay develops receivers.

I think long term, I'm actually not concerned with Watson, because I do think Watson's a stud. I'm going to stand on my evaluation of him. Dubs looks the part. He looks better than most fourth round picks do. He could be this year as Amon Ra, St. Brown. And then... Which a lot of people were not touting him to be Amman Ra, but they were touting him in training camp of like this is the guy that Rogers has chemistry with. This is the guy

Rogers believes in. This is like look out for him. Yeah. And Dubs does a lot of the things that Devante did already. He does those well already. Like those back shoulder balls, the crazy body control, you know, the ability to contort and, you know, hauling tough catches, you know, through contact down on the sideline, like stuff like that. Like, and precise routes too. Dubs runs precise routes. He's a really fast guy. I know he didn't run the best 40, but at the Senior Bowl, he had a couple plays where he hit over 21 miles an hour. That's lightning fast. Yeah, absolutely. So I do think that long term, man, dubs and Watson, as they start to develop, they could be great for Rogers. I just don't know if it will be this year, unfortunately.

I hope it is, but I don't know. I don't know if it will be. Lassard and Cobb are so mid. It's crazy. yeah and i pulled i just pulled it up and this is exactly what it felt like this game felt so dink and donkey yes like and it did tom brady averaged depth the target 5.6 yards erin rogers 4.6 yards that is so gross oh my gosh it's disgusting erin rogers still uncorked a couple deep balls but still 4.6 yards and 5.6 yards is like I know Tom Brady gets the ball out fast but that just shows how stunted their offense is without like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. They just have no one like they have nobody winning to you know let Brady get the ball deep. Aaron Rogers I mean I feel like his depth of target for this year has to be low.

Yes. And it is. Take a guess at what his average depth of target is right now for this through three games. I was going to guess seven, but I feel like you're going to tell me it's lower than that. It is 4.9 yards through three weeks. That is so disgusting. 4.9 average depth of target. And then he has an 11.7% deep throw rate.

So that means that Aaron Rogers is either just, dumping it down, throwing short routes, you know, doing whatever. Or he's throwing a deep ball. His check-percent, his checkdown percentage is only 10.7%. So he's not checking the ball down too much. It's they're running so many short routes. Yeah, because they're running spacing, slant flat, all curls. A lot of swing passes, some pop pass too in there.

Yeah, they're not really doing anything. They don't have anyone that can win one-on-one, though. Right. And I think that again, this is one of those things that we led the show with. Like, why has it felt more boring? Why has it felt like this season has not lived up? It's because you have a guy like Aaron Rogers throwing an average depth of target of 4.9 yards. Like, what is Aaron Rodger?

Like, we've known Aaron Rogers to be the guy that makes the big throw, fits it into the tight window, has exciting, out of structure plays. But instead, this year you have him. you know, like through three weeks, we have been a 4.9 average depth of target. That means that he's just getting the ball to his guys and letting him, like, you know, like hopefully you make something happen after the catch because his yards per attempt is 7.3 yards. So it's literally just like their offense is predicated right now on trying to get the ball into their guy's hands and let him go to work.

Yeah. Oh, man. It's gross stuff. So two Hall of Famers battling for most boring offensive performances that can have. And it's really not their fault. Brady's obviously dealing with crazy injuries. And Rogers is dealing with the fact that his, his, you know, all pro receiver left. And they didn't really do much to replace him in the, you know, immediate. Like for Brady, this was more of an aberration.

Like this was brought on because of injuries. They had to adjust how they played. And, you know, Brady working with three receivers that he doesn't have a ton of trust in, changes how Brady plays too, definitely. But this is the norm right now for Aaron Rogers. This is how this offense is running. Yes. And this might be how this offense runs through the year.

Hopefully when, you know, if and when Christian Watson comes back and is a little bit more consistently healthy, hopefully you start to see a little bit more of, you know, the deep balls and plays down field. and it's less like a moment and more like filtered into the game plan. But right now like this this Green Bay offense, which credit to them, like they're, you know, they're two and one. They've looked better. I mean, they played a terrible Chicago team.

And then they played an injured like for all intents and purposes, I think Tampa Bay should have won this game. But like this is, I mean, I think this is going to be kind of. of the norm for a while for Green Bay of just like let Aaron Rogers get the ball quickly to guys in space and just see what some of their athletes can do and then you know use that two-headed monster that you have in the backfield and wear defenses down 100% all right let's let's do this so we have a question from a listener that I want to get into to end the pod okay before we do that we really never get to preview the Thursday night game because we don't record until Friday. So we're usually reviewing it, but we never preview it. Usually it doesn't matter because that game sucks. This week, however, we get Miami-Cin-Sin-A-Sin-A.

