Green Light with Chris Long - Saquon Barkley & Eagles Come Alive + Tua Goes Off | Chris Long Reactions

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Chris Long reacts to Saquon Barkley and the Philadelphia Eagles coming alive and dominating the New York Giants. Saquon ran early and often, finally getting a run longer than 20 yards, and Jalen Hurts, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert were all on the same page. Jaxson Dart and the Giants couldn't get things going, especially after Cam Skattebo went down with an injury in the first half. Around the league, Tua Tagovailoa bounced back from a horrible last two games and had a solid performance against a really good Atlanta Falcons defense, Drake Maye continued his dominance and the Denver Broncos and Dallas Cowboys delivered a great football game. Have some interesting takes, some codebreaks or just want to talk to the Green Light Crew? We want to hear from you. Call into the Green Light Hotline and give us your hottest takes, your biggest gripes and general thoughts. Day and night, this hotline is open. Green Light Hotline: ‪[phone]‬ Also, check out our paddling partners at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Appomattox River Company ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠to get your canoes, kayaks and paddleboards so you're set to hit the river this summer. Green Light's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where you can catch all the latest GL action: Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the show, everyone. Cowboy Reed's fired up about the Broncos. You know, he's just running around like a madman right now. We had to get the audio right. We good now? Okay. Nolan asked me what was worse, that slate or the Steelers uniforms. And I'm not qualified to say because I like the Steelers' uniforms.

I mean, everybody's got their kinks. I got a little, I like those uniforms. They're not perfect. The yellow lids, I don't know what else you would do, but the yellow lids aren't great. And, you know, by, you know, chain reaction, the damn Packers are in those awful, all whites. I know some people like them, but look closely. Yeah, not a good slate of football. One, one score game.

Just one. So far today. Which means tonight's got to be a banger. It just does. and honestly NFL you do that again I'm not going to do anything about it I'm just going to keep watching I'm not going to be real happy about it though because that was gross

what wasn't gross if you were a Broncos fan or you were an Eagles fan those are the two teams that had the big statement wins and the one in the fours in my opinion pretty good day for you pretty good day to be an Eagles fan Eagles kind of looking like they got on track found their run game ran duo like the third play of the game he's actually the second play game for like 65 yards got the double on the you know the doubles in the

backers lap he can't get over the top and you know you see something remember last week we talked about Denver attacking the perimeter with screens and that sort of stuff last week against the giants that was part of the game plan because the secondary does take bad angles and frankly I saw a lot of that today in the run game support players just not great obviously they're down some guys but I'm not going to rain on the Eagles parade with the run game because that looked a lot more like it. And I think Petulow's kind of figuring some things out. I'm not saying he's arrived or anything like that.

Just what a different game that was than the one two weeks ago, which just goes to show you. It's really hard to beat a team twice, especially when the other team is better than you in your division, especially inside of a month. And it felt like to me when the Giants beat the Eagles, There's a sentiment that they derived. We certainly kind of gave Jackson Dart his due after that game and said,

hey, God looks like a good football player. I still maintain he looks like good football player. He is a very young football player. But in this game, the Eagles just came to play. Eagles came to play flat out. I thought, let me get to my Eagles notes here. The run game starts everything, second play of the game, hitting that thing. They got in big personnel a lot more.

You know, in this football game, they were under center. A lot of tight ends on the field. I like that look for them. Obviously, part of it's out of necessity because AJ Brown's hurt or what have you. And they just looked a lot more at ease doing that. And, you know, something that I thought was great was, hey, Sequin, look more like himself, that sort of thing. But when he left the game with a hamstring, and hopefully that's no big deal,

I haven't really followed today, if you guys have heard anything about that. Was it growing? Leaves the game. Of course, like three short of the prop for carries. That's why you do yards, not carries, you big dummy. And then Biggsby was having to finish that game off and also was spelling him at different points of the game and looked really good.

I thought Bigsby looked the best he looked all season. I thought the run game in general looked the best that looked all season. I thought the defense did a great job of just harassing Jackson Dart. You know, getting that guy down as a challenge. You saw at one point, like Jay looks. Hunt, who's a great athlete, had a shot at him, rolling right, couldn't get him, but the

swarm mentality of that defense, so Jalen Carter getting his first sack on the season, dudes just hanging in there. And Vic, playing zone behind that defensive line. And, you know, in the last game, when they did not have, for much of the game, Quignan Mitchell, and did not have Jalen Carter because of the heel pregame, they played a lot more man. And in this game, it felt to me like they were a little bit less aggressive in that right, and the pass rush got after it, and they ended up winning the game. Now, a lot of the conversation here is going to be about the officiating. I'll get there in a second.

