NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - 2023 Week 13 Recap

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

In a room full of heroes - Dan Hanzus, Gregg Rosenthal, and Marc Sessler recap Week 13 of the 2023 NFL season. The heroes start the show by recapping the 49ers' statement win against the Eagles (02:03), the Lions getting back on track against the Saints (12:38) and the Texans ending the Broncos' winning streak (21:36). After the break, the guys run through Colts at Titans (30:02), Dolphins at Commanders (38:49), Browns at Rams (44:15), Falcons at Jets (51:22), Cardinals at Steelers (58:00), Chargers at Patriots (01:08:42), Panthers at Buccaneers (01:16:05) and finally Chiefs at Packers (01:25:19). Note: time codes approximate. NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. The Around the NFL podcast. Living in your hands. From the Chris Wesleying podcast studio. It's Around the NFL. The Week 13 flagship program. Wow, Dan Hans is here with Greg Rosenthal and Mark Sessler's heroes both.

And this is an interesting week. We had six teams on bye, and boys, I, there are many times where I miss living on the East Coast. It's days like today where I sit down and I turn on the 10 a.m. starts and up and down the eastern seaboard, just miserable weather, messing with everyone's lives, like destroying any semblance of having a fun day at the stadiums. And I think, okay, it's pretty nice out here. Yo, 100%. And I mean, you know, we got some weird weather suspended play, which happens to, it seemed to happen like. once a year whenever it's covering that game. And I believe it was you, Greg, that you're suddenly watching that game. An hour and a half later than all the other early slot games ending.

I mean, the Cardinal Steelers deserve to be a four and a half hour game. But yes, I'm always happy we're here on the West Coast. So we're not driving home either at their Sunday night football at 1230 at night. Yeah, that's true. So you had, yeah, multiple games in raining or downpour conditions. You had all the soggy fields, slippery fields, all those black pellets everywhere, like on the cleats and on their faces and their face mess. but and then you had all these backup quarterbacks oh and all these guys that can play so you got some things going on around the league but the one thing we did have one thing we knew we had in our back pocket in this week 13 were the eagles and niners and here's the good thing and we're going to get to the game and maybe it wasn't the barn burner we were expecting but we learned a lot about both teams and also greggy these guys hate each other and and I just get the feeling it was round one to set it up for a better one

to Philadelphia, we go. First and 10-9ers in the Philly 48, 30, looks left, now middle throws, caught. Broken tackle by Debo Samuel. No. He's from first on 30, 20, 15, 10, 5, touchdown. He is gone. San Francisco. What an absolute beast, Debo Samuel.

Oh, man, Greg Papa and Tim Ryan with the call, K-N-B-R-B-R. you know, there's so many stars on the Niners and superstars in the Niners. I have long thought Debo Samuel is one of those people. He's in my Superstar Club. And if you look at the Niners bump in the road this season, it neatly coincides with Debo Samuel out of the lineup. He is such a devastating jack of all trades. And we saw it again in Philadelphia where Samuel scored three touchdowns,

the star of a dominant offensive performance for Kyle Shanahan's offense, and a 42-19 win over the Eagles. That's just the second loss of the season for Philly. And that tightens up the top of the NFC picture considerably. Greg, the game started in one place. Yep. And then once San Francisco kind of got things calmed down, the whole game changed. Yeah, the first quarter was completely dominated by Philadelphia.

They had seven first downs to only six plays for the 49 to 124 yards to negative six. And then after that, the 49ers put together what was really one of the best offensive performances of the season by any team. And zooming out, I think it really brings into focus this matchup. 49ers offense versus Eagles defense specifically, because that's where I'm concerned about this Eagles team. Their linebackers have been poor all year. The safety's up and down. And Chanahan just put a big circle on those linebackers. And he kept putting them in conflict. And their tackling was poor. And it was Kiddle. And it was Sam and it was Iyuk, and it was purdy on some early third downs being very calm and making good

throws. And this Eagles defense, 17th and DVOA coming into today, to me, it is a season-long issue. And once again, they get out gained by 95 plus yards. That's five straight games that that's happened. That is wild. And it's like, this is a matchup situation too, because I'm with you. We're going to see these guys playing again. And for the Niners to start, We're going to be cheated. There's a confluence of these teams, though. As football fans, I want to feel like we get cheated if these teams somehow don't meet again

and hopefully the NFC title game. Or at the very least, the divisional plays. We got to get these guys back in the same. Yeah, you throw Dallas in there too. I mean, I just think to start the way they started and you're wondering, did the Eagles just have this team's number? And to turn around with these long

Shanahan-esque touchdown drives, six touchdowns in a row, clock chewing high yardage multi-play situations where it's like every game someone else steps up and plays the star for San Francisco and this version of Debo Samuel

when you have Trent Williams back in the lineup it just makes it impossible to figure out how to defend them right you mentioned it coincided with Debo being out and that's totally fair but Trent Williams is the guy I feel like he's a to me a first ballot type of Hall of Fame type guy who's still playing at a high

level and when they got going early and they were down six nothing and Philadelphia went over two in the red zone settling for field goes they did it by going left it was running left behind Trent Williams and I also think about a play to start the second half they did so well going into halftime a four minute drive that killed the clock didn't give Philadelphia a chance to score coming back and then a four minute drive out of halftime and there was just no pressure on Purdy for the most part on those throws and I think of a third and seven it to start that drive coming out of halftime, which is an out route to Ayuk to the opposite hash. And you don't think a Purdy in terms of his arm strength or anything, but that was a real deal

pro throw. He had a nice run in the red zone where he bounced off the tackler. It was a great day out of him, too. Like, it's pretty rare that, you know, a quarterback, it's 314 yards on 27 attempts, four touchdowns. And he does feel like the third or fourth person that that you talk about on this team. But it was really just perfect. Isn't that life for Purdy? Right. It's perfect for everyone. And Shield Capadia put that this was the second best EPA per drive performance by any team all year, which makes sense. They went six straight touchdowns and then finish the game after that. I got to give us a little bit of credit because I think as a group, we were kind of on this as a possibility with the Eagles living dangerously these last few weeks. And the Niners looking for that revenge, playing at a high level, being in a place where they kind of needed the win.

And there seemed like an opportunity for this. Mark, I think you locked it up. I did. Good job there. I almost came with you. Yeah. And I would have been safe in that spot too. And, you know, so you just got to,

you got to give the Niners a ton of credit. And they're, like I said, a lot of bad blood here between these two teams. We'll get into what happened with the director security in a little bit. But for them to put them on them that way with the six straight scores. And I think you can't win a game in the first quarter, but you can't lose one. You could let a game really sneak away. And you look at the way the game started.

Greg mentioned that Eagles went red zone, red zone field goal. field goal early. They also, uh, the Niners first position minus two yards, their second possession minus four yards. And they're facing a third and three in their third possession. And Purdy connects with kiddle to move the change. They're facing a third and one. A few plays later. It's pretty again. And that's where he was so common. Yeah, just kind of waiting for Debo to get open on a third and one is very good. He hits Samuel for 13 yards. And once they kind of got the crowd a little bit taken out of it and they got calm down, they just started rolling. I mean, that's a, that's a sign of a championship team. And we're not going to go back and

Eagles fans don't want to hear it. And the Niners fans, it wouldn't help them anyway. I kind of think the Niners were the team last year in the NFC and the way played out. The NFC title game was heartbreaking for them and their fan base. This was a, this was an announcement to the Eagles. Like, this is us at full strength. And you don't want to see us in January. Let's see what happens. Right. Because the 49ers defense got more pressure on Hertz than vice versa. Now, sometimes I feel like Hertz left the pocket when it was clean and just held it forever and wanted to make a play. And it was back to a little bit of what we saw from Hertz. I don't think their offense was bad today. They finished with 19 points, which is disappointing. But they moved the ball. They

didn't have a ton of possessions either. He almost had 300 yards, but no running game at all. And then Hertz just not feeling like comfortable going to his first read. Not a lot in rhythm for them. And so give Charvarius Ward and some of the other defensive backs credit for them. Yeah, and I think it's like it's so easy to, you know, magnify the Niners' offense and talk about how versatile they are and all their stars. But it's like their defensive front is growing more powerful. And like they gave up 2.6 yards per carry to an Eagles team that, you know, has been hot and cold on offense in some ways.

But they were able to lean on their ground game heavily early in the year. And today they couldn't at all. And I think to go do this in Philadelphia, which is one of the nastier places to play and come out from the West Coast, it's like this is a statement operation, by the Niners and stop telling me that Brock Purdy is so far down in this MVP race. It annoys me. It annoys because I don't know what else he needs to do.

I don't know what all he needs to do. Here's the thing. Here's the thing that's, and I'm with you. Fundamentally, I'm with you. Like, it needs he needs more credit. Also, like, I think Christian McCaffrey deserves real MVP, a real look. He had 133 yards in this game. We haven't even mentioned him yet. It was like, for him, that's a quiet. But he was

every time they kind of needed a play, he made a play. He had a couple runs where he just showed the best footwork of any running back in the league. Just a brilliant, brilliant offense. And you could tell when they had a nice sideline shot of Shanahan Purdy. I thought I you kind of bailed him out a little bit on the play, the short touchdown pass to get them going. And you saw, you saw, you know, Shannon, like, pump his fist on the sideline.

And, like, they were off and running. And it was just another show of Shanahan's might. So you know what? Let's do the, do this game on the NFL plus on Monday. Yeah. Game of the week. We've tilted towards, you know, the closest game of the week sometimes. This has a meaning in a very different way.

Now, would we do Game of the Week if Big Dom was not involved? Listen, Big Dom is someone who I think we need to have long conversations about. It was made clear to me from John Kelly that Big Dom, the director of security for the Eagles, is a folk hero in Philadelphia and apparently his skirmish with, who's a Dre Greenlaw. Yeah. That led to Greenlaw suspension. and the head of security for the Eagles being escorted from the side to off the sideline, which is funny, that I was a little bit worried.

I got to be honest with you that that was going to spark some type of magical moment. And then we were going to have to deal with Bradley Cooper jumping up and down and leading Dom chance and all that stuff. But it didn't happen that way. It didn't. And this was, you know, like, it's not the ironic nickname where they call a large, very large person tiny, like back in the 30s or 40s. That old move, yeah.

Yeah, he literally is just a giant guy, and they call him Big Dom, and they should. I'm not, now, he's been going to become, he would have become an even bigger folk here. People love him. Andy Reid loved him, too. He called him my big Italian son back in the day. Like, I think that was on Chris Law's podcast. I saw him tweet that out. And people loved him, but Big Dom ultimately, like, kind of skated in terms of the broadcast.

