NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - 2025 NFL Week 9 Recap: Allen vs. Mahomes, NFC North Drama, Seahawks the Best in the NFC?

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Gregg Rosenthal is joined by Jourdan Rodrigue, Patrick Claybon and Nick Shook to recap all of the Week 9 action from around the NFL, starting with the Chiefs at the Bills (01:10) followed by Colts at Steelers (11:20), Falcons at Patriots (20:10), Vikings at Lions (28:45), Bears at Bengals (38:14), 49ers at Giants (47:30), Saints at Rams (56:10), Chargers at Titans (01:03:10), Panthers at Packers (01:10:29), Broncos at Texans (01:17:50), Jaguars at Raiders (01:23:00), and Seahawks at Commanders on Sunday Night Football (01:30:10). Note: time codes approximate. NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Welcome to NFL Daily, where we don't know what to think about the number one seeds in each conference. I'm Greg Rosenthal here in the Chris Wesleyan podcast studio. I'm joined by Patrick Claibon and Jordan Roderick. Nick Shook coming up later on the show, and he's going to talk about one of those one seeds that fell, the Green Bay Packers. I feel like some of these Sundays, it's just like move it forward Sunday. It's like a four or five-yard run on first and ten.

This was not one of those Sundays. I feel like we had big-time teams losing. We had J.J. McCarthy reentering the picture. Like, we just, a lot happened. It was fun. I mean, everything comparative to last week is just awesome. As awesome as last week was, don't get me wrong. Like, the unexpected happened in so many in these games, and I love it.

Yeah, last week was the, third quarter first drive interception deep into your own territory. And this drive, this game, this week was like the defensive line stepping in getting a stop on fourth and goal. Get the old Mo back on your side. It was a lot of good defensive stops,

including in the game of the day. So the Bill's Chiefs was not the best game of the day. Ultimately, when Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes are playing near the peak of their powers and their teams are relevant, which they always are, they're going to lead the show.

And ultimately, I thought what happened today and the AFC was really interesting. Let's talk about the top of the AFC to start this show. And let's start in Buffalo. Five on the play clock. Mahomes in the shotgun on third and 11. Play clock down to one.

Here's the snap. Pressure coming. Mahomes heaves it down the field. Looking for Worthy. It's picked off by Maxwell Hairston at the Buffalo 32-yard line. The rookie with a takeaway. Joey Bosa got the pressure and it led to an arm punt by Mahomes

and Hirsten camped out under it and picked it off. Ooh, Maxwell Hirsten. Has he just changed the entire Bill's defense in the last couple of weeks? Picks off Patrick Mahomes late. The defense prevents Patrick Mahomes from a Hail Mary try and the Bills win

with a nice combined effort between the offense and the defense. That was Chris Brown on WGR, capping. Just a magical weekend for Eric Roberts, hardcore Dodgers-slash-Bills fan. Austin Roberts, his son only knows Dodgers World Championships and Josh Allen as the Bill's quarterback. Fantastic game to me, Patrick, because I don't think there was anything lucky about it. In fact, there were some unlucky aspects to it for the bills, including more injuries for them. It was just a game where they looked better up front in terms of their running game and their pass rush than the Kansas City Chiefs.

And frankly, like, by the end, it almost felt that the Chiefs were lucky to still even be in this way. Yeah, consistently throughout the game, Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes were trying to game out. What Sean McDermott's defense was doing to scheme them up. There was a play that we discussed extensively in the first half where the Chiefs, have a goal to go opportunity, wind up kicking a field goal. But they run the Xavier Worthy on the play that the Philadelphia Eagles were doomed

to stop in the Super Bowl running motion coming in and going back out. And the Chiefs had a man look that appeared to be man. Turns out it was zone. So Xavier Worthy was running directly into defender. And Patrick Mahomes had nowhere to go with the ball. That was a consistent thing. And the problem with this Chief's defense was having guys

have yards after the catch, yards after contact, yards after catch, over expectation, all negative. Rishie Rice, negative 11 yards. Travis Kelsey, negative 4, Hollywood, negative 3, Karim Hunt, negative 1, Xavier Worthy, Jujo Smith-Schuster, all negative. Yes, the only theory I have, Greg, is guys are out of position, they're uncomfortable. Maxwell Harrison comes in, and suddenly, this defense has folks where they want to be, where they can make plays, and the chiefs, their limitations,