But the Giants man down to, who is it, Corey Black, I mean, they're throwing jump balls to Jahan Dotson and Scataboo getting hurt early in this game. Just wasn't their day. Don't think you're going to win the game if the calls go your way, but certainly some calls. you know, that some people might think are 50-50. Went the other way. I don't think the Giants had any chance in this game the way the Eagles came out and played today. Now, let's talk about the calls that you're wanting to hear me talk about.

I thought the Giants got robbed on the Tushfush. Certainly the game plays out a little bit differently in sequence if that changes, but the whistle was the whistle. And that's the problem. I see so many touch-pushes where the forward progress is, you know, three, four, five seconds. I understand the case the Giants fans would make that Thibodeau pulled that ball out. And I think he did. I think he did.

Didn't go their way. Now, the Slayton OPI, I see why that's called. I really do. And honestly, you know, I try to be boldly objective in these situations and not take the Eagle's side in every damn situation. situation, just so you know. I thought Slayton pushed off. There was some hand fighting going on. I think one thing that didn't help Slayton is that Slayton went to look for the ball. A little bit early, Quignan Mitchell slows down to try to track the ball, and at that point, the arm gets extended. I don't know that he was forcefully pushing him, but when a referee sees that extension,

he's going to call it. I saw at least in real time during the game looking at it from the far sideline where the TV cameras were, I did think it was a push-off, which is why I feel kind of gas-lit, logging on, which you should never do to kind of compare mental notes with people. It's amazing. It's like everybody's looking at the same picture, and they're all seeing something different, which tells you something. But I did look at it a few times, and I could certainly see how that call went their way. Now, you know, there wasn't off-sides. That probably was a false start in that game. And the dart arm thing, I got to go back and look at it more. Got to go back and look at it more.

But I guess the point I'm making is I'm not trying to prove a point either way. The officiating in the league is shitty. I don't know if it's getting worse. I say this a lot. And I don't think it's in any one direction. I've been pretty consistent that way. And when you watch other games, you kind of feel the same way. I think it's any given day who's going to get.

If there's five bad calls in a game. It's like I pick favorites. You know, I pick against spread every week with Macon and Steve, and I was up big, and then the last two, three weeks, I kind of suck. I've been three and two, two and three, whatever. And today suck, too. The whole Lamar Jackson thing kind of bit me in, no, not the Lamar Jackson thing, the Pennix thing bit me in the ass.

Fuck, gave out Atlanta earlier in the week. But the whole point is when there's such a small sample size, you get three, four bad calls in a game, it's kind of arbitrary who gets the edge. You know what I'm saying? You know, if one week the Eagles get three of them, you know, the next week, they're going to get two out of five or maybe one out of five. And that night their fans are going to go fucking nuts and vice versa the next week.

So, you know, I don't want to do that whole thing. I just think officiating has been really poor. And I know they have a really hard job to do out there. But I've said this before. It kind of feels like in our game now, our vantage point is better than ever. There's a million cameras. There's so many cameras. Will Reichert is hitting the cable twice in a single season.

Oh, whoops, NFL just radioed in and said, I can't say that. Shout out to Al Michaels. But like there's so many fucking cameras, we see everything. We see it better than the refs. And we have the advantage of looking at in retrospect. You know, because there's all types of calls that we see in real time think they're one way. And if we were the officials, we damn sure would have been wrong. You know what I'm saying?

And so, you know, I just think it's kind of uniformly bad. And I don't know what they've got to do to fix it because the vantage points are only going to improve. I heard Goodell talking about using AI to, like, improve officiating. I don't know where we're going, but just it should be better. So the Eagles got the win there. And the Broncos in the 4 p.m., you know, to add insult to injury if you're an NFCE person and you don't like the Eagles. You know, Dallas got smacked. And just this week, we were singing Dallas's praises talking about where they can go if they improve on defense through maybe a trade.