Like, let's calm down, Big Dom. I get why Kyle Shanahan was pretty far. fired up afterwards he he was i won't hear this big dom slander he does not on this show he does not need to be involved and nick syriani actually agreed and said like dom should not have uh been involved there either didn't approve of his actions and kind of baited like he did a good job baiting drake giland to getting ejected but i'm not sure he needed to be ejected when some big guy on the sideline is pointing a finger at his face like get out of there you know the eagles have problems after this game i feel like big dom's law on the list uh there it is

You're watching on YouTube. They've got to figure out how to stop a team, an elite team, because they have not been. And guess what? They get the, I think the Cowboys next week. And all of a sudden, everything's up for grabs. NFC is for the Eagles. And maybe the number one seed. Spicy.

It is delicious. All right. Let's see. Let's move on. Let's go to another game that looked like it was going to be a blowout, then got tight to the Superdome. Too tight end up for the lions. Golf takes, fakes the give, goes end around. Now they flip.

on the second back coming around. That is James and Williams. Inside the 15, inside the 10, darts into the end zone. Touchdown Detroit Lions. Oh. A little razzled dazzled at number nine, who did a swan dive into the end zone.

The Lions has extended their lead. You know, these are the great, that's Dan Miller, of course, and Lomas Brown of WXYT. These are all amazing athletes that we watch every Sunday. But sometimes you see a play, and you see a player and you're like,

oh, he looks different than the other guys. James and Williams, we see you, bud. I mean, he's sore through the air there. Barely, but not even just the sword, just the speed in which he cut through those 20 yards. He can't tell me he did not run 33 miles per hour on that. It was ridiculous. I swear to God, if he was not,

and Eric, if there's a way to track this down, if there was, if he is not above 21 miles per hour, I'm going to be sick to my stomach for the entire next-gen industry. Rightfully so. The Lions got that well-time TD from the, their first round mystery man. And another huge performance from Breakout, breakout tit on Sam Lipporta in a 3328 win over the Saints.

Mark, Detroit jumped ahead early, nearly let it slip away, but the ability to make big plays when it mattered, that was the difference. They did. They obviously, I think Detroit, and we've identified, there are certain weaknesses that they carry into their postseason journey.

But at the same time, it's exciting to see what you got from Jameson Williams and Sam Leporta is emerging. as like a rock solid star tight end who is a heap becoming a bigger and bigger part of their offense. They jumped out to a 21-0-0 lead in the first seven minutes. Derek Carr threw a terrible interception on the first offensive play of the game. Detroit popped it in a couple plays later.

He had a rough fumble in the fourth quarter, and that was when they were climbing back into this game. Derek Carr got whacked at one point, looked really banged up, left with a shoulder injury, a back injury. I got thrown into the concussion portal. And, you know, at one point is getting booed. I hope everyone's happy. Well, no, you know what?

Derek Cars is out of your life once and for all. I know. In question, portal. Well, it does sound dark. But like you... Protocol. You, like, have been defending him. And I had to say that at one point, like, with the Superdome, which was massively filled

with Lions fans. So it's like, that's telling me that a lot of Saints fans are about as frustrated as possible in selling their tickets. But he's getting booed relentlessly because it was a rough, like, the way this whole thing started, it was not a good look for Derek Carr. Like when Tayson, he was. hills on the field, they then boo when Carr comes back.

Yeah. Like, Carr was. It was. It was. And you just saw a look on his face on the sideline. But at one point he's getting lustily booed by this crowd and he'd hit 15 straight passes. And that first interception was just a drop. It was not on him, to be fair. Yeah, I just think the problem with, I think the whole thing with the whole experience

here is becoming, like the whole Saints team feels like they're floating away to me. And it starts with the coach. It's the quarterback situation. He's like the face of it and he's become the main target. And he absolutely. absolutely has played a role in what's happening here, Mark. And I'd love to hear more, although I'm still trying to wrap my head around next-gen stats report here that James and William reached a top speed of 20.7.

Okay, here's why, though, because you only get those, you only get those top speeds if you run for like 25 straight yards, you know what I mean? No one can get it in the first 15 yards. You know what I mean? You can't tell me you watch that play in real time. He's not going 60 miles an hour. I, yeah, it's, it's questionable. And when he jumped, and then the celebration, like, multi-part.

He only has a couple plays every week, but they're among the most exciting plays in the NFL. I love me some Jamison Williams right now. All right, let's watch some Jamison Williams post game. One-way play. We already know what's going on when Waymo gets the ball. Waymo. I just got to get it. Let's go.

Let's go. It's such a great guy. I got to start calling him Waymo. I thought it was Jamo. I thought it was Jima, but I guess he's Waymo. Mark, getting back to the game, and along the lines, what you're saying with Carr, and James Winston comes in, and they have a chance to steal this game, and then he's scattershotting the ball all over the place.

So just be careful Saints fans of who you're getting after, because it's a lot of people that aren't getting jobs. Well, they're not to some other parts, and I don't think, I think it's pretty clear to most Saints fans that James Winston's not going to give you a completely different experience. I thought this game mattered a lot for Jared Goff, who, was money when it mattered in the final couple of minutes. It was third and eight.

They're up 33 to 28 with two plus to go. And Goff hit Sam Leparta, beautiful throw. And then on that same drive on third and nine to ice this thing, to not allow the Saints back in when it was so close, hit Josh Reynolds. And it's like this was a game where Jared Goff returned to the player that we've seen, not critical mistakes down the stretch. And for the Lions, like had they somehow crumbled here,

we'd be asking a lot of questions. Now they're nine and three for the first time. the Super Bowl era. Right. A big win on the road. Wow. Like I expected. That's quite a stat.

9 and 3 for the first time in 57 years. The Lions. They're going to have a lot. It's been a dark organizational journey. They're going to have a lot of these little numbers. And this game kind of went like I thought where just there would be messiness. These two teams, the Lions defense is a problem enough that there's going to be messy moments. I was nervous, Greg.

You were nervous. You jumped on my lock, but you shouldn't have been nervous. because they always get it right in the end. Give it to us once. No, give it to us. The vibes are right. Give it to me again. I got to say one thing real quick.

I thought that was going to be a very annoying aspect of today and you guys barely even talked about it. So good, that was, you made the office more enjoyable. Why were you expecting? Just a lot of you guys. Like a block party? Like dozy doughing around the office. I'm not going to honk too much about the Saints losing here.

But that third nine you just mentioned, so the La Porta catch before that, nails. He has a chance, Leporta, to set the all-time record for yardage as a rookie. I mean, he went nine for 140 today. That's the record, I believe, for a single game for a rookie tight end. And now he's got a chance to break the season record. He's got a pretty good chance. I think he needs a couple hundred yards to go in the last five games. He's ridiculous. But that throw on third and nine to Reynolds, that play call and then Goff's execution of it was as gutsy to me as any fourth down call that Campbell's made all season.

That was as gutsy as going for on your own 32. Because the Saints had no timeouts there. The Cowboys were in a very similar spot, actually, on Thursday night when they went for that touchdown late, a little different situation. But if all the lines had to do there was run the ball and they get to punt with a minute left up a touchdown. And instead, they call a pass on third and nine.

And I'm thinking that's one of those plays where you tell Goff, Like if it's not there, just eat it and the clock will run and we have like a 95% chance to win. Yeah. And there's pressure early. Goff actually takes a hit on that play. He's moving left to get out of the way. It's like second reaction, Goff play. And when he throws that ball, I'm thinking, no, no, no, no, this is such a bad idea.

And he puts a dime on Reynolds while moving left. And Reynolds makes a great catch with it too and run after the catch to get the first out. That was a really high level play by Goff and Reynolds and a ton of guts by the coaching stuff. And a lot of trust. They really do trust Jared Goff an incredible amount in these bigs. And he's shown them outside of the past couple games where, you know, he deserves that trust. There was one moment in this, and it wasn't really like the, it wasn't the network's decision to do this. But, like, Kamara raced out of bounds and, like, ran into the legs of, like, a chain gang dude.

Yeah. And, like, the camera was sort of fixed. It was, like, the camera guy was sort of fixed on the whole situation. And it was uncomfortable to watch because it was just, like, not an athlete, but like a normal man. just like writhing on the ground in a way that like it was worse than stuff. It was like a catastrophic lower leg injury. It was a dislocated kneecap or something. Jeff Duncan of the Times Picayune reported that, yeah,

that he was at University Hospital in New Orleans. It's going to have surgery. It was uncomfortable to watch. We wish him well. When we've been on the games in London on the sideline, there's always this like underbelly of concern that like a football is going to hit me in the head or a player's going to smash in me and I'll just be killed.

Right. That would be in some ways a pathetic way to go. but also kind of cool. I mean, it would be pathetic. We're all just specks on this universe, and at least that would be a memorable death. It'd be pathetic. Oh, how's your buddy Mark doing?

Oh, died, killed on the sideline by Derek Henry in week five. Like, oh. He go on. Notable. He going. All right. Let's head to Houston, where the Texans were looking to keep their playoff push going,

and the Broncos were looking to keep a winning streak intact. Third and goal from the eight, Wilson in the gun one back P-Ride Wilson gets to snap Wilson chased Wilson escapes the sack

throws left side of the end zone it's intercepted yes The Texans have it Jimmy Ward yes Houston's gonna win

nine seconds to go yes Mark Van Damir and Andre Ware with a yes K-I-L-T Andre Ware that's awesome

yeah the fun and surprising Texans season has been defined by the play of wonder kin to QB, Bryce Young. Jakes, fighting asleep. CJ Stroud on Sunday, we were reminded of the huge gains made on the other side of the ball. Jimmy Ward's end zone I&T saved the day for the home team and a 22 win over the Broncos, whose winning streak comes to an end and the Texans keep themselves in the playoff mix.

Interesting game. All right. Let's start with the big injury news because it's, it's, it's, terrible because tank dell on the Texans uh from in close touchdown run he's blocking he gets rolled up on and he's got a broken leg and he's out for the year and he's going to injured reserve and uh it's hard to um understate um how important or overstate how important he is to this team and what he is meant to c j stroud and and what has been a kind of a historic rookie season when you have a quarterback having a historic rookie season there's usually a wingman

that's helping him make it happen. And that has very much been tanked out. So losing him for the balance of the season is devastating. That said, this is not a one-trick pony act, this offense. And on the day that they lose tankedell for the year, Nico Collins goes nine for one-nine and a touchdown. They still aren't getting anything from the running game. But Stroud was able to find a way.

And most importantly, as I said at the top here, it was the defense because you had, like I said, you had the interception to seal it. That was one of three picks by Russell Wilson. The other two were by Derek Stingley. Their number three overall picked two years ago. And Will Anderson had two sacks and two tackles for a loss. So you have all these guys when they were the worst team in the league the last few years. And they're starting to bank these high level draft picks.