here, of which are few, I think, in terms of route runners who can get open and separate when there is no Andy Reed masterminding and Patrick Bahomes creating after the snap, they're kind of limited in that capacity. Yeah, you know, Patrick Mahomes completes under 50% of his passes in this game. And a lot of them that he did complete, it was 15 for 34, were holding the ball forever and just trying to make magic that only he can make. And I did think Hirsten sticking with Xavier Worthy, who only gets three catches on seven targets, a couple down the field,

was huge. I thought Joey Bosa and Greg Rousseau and the pass rush were really good. And Cole Bishop shows up. I mean, all the problems that we talked about, including the run defense for the Bills' defense, really wasn't there. And if nothing else, man, Sean McDermott, he knows how to fix things during the buy. And he knows how to make it uncomfortable on this Chief's offense,

specifically in the regular season, but really has done a good job. Well, I think one of the things that Sean McDermott has showed so well, especially in this game, is taking advantage of where there are weak spots, whether it's due to injury, in this case very much so for the Chiefs, taking advantage of those potential soft spots or those weaknesses when he's devising his defensive game plan. And to your point on Maxwell Harrison, if you don't have a player who can switch between man and zone coverage as well as Maxwell Harrison can, then Sean McDermott can't run the stickier types of coverages and move a player, even though he's playing a zone. for the most part, behind that one player who's moving around. He likes to do these things to try to take away or leverage different areas of the field. And I thought that he had a really outstanding plan to coach around some of the deficiencies we've seen and also take advantage of where the chiefs are banged up. They're banged up along their offensive line.

Okay, they hit Patrick Mahomes 15 times, three sacks, but 15 hits and the pressure was there. They also are missing Isaiah Pacheco. Okay, well, the bills have been one of the worst run defenses in the league. 141 rushing yards per game allowed over the entire season on average, just 79 today and 49 to Kareem Hunt alone. The way that they could take advantage of where the chiefs are down players or missing guys was really, really good game planning, in my opinion. Yeah, I think the running game is a perfect thing to look at

because the Chiefs were effective enough running the ball today, like the success rate was about the same for two teams, but the bills do it at volume. And they do it early in the game. And James Cook was going right up the middle quite a bit. early in the game between the tackles where they're good. Josh Allen only has three in completions. I wouldn't say it's been a bad Josh Allen year at all,

but I'd say the last three or four weeks, it hasn't been him at his very best. And this was him totally under control over 10 yards per attempt. Dalton Kincaid is getting wide open. Good job scheming him open, and he's looking fast. He's third on the team and tight end snaps. Even today, he played behind Knox and Spencer Hawes, and yet they're getting him the ball a lot, six for 101.

So I was just, if you, if you're that much better up front and the Chiefs did not have a great pass rush today, you're going to win this game. Yeah. And you kind of see some of the same issues for both teams, except the Bill's offensive line better, healthier. John Taylor left the game at a certain point. Then the Chiefs lose another alignment where they have to finish the game. I believe it was. Tua Matea left. Juan Taylor played a lot of this game too.

Everyone was like going in and out. But yeah, they are not 100% and Josh Simmons still not back for them. And so, like, you get the dichotomy where it's kind of like the season, where the average air yard per attempt for Josh Allen was 4.6 yards. But he didn't have to do much because they could be so dominant on the ground, whereas Kansas City, if things aren't working, it's just kind of hope ball. And, like, they get a weird fourth and 17 conversion that ultimately leads to a score, which is the reason the game finishes up at 28, 21. but other than that, like nothing long sustained in terms of success and they were also three of 13 on third down.

That's crazy, but them being able to hit a fourth and 17, that's why you go for the fourth and ball. I loved this conversation back and forth in the news. You're the Kansas City Chiefs. I thought you're Andy Reid. You found fourth down religion and they decide to kick a field goal

after failing on the goal line right at the end of the half. And it was a half where they were pretty consistently outplayed down 2110 and then suddenly they hit a big play down the field that one was to the thornton right and you know to hollywood brown and he comes up like a yard short of scoring the touchdown and it was one of those situations where the bills kind of they know you're gonna with only one time out probably run on the first play they stop it finally kareem hunt gets stopped and then two unsuccessful pass plays of which you talked about uh but you got Patrick you just got to take a chance

because later in the game you're going fourth and 17 you're going fourth and four and by the way you hit them both. And also the guy who makes that decision is the guy who calls the plays. And I think there's a little bit of survivorship bias in the way we look at the fourth down situation because the teams that are going for it on fourth down either have to go for it on fourth down to try to win the game

or stay in the game or they are confident in a play call that allows them to go for it and successfully execute the fourth down conversion. Where you don't really see a lot of fourth downs when the play caller and the coach both say, hey, I don't think we got it here. I think we should kick the ball and get three points. And so

I think that's a fact. And yeah, Pacheco's out and they have the buy week. He can get healthy. Like, I think they need to trade for a running back more than anything. To me, Pacheco is not a plus starter at this point. Kareem Hunt is not, I think he's probably playing better than Pacheco is right now. And I think that is a position that they could improve in the next couple of days. I think the bills have to be buyers too.