Let's just spend five minutes tops talking about this really, really quick, because this is a premium match-up for a Thursday-night game. We've already spent some good time on Burrow and the Bengals. I want to talk a little bit about Miami's defense and how they match up in this game. Yep. I don't know if you watch Miami Buffalo, but Miami's defense won them in that game. 100%.

So backing up a little bit, Tuo gets hurt in that game. They didn't really get a chance to run the offense and take a ton of advantage of the depleted Buffalo secondary, which is a huge question mark, why they couldn't attack that more, but not the focus here. The focus is what Miami was able to do

in crucial moments against Josh Allen. So Josh Allen basically was moving the ball at will until he couldn't. It's the best way to say it. Miami got really creative with a lot of zero blitzes, flooding the line of scrimmage, and really just putting doubt in Josh Allen's mind. They did a lot of this on third down. So they were able to get the bills to third and six, third and seven a few times,

and it paid off tremendously. The dolphins got pastures performances from a lot of people that were really good. Javon Holland, your guy, one of them. They blitzed him a ton, and he was all over Josh Allen in that game. Melvin Ingram, another guy rushing the past are extraordinarily well, especially on semi-limited stamps. Christian Watkins from the interior had a good day. Trey Flowers, former lion and patriot, Prey Flowers, had a pretty good day. It was kind of crazy, though.

They were just throwing bodies at the light of scrimmage, flooding it, and hoping that their corners could hold up in man coverage. And that worked. They have really good corners. Yes, they do. between Xavier and Howard David Howard Byron Jones

and Nick Needham I think he played in the slot this week I think he did right I think so yeah needham played in the slot this week they've got Javon Holland also in there who can play in the slot

but is mostly a do-it-all safety Eric Rowe is a good player so their secondary is very good and with a secondary that skilled and a bunch of good athletes in the front seven I love the idea of just flooding the line of scrimmage against Burrow, with as bad as that offensive line is,

and just getting after it and hoping your main corners, you know. And I feel like that with how much that Joe Burrow has been pressured already this season and is pressured over his career, like Miami's, like, if as a listener you haven't watched Miami defense, there are a ton of fun to watch play because it just looks so chaotic. Like, whenever I watch that defense, I'm like, this has to be a nightmare for a quarterback to diagnose because they are constantly lining seven, eight guys up on the line of scrimmage all just like straight across. And then they, you know, sometimes they send it all. Sometimes they send five.

Sometimes it's just three and they bail a bunch of guys out. Like they make it hell for the quarterback. Yeah. And for a quarterback, like they had to play a little bit differently against. Baltimore for obvious reasons because, you know, Lamar Jackson escaping the pocket is like more of a threat and they needed, they needed guys firmly dropped back into coverage to defend against that a little bit more. But when, and I think they were able to get the jump on Josh Allen and stop that run game to the point where they were able to start unloading that just like eight man front, seven man front and just unleash him on him on him or bail out. But I feel like that's going to benefit the way they play defense is going to benefit them because Joe Burrow is going to have to do a lot of orchestrating at the line of scrimmage and directing and, you know, coordinating pass protection for an offensive line that has not looked that has not looked good. Obviously, we've talked about it extensively.

But like Miami has an opportunity to really, really bog down that Cincinnati offense by making them. making them diagnose their defense correctly. For sure. And Buffalo has a pretty good offensive line. Yeah, they do. Cincinnati does not. So this has been, and listen,

I honestly have no idea if it's going to work or not. But it is going to create for some really fun watching, hopefully. It's for sure backfired on them in, like last year. Shoot, it did in that game. I mean, Josh Allen hit it were 400 yards passing. Like they are such a boom and bust defense.

Yeah. But I love it. But it's so much fun to watch. It's so much fun to watch. Because they do. They just have like, they just have some like fun athletes. And they like, it's, it's, it's fun because they put their, they put their secondary in such like on an island plays. And they're just like, hopefully you guys can hold up because we're sending them.

And then like they're going at them. I mean, they blitz at, they blitz at a 36%, 36% rate. Yes. It's pretty good. I mean, that's pretty high. It's a ton of fun. It's funny because we talked about the issues with Chase so far. Like, this could backfire and this could be the day Chase gets open downfield and they finally connect because he's going to get one-on-one opportunities.

Just to callback, that's what happened with Kyle Pitts last year against Miami. Oh, geez, yes. So, like, it's 100% a chance because they put their corners in. in so many one-on-one man-to-man situations that it's, you know, it works against, it works against some guys that aren't as good, but there are the guys that are true number one receivers that can torch their defense, and this defense kind of can fall apart a little bit. Yep.

Could be a day of a lot of offensive scoring. I mean, we know Miami's capable of it. In his defense, I don't think matches. up well with Miami's offense at all. I don't think any defense does. That's why I was so surprised by Miami's dud last week. It doesn't match up well. And then that goes back to you still have Tua leading the offense.