Well, then you hear Dallas is trying to get crowds. We were trying to get Hendrickson, and they're kind of told kick rocks. Well, maybe the crushing defeat that the Bengals suffered today would kind of encourage a trade that they're on the edge about. But depending on how this game goes Sunday night with the Steelers, they're really not out of it. the Ravens showed some fight today. But the point being, like, this is a team that was really looking for some edge rush support. Don't know if they'll get it in a really big way.

Miles Garrett had fucking five sacks today. They slamming his helmet at the end of the game. I know that he's the guy that inked that contract. So you're not supposed to feel sorry for him, but damn, it's hard for me to watch a rusher kind of rot away in a situation like that. And judging by, man, Miles Garrett with a helmet in his hand is a whole thing, isn't it? remember remember and then remember that he dropped his helmet the next year and uh tackle for the steelers just like somebody picked up uh he reached down to grab somebody else's helmet and the

steelers guys were like hey bro snap out of it he he was just trying to hand the helmet back to a guy but like he slammed the fuck out of his helmet today and uh you know on a day where we're talking about like other teams needing pass rush and you know that would be a blockbuster trade but the point is i don't know who's walking through that that door for dallas this is the worst their defense is going to look and the defense isn't very good anyways. Secondary is totally depleted. I mean, they looked awful. It was like 2x what the freaking giants were dealing with. There were safeties before this game. I think they were down to like the third or fourth safety. And by, you know, midway through the game, they don't have any more safeties, can't have any more

injuries. Just an ugly deal. And I thought more than anything, Dallas off a big win, where they played a lot of man last week. Couldn't do that this week. Bo Nix, extending plays, hard on rushers. When you're not getting home, you've got to drop more people because your defensive backs are kind of suspect because some of them are off the street. Some haven't played football before, right?

Like in the NFL. So you're rushing your ass off at altitude, huffing and puffing and bo next is just, he's baking a cake back there. And, you know, when they went verticals, like there was always somebody open. that he could throw the ball too. And I'm not taking away from Bo Nix.

I'm just saying that before I praise him because I thought the ball placement for him was really good today. You know, part of it is who you're playing against, but all you can do is make the fucking throw. You can't do any better than that. And he made the throws. And he made throws in the end zone

that were dimes. Like the one to Bryant was a beautiful ball. And the other thing about that is, on a day like today, good to see your rookie stepping up, you know, when you're Denver. I thought last week, the supporting cast let the offense down. You know, Bow Nixon included, but we talked about on

the perimeter a lot of screens that weren't blocked four well, you know, little detail things that they fucked up. Today it felt like, and I kind of wonder what Sean Peyton would, I mean, Sean Peyton knows the deal, but how the players would respond last week, big emotional game, right? Big comeback. You get a win, but it kind of like covers up a lot of your deficiencies, things you didn't do well. So you kind of escape a situation like that. and maybe you get a little fat and happy around the facility this week. Well, maybe it turned out that they were kind of overlooking the Giants in the first half looking forward to Dallas, right?

Because they played this game like they lost last week. And that's kind of how they should have been. And I think Sean Payton probably did a great job this week of setting a tone of like, I know y'all got away with it last week, but we did not fucking play well. and those guys came out this week and played really well. You know, DAC was under some pressure, made some poor throws, made some poor decisions. This was the most human this offense has looked in, honestly, since they played Chicago, which is a weird thing to say.

So hats off to Denver defense, and they did it down Certan for much of the game. You know, and they did it with Bo Nix throwing a pick almost immediately in the game. But Harvey, who carried a crack toss in the end zone early in the game, and then had the ball in the Wildcat, low red situation. By the way, you're definitely going to see him throw the football at some point this year, right? He was a college quarterback, came into college at Virginia as a quarterback, and then we let him go. He went somewhere else.

So, you know, seeing that, seeing Brian step up, really good, seeing that offensive line against a unit like that, it kind of highlights the power that those guys play with, minors leading through the B gap, that sort of thing. So just a really impressive day for them. They couldn't have played much better offensively. Really, they couldn't have. And for Dallas, you know, that secondary is in bad, bad shape.

You know, you want Iber Fluse to play, man. I don't know that he can, you know, in that situation. And they did a lot of it last week, but they played the commanders who were down multiple guys outside. So the thing where, you know, in Dallas in a game like this, you kind of had to know coming in, and I thought they'd be able to hang with Denver's defense a little bit better. You had to know you'd have to play a lot more close to perfect.