It's so sad, you know, Michael Hoyt being out with what Sean McDermott said postgames and Achilles. That really stinks. Obviously, he missed the first six games as well with that suspension. he was really showing up for them. He was popping, making some splash plays, and they needed a player at his position who could play on the outside and on the inside. So if they weren't buyers already,

especially along that defensive line or pass rush, I feel like they should be. Maybe even more so, I know the buzz is that they want a receiver, da, da, da, da, da, da, like, I do think that this defense could still improve so you don't have to coach so dramatically around the deficiencies. Yeah.

And the thing is they've been out, like they've been much better. past rushing since the buy. It's only been two weeks, but they've just looked like a different team. Joey Bosa in this game had 10 pressures. According to PFF, two sacks, three quarterback hits. The NFL is going to record it differently.

But in terms of pressure, he was consistent. Rousseau was consistent. Great, complete game from the Buffalo Bills. They get to six and two. And here are the Chiefs, even though I think they're playing better, some of their shortcomings here, not much of a pass rush. The running game, eh, four losses.

It is going to be hard to catch up to try to get that one seed this year in the AFC. It's not out of bounds, but it's going to be out of their hands at this point. The Bills with a two-game lead and the tiebreaker. All right, let's stay in the AFC. It was not the bills on top in the conference going into the day. It was the Indianapolis Colts, big test for them in Pittsburgh. Colts moving crisply to the line of scrimmage. Under three minutes remaining here in the fourth quarter.

They get everybody in place at the 250 mark is. Jones gets a snap back to pass, looking pressure coming, throws, and it's intercepted. Joey Porter Jr., first interception of the season at the 40-yard line of the Steelers, as the Steelers now with another turnover. How many, Max? One for the other thumb. Six on the day. Outrageous.

The Indianapolis Colts came into Sunday, and yes, we're one game away from being halfway through this season. with four turnovers. They had six today. Five of them at the hands of Danny Dimes. A couple were bad luck, a couple were bad plays. It was just bad. But more than anything, I give the Pittsburgh Steelers credit. I also give Rob King and Max Stark's credit on WDVE with that call.

Steelers win 27 to 20 in a game where they were up by three scores in the second half. give up a couple scores late to make it look closer, but I've been asking for it. Alex Highsmith, Cam Hayward, T.J. Watt, just show up and like be the badasses that you are. And I think them beating the tackles on the Colts today, specifically Bernard Reimann and Braden Smith was so important to this victory. And we can get into what they did differently, schematically.

But I do think it was just like their best players showed up and were better than the Colts best players. Well, we have to get into it schematically because that's not the only thing. That was the difference here. Part of the huge difference is that a hugely emphatic man-to-man coverage team played more zone and sent more pressure

specifically out of zone looks. And it's unscouted for them, meaning that the Indianapolis Colts did not have a bunch of data or film on what that would look like from the Steelers coming in. And you could see that it confused Daniel Jones at certain times. You could see that it changed

the way that the receivers were trying to run their routes, the way that they were trying to scheme open space. That was very clear too. So I think, you know, credit to Mike Tomlin because he has been so rigid and not wanting, and inflexible, not wanting to change the things that he does or the things that he likes to do. So it's not only that you're winning up front

the way that these guys are supposed to do, the way we expect them to do, the way we've been lamenting that they haven't over time. But it's also that they mixed up some of their coverages and they changed things in specific situations to where they could afford to make these plays on the ball and capitalize on mistakes. And the way they talked about it was,

and this is always a code word when things aren't going well, we simplified it. Like, we didn't do as much. Because he thinks playing zone is the, yeah, and it wasn't in the end. Zone for dummies. That's what he thinks zone is. Right.

In the end, like you look at the numbers and it wasn't much different. It's like, you know, they were a relatively heavy man team. And they like, they went 10% down. But I think it was in key situation. And they said, I think a big part of it was because Kyle Dugger was on the field. Kyle Dugger got a game ball. He played every snap today, 78 snaps.