It's really looking like they're hitting on these guys. And you're seeing with D'Amico Ryan's lead in the way progress on that side. And that makes the Texans dangerous. Yeah, I think, like, there's a connective DNA to what D.Mico Ryan's was able to do in San Francisco before he got this job, where there's player development. Like, Will Anderson's growth has, like, he was a fascinating player today and wreaking all sorts of havoc. Like, you bring in Jimmy Ward, who obviously, you know, they knew each other from San Francisco, and he's making big plays. And, like, Derek Stingley, it's like, it's the, yes, C.J. Stroud is the biggest story in Houston, but this defense can make a difference, too. and I kind of just like the way this whole team-building situation has gone for Texas pretty quickly.

Right. Jimmy Ward and Stingley, you look at when they were in the lineup and when they weren't, and that kind of coincides with them playing much better. Now, their offensive line has also gotten healthier. I think that's helped, too, in terms of the past protection for Stroud. But they are box office every week. That is now, and they showed a graphic during the game, like heartbreaking losses for the Texans that they had suffered their last three. losses were all heartbreaking. And I was looking at it. I'm thinking, well, that's true.

But like every time they win, it's a heartbreaking loss for the opponent. That is now eight straight games that have been decided by one score. And I'm just eyeballing them. And I think all of them were like the last drive, where like someone has the ball and they either win the game or they don't win the game with the ball in the last seconds. And that's just, it makes sense that they're a young team. And I think they got to be so excited about the Stingley-Anderson combo. As well said, Dan, the stick. Start it out. Thank you, Greg.

Yeah, so you have that side of things. And the reason, and again, they just lost their most important offensive player besides Stroud. So I'm not going to come down on the offense too hard, but they really struggled to put this game away. Third down, they were four for 16 in this game and it allowed Denver to hang around even on an imperfect day from their offense. So Russell Wilson, we just talked about him. Greg is pumping his fist right now because Wilson, after going. I didn't say a word. No interceptions during that five game winning.

streak he throws three interceptions in this game and it's kind of frustrating i know denver fans are feeling it because the interception that ends the game he makes a really athletic play to escape the rush and he act if he kind of sets himself a little bit and and takes an extra beat he probably doesn't throw that ball up for grabs because he had he had some time but i think he was rushing after uh the hurry and it led to the interception so that those uh turnovers were killer he also had a touchdown pass and a touchdown run and did move the offense, especially in the second half, but it wasn't enough. Arrow up on Cortland Sutton, by the way.

Oh, I feel like every week he's doing something amazing. And I was, I was, I think I had a tweet earlier today that he's really kind of arrived. But he had like a 1,200 yard season a few years ago. One of Wes's favorite players thought he was kind of an all pro that was buried on a team that it depressed his stats, even though he was just incredible. But he's kind of back now. That version of him, his back. He had his ninth touchdown touchdown catch of the season.

And so that was the positive Denver and Houston still in the playoff mix, but that was a big win for the Texas. And a big loss in the injury. Wilson on the ground last, you know, three or four weeks has been looking a little bit more like the old. Yeah, had a big fourth down pickup. They're six and six, Texans seven and five. We'll see if that tiebreaker ends up mattering, but even just the fact that the Texans get a game up and have a fairly favorable schedule moving forward as big. James Palmer pointed out, Russell Wilson, 3.8 yards per attempt. and play when they weren't doing play action

and, you know, 13 when it was. And I think that points out a little bit of what I've been just saying with Russell Wilson, which is that, like, there's still, like, kind of a limited offense. They can't just, like, drop back to pass and win. That's not what they're doing. It's like play action. It's like scheming up types of plays.

Yeah, I mean, nobody's pound on the table for MVP for Russ Wilson. No. There was, like, one Broncos fan, but you don't want to be. Well, you don't want to listen to closely to Broncos fans. Like, it was like, it's better. MVP is that. I don't know. Yes, I saw one. That feels slightly disconnected from reality.

I think he's probably a big wins as a QB stat guy would be my guess on that play. One last thing before we move on. We need this happen a couple of times that I saw in games I watch today, happened in the Meadowlands, too, against the Falcons when they blew a play dead on a strip of Trevor Simeon that would have went for a touchdown. They overturned it on review from an incomplete pass, but if they just let the play play out. It's a touchdown and a game icing touchdown for Atlanta. In this game, the Texans hit Samad JPM Ryan for no game. They took the ball away, ran it in for a TD, but officials ruled

forward progress and stopped. A replay showed it that that was, you could very easily have gone the other way on that. And it's just, you know, come on. Bad officiating day by the way. Slow down with these whistles. I feel like I was watching a lot of bad officiating in the games I watch today. I don't know about you guys. And the Texans first touchdown was after the Alex single Ruffing, which was pretty soft, like, where it was, that was a fourth down turnover that it kept the drive going because he, like, lightly pushed C.J. Stroud. Although, if I was Texans fans, I would love the fact that Stroud, like,

immediately got right back in his face. And that's why I was surprised, like, Singleton just got the penalty, and Stroud didn't at all, but it was good. I liked it. I would say if you're an official in its pouring rain, or it looked like it was hailing at one point down in Tampa, like, I think it'd be, you know, I would do a lesser job. Not a problem at NRG Stadium

If that's what it's Is it still energy? I don't know. They flipped that one so many times So you're saying They wouldn't try as hard If the weather was bad I don't know but to try as hard

It's like go do anything Just as good If it's freezing rain And you're like soaking wet It's your job, be professional You know what If this is open air It sounds like a terrible job to begin with

If this is open air And the rain is pouring in Oh we'd be professional But this is what we do It stays at a level Absolutely Of greatness All right let's take a break

And we will march on All right. Welcome back to around the NFL, the flagship program. Week 13. It's time now for the Sunday drive presented by the first ever Toyota Grand Highlander. It is Nick Shook time. So let's head to Nashville. 234 to go in overtime. Second down and goal at the four. Hens you out of the gun. Shot Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince, Which two is from in the end zone throws. Michael Pittman, touchdown. Touchdown Michael Pittman. Ball game. I.

Indy. Michael Pittman into the end zone from Gardner-Mitchew and the Pultz win. 31-28 in Nashville. Yes, sir. Oh, the bongos are out. Matt Taylor and Rick Van Tury with a call WF&I. Gardner Mee-N-Hoo through a four-yard touchdown. pass to Michael Pitman with 231 to play in overtime, allowing the Colts to escape Nashville

with a 31-28 win over the Titans. That's four straight wins for the Colts to keep him in the playoff race in the AFC. The Colts had needed that touchdown because Nick Folk booted a 46-yarder earlier in OT, but they would not be denied. Another man who will never be denied in all things, but especially in the gym. The pipe. Pipe. Pipe.

Pipe. Game turned on that block pun, didn't it? Yeah, a little bit. Got the Colts back in the game. Titans were got out to an early lead. Kind of had a little bit of control of the game. Colts couldn't do all that much offensively. You get the block pun.

Everything swings. Suddenly the Colts are stringing together. Good drive. They take the lead. They get it to overtime Titans fight back. This game had everything, guys. This game had pretty much every element you'll expect from an NFL game. There was all kinds of wackiness.

you had two former backups now starters playing pretty good football a classic meeting between the Colts and Titans this used to decide the division it's not going to decide the division this year but it was worthy of that type those types of stakes and Colts come away a winner and I don't know if you know but just just so you're certain in case the radio call didn't get it through to your head yeah he got it he got it yeah you can watch games all season and not I would imagine we won't see any other game where A punt is blocked twice in a row by the same team, which knocks out the punter and then brings in Nick Folk to punt. Who, by the way, punted fine.

Sure. Let's just save a roster spot and have Nick. Also, Tanahill as the holder. Yeah, he didn't have a great day. Which is that may have cost them because they missed the extra point with Tanahill, the laces. It's like, okay, can we calm down with the laces and hit an extra point? What do I know? You're out of your element, Donnie.

And then more importantly, in the same game that we have two straight block punts, we have a pick two, which is one of my favorite. favorite things that can possibly super underrated. Yeah. If this game did not involve the Colts Titans, it would absolutely be our game of the week. Maybe we should rethink it. I'm just saying there should there was a lot going out of this.

Yeah. Go ahead, Shucky. Yeah, they kind of are. I mean, Gardner Minchew had a strong day. You know, he didn't make any mistakes. He had a beautiful touchdown pass to Alec Pierce, who I think's kind of coming on as of late. He's a guy who I've kind of liked and you look at the receiving core and you think, well, they don't have all that much talent. But if a guy

like Pierce can produce like he did today, then suddenly they'll be much better and be more than just Michael Pittman, who also had a strong day. But it's, you know, it's a cold team that's hanging around, guys. I mean, we know who the Titans are. They went through a stretch last couple weeks where they couldn't move the ball at all. And it was nice to see Will Levis get some time to throw. And because Derek Henry found some success in the ground before he exited with an injury, you know, Levis was able to operate the offense. And you kind of see what Greg was all high on Levis for like a month ago or however long ago was like it's there. It is there. I totally see it. But once Henry leaves, that offense kind of shrinks, gives the Colts an opening.

And again, like I said, the Colts are hanging around. They're seven and five. They're probably the ugliest seven and five team in the league right now outside of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But then again, you have to take them seriously from here on out, especially when they find ways to win this game because for a while there, it looked like they were going to drop one to a division rival. And they're not going away if they play like this and if they're coached like this

because they've got the Bengals, Joe Burrow free Bengals next week, a Steelers team that's going to be playing with their backup quarterback, a Falcons team that's beatable, the Raiders who are beatable, and then that final game with the Texans. So it's like, we talked a lot about the Colts last week, and I hear it, like, they're not always exciting to watch, but I do think that Shane Stiking is a difference-making

type of coach, and I look at the overall job he's done this year. I'm really impressed, and you get this version of Gardner, Minch, you're not the one that's throwing three interceptions, and you can win. Right, that was his best throw of the game in overtime, and I want to give them credit because they're just clutch, they always

find a way here, and then I look at, like, The offense, I think, had a total of 14 yards on their last five possessions in the fourth quarter. So their offense did not, was not clutch in the fourth quarter, but their defense made just enough place to get them to overtime and then Minchu makes the play. And it's just like, and that the culture now 3 and O when Meenchu does not throw an interception, which, you know, he does do that a lot. So, but when he plays the clean version of a Meanshu game, it's just like the cults are a reminder. And I hope teams are learning from this in this very sloppy quarterback season.

of 2023. Your season doesn't have to be over because your starting quarterback got hurt. It doesn't have to be. Right. For many teams it is because they don't prioritize or invest in the position beyond the starter. And Minchu was out there for anybody. And the cult said, okay, we like having that guy behind our rookie. And when the rookie, rookie disappears at the end of September, they were still okay because the rookie was still figuring things out. So it wasn't even like you were going from up here to down here. And Minchu somehow has to find a balance. Like he came in playing, I mean, he's a lower level, he's a high backup, you know,

lower rung starter, but that's enough in a division like this and a team, like you're saying, credit to Stuyken and the whole operation, they've been able to win a lot of these like coin flip games and they're in the mix as a result. I mean, if you can have a fringe starter as your backup, you're in a different place than teams that, you know, with

a lack of creativity, stick someone behind your starter like in Cincinnati, I mean, if anything happened to Josh Allen and Buffalo, where it's like, your season is lost if you stick in a guy who's just a ham and egger. Yeah, but I think it also is kind of good ham and egg reference. They're indicative of how strong your coaching staff is because we've seen this happen over the last few years. And you've seen it in this season where, you know, a team like San Francisco in previous years had to go through a number of different quarterbacks and yet found a way to still be kind of competitive or this year with the Colts and how Shane Steichen is doing such a great job.