And that's fucked up to say. I didn't know that it would be that ugly defensively for Dallas, but those injuries popped up as the week went on. And, you know, if you're Dallas, you get in the red zone at the beginning of the game, you're seeing man coverage. you know, maybe try one of the linebackers, you know, or run the fucking ball in the end zone. And at the end of the half, you know, DAC gets greedy, throws the pick. There were just little moments where, you know, if they had done things a little bit better,

they might have been in this game. It kind of reminded me of the way that Indy put a lot of pressure on the Chargers last week, and the Chargers were always like two scores away, right? But the differences, the Chargers were actually able to put together some really nice drives. But Dallas just couldn't do that with regularity against this defense. And Riley Moss, feel for the dude. He just is in his hands are in the wrong place sometimes. Kind of got picked on a little bit today.

Great player. But, you know, he's used to the ball getting thrown at him because of who he plays opposite. And on a day like today against two very good wide receivers like that, you know, he was flagged a couple of times. And the Milton throw just deserves mention. That was a fucking BB. That was an amazing throw. So, and one more thing. Sean Payton last week talked about.

People said, hey, you know, his play calling sucked. The one thing that I thought he was last week was conservative in a lot of situations. In this game, they were a lot more aggressive. Now, a lot of that is because, you know, Dallas was down so many dudes in the back end. But it's a good look on them, being a little bit more aggressive. You know, they're certainly balanced, but they took shots and they went and got it. You know, this football season, Bet, MGM, wants to give you another chance at first touchdown. scores with BetMGM's second chance promotion.

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BetMGM. Make it legendary. You know, I just saw Scataboo, the injury was terrible. I mean, it just, that dude, I think whatever team you root for, you enjoy watching him play. He's just kind of got, he's got a magnetism to him. Plays really hard. Obviously, he's kind of a meat head, head button people and that sort of thing. but, you know, he's a football player. And to see him kind of go down like that, it was immediate.

He tapped that helmet very calmly, by the way. It's amazing what happens to you when you're in shock because his ankles fucking sideways. And that's another thing. When you're a young team that's kind of living off vibes, I'm not saying you're not executing, not doing a great job, but it was such a vibey couple weeks for them where, you know, you got young players, you know, making big plays, beating the Eagles. going to Denver, coming out hot and the whole thing.

And, you know, there's some back and forth between, you know, the Broncos, rushers and Jackson Dart. That injury really just deflating them. So it's tough to see for any football fan and certainly for Giants fans who have dealt with the neighbor's injury and now that. So Houston with a big win. And, you know, I said this on the show this week. I said, like, I really want to give these guys out.

it doesn't make much sense, but the line was tight. And Houston's a totally different team at home. You know, I think that's what happened is you got those rushers teeing off a little bit. I mean, I think Anderson and freaking – Yeah, Daniel Hunter fucking dominated in that game. But the problem is, you know, people look at that and say, they only had two sacks. Well, I think they probably accounted for about 1820 pressure.

between two of them. Just total studs. And they play faster on turf. They play faster at home. They played so poorly for anybody that stayed up till fucking 2 a.m. the other night, they played so poorly, I wanted to puke. And the way they played today, the way C.J. Shrod looked, and he staled some balls, but he looked really good in the pocket, possessed the football in the first half. I think we were looking at earlier. It had to be, you know, well over 20 minutes of time of possession, 24, 24 and a half minutes of time of possession.

Geez, that is a lot of yellow. Why aren't they wearing pants? Oh, it's the nude. They're nude. It's the nude pants. You know, the wide shot's not kind of these uniforms, but I like the, I like the, I do like the jerseys. So, yeah, I thought good day with Collins out to get Noel involved, you know, beautiful ball and the deep ball. Higgins, you had Hutchinson, who was, was, I mean, ripped that ball into him on third and seven.

in the red zone with pressure in his face. I thought it was encouraging to see that. It was a little confidence builder for them. They kind of had that a few weeks ago against Baltimore, buts, buts about it. Our good football team has been beating a lot of good football teams. If you're, D'Amico, you go in the locker room and you say, hey, guys, what we can look like every week.

Now, the caveat is every week that we play somebody who can't rush to pass her, because Stroud has been under attack. And today he wasn't even sacked. And, you know, like, I got to give the offensive line credit, but just not a great pass rush unit. Christian McCaffrey, though, eight yards at the half, 25 yards rushing on the day. Like, just a defensive win for Houston.