And they said he had just tried trying to learn this defense. That was part of it was they were almost trying to simplify for him. And they play a lot of single high safety today. And so the real goal here is to stop Jonathan Taylor. And it was Jonathan Taylor's worst day of the season, make Daniel Jones beat them, trust in the pass rush. And yeah, they put Jalen Ramsey at free safety the whole day too. Like he literally was just at free safety.

People stayed at the same position. And they were awesome. And like the Steelers. Offense deserves credit for just not messing it up. But they got out gained by like 140 yards today. They had 230. This was the kind of the Steelers team that I expected to see all season, which is badass defense. And the offense just don't mess it up.

That's what they did. And we've seen the Steelers team earlier this season when the New England Patriots, who are the team with the second best record in the AFC, went up against the Pittsburgh Steelers, turn the ball over five times. They actually, the Steelers got out gained 369 to 203. And today, it was 365 to 225 in favor of the cults on the yardage. But in terms of the picture for Daniel Jones, because there were plays like the watchtrip sack where Warren was open, but there was that split second of hesitation as Daniel Jones is looking down at the coverage and doesn't see T.J. Watt six feet away from him with the bend able to reach for the ball and get it out. It's like shades of metlife dimes.

Oh, no. in terms of, you know, giving the ball up. But it wasn't like consistent ultimate failure. It was just every time the Colts had a major opportunity, the ball was going the other way to the Steelers. And that's not like the Colts coughing it up. I think the Steelers made plays on every single one of those, probably the best Peyton Wilson game that we've seen all season long.

Peyton Wilson with a interception, tips a pass at the line of scrimmage. And that's where there was some bad luck here. And Daniel Jones, I don't really fault him for the Alex Highsmith Strip Sack. That to me was just like a great defensive play that's on his blind side. Very quick pressure there.

But he did have kind of a groaner where he gets to his second read late on a throw over the middle early. And this is after playing like a great first couple of drives and then that T.J. Watt Strip Sack really turned everything around. Let's listen to Mike Tomlin who was feisty after the game

talking about his five and three Steelers. It's a fine line between drinking wine and squashing grapes in this business. That's football at this level. It's a limited number of plays or sequences that can really change the trajectory of an outcome. We're still the same group that stunked up last week. That's football. See, I like that he said that because that's exactly the point that I was making earlier, Greg, is like it's not like they dramatically overhauled their entire system and scheme. They had a new player, joined the group, and yes, okay, you can use the word

simplify for some of the things that perhaps they translated to him as he was picking up the playbook conceptually. But also, they picked their situations. And he said there's a finite number of plays you can make through the course of a game. Well, they picked their spots better schematically with which to send some of that pressure and some of those mixed coverage looks that they did deploy. I think, lean into that. Keep going with that. Do do these things act like Kyle Dugger is joining the team every single week? Honestly, like it worked. Good pickup. Yeah, they got them if you missed it in a trade, a late round pick swap. And just the dudes showed up.

And it was funny watching the Colts defensive plan. They blitzed on 41% of their snaps. And they had a 10% pressure rate because Aaron Rogers, he went, like, everything you've seen about him this year went to an extreme level because he took some pressures early. Their offense did not look good early in the game. And the rest of the game, he just decided, I'm getting rid of the ball. I am not getting hit. They did not have much of a run game today. Jalen Warren held under two yards per carry.

But Rogers, yeah, but he did score two touchdown. And that's the thing about the Steelers. They're a great red zone team on both sides of the ball. That has basically been the key to their season. And they did capitalize in the red zone, at least early in this game. He had a time to throw of 2.1 today, which is just outrageous,

and averaging 2.7 air yards. So almost all of his yards were after the catch. And it's a lot of Darno, Washington, and Fryermuth and Jonu Smith and they're in multiple tight ends like 50% of the time three tight ends like 35% of the time like it is just

it's some heavy big boy football that Jordan Roderick loves. There was a rollout before the first Jalen Warren touchdown where 2010 Aaron Rogers is in the end zone discount double checking and there was so much grass and I'm like oh Rogers is back

the grass went away the gap closed almost in And it's a sign that, you know, Aaron Rogers is my age out there. But yeah, he has like that one moment of hesitation. He's like, am I going to, am I really going to do this? I'm like, your only chance is to just go for it. But I think he was smart to not really go for it. No, he was topped out.