He'd be a coach of the year candidate if DeMico Ryan's didn't exist, I think. Or you look at the grounds and how they've had to go through all these things with with their quarterback situation. and Kevin Savancy's been up and down in that department, but yet they've stayed afloat. It really is the silver lining of a messy quarterback season is you get a better evaluation of how strong coaching staff is and how well they're equipped to handle adversity. And, you know, sometimes that could be a fun little.

He is a candidate. They invite three coaches to the NFL honors. Put them on the list. He's certainly got a chance to be one of those guys. Don't invite two coaches who aren't going to win. I don't know how that works. Maybe they don't. But they definitely announced the three.

Yeah, but if you don't invite, multiple coaches, then you've won't sold. You've got to give it a sense. I do like the idea of man, Shane Stegg is like, I could be coach of the year. If only Dimeco Rines didn't exist. It's like Q Josh Mankowitz on Dateline.

They got the core of an episode. They got the same record. They got the same record. And one's coaching with Minchu. So you might have a point. But it's one of those things for- I'm insinuating murder. Yeah. Everything goes right for them.

That you get two block puns. Jeffrey Simmons leaves with an injury. And Derek Henry leaves. with injury in the same game. On a day, Henry went over 100 with two scores. Hopefully he's going to be. Okay, Shuki, thank you, buddy. Easy one this week.

Hey, no more buys in a couple of weeks. So we're going to need you down the stretch. I'll be getting my back ready to carry the load or at least some sort of the load. You don't skip back there. No, I don't. I definitely don't. Shooki, thank you, buddy. And that was the Sunday Drive presented by Toyota.

Let's go places. Learn more at Toyota.com slash Grand Highlander. I think we had a good Thursday show, guys. I keep looking at some of the results and it's syncing up with our commentary going into these games. We looked at this Dolphins Commander's game and said, you know what?

These fish, it's been a while since they gave us some explosive fun. And it was explosive. Well, it's explosive fun for the dolphins and explosive something else for the commanders and their fans. Let's head to Landover. Gross.

Kill in motion. Those to the right. looking for him deep down the field and he got him what a movement by a hill to catch that football he was turned inside Joe the ball is hit throw it to the outside and he weeded his way back another bomb to a hill touchdown Jimmy Cephalo WBG with the call Tyreek Hill had two more touchdowns in five catches for a buck 57 that was basically in half of work and he and the Miami Dolphins absolutely ham it the Washington commanders 4515 to remain comfortably atop the AFC east and they're nine and three for the first time since 2001 how about that Gregie

this was it this was that a dominant Miami offense and of course if they're having a dominant day Tyreek Hill is all over yeah I wanted to be dazzled I said it's been a while since we had one of those two games and we got it and yes Tyree kill is ridiculous and that is such a great adjustment on the ball, though, where maybe they weren't on the same page exactly, and he gets the long touchdown. But Tua creates math problems with these receivers. Those two long touchdowns that he threw were in getting rid of the ball in 2.13 seconds and 2.25 seconds, which is so fast, and yet the ball is 50 yards down the field, and Hill is catching up to it. So it's timing. It's footwork. I think Tua's really improved at resetting and making the first

pass-fresh or missed. That wasn't maybe the case on those touchdowns, but there were many plays today where Washington actually did get pressure quickly, and he just does a little shoulder shake, or he moves to the side, and then he resets. It's very Tom Brady, just in terms of the pocket presence of just quickly moving and then making a nice throw. So I'm all aboard. The Tyreek Hill is the MVP right now. I've been saying that for a while. He's at 93 for 141 and 12, but this was absolutely also a great Tua performance and it was nice to see. We needed that. I mean, Tyree Kill is just doing this every

week. Part of it is the opponent. Washington has given up 105 points in three games. And while I think Sam Howell has been a visually intriguing player to watch, everything is falling apart and it's clear the coach is going to be gone, the GM

is going to be gone. I think Howell deserves a chance to stay as your future starter. I think he's shown a lot but he also like is not protected well walks into a lot of his own sacks and when you get the version of them throwing a pick six today lightning now i think it's a good sign that without jillips the dolphins like defense played another good game they got so much pressure on how this i thought howell played well in this game which will sound crazy because he had 127 yards and it's in an interception the interception to me is not on the quarterback it was a great read by andrew van ginkle like a play that they through film study he just read it uh and picked it off van der and Ginkle had a sack, a pick six, and almost blocked a pun. And then, yeah, Seeler and Ogba getting pressure. They were all over Howell, who had a couple rushing touchdowns. And he only took three sacks in this game.

This is one of those where he could have taken about eight sacks in this game. You can't give somebody a stat for almost doing something. I'm just saying it was. You can't include it amongst a pack of stats. I just mean like Van Ginkl was everywhere. And there was a moment like right after a pick six and a sack that he then almost blocked the punt. I was just like, wow, that's great. You know, I think we now have Ron Rivera.

He has now graduated to the Frank Reich Dead Man Walking Club. It's no longer a matter of if. It's a matter of when. And there is certainly a case to be made here. And everyone out there wants Eric Pianami to get a shot as a head coach with his resume to give Bienaimi, you know, four or five weeks.

I couldn't agree more. I don't think you let you just let him go. I think he's been a, he's been a big asset. See what happens with the team. See how they play with him and see how the offense operates with him kind of having more responsibility. Now, I might look smart if this happens on like tomorrow would not shock me, but they also just let go of the defensive coordinator. And that was kind of the bloodletting that I thought would take Rivera to the finish line.

And yet games like these make you think like, what is the point? They're also, you know, they're entering their by week too. So another reason why it could happen. Okay. It could. And there was like a moment. moment where Bianami was kind of like barking at, uh, how well on the side. I just don't know like it's not a good position for B enemy to be in either.

I don't think it helps anyone, uh, but yeah, Rivera's defense. The, the dolphins only had nine drives in this game and they put up 45 points. So it was rather that was rather efficient. And a chain came back, scored a couple times. They, you know, that was a kind of get right game. That was a nice. I just, I had not thought of it in roughly 25 years, but on, uh, NFL prime time and a yes, B.N. back in the 90s. Eric Bianimi was a running back. Oh, yeah. And Chris Berman would call him

sleeping with Bianemy. Oh, yeah. The Julia Roberts vehicle. One of his best. Yeah. There's a maller in techmobiles. No, sleeping with the enemy is that's a classic. Eric sleeping with the enemy. Good stuff. All right. Here we

go. We move forward because that's the only thing we can do. Across the sidewalk, Mark Sessler was not in attendance. maybe that was a good thing. Still has seven seconds to work with as they set up. From the 30, second and one, from the pocket. He deals down the seam.

Stroke it. Oh, that was pretty. Puka, Nakuwa, to the crib. Touchdown, L.A. To the crib. You know we love our guy. Davey Long with the call. Great guy.

Great announcer. Oh, yeah. Matthew Stafford threw three touchdown passes. And that guy, Pooka Nakua, the first ever Rams rookie wide receiver to cross 1,000 yards in a season. It's December 3rd. How about that? Wow. The Rams keep winning.

That's three in a row. Sneaky three game winning streak, 3619 over the Browns at SoFi mark. That final score is misleading because we are sitting next to each other. The Browns have a chance to tie this game. I believe in the fourth quarter. Yeah. And then what? Midway through down one, right?

Yeah. And you're one of the most reliable kickers in the league misses an extra point. And things go south from there. Dustin Hopkins. Dustin Hopkins. I think this feels like a lot of Browns games we're going to get down the stretch. Because you got, you had Joe Flacco, and I'll say one story for Cleveland is that I would not have been surprised if we got a version of Joe Flacko that literally was a statue, couldn't move. Any fumbles today?

No. No fumbles. Through the ball, he had a bad interception. See, if you protect the Stone Age pony, he can do some things. He also looked to me refreshed. I mean, I'm not saying he's going to, he's not relaxed. He's not going to, like, confuse anyone on the ground, but he didn't look like he looked to me last year with the Jets.

I thought he threw the ball outside of, you know, the one interception that was so costly, like, threw the ball really well at times. And, like, it's like, oh, well, if you had this version of a quarterback play, like, during this, like, you know, they've been on four of them and it's been real up and down, maybe they win some of these close games but this is an example of like Amari Cooper goes out with an injury

they've got very little else happening you know through the air and like they're they're a patchwork ground game without Nick Chubb and so it's like they're the amount of mistakes they can make and afford is so narrow

unless their defense has one of those games from Miles Garrett has three sacks and you're turning the ball over you're generating takeaways and they weren't doing that today and it's a couple weeks in a row where it's kind of just like concerned about the overall journey of this Browns team.

I feel like other AFC teams at the bottom of that like wildcard grid are starting to heat up. Like Cleveland's going in the other direction and I don't really think you can rely on Joe Flacco and what's left of this offense to save you. Well yeah, midway through the fourth quarter, which is crazy looking at the final score.

The Brown score touched on. They missed the extra point. But then they get a quick punt from the Rams. And Joe Flacco actually has the ball with 651 to go down. one point. And at that point, there were a lot of tweets. And I was half watching this game, too. There's a lot of drops. I thought Flacco was playing great. Like Tony Grossy's saying, this is the best game any quarterbacks played for the Browns this season. And then Flacco just forced one. He took a

shot that he shouldn't have taken. John Johnson intercepts it, returns it. And suddenly the Rams are rolling. But you can tell me more, Mark, that I was surprised to see the Rams rack up 400 yards almost in this game. And I think Stafford played well and Puka Nakua is great and they got the running game going late. But if you had just said, okay, this is an average defense they're playing.

Like they looked like an average defense based on the stats. Did they look like that? Yes. Yeah, because it wasn't the way that the Rams, the Rams did it a lot through the air. I mean, Nakua fried them. They don't have Denzel award

and that's two weeks in a row. Yeah. They really miss him. I think that if you look at Jim Schwartz's defenses historically, like they've shined when he's had like that shutdown corner and they're picking on other cornerbacks in this game. And, like, Nakua had 100 plus yards, because of that play right there,

but he had 100 plus yards in the first quarter. And then, like, it looked like he had a nasty injury. It was a rib injury, but came back in. So it's like, this is a gritty young guy who, like, when you don't get big numbers from Cooper Cup, Stafford can lean on him. And it's like they found different ways to beat a pretty banged-up Browns defense.