That offense goes as Tua goes. Sure. For sure. All right, well, that's going to be fun to watch. We'll definitely do a deep dive review on the Friday podcast. Hopefully this is a turn in the season, in a turning point of more exciting prime time where we get to actually talk about exciting football instead of just maybe like lauding one player's performance as their team is wiping the floor

with the opposing team. Hopefully it's more of a back and forth, complete game where we're talking about both sides of the ball and it kind of amps up the excitement for this week and for this season. Yep. All right, let's end this thing, Steve, and I want to end it with the listener question. Yep. Send it. So he says, his name is Jared Irvin.

He's messaged me a few times about the pod. He's said very, very nice things about it, Steve. Thank you, Jared. And I think he's a loyal listener here. So he says, hey, Brett, I have a question for the next pod. Does the Malik Willis situation have similarities to how the Jalen Hertz scenario played out with the Eagles? I'm not comparing the two players, but would be curious to y'all's take on Willis and Tennessee. So, very quickly, I will say this, Jared.

Mike Comp for Willis actually was Jalen Hertz. Believe it or not. So I will compare the two players because I think they're very similar. I think there's a really interesting dichotomy between the two guys because there's a very good chance Malik Willis is more physically gifted than Jalen Hertz. I think he's a little bit better of an athlete, and I think his arm is otherworldly. It's like alien type stuff. I mean, you were probably one of the highest on Willis going into this draft than any other person I really saw out there.

Like you were very, very firmly on Malik Willis compared to a lot of people who, you know, didn't feel as strongly and were a little bit wishy-washy with him. That's true. And I've taken some heat for this because I, I, I, did think Willis was worthy of a top 10 selection in this draft. I do think NFL will rue the day that they let him slide of the third round. I'm pretty firm on that. But the big difference between Jalen Hertz and Malik Willis right now, they're actually comparing their personalities.

They're very similar guys. There's not a person in the world that will say a negative thing about Malik Willis and his character and the type of person he is. Everyone talks about his work ethic, you know, cliches galore. First guy in, last guy out. So I've got football guy, I've got no issues there. The biggest difference setting them apart

is the coaching that they've had their entire career so far. Jalen Hertz from high school all the way to Alabama with Sabin and his staff, all the way to Oklahoma, with Lincoln Riley and his staff. He has been coached by far superior coaches than Malik Willis has Hugh Free. or Gus Melzahn.

Okay, so a lot of... Yeah, yeah, a lot of deficiencies in Malik Willis's game right now don't surprise me because he hasn't been coached by good people or good coach. I'm not, I misspoke there. He hasn't been coached by good coaches. I have no idea if Hugh Freeze or Gus Melz on or good people or not. I don't know them personally. Anyways, yeah, that's a huge difference to me.

And so I think Hertz Coe's. take longer to develop because he's got some really bad habits he's got to work out i assume he mean willis there not hurts does it hurts yeah wow okay weird um yes sorry willis could take a lot longer to develop than hurts we've seen a pretty meteoric rise from hurts all the way from his last year at oklahoma or his only year oklahoma compared to where he was at alabama it's like each year he's gotten better yes willis could take a little longer um you know i'm not entire entire fairly sure. But I do think it's similar. If Tennessee keeps playing badly, you could see Willis get into more games and he could look poor as Jalen Hertz did when he first hit the field.

The question for me is, are they going to do what it takes to, you know, like, okay, let's just assume Malik Willis is good enough to push Tana Hill out of Tennessee. I'm not sure that's even true, but I have this hunch that it might be true. So let's just assume that's true for a second. Fast forward a year, Willis is the main quarterback going in. Maybe they throw a dart at a low level free agent, like a Mitch Trubisky or this year or a Marcus Mariotta, something like that. And it's just a really simple competition. I think Hertz had to compete with Gardner Minshu. That was the guy they brought in.

So somebody of that caliber. Yeah. I want to know if the Tennessee Titans will do what it takes to support him the way the Eagles have supported Jalen Hertz. because Tennessee's offensive line right now is terrible. Yep. It's getting worse. Loan's out for the season. Their time to pressure, Steve, is 1.9 seconds per dropback.

Less than two. Oh, my God. Yeah. And Tanna Hill is good about getting the ball out super quick, but you know who's not as Malik Willis. No. So some things that have to change there for him to find success with the current offensive line. Eagles, as we know, have a tremendous offensive line.

The Eagles have also surrounded Hertz with talent. They already had Goddard in the mix. They drafted Defontza Smith. Winton made a trade for ironically, A.J. Brown, former Titan. There's talent there. They bring in a guy like Zach Piscall who, not a great player, but he's a decent third receiver, giving them depth. They've got quez for the speed. I want to see that commitment to Malik Willis's development.