Yeah, because there was there was two. Well, I know, but like if he like like thrown his body in there, but there were two defenders there and, you know, discretion, the better part of valor there. The Steelers winning the division right now, I think the Ravens see, this result, and they were like, hmm, we thought that might be a loss at 5 and 3. And yes, the Colts fall to 7 and 2. They're going to Berlin next week. They're still atop the AFC.

But you mentioned who's right behind him. Let's go to Foxborough. May has Diggs in the left slot. It's a third down to five snap to Drake. He throws it to the left for Hunter Heller. He's open to the far sideline, and he slides in bounds at the 40. The Patriots table to set up a bit of a rough play for Hunter Henry. He's able to get wide open.

Drake May finds it. That's a ball game. Oh, they wouldn't even let Zolak in on the call. I like it. Eric's feeling frisky at Dodgers parade on Monday. You're not getting in his show. Bob Sochi, WBZ, 24 to 23. They've had a lot of games like that, Jordan,

where they need Drake May or the offense to get one or two first downs at the end of the game. And even after letting the Falcons back into this one, they get the job done in the end. Yeah, and Drake May and Hunter Henry, needed that. They needed to make that play badly, not just to ice out the game, but because after a really strong start by Drake May, two touchdowns, super clean game, he only had three incompletions, he started turning the ball over. He turned the ball over twice. The falcons

scored 10 points off of his turnovers, and then the Patriots basically just had to hold off a falcons comeback because they only scored three second half points. But, as we know, whenever they are given the chance to falcon, the Falcons will falcon. And at the end of the game, Parker Romo misses an extra point that would have tied the game after the two teams traded really sloppy possessions. Drake May got a last chance to close it out with that conversion, and that is ultimately what sealed the game. It was real touch and go there for a minute, but they got it done. I didn't think that my worst take, and I've had so many of the preseason, would be that the Patriots were making a mistake, keeping their rookie, Andy Borogallis, who's been money and getting rid of Parker Romo,

who supposedly beat him in the camp competition. But you know why they didn't? Because Mike Rabel knows things we don't. You know? He just has the magic sauce, apparently. It's incredible. It's incredible what they're doing. And I will say, you see the score and you see the second half of the offense for what New England was doing or not doing.

And you see the Falcons start to surge. The Patriots look like the better team through most of this game. Atlanta, they only had four carries for Bajon Robinson for 20 yards. 15 of those yards came on one carry. By the way, I'm. I'm clocking this. Their only under center run play or any play from under center of the game goes for 15 yards. It's his longest run of the game.

And Michael Pennix had two touchdowns, but really only one full good first half drive. Three total touchdowns, right, to London. Yes, yes, but I'm talking about the first half, like I mentioned. So in the first half, he only had two touchdowns and really only one full good drive. It was 53 yards and five plays. And that was on the third possession of the game. They really couldn't move the ball much at all in the first half. They capitalized from the six-yard line off of a takeaway, one of the first, the early Drake-May turnovers.

And that was what really was helping them stay in this game. That and the fact that every time Michael Pennix threw it to Drake London, who had a hat trick today, he was making something insane happen. Let's hear his third touchdown of the game. Sills London to pitch to the right, Mooney to the left. They're going to get his own coverage. Robinson with Pennix. Here's the snap. They bring five again.

they'll throw for London. Did he hang on? He did touchdown Atlanta. Oh, this is an unbelievable ground. Drake London has done it again. It's just insane. It's just insane. And it was really,

Drake London, go up and make a play and otherwise just extremely disjointed from the Falcons offense. And it wasn't, you know, the Patriots had a really solid run defense again. They had not up until this game had not allowed a single rusher to go over 50 yards the entire season. But this just was another example of the Falcons doing just enough in spurts and way negative plays,

negative drives, not enough in others. The two rookies on the defensive side were a bright spot, Jalen Walker and James Pierce Jr. They combined to force that Drake May fumble, strip sack that James Pierce picked up and ran to the six yard line. Other than that, I mean, the Patriots really outplayed them. Again, the box score doesn't really show it. But in every phase, the Patriots just really had it more consistently than the Falcons did. And it's a consistent thing that we've talked about for weeks now about this game and how they are executing this offense for the Atlanta Falcons where I think we can just get rid of the game against the dolphins where when Kirk Cousins was playing, that in hindsight was just going to go left regardless. But we see where Bajon Robinson's getting 10 targets for just 50 yards, other than Drake London,

and a couple of Kyle Pitts catches that really nothing available. And it's just Drake London, a lot of times, late in the plays, and Michael Pinnock, Jr., kind of collaborating to freestyle stuff. Like the one fade touchdown to Drake London, he catches the ball on the other shoulder on a fade ball, just having to, like, I don't know what the original call was there in terms of the offense because, like, it's a fade that he's catching on the inside,

just because he's got that significant size advantage over most people. people, but you look at the way that the Falcons are operating, and so much doesn't make sense. And despite all that, there are Parker Romo extra point. And again, like, who's to say they stop the Patriots? And Drake May doesn't get a Borogallis field goal to win the game. But it's another one of these situations where this team could have easily won this football game, despite all the problems that they have on both sides of the ball.