Browns didn't force a turnover. The Browns didn't have a sack. A lot of talk about the Browns is a story. defense that's kind of out the window now they've been normal for a few weeks now and i don't know if miles garrett's healthy or not but you know that's now a very quiet game and a big spot and on the other side of the ball you know joe flacco you know he's six foot six and he's got the howitzer even on the jets last year if you protected him he made some plays like he could so if they can block for him he cannot play behind a bad offensive line at this stage of his career but if they

block for him i'm sure he could keep this offense moving but the defense has to rediscover that spark or yeah, they're going to fade out of this very quickly. The Rams are interesting. This is their first, Greg, three-game winning streak since their Super Bowl season. Wow. And they're limiting teams. I think this is 4th Street. They've held opponents under 21 points.

The defense, which is so undermanned, gets better and better. Kobe Turner, a rookie had a really nice game. But I think this was a reminder. Flacco's old, for sure, 38 years old. But it's easy to forget. Matthew Stafford's 35. and he is just next freaking level. There was a play.

They hit a couple big plays to DeMarcus Robinson in the second half, and there was one where Kyron Williams is coming out of the back field on a wheel route, and Stafford turns his whole shoulder, and Williams is open, turns his whole shoulder to kind of look at him.

It doesn't even do a pump-fink, but just moves his feet and his shoulders to look at Kyron Williams, gets the safety to bite, and then just throws a total dime behind the safety on that touchdown to Nakuwa, that was an audible at the line of scrimmage. Sean McVeigh did not call that play.

And so Stafford's operating at a really, really high level, and that's why they're six and six. He still is the biggest reason to me that they're six and six. You know what, LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbarra both at this game. Oh, at the football game. The two highest scoring players in the history of basketball. But they're basketball players. I don't know.

Why would they be at the football game? It made no sense to me from that angle. They're not the same sport. Doesn't it seem like... We should have heard something by now. Oh, Eric. Come on. I mean, how much more time do I have to buy for you, bud?

I don't know why this is the... Football is completely different in basketball. I don't know why this is the drop. Of all the drops that have gotten the most use out of the year. There was something highly comical about, like, flying up the Rappaport connection. Like, Ian was your guy... Football's different from basketball.

See? That's an NFL insider saying that. So I, you know, I'm getting. But I agree. I think we all agree with you. So that's why I was surprised they were even at the football game. Yeah. I mean, I, it is illogical.

All right. Speaking of it logical, the Jets for the past 12 years. Well, 50. 12 to the medal ends. Boyle from under center here on second and nine. Play fake to Dowled and Cook. Boyle wants to hang one up for Garrett Wilson. And it's picked.

Jesse Bates has got another one. Fifth interception of the year for Jesse Bates, and like last week, he read it from center field. And Atlanta celebrates the pick by Bates with 26 seconds to go in the third. Yes, that right there might be the final throw of Tim Boyle's NFL career. Yes, another benefactor of the Aaron Rogers Scholarship Fund

bit the dust on Sunday. Befuddled by the Falcons defense in an ugly 13-8 win. For the NFC South leaders, Desmond Ritter, back in the lineup for the second game. He threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Mikol Pruitt in the second quarter. That was the only touchdown in the game. And that was the only thing that you would really need to beat the Jets who cannot score touchdowns. So the Falcons, they keep their spot top the NFC South.

However, man, if you want to talk yourself into the Falcons, go do it until you're blue. in the face, and I'm not going to take anything away from them. They won this game, but I still don't see it with this team, and they could not get the running game going. They really won because how inept the other side of the ball is here. They're a tough watch, and I'm looking at this drive chart that the

Jets had six drives that went for less than six yards. I mean, and they seem to look at like it every week, and I guess I'd ask you this, like, do you see the team continuing to splinter and fracture, or was this a little bit better? That's almost too exciting a fate for the Jets at this point. They just stink. They're a bad

team. They are now on their third quarterback. Trevor Simeon came in after that Boyle throw and was equally ineffective. It was so, and credit the Falcons defense. Okay, you got to because you know, you got to win games in the league. And when the Jets took the field for their last possession, they are down, uh, what are they down? They're down five points. And they have the ball with less than two minutes to play. They don't have any timeouts, but they have the ball. They just have to go down the field

and score a touchdown. There was no one watching this game. There was no one at MetLife Stadium that thought the Jets had any chance to go down the field. They had one completion on the drive to get near, I think, the 40-yard line. And then they just marched backwards and didn't even come close. So the Falcons, you know, as frustrating and up and down as their offense has been this season, and again, you would have liked to see their running game, you know, do better

in this game. Their defense has been at times pretty good this year. against the bad offense like the Jets and weather like this, it was miserable at the metal ends. They took advantage of their setup. Yeah, I think this is sometimes I think the narrative has been played up too much

that the Jets defense is just holding on, holding on, holding on. Some of those games, they haven't been, you know, pristine. This game, you give up 194 yards. You give up three yards per play. You hold the Falcons running attack, which was outstanding last week,

to 90 yards. You keep giving your offense a chance after chance after chance. The Jets offense had seven possessions in the second half. They did everything humanly possible. This was kind of the stereotypical Jets game that we've been talking about all years. And now they have the fewest touchdowns of any team through 12 games in 30 years. And I saw this stat from, whoa, from it was, I think it was on true media.

I forget who tweeted out. I apologize. But two of the top five worst games of off target. throws from quarterback. So they measure how many throws did you have in the game that gave your receiver no chance to even make the catch? Tim Boyle in this game was, I think, third worst all season. And Trevor Simeon was fifth worst. So it was like, they can't find a quarterback who could just throw the ball in the, and I know there was bad weather, but it's like Ritter wasn't on that list. As I will do on these Sundays this season, because this has been, honestly,

and there have been so many, but in a lot of ways, the most frustrating worst jet season ever, of the Rogers side of things. And maybe if there's any positive to this, this almost certainly should take Aaron Rogers out of play trying to force his way back on the field because they are essentially eliminated at this point. Four and eight. I heard there were Zach Wilson apologists in my mentions being like,

oh, and you wanted, and you wanted Zach Wilson out of the lineup. Well, yeah, it didn't work, but it was always a Hail Mary to see if one of these guys could provide a spark. Neither could. And now you have Bob Sala, who has completely been stripped of any dig,

up on the press on the day of saying, oh, you know, we might be turning to another quarterback next week. And again, it didn't have to be over after week one. Maybe the Super Bowl dreams had to be over. But you could have still been competitive this year if you went out and got a real quarterback. You didn't. And like I said, you get what you deserve.

So another gruesome Sunday at the Meadowlands. And the thing I worry about spinning forward now is, and I've seen it before, they got some really talented. It's a top heavy roster for the Jets. a lot of talented young guys that are living through a gruesome season after a horrible ending to last season. And it's just bad energy and bad vibes. And that leads to negative talk and guys maybe not wanted to be in the building anymore. And they're seeing what's going on elsewhere in the league where people are having fun and winning games.

It's gotten to that place for the Jets. So I don't know how much else needs to be said about this game. The Falcons took care of business, but I wasn't overly impressed by them. It was like a mediocre team against a team that is completely imploded and the mediocre team came out ahead. Yeah, I feel really ultimately incorrect about what I thought the Falcons would be. And they're just the middle of the road team in a terrible division. They're going to get an extra game in January that I don't need to watch.

Maybe, maybe. Well, they're six and six. They're in that world. They're six and six. So that gives them a one game lead over the Saints and the Bucks. Hopefully it's only one NFC South team to sneak in. although if the, you know, Falcons are at 6 and 6. They're one of four teams.

We just mentioned the Rams that are at 6 and 6. It might turn into 5. It's a 6 and 6. God help us. We get two teams from that Southern Division. Probably won't happen. Probably won't happen. A.J. Terrell got hurt in this game, by the way.

Their best defensive player. After losing Grady Jarrett, you know, they need him back. All right. Let's see. Let's see. Let us move to, you're dying. With anticipation, aren't you? Let's move to Pittsburgh, where the Steelers are looking to continue their quest, 12 and 5.

Third down on a yard on the nine. Three tight ends, Murray under center, Connor behind him. One receiver to the right. They hand it off, Connor to the left. First down, Connor dies for the end zone. Touchdown. James Connor with two scores in the welcome back party in Pittsburgh. Oh, the Cardinals just broke out the black and blue brigade, baby.

Light up and suck the beating heart. Metaphorically speaking of your opponent. Whoa. Put that at the top. He's one before, too. Clip it. And I know, Eric, you know, when we're saying this, do we have a folder of the top calls of the year?

Yeah, I have a folder. because once again Ron Wolfley is announcing this is my competition to lose I like that he clarified metaphorically speaking right James Connor

the former Steeler ran for a buck five and two touchdowns including the game icer and the Cardinals beat the Steelers 2410 at the field formerly known as Heinz it's their first win in Pittsburgh since the summer of love Mark

which was 1969. Well, it depends who you are, but yeah. That's correct. And Gregie, I mean, awesome. Come on now. Steelers, we can't,

we can't be December and we're losing games to the tank and cards. We can't. For a game that was delayed by lightning multiple times in Pittsburgh in December, come back to us, Mother Nature.

It's a high desert team flying across the country. They're just looking to get this game over with. Right. And at one point was 24 to 3. It was highly entertaining and surprising. Sometimes you watch a game and you're just not expecting it to go a certain way. And late in the second quarter of this game, it was going how we expected. The Steelers had outgained the Cardinals at that point, 161 to 36. And then a two-play sequence on the goal line changed everything. Kenny Pickett scrambled, trying to score at the four.

He got to the one yard line. He hurt his ankle. We're now hearing that it's a significant injury, according to Jerry Dulac, and that he just said not good, and that he'll miss some time, extended time. So if it's an ankle injury. He's ducked serious injuries. He seems like he's getting hurt every few weeks. And he takes a lot of big hits.

So that sounds like a multiple week injury. In comes Trubisky. He hands it off to Najee Harris. It's 3-3 at the time, even though the Steelers have totally dominated. They hand it to Harris. He gets stoned at the one. Well, at least he got the Steelers defense backed up or playing against the Cardinals. We haven't done anything backed up.

Kyler Murray leads one of the most epic drives of the year. 15 plays, 99 yards for a touchdown. And you know what? Kyler Murray played fantastic the rest of the game. So did James Connor. And they kind of dominated the second half of this game. Trey McBride went wild. The second year tied on, eight for 89.

And a touchdown, he dominated that that 99-yard drive. And I was just floored by how much this game changed in that sequence. That 15-play touchdown drive was Arizona's longest March since 2015. You know what else is? It's the longest march in NFL history. I mean, yards-wise. You can't top it. It's a tie to a lot, bunch of them.