And the last little bit is I feel very good for the Jets. I feel very good for Justin Fields. With everything he went through this week, you know, You forget guys are, you know, I know guys are getting paid a lot of money and stuff, but you forget guys are kind of human beings about shit and hearing him talk about, you know, what the game meant to him after the game and watching him have to answer a question this week about, hey, do you hear your owner basically says that you're terrible? I mean, this for a guy that was kind of run out of Chicago, and maybe rightfully so,

but obviously the new quarterback doesn't fix everything for the Bears. Look at today. Justin Fields was not good enough in Chicago. He had his little stint in Pittsburgh, you know, where he gets his hopes up and then he's pulled for Russ and that sort of thing. And to end up in New York, it was a really, really tough draw. Now, making a lot of money doing it, but when the owner kind of calls you out,

that's pretty embarrassing shit. And, you know, for him today to come through and put up damn near 40 points on, I know it's the Bengals defense, and we'll look at it some more tonight. But just really impressive. And good for that coaching staff, too, because they've taken it on the chin a lot. Ironically, Aaron Glenn, who's coached his ass off on defense the last few weeks,

they damn near give up 40 points themselves, but the offense taking a turn and making it happen. When you're losing in the NFL and, you know, it feels like every week it's the same thing. I've been on teams like that. It can be very hopeless. It can affect your mental health. It can fuck you up good. And for those guys just to get one night where they don't feel like they're the worst fucking football players on the planet, which is just a terrible feeling. Good for them.

And especially good for Justin Fields. And hey, one more shout out. Anthony Weaver, I know that it was Kirk Cousins. I know that the Falcons now suddenly look hapless. And I know Tua played well and the offense played well. but Anthony Weaver did a really nice job today with Miami's defense. I think as a whole, like for a team like that to go on the road, they're about broke, right?

Like everybody's about to get fired. It's doom and gloom in a building like that for them to come up with a win like that. Again, nice job by that coaching staff. They were kind of on the brink. I still think they're on the brink. But it shows that players will play hard for Anthony Weaver, you know, like or for Mike. because it looked pretty hopeless this week.

So totally fucking terrible day of football. I'm going to need it to culminate with a Green Bay Packers win or I'm not going to sleep well tonight, if you know what I'm saying. So we come back tomorrow for the live show. I'll have a better handle on everything. But how about that Thursday night, though? the wire thing and then and then al michael's going rogue and he's the perfect guy to do it because who could give a fuck less than al michael's right honestly and they're like hey al you can't say that

and he's like okay no problem meanwhile the NFL just called and they said that that was an optical illusion um in the UK on the kick what else did he said he said some other shit he said Yeah, he's a bit. It was crazy. It was crazy. How Michaels has had it, bro. I don't blame him. I'm 40. I've had it. Fuck. I can't even imagine. What the fuck I'm going to be doing if I turn 80 at some point. All right, y'all. Um, and listen, dude, I can't, I can't finish this without saying this. You know, the Nick Mangold thing is crushing. It's absolutely crushing. People love that guy. I mean, watching Rex Ryan talk about him. And obviously with Doug Martin and everything happening last week, obviously two very different situations. But life is fucking hard, man. And the older you get, the more you realize that you look around and, you know,

people pass away and shit like that happens. And you should just check on your people, man. Check on your people in the case of like a Doug Martin. and be appreciative of every day because that Nick Mangold thing kind of came out of nowhere. I know that he was just asking for a kidney and that sort of thing, but I thought he had more time. I lost a teammate earlier this year, Brian Brayman, and that escalated real quickly.

And so, you know, it's just a rough, it's a rough year for that sort of thing. And it just feels like when you get older, you know, you see more of it, more of your peers going through stuff or, God forbid, passing away. So just a really terrible thing hearing about Nick Mangold. He was an incredible player and was a very nice man. I mean, I've got a chance to hang out with him at the Super Bowl just a couple of years ago. He was on Greenlight, doing a live show with us and just such a gentle, kind dude, but he was such a monster on the field.

And, you know, I can always tell after these things, like how it hurts teammates that play with guys. And so love up on your people. and, you know, just be appreciative every day you have, right? So we will see you tomorrow, 2 o'clock live show. Appreciate you.