Well, it really was for the Patriots. It really was as simple as the turnovers, because they were moving the ball really well. And, but they just turned it over between the second and third quarters. And they just, Drake May just doesn't, hasn't really done that. I mean, he has played mostly just really clean football. He's pushed the ball. He has not been afraid to make really good throws. There were a couple early in the game that were absolutely sick.

I was turning to Greg and being like, I don't think you're actually making enough of a big deal about. I think, I think so. I mean, if I've almost been afraid to make too big of a deal. I know, because you'll be judged. Drake may becoming like a top five type of quarterback this season. is one of the biggest stories in the NFL this season. But I do, I'm not surprised. To me, he's going to have some higher variance games

because he does take chances. It's been crazy how clean everything has been. So games like this don't surprise me. I think there will be more games like this. And to be fair, their offense has almost never put together full games. It's always one terrible. It's always like one really quiet half. And then they turn it on.

It's usually the second half. This time they kind of reversed it. Yeah, it was definitely the inverse of it. I think credit to the defense because they did, make enough plays on their end to just stop a ton of, um, like consistency. And it was a lot of stop start, stop start and then throw the ball in a got to have it moment to Drake London. Um, this, this was a Michael Penning's game that was kind of confusing. So we had a fourth and four on that drive. And of course he goes to Drake London and of course Drake London converts it. And then it sets up a

touchdown. But then when they're trying to close out the game and to be fair, both offenses traded sloppy possessions. We were trying to close out the game. it's a confusion. There's an intentional grounding penalty that, you know, Rahim Morris said after the game, the Patriots caused because they were clapping with the cadence because they had scouted out the cadence. Now, I went back and I looked at the all 22, like what was available on NFL Plus. And I cannot see a single player clapping. So I'm not really sure if it was coming from the sideline or where it was coming from or what prompted Rahim Morris to say that. But they definitely messed up the snap cadence and the timing. Michael Pennix had to dirt the ball. It was called intentional ground. it totally took them out of the ability to continue the drive and maybe even try for another field goal. It just was sloppy. There's like one or two really great moments per game and then the rest of it is so sloppy.

Yeah, that was one that I was having a conversation with you, Patrick. I think people should go for fourth and long, a little longer. They decided to punt it away instead of going for a fourth and 20. They don't get the ball back. I know it's either way, it's a low percentage play, but I would go for fourth and 20. That's not what the Patriots would rather, you, punt the ball away in that situation.

Christian Gonzalez left this game. He did say afterwards that he was checked for a concussion, I believe, and he could have come back into the game. All right. So the Patriots, they are still the second seed in the AFC, and that's kind of the top of it right now. Before we take a break, actually, though, let's talk about the other biggest story of this Sunday.

It was the return of J.J. McCarthy. It was glorious. A first down wins the game for you, J.J. McCarthy. Shotgun, third and five from his own 28, 27, 24, Minnesota, Detroit with one timeout remaining. Snap. Poor man rush. McCarthy, throwing right, Nailer. And he caught it. Yes. At the 46-yard line. That's a 16-yard grab by Jalen Naylor. And all you lions lovers here at Ford, Bill, where you can head home. I love it. I love everything about it.

I love Paul Allen on K-F-A-N. I love that they got the matchup of Jalen Naylor on Arthur Millett on a third and five and that J.J. McCarthy had the confidence to go after it. Back shoulder, perfect ball. Naylor ices the game. They hold on to beat the Detroit Lions 27 to 24. Patrick, give us your big picture view of what kind of date J.J. McCarthy had. It sums it up on Paul Allen's call because

it's been a while since we've seen J.J. McCarthy. Justin James McCarthy back in our lives since week two, it was Carson Wins. And we didn't hear that sauce, that spice from Paul Allen saying Lions fans, go home and enjoy the rest of the Detroit has to offer because that's the ball game. To sum it up where there's Jordan Addison, there's Justin Jefferson, who dealt with some cramps in the game. They're lined up three wide on the right side. They both run crossers,

and that was the second target of the day for Jalen Naylor. One was an interception on a ball that McCarthy actually missed, was a little bit behind Terry on Ardle, got his first career interception on that one. But he throws that back shoulder to Jalen Naylor, to ice the game, the confidence to go with that. And it wasn't just welcome back, J.J. McCarthy, it was welcome back,