Cannot top it. Can't beat it. I have a weird stat from this game. Weirder than what Greg just said, because that was weird. I'd say it's less trenchant. Okay. Kyler Murray at 5.10 and a quarter inches to Ron Deal Moore, who's 5-7, their touchdown combination, is the shortest duo to connect for a touchdown since Pard Pierce, who was 5-5 through a touchdown to Dutch Sternaman, who was 5-foot-8 on the 1920 Decatur Staley's. I think it was football. Wow.

That's a different sport back then. That's pretty good. That came from Adam Harstead. And that was one of my favorite plays and throws of the week and they actually called it back because of a holding call. But he has thrown touchdowns to Rondale more in the past, I believe. So that would still be a true statement. Unless one of them was much taller when that happened. But yeah, that was, Kyler, you look at the box score

and you see 145 yards on 23 attempts in a touchdown. You think, okay, it was good game, nothing crazy. But he had two of the best throws I saw a week. one would have been a 60-yard plate of Moore who dropped it and the other was like a 40-yard touchdown to Moore where Moore made a great plate. It was a great throw on the run and it ends up getting

called back. It was very confusing because they never showed flag on the broadcast. Suddenly they just are lining up again but wow. Ruckus asleep at the wheel. A little James Connor revenge game in Pittsburgh. It was fun. How about Mike Tomlin who's got to be I mean we know our boy Mike T

the aviators. He had to be furious with his Steelers laying an egg against the cards. Let's listen. You know, that was a horrible day at the office. We didn't do much right in that game to be quite honest with you. So we got to own that. Obviously starting first and foremost with me, just losing football. A lot of it was like bad snaps. He called a JV. He said it was a JV performance. Had a lot of bad penalties. Yeah, they had a lot of big penalties, nine for 77, and they're usually one of the least penalized teams. They had, like, three different bad snaps.

So you'll see in the box score that Trubisky and Pickett both had fumbles, but those were the bad snaps. They lost one. So they set up a short field. Like, the Cardinals touchdowns were often, other than the 99-yard one, were on short fields. And, yeah, it was just sloppy. Trubisky wasn't great, but he took a couple shots.

He wasn't, he wasn't a disaster. It was just, they got down fast in a hurry, and J.J. Watt went out with an injury. He did say after the game, J.J. Watt, or T. sorry, that he's fine and he'll be playing on Thursday. You know, I didn't, I don't want to be that guy because you guys were excited about it. But I just, I couldn't get on board with this Pittsburgh offense turning the corner talk this week. And then this game happens and I have to watch it. But it's just like, even when they were putting up more yards, they still weren't scoring points.

And once again, they can't, you can't score. Well, I think it was a reminder. Their running game was working great until the moment they got stuffed on the goal line. But when you suddenly get down to touchdowns, like, that kind of went out the window. Well, that's so-called explosion happened against the Bengals team with zero offense right now

and the defense of Canada is good as you thought it was. And it included again 16 points, as Dan pointed out. Back to normal. And yeah, this guy, this guy McBride, who again, for the 17 people like myself who watched all or nothing, and Trey McBride was featured in. Or no, it's hard knocks in season.

Very likable guy who had very little role last year. I think he is their leading receiver for the season now, Dan, which maybe is not a great thing. But he's on pace for over 800 yards. That's pretty big time for a tight end. Let's add some weapons in the off season. Nice hands. Mark, we got to get 12 and 5 now,

we've got to be Patriots at Indy versus Cyncy, at Seahawks, at Ravens. Need them all. Yeah, it's not going to happen. And the Cardinals, need them all. It's not happening. Thank you, Cardinals, for winning this game

and helping out the tank-a-fond exploits of the Patriots here. Let's take a break. And then we'll hit those patrons. Good lead in. I just think we got something here. That stink. Welcome back to around the NFL, the flagship show. Hey, I was thinking,

I was thinking because I came into the studio before we started recording, came in a little hot, came in thinking, you know, if the NFL ever, like, invested in, some type of promotional campaign for our show. It hasn't really happened yet, but it doesn't mean it can happen. You know, they started to flex our financial might, what, $15 billion company. Yeah. All of a sudden, they start running ads on Sunday for around the other company.

Yeah, that would be fun. Yeah. I'm sure they'll get to that soon. So I just had an idea that popped into my head exterior, two dads at a playground in a park. Okay. Okay. And then so dad one's like, oh, man, it's so hard to keep up with everything going on in this world,

especially in the NFL, you know, because my wife is dead. And then the other guy comes in, and their kids are playing in the background. And he's like, well, I got something for you. And the other guy's like, oh, a new wife? He's like, no, I have the around the NFL podcast. And then the guy with the dead wife goes, I don't need another show about X's and O's of the game. And then the other guy goes,

nah, this show's a little more than just about. the X's and O's. End of commercial. I think it also could have different versions where like it's all the same except his last line is different and it's

like actually these guys have a lot of fun too. That's good. You know what I mean? And so it's you're building and building different variations. It's unclear how the wife perished. Well I was going to say you could have a last shot of him being like, well, off to the cemetery. I mean, that seems like a downer.

Seems like a downer. I think our show would mask over a loss like that. But here's the thing. It's like... That would be, that would get people talking. Yeah. Yeah. They take their jobs really seriously,

but they don't take themselves too seriously. Oh, yeah. These guys love ball, but it's not just about the ball. They have fun. Very organic conversation. Yeah. It's like your friends with them.

These are like the three buddies in the bar. especially if you're from northern Scotland there's Scotland coming up again on the show great country if anyone's listening from the ad department just that was a freebie

why have they never invested even a penny on our show I've done the slogans before I've never heard anything anything from the third floor maybe that's for the best all right let's head to

Foxborough where the bizarre misery continued for Greg's Patriots Herbert to throw. Has a man, Erickson, ends the game. Alex Erickson. When the game demanded excellence, Erickson emerges. Kudos to Kellyn Moore. Do not shrink when the lights are the brightest.

He puts the ball in his most valuable weapons hands, and Justin Herbert delivers the victory. Put that on the list. That's pretty good. You got a chance to work with money for a few years on power angles. The man's got a keen sense of humor and a dry wit. You could hear the sarcasm pulsing through that call. And again, also, if you're going to put any other guy from San Diego, too,

if you're going to take money out of Seal Beach where he's doing his surfing at 6 a.m. And you're going to put him on a plane and send up to New England in December for this nothing burger of a game, at least get a W Chargers. And they do. Because Cameron Dicker made 2.38-yard field goals. Hunter J.K. Scott. Oh, he was pinning the pads inside the 20 all day, seven times in the cold and rain. And Herbert picked up that late completion, Mark Sessler.

6-0, the final. Whoa. This was the worst football game I've ever watched. Is it? Wow. 6-0, 2 field goal, too short. Short field goals, yeah, that's... I'd say from a distance,

I'd kind of be into that kind of a game because it stands out is something very unusual. It's a cess dog type of game, you're right. Unwatchable. How, so Bailey Zappy is in there, Yon. Is he worse than Mack Jones? I think it's hard to detect who is worse

because there's also nothing around them. They lost from Andre Stevenson with an ankle injury pretty early in this, and that's really all they seem to have. I thought Zappi's day was characterized by a pretty great deep shot in the third quarter. They're trailing 6-0. Horrible drop by Taekwon Thornton.

It's like they just can't get anything done. The Patriots defense looked good because the Chargers... Six points. The Chargers are spiraling a little on offense. They cannot run the ball. They have no balance. The Patriots, this is a wacky stat.

They are the first team to lose three straight games despite allowing 10 or fewer points in those three games since go back to 19. 1938 to the Chicago Cardinals. Every other team this year that has allowed fewer than 10 or fewer points is 53 and 0. This offense is so bad.

Yeah, this offense is so bad. They're so unwatchable. And yet, I kind of think, I mean, I guess we don't know where anyone, where Belichick will be after all this. It's like what they did last year by, or last week, by, you know, I think overtly missing that final field goal.

I mean, they didn't try to miss. I don't know. I do know. They weren't playing for the win. That remains, like, the jury is out, in my opinion on that one. And then missed the kick. Right. That was drastic.

I mean, it's kind of working out perfectly. They're so bad that they're probably going to guess snag the number one or number two. How about this? I'll take it a step further. Everyone's connecting Bell check to the Chargers. I don't know whether there's actual logic to it. Well, there's logic, but actual smoke to it or if there's fire to it or what. But not only did you lose again and it's remarkable how badly the season has gone.

I never thought it could get this. bad for Bill Belichick and New England. Because he, no. And I'm not, I don't even want to go down the road of like, if he's really the greatest coach of all time, how could this be happening? Because there's a lot of things going on here. But like, you know, he also made the Chargers look bad again

in its own way. So it's another nail in the coffin of Brandon Staley, despite getting the win in a way. So the conspiracy theories continue. Yeah, I would, to unfurl. Wow. Staley's defense just pitched the shut out. No, so that's a thing. It's not all negative because I, like, I'm losing hope in their offense.

Quentin Johnson, another terrible drop today. Oh, that was awful. I mean, it's happening every week, so I don't know if there's no new story there, but Khalil Mack had two more sacks. He leads the NFL with 15 sacks right now. When I saw that on Twitter, I was thinking to myself,

okay, we know he had that insane game when he had seven. So that's always going to juice it. But he has a chance to challenge for the all-time sack record. Khalil Mack, he's not young. He's not a 23. Yeah. Like, that could happen. He certainly could challenge for a 20-sack season,

which only about, what, 20 guys or whatever have done? All he's got to do is play Zappi and Aiden O'Connell every week, and he'll get it done because Zappi, the little I watch, was just holding onto the ball forever on some of those plays. But this still, 15 sacks. No, still. He has been, December 3rd. He has been fantastic this year.

The thing that gets me, and it happened these last two weeks with this team, is Belichick has spent more money and more time, and he's so worried about the details, and he invests in all these special teams-only players. And their special teams are terrible. They're bottom five in DVOA. Their kicker who they drafted and got rid of focus, terrible.

And then every other time I looked at this game, you got Bryce Berenger, who's one of the worst punters in the league. Bryce Berenger, who's another rookie punter, who they also drafted. They drafted a punter. And the kicker's no great shakes. And he's terrible.

And like the difference in punting in this game. And the kicker, like, it's just, if you've lost that with Belichick, I know the defense has been playing well. Yeah. And they have been. They have. It's still not good enough.

Maybe we could save this conversation. But how is it, how is Bill Belichick presiding over something this truly dreadful? How has this happened? How could it happen? Well, I think first of all. I think he's, he's, he's making people in the same place and he has no checks on his power. And the few people that maybe not had checks on his power, but would, you know, answer to him or like have some power in the organization. They're all long gone.

Nick Casario, he's long gone. Like, they're all... Tom Brady's long gone, of course, as well. He's been a bad GM for a long time. Yes, let's hear from Bill Belchuk. Awkward press conferences are the norm. And now, you know, he's forced to answer these questions about his own job security.