If they get that, I do think there are similarities in how this scenario will play out. I really do. If they don't commit to it, Malik Willis will probably play his best football. on another football team. Yes. And, I mean, you floated it. I don't know if you floated it on the pod, but we for sure talked about it.

Oh, we did. It was the Friday episode with John, where there's a scenario where at the end of this year, Tanna Hill's done in Tennessee, Malik Willis rises up, hopefully takes over, and then Tannahill goes back with Arthur Smith and at Lina Hill while they try and figure out what they're going to do at quarterback going forward for the future.

That is my hunch that is completely non-supported by any. Yeah, there's no insider info to say that that may or may not be true. It's just a, you know, just like lining up the stars type thing. Yeah, Malik Willis is like, he's an athlete and we've seen that this archetype of quarterback is becoming more like. people are developing them better. A lot of times when a guy like that came into the NFL in previous years, like seven to ten years ago,

a lot of the time it was try and force them into more of a structure offense and then watch as they as they kind of flame out because of decision making and, you know, things like that. But like the blueprint is there for a quarterback like him to develop. For sure. They've got to commit to it, though, or else it's not happening. Right. Yeah, they can't be wishy-washy.

They'd have to change the offense a little bit. They'd have to switch how they run a lot of things up. And you just would need better receivers because you need to give, you would need to give him a lot more easier, like, winnable throws that I think that with the receiving core they have now, they don't provide those as often as when they had like an a j brown in tennessee but i like i think that tanna hill's done in tennessee after this year yeah because i think that i think that they have to consider a shift into maybe rebuilding isn't the right word but retooling yeah that makes that team because right because right now this is

not like this is the worst team for abel's probably ever had they're coupled that with like they have some injuries that are that have taken away a couple of their better players and I just think that like they're going to have to look to retool and change this offense a little a little bit especially if they're going to bring in Malik Willis and not and move on from to Ryan Taney. Again there's no evidence to support that they're going to do that but I just think that in a year where like I said their talent level isn't as high as it was, you're seeing very, very clearly. And we all knew this. But you're getting the very, very definitive answer that Ryan Tannahill is not going to

carry you to anything. He's going to be, he's going to take you where the team can take you. And he's not going to elevate above that. Whereas Malik Willis has the traits and the talent to do that. Now it just comes. And then it would just come down to development. you said because he has a he has a longer way to go as far as like operating in structure operating within an offense and like developing that more structured aspect of his play he has farther to go

than jaylon hurts because jaylon hurts was very good at operating within structure in college because he had such good structure as well-structured offenses with talent around him that malik willis did not have at liberty and so he was forced to he was forced to get out and make a lot of plays on his own for sure do you know but just like you know it's kind of some of those plays where you get like it's it's almost like when you have a star in high school and it's like all right here's the play we're going to snap it to malick and then just like everybody run around malik go make a play like there's more structure to it than that but like there were times in that offense where it felt that way and jalen hurts did not have that

hardly at all in college and that's i think what helped him develop so well because he was able to focus on developing his out-of-structure play a little bit more and, like, his accuracy and some of that stuff because he knew he could step into a lot of structured offenses if he has the right talent around him. For sure. All right, Steve, I think we should get out of here. I'm hungry, man. Yeah, I am too. Jared, thanks for the question. Actually, before we go, Steve, two things I want to know. I'm very proud of myself. I didn't mention Traylon Berks once on this podcast, even when we did the Holy Ghost bit. And I didn't try to bait. you. Two, you know one thing we've never done on this pod? What's that? We've never had a strong

call to action. So I have two call to actions for you. If you don't already currently subscribe to fantasy points, please, please, please, at least check it out. Go to fantasy points.com and look at some of the options we have. We have a really cool data package coming out to that I'm sure all your current subscribers will be very happy about. But on top of that, Steve, we've never told the people where to find us. We're not strong salesmen. We're not in it to sell things. We're too focused on talking about the football.

Yeah. So you can find me at BG Whitefield on Twitter. Steve, do you want to throw out your Twitter? If you don't know it, I got it out here. I am at Call Me Steve-O-7. All lowercase, all one word. Yes. Pretty simple.

But at fantasy points, Like you get access to guys like Scott Barrett and Graham Barfield, guys who are legends in the industry. The guru, John Hanson. Like John Hansen, like guys that are legends in the industry, they all have kind of like, they set the tone. They give you so many insightful, awesome things to read data points, everything, things that either whether it's, you know, whether it's winning your fantasy league or just becoming more

knowledgeable about football, football situations and all of that. Fantasy Points has you covered. For sure. All right. We're going to get out of here. I am one of your hosts, Bro Whitefield. This is my co-host, Stephen O'Rourke, and we are out. Peace. 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.