Brian Flores in a vintage Vikings defense performance where they made timely plays where the Lions probably didn't have their best pitches. I know Dan Campbell acknowledged that sometimes things just go the other way. But it was

a rough game for Lions standards for them. The guys in Purple though had a lot to say about that. Jamir Gibbs, David Montgomery, both combined 65 yards on the ground. Sustained success wasn't there for the Lions. Amon Ross St. Brown had some drops. then he normally converts

but the way the game started on fourth down is fourth and four. Dan Campbell being Dan Campbell goes for it. Sam Laporta catches the ball at the 10 muscles his way into the end zone with some help from Khalif Raymond to go in there. But JJ McCarthy comes right back down the field. Some nice runs from Aaron Jones who they're glad to get back

because the ground game was great but Aaron Jones would leave with a shoulder later on in this game. McCarthy hits Justin Jefferson for a fade ball, a one-handed snag from JJ where we've seen he and Amik Robertson go at it since 7-on-7 camps in Louisiana. Amic got the better of him in that week 18 game last year, but Justin Jefferson showed his dominance there. And the closing sequence where the Lions do get a touchdown on a ball to Jameson

Williams, where the stripes thought he stepped out of bounds, but Jamo stayed in, extended at the pylon 4-6, but they left too much time. They get the ball to J.J. McCarthy, and he goes down, burns the clock out and a solid division win for the Minnesota Vikings and the overwrought J.J. McCarthy conversation for a week, Greg. It feels so different. Forget a week. This is a, I think, a season changing type of win. Because I, it was two starts. Jay J's all that matters. And it's just a start towards everything that they want. And this division is suddenly very close. All four

teams got a chance here. And they're four and four. But to knock off the lions and to do it in this way, you mentioned the defense, 11 QB hits on Goff, 10 tackles for loss, five sacks, and then the running game, they are successful on half their runs, doubling the success rate of the Lions who couldn't run the ball at all. And maybe it is all from that confidence from the quarterback. Let's actually look at J.J. McCarthy's arrival. If you're watching us on YouTube, we appreciate you all. And like, subscribe, do the thing.

And just watch how awkward this is. he's coming in, you know, with his work shirt. That, that symbolizes that he's a working man. He sees the dude. Oh, Tom Pelliserro gets a fist bump and then KOC gets it. I really just wanted to show this. Partly for the shirt, that was like,

hey, we're, we're coming here to work. I guess it's a Michigan Wolverine thing. So it's a callback to that. But then giving Pelliserra, he had no idea, I think, in that moment, who Tom Pelliserra was and just was like, I guess I better give the fist bump. Or maybe he did. And Palliseros on the team. I don't know.

It's the key. and peel sketch with the president dapps like fully fully executed there like a full on tap on one side in the fist bumps for Tom P and he goes to see his head coach and then he's out I wanted to throw that in there because that's

JJ arriving and then this is him arriving in the locker room after the game I just like that they were all waiting for him, like a groom at like a wedding or something. That was amazing. That's cool. I loved that Kevin O'Connell, these little things that build confidence for a quarterback. And we have such a small sample size for J.J. McCarthy. But I think there were so many moments in this game.

where it was this like mutual ability to not only build confidence with what you're calling for this quarterback, but also the team doing what the plan was initially when they decided they were going to go with J.J. McCarthy, which was get what they could out of a better running game. Lift the floor there. Really play very, very good attacking solid defense. Absolutely. 47% pressure rate on Jared Goff attacking defense. At one point with only one down between these two plays, you saw Javon Hargrave get into the backfield for a tackle for loss in the run game. Then you saw Harrison Smith bat down a Jared Gough pass when coming off the edge on a blitz. That was the Brian Flores experience in a nutshell today. And it was

back and they needed to be because this was what they wanted for J.J. McCarthy, not just to give him like a level runway to continue to stack days together, to get more experience, to play football, and then to lift the entire floor around him if things didn't necessarily go his way. And I thought for the most part, they did go his way as a passer. He made some excellent throws today. And I loved that Kevin O'Connell put it in his hands to ice out the game to try to make that

difficult level, low probability throw outside shoulder to Jalen Naylor on the perimeter to ice out the game. All of these things together in combination really go such a long way for a quarterback that is trying to actually be in the NFL and put

positive games together. And I think we saw the glimpses of why you can be hopeful and believe? Because I had openly wondered, I was having this conversation with Greg, like, where is the place that J.J. McCarthy excels? Like, athletically, how do we evaluate him? And I was skeptical there. And Greg Rosenthal's like, no,