Bill, do you want to stay here and keep coaching the Patriots? I'm looking forward to this week. Getting ready for a Steelers. Read that. You know, that's kind of a bill answer, but... Yeah, it all feels like the beginning of the end. You and I are getting Steelers Patriots on Thursday night, Dan. Oh, yeah, a little Trubisky zap dog.

How about this? The world is getting Jets Patriots in week 18. Wow, but that's not a like a meteor. Not many people will watch that. At the earth, like ready to eviscerate everything that lives upon it. I'd take the meteor. By the way, Chargers in the AFC at 5 and 7 are two games back of a playoff spot. You can't totally X them out.

But if they were in the NFC, it'd say they'd have a chance. In the AFC, two games back with five games to play. And a lot of teams, the hop is a lot. Can't do that with you, bro. They have to just win out, essentially. Which they will not be doing. They will not be doing that, most likely.

We're in that part of the year. We had these conversations and you're just waiting for the slow crawl of time to remove these teams permanently and mathematically. All right. Let's head to Tampa where the Panthers and Bucks did battle in the, downpour the snap of good one bell high dropping the throw with bryce young flushed out of the pocket flushed down the hose of all upfield it is intercepted picked off at the 43 yard line by and john magnificent and juan winfield what a he peaked was in the middle field and chased it down to the sideline

and young those a pick and the bucks have it the great jean deckerhoff with the call Yes, Antoine Winfield. When it looked as if the Panthers could somehow find a way. Bryce Young threw it up for grabs. Winfield came away from the ball, with the ball through the from the sideline, steps from the sideline. And the Buccaneers escape with a 21 to 18 win over the Moribund Carolina Panthers playing their first game without Frank Reich.

So what to take away from this game? First of all, let's talk on Mike Evans. Just when this game appeared to be slipping away from the bucks, and Baker was having a miserable game, he was averaging like four yards an attempt. He hits Evans over the middle. Evans goes down the sideline like a house on fire. He dives toward the pylon.

They mark him down at the one, as the officials often were today. They were wrong. He actually cleared the pylon. And upon review, he gets credited with the touchdown as he deserves. 75 yards, changed the game, got everybody back in line and gave Baker a stat line

that you wouldn't be afraid to show to your family. Heaven's finish with 7 for 162. He is now over 1,000 yards. He has now gone over 1,000 yards for 10 consecutive seasons. Jerry Rice has

the record of 11 straight seasons. It's wild. And it's funny. I think it was Nick Wessling, who texted me at the beginning of the year and says, like, Mike Evans doesn't get enough respect. He should be in the superstar club. Look what this guy's done. And the interesting thing about Evans's career is he's gone over 1,000, as I just said, every single year for a decade. He has 10 touchdowns this year. Doesn't matter who the quarterback is. And he had that golden period with Brady, but he's also played with a lot of Hammond Eggers, Mark. And

Baker is, you know, kind of on the upper scale of that type of group of quarterback. he is just an incredible player. So I don't know if he's a superstar, but I think he's a Hall of Famer. Right, because, I mean, you know, literally Jerry Rice is one of the greatest players of all time. But Jerry Rice had great quarterback play around him. And he didn't do it to start the career.

This is a record in terms of starting his career that, like, Evans is just way ahead of anyone else. I think one thing about Evans this year specifically, because I remember they were just an unwatchable mess on offense for much of last season. And it was like Tom Brady, and Tom Brady and Evans were not on the same page. when Baker's been good, I mean, Baker and Evans have had a pretty good connection from wire to wire this season.

And it's just another example of like Evans adjusting to whatever's around him and being that consistent. Right. And he could, he, I think he only topped 1,400 yards once. He had a 1,500 yard season in 2018. I mean, he's got a chance to even get there this year. He's on pace for about 1,400 yards. Yeah, he's in a contract year. Between him and Winfield, they actually have two teams, two guys that have a chance. Evans probably isn't going to make all pro because the receiver's so tough to make that but I think Winfield has a chance I really have just been so impressed by Winfield

each and every week he had a sack two tackles for loss three passes defense he had the interception eight times I just haven't seen a more impactful safety so that's been a weekly thing with him he is Evans and we'll move up Evans but he is an interesting player and he's kind of a fascinating Greg when you get to your

free agency 101 yeah I think age 31 season one of the most consistent players in the history of the sport like what kind of market would he have anyway the buck in the nfc south um which is bad as we've stated uh that was only the second win for tampa bay in the last eight games but now that they are in a tie for second place in the division so uh they are in the mix uh and uh it wasn't always pretty in this game but they got the job done on the other side of the ball um no bassaccia bump here uh for the panthers who were competitive uh in the rainy conditions but they're still just you're not

seeing anything with this offense. Shuba Hubbard did some things, got in the end zone twice for him, but I just don't see it. I have this theory that I'm working on. I'm workshopping that Bryce Young is getting one inch shorter every week now. So now he's about five, six. There aren't that many more weeks.

The pocket feels impossibly muddy around him, and there was one play in this game where the rush was coming, and he kind of just turned and threw it behind him, and it bounced out of bounds for a fumble. There was another play. It was a big, I believe, was a third down where it was very clear

he had to check out of a play and he doesn't and they run right into a big loss where they're showing a blitz and he just doesn't see it. So whoever it is that's tasked with kind of getting him on the right track, just has, they have a lot of work. Well, it's a lost year and it's like it's going to be an offseason of a billion storylines

about how now he feels comfortable and it's a new start. I mean, it's been a rough spot, but like I thought that final that fourth down game ender, like he had a chance if he were little, if he were reacting more quickly to hit Adam Thielen. It was like, it shouldn't have happened the way it happened.

Like, it was just another... It's not processing. Right. It's all bad. It's sort of like not really, there's not a part of it where you see. It's crazy to me that he outduled, if that's how you want to put it, C.J. Stroud in the one time they met. Like, it was like the most atypical game for...

Outduld, it feels like four years ago. Outplayed slightly. I would say. It's best game, I think. Usually out dueled is like two athletes playing on a high level of one edge is the other. I could be wrong. I don't think the Panthers scored a touchdown in that game, I believe. leave. They won with five field goals, but

I was getting a lot of text. Now, you mentioned they didn't get the Basacea bump. No. But according to our friend Spicerack, the fired coach principal, at least in terms of the desert, is 9-0 since September 29th. I can't fact check this. He's including

college. Can we please? But Carolina kept it closer than expected. It is my point here. You don't get credit for the Basachi bump when you lose. No, okay. This isn't, we're not all in the desert. No. No. That's for teams that win after the firing. I do want to use his comparison.

Not gamblers who win. Because he was going nuts because he wanted the Panthers to do better and win this game. And at one point, he said he was on fire. He was on fire comparing Young to Bryce Young in terms of his body language, saying it was identical. Bryce Young to Achilles Smith was his comparison. And he wants to be anywhere but here.

I will just push back just a little slightly, which is just it reminds me a little bit, maybe because they're all number one picks. Alex Smith's rookie season was the worst top pick or really rookie pick I've ever seen. And he bounced back pretty quick to be... Spend it, baby.

And Eli and Jared Goff were close. So all those guys were in a similar situation where they showed almost no bright spots their entire rookie season. So it's happened before. There's something else here, though. You're right. And it's like there needs to be patience,

but I really watch Bryce Young and feel like, to your point, Dan, like he plays small and it's like I don't know if he's he's not Eli Manning you know is prototypical perfect quarterback type build right and he is small he plays small he is small and he's getting sacked they're on pace the Carolina line is not helping him he's on pace to be sacked 66 times which is almost the team record so that's a recipe for disaster as well oh man they are hot on our tails Greg in the uh in the

competition. They are right behind us now. Two games. You should have seen Mark Space when you said us just there. He's like, what is this narrative dance? What is your record right now? What is our record, Greg? What is you talking?

I'm 11 and 1. You're 1 and 0 jumping on with me. Actually, you're not because the one week I got wrong. The three of us all did it together. Well, there's a lot of different standings at play. So I'm 1 in 1 when we picked together. I'm 12 in 1 now. I'm 12 in 1 since I just got.

on the train. I'm one and one overall after they blew up the entire operation, after the horrible Joe Burry injury designation fiasco. And then if you want to look at the broader, I think I'm six and seven. I don't want to look at the broader. Like, I think this is a, that's just a farce. Do you want to join the Rosenthal train? Because it was a little bit of a bumpy ride today, but we were drinking champagne and

eating caviar. I locked up the Niners with confidence and never for a second had any concern about that a fair. Nice job. That was a good luck. Hey, we all got dubs. Right right across the board. I'll travel my own path though. You're a brave man. Me? Like second to last place, so. It's just me. It's Greg in the

motorcycle and me in the side car. This is one of the most bizarre podcast strategies we've ever had. All right. Sunday night football. Three receivers right, two to the left. Snap to Mahomes. Looking. Steps up. Scambling. Left. Still looking.

still waiting fires it into the end zone broken up incomplete and that is your dagger the game is over the packers have defeated the chiefs 27 to 19 oh what a moment for this young team wayne larravee with the call for packers radio and yes it is a big moment for the green bay packers a team on the rise now uh six and six after a 27 19 win over the mighty, well, are the cheese mighty? I'm not sure about that anymore. But a big win for the Packers coming off. Obviously, a huge Thanksgiving win over the Lions. And all of a sudden, Green Bay looks like a team that makes some real noise in a wide open NFC.

And boys, we've got to start, unfortunately. And we're going to give the Packers their flowers. But we've got to talk about what everybody's going to be talking about, which is an absolute meltdown by the officiating crew. in the final minute and a half of this game. I'm actually looking at it right now, boys. There were you can make the case that they blew five calls

in the final 65 seconds of the game. Patrick Gahomes scrambles out of bounds at the KC 40 for 10 yards. They penalize Owens on Green Bay for unnecessary roughness. Bogus call, not the right call, not even a question. And was an emphasis on the

by the Rules Committee in the offseason to not let quarterbacks bait defenders into those calls and they still miss. Terry McCauley comes in for NBC says, hey, this is the wrong call. This is that you cannot throw a flag here. The very next play Patrick Mahomes to Rishie Rice

for 10 yards. He's down by contact. They rule it a fumble. That gets overturned on review. But that even has a butterfly effect by missing that call and ruling Rice up when the Paul comes out. That leads to the Pichenko fight

Isaiah Bichenko fight where he takes a swing and he gets suspended. That's a missed call overturned on review. And that took about 27 minutes it felt like for them to sort all that out. Then you have Patrick Mahomes dropping back to pass and he unfurls a deep ball to Marquez-Valdos Scantling a clear pass interference. Once again,

no doubt about it. They do not throw the flag. Again, they bring in McCauley And McCauley says, yeah, that is obvious pass interference. It should also be said that MVS also made a catch on the play prior to that where his forward momentum had stopped and he's moving backwards as he's pushed out of bounds. But the side does rules that he was able to stop the clock. That's a blown call. And then finally, and I know this one is going to be the one, especially Packer fans,

are going to say, shut up, Dan. But a Hail Mary throw, and it's not really even a Hail Mary. guys. It was from the 33 yard line. Yeah. Travis Kelsey gets a two-handed shove in the back as the ball is approaching the end zone, taking him out of the play. And yes, Greg, you can say on that play,

nobody throws the flag there. But one, he took the, essentially the guy most capable of making that play out of the play with a two-handed shove. And two, man, I know makeup calls exist. If there's a way to make up for the MVS blown call, maybe you throw the

flag there, but they didn't. And the pack of the benefactors. Well, they're all humans, and I don't know who made them non-call. That's the problem. We've got to get some AI riffs in here. I don't know who made the non-call on the pass interference to Valde Scantling. Should have been a pass interference. It was Corey Valentine that was in coverage.

That, to me, in the moment, felt like a makeup call, makeup non-call, essentially, from the Mahomes. Because that happened right after the Mahomes, which they blew that call. It was brutal. I don't know if they somehow knew that they brewed that call, but they were suddenly in the crosshairs. Like, they helped the chiefs get to that point. And then right after that was the throw down the field. And that was the one of all of these that was truly egregious.

And probably changed the game. I think it's worth pointing out. Yes. It's first in 10 at the six, Greg. Okay. It's first and goal. Okay. And they struggled twice in the red zone tonight and they had to hit a two-point conversion

and there's overtime. So it changed how the whole rest of the game. would have gone, but it's just worth noting, like, you don't know that the results of the game is going to happen. It's still brutal. Right. It's like we were saying, you know, before we recorded, like, it wasn't like any one of these calls is going to stir up

like the competition committee to look at things differently. The combination of all of them, though, suggested officiating gaggle of officials who seemed completely out of control. There was just an air of, like, the game was melting down. Yeah. And it's like, who's in charge here

and why is this taking so long? It's like, None of it was so overly complex that it should have looked the way it did to us. And when you got McCauley, I thought he did a good job. He came on three or four times and forcefully said, wrong, wrong call. And like, I guess for me, the whole thing, they are human, but the concept of a makeup call is not how things should be done. Like, it's like if you made one mistake, you don't then allow yourselves to visibly make another without telling us what's going on. And it looked like they were falling further and further from an element of control. I think that MVS, no call, given the stakes, is one of the worst non-calls I've seen, period.

That was one of the worst blown DPI calls you could possibly see. And the fact that it was dead center in the middle of the field, no question about it. It can't happen. And you know what? I mentioned it earlier in this episode. I guess I had my eyes, like on a typical Sunday, we're going to have our eyes individually on about five games pretty closely. almost every game I watched today there were really bad mistakes

being made by the officiating. And I hate talking about this because obviously you want to focus on what Jordan Love and the Packers are doing, but we have to talk about it. And I know on Park Avenue that they're going to be talking about it first thing Monday morning because it's affecting the quality of the product. It's just

rare that there's two calls in that spot, Patrick Mahomes, in Lambot, Sunday night football, the biggest stage we have, a really unique entertaining game in that you have two calls, and I'm separating the Mahomes hit out of bounds in the first pass, the pass interference non-call as just clearly wrong. No one's going to argue that. We will see the pool reports. They might be out by the time we finish talking these 10

minutes. They will have to just admit we missed those calls. They were absolutely crystal clear. And that it's pretty unique. I can't remember any game in this sort of spotlight. where there's a cavalcade of calls like this all in a row. It was a pretty unique circumstance. The problem is they could admit after what we all see with our own eyes. I'm just guessing that I admit. They try not to, but those two would be tough to. There's just a lack

of, I wouldn't say the words accountability, but it's just like when this happens to a team and you get totally hosed on an island game on national television and a circus of officiating, all it just leaves you with is the loss. Let's talk about the Packers. And they deserve to lose, too, by the way.

I don't like that. I just mean teams fritz out players fritz out coaches fritz out and sometimes to your point I think mark officials often fritz out too yeah but I can't live with that yeah you know that's as a fan like I want the officials to do do their job and stay out of the way and we're just never going to know really how that game really should have turned out because the officials yeah all i mean is they were in that position where they had no time out they had to drive the length of the field in 109 for a touchdown and a two point to tie. So they had put themselves in that position.

They certainly did. And the reason they did is because, yeah, for the most part, Packers outplayed the Chiefs in this game. And you're seeing it. And Matt LaFleur, by the way, the bearded boy himself, 16 and 0 in December games. Wow. The Packers who were left for dead, I think they said on the game telecast and it checks out because it felt that way. Once went 40 days the season without winning a football game. And now they, you can make. the case that outside of the Niners, they're the hottest team in the NFC.

So they're very interesting, Mark, from that perspective. And the thing I'll say about Jordan Love in this one, Mark, and I'm curious what your thoughts are, it's not just the stats that look great right now. It's how confident he's playing and how you could tell he's in control of everything he sees. And for a guy that's as young as he is, as inexperienced as he is, and as lost as it seemed he was like a month or so ago, it's pretty remarkable to turn around. it's um i think one thing that's wonderful about kind of covering the whole league versus just your team

is that you start to see operations just grow up right before your eyes and it's jordan love and it's like the offense around him um and i thought tonight there were four or five throws uh well i can think of one to christian watson where it's like he is just throwing with intense like confidence and putting in it like into tight windows and there's a couple you know there were a couple drops but he put the ball right on the money. And I just think on top of that, like the way he's seen the field, the way he uses his legs and moments, the fact that he's pairing well in a Matt LaFleur offense, and Matt LaFleur two weeks in a row because Thanksgiving feels like about seven eras ago, two great Matt LaFleur coached games. I think that like this is working well because they're

kind of all growing up together. Yeah, I said when they were at their Nadir, I brought up how in the off season, we said, we're going to learn a lot about Matt LaFleur. And I ended it with some smug little thing of like, they are right now, like one of the worst offenses in the league. You jerk. Okay. Right now, we're going to learn a lot about Matt LaFleur this season. He has taken a young quarterback and I think Love deserves the most credit.

But I think with the weapons around him and the amount of play action, he really there, I hit on, you know, Russell Wilson really relying on play action for that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, Ryan Tanniel did it for years. A lot of teams do it. He is relying on play action as much as any quarterback in the league, and it is hitting. Guys are open. And then when he is doing that back pedal and he has to do something special,

like that rainbow shot to Romeo Dobbs, which looked like a bad idea. And I don't know how it fell down in there. Like, there's, it still was a, he still got it exactly. He Bermuda triangled it in there. He got exactly where it wanted to go. And I think you're right. He's playing with such.

incredible confidence that when he's doing these back pedals and making these crazy throws, like I'm almost surprised when he's not hitting him. These are all like chunk plays too to like rookies, Malik Heath and is that even a person? Don Tavian Wicks and just all these guys like 15 to 25 yard chunk plays.

It's pretty awesome. And it's gotten this bad for the Chiefs with their offense. If Patrick Gahombs is not handing the ball off or getting the ball in the hands of Checo who's a very good running back, or getting it to Travis Kelsey, who's not, you know, dominating of the same clip as past years.

Or Rishie Rice, who's a consistent guy for them now, is bad news. But limited. Consistently good, but limited is what he does. Like today, he had eight for 64 on nine targets. Like, at least he's a guy that he's not a liability. Everyone else that he's trying to get involved, whether it's MVS who, yes, got jobbed. But let's face it, probably would have dropped it anyway. Richie James, Clyde Edwards Lair, Sky Moore, that route.

he ran on the Mahomes interception. I mean, you just like, who do you trust Godarius Tony, who's like not even on the roster anymore at this point? They have work to do in the offseason to fix it. And again, like every time you think maybe they're coming out of it, there's another one of these games that tell you, no, there's just a limit to this offense. And it's kind of a stunning subplot of this season.

They're really frustrating when they get into certain situations where in the past, you could simply trust or you'd be a fool not to trust Mahomes to bail you out. and to have some targets that would help you too but it's like we're running out of time here with the chiefs we'll see where we were on the playoffs but you asked that they were mighty still and I think it's a fair question

because you can't just rely on Andy Reed, the mind of Andy Reed and the brilliance of Patrick Mahomes to rescue an offense that it's missing pieces and has been all year. So they finished the game so ugly and that's what we remember three and out then the interception which

was going to be a tough pass but more really did a terrible job. The effort wasn't even great. And a great, yeah, he killed him by changing, by slowing down on the route. And Keeshaun Nixon made a really nice interception, too, that you don't see guys make a nice play like that.

And then the way that game ended. I should know, though, I mean, each of these teams only had seven drives. That is an exceptionally low number for both teams to have in an NFL game. So to me, this was sort of like an old chiefs game where it was like, oh, man, our defense stinks tonight. We need Patrick Mahomes to answer

every single drive. We just haven't seen a Chief's defense give up points like that. 27 points in seven drives is terrible. The Chiefs, even 19 points in seven drives is pretty great. Like that points per drive, that would just barely like lead the league in points per drive, 19 points and seven drives. Like it just was so limited here. But the Packers were scoring almost every single time.

And the Chiefs, you know, is their defense going to stay out this level the whole season? Outstanding? We've seen a little leakage lately. They've had some injuries at linebacker, Nick Bolton and Drew Tranquill are out. So that's part of it. Brian Cook got carded out of this game. They're starting safety.

So that side of the ball might be creating a little issue, too. Here's the final stat. Okay, it's from Tony Holesman, Escarano. He is the NFL media senior researcher. Kansas City, and I know points per driving. I understand it. I'm saying they were pretty, they were okay tonight. They were pretty good.

Does it feel that way? Here it is. The Chiefs have scored fewer than 20 points in six games this season. The Chiefs had six such games in Patrick Mahomes' first five seasons as a starter combined. Yeah. And it looks that way. Eight in that fourth loss is big. They're now behind three teams in the AFC who have three losses.

Ravens, Jags will see on Monday night and the Dolphins. And the Packers here at six and six. You look at their schedule and all the projection models now have the Packers. They're golden. They just take care of some business. As the favorite, as like a decent size, over 50% chance to make the playoffs. I even think we'll be potentially in three weeks. They're six and six.

They play the giants, the bucks, and the Panthers before finishing with the Vikings and Bears. Anything less than two dubs there is a disaster. All right. A disaster. This NFC, they'll be fine. No matter what happened. They could probably like me. All right.

Tomorrow Monday, we got a double header. We got the NFL Plus game of the week. We'll be breaking down the Niners' dominant effort against the Eagles. And then Monday night football and news recap. I'm sure there will be maybe some follow-up to everything we just talked about here coming out of Lambo. Until that, you know what you've got to do. He the call. This is an I-heart podcast.