JJ's an athlete. He showed it today on that touchdown run where Jack Campbell has gotten everything in his vicinity. He puts a move on Jack Campbell at the five. And then it looks like Brian Branch is going to smash him at the pylon. And he evades that just enough to go in standing up

where you can see, like, you get J.J. McCarthy out the edge, that is an athlete, making plays where I'm in. That was the moment where I was like, that was not happening over the last. No, Carson wins five or six weeks. By two guys. And like, I don't think you can overstate like the Flores game plan because Eric Wilson, their linebacker had five quick pressures today. I don't, I just counted up.

They had 16 quick pressures, which is under two and a half seconds as a team, which is as might be the highest that I've seen all season. And it's close to being up there. and just percentage-wise, JJ McCarthy actually was pressured at a higher rate, but that's partly because he was holding onto the ball a lot. But the Lions also got a million quick pressures too. So this was a game where both offensive lines were losing

in terms of the passing game. And for the Vikings to come out on top in a matchup that Dan Campbell as owned, I think it's a really big statement win in the middle of this season. And there's going to be more shuffling up front for the Lions. Christian McGuagney got carded off in the fourth quarter. Dan Campbell says he was going to, be out for some time there.

So more changes up front for the lines where they just started getting people back up front. Now it's back to the shuffle. So the Vikings, they don't forget about us in this NFC North race. We will get to the Packers a little later with Shuki in the show. But yeah, lines fall to six and two. And let's take a break. And on the other side, we will go to our favorite weekly segment.

Yes, it's the Cincinnati Bengals. Defense helps to create the game of the year of the week again. Bears cannot stop the clock with a timeout. They're out of those. Safeties are back deep, but Eun-J motions left. They're blitzing. It's picked up. Caleb throws, middle of the field.

Loveland catch. Breaks away at the 30, Loveland 20, Lovelin 10, Lovelin end zone. Touchdown Bears. Colston Loveland. and out of throw by Caleb Williams. It's a 58-yard strike to the Michigan rookie at his second touchdown today. He outran the Bengals here in the jungle.

The Bears have the lead again. Jeff Jodiac on WMVP. Man, fourth quarter, three touchdowns, after the two-minute warning, only in Cincinnati. 47 to 42, Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson breathe a sigh of relief. And, yeah, Jeff Joniak on WMVP is loving every minute of it. And Bengals fans are thinking, how did that happen again? The Bengals for the Bengals, whoopsies.

A game that featured all offense and very, very little defense, including eight lead changes, also got as weird as it did thanks to two massive special teams plays. First, the game opened with a kickoff return for a touchdown on the very first play by Charlie Jones of the Bengals. That kicked off scoring. Score again and again and again and again they would. Then late in the game, an onside kick during the Bengals double-digit fourth quarter comeback got accidentally kicked by Daniel Hardy, a Bears player on the coverage team,

even though it was short of the distance it needed to travel. which was recovered by the Bengals, which set up their go-ahead touchdown to make the score 42 to 41. But Caleb and Colston Loveland, who had caught his first touchdown of his NFL career earlier in the game, connected on that 58-yard touchdown,

sending Bengals defenders pinballing off of each other and lost in coverage. And once again, it was the Bengals defense, letting down the offense, and a wild one with just 25 seconds left in regulation. I know you have. have some stats. There are just so many ridiculous stats

when it comes to the Bengals defense. So many of these plays... It's more like I have weird facts. So go for what you were going to do. Okay. So many of these plays seem to include Gino Stone, not to pick on just one guy, but it's just like they're at a point

where they have multiple problems and they just have no one to put in for them. But yeah, some of my stats were, they're their first team to allow 500 yards, 38 points, create no takeaways in a two-game span ever. That's just Super Bowl, like since the merger, Super Bowl ever.

They're also the first team since the 66 Giants to score 38 points or more in back-to-back games and not win any of them. And then if you go through, and this is from Jake Liskow, who does Lockdown Bengals, some of the worst EPA per play numbers of the last 25 years, this out of 800 different defensive. they're the second worst overall, worse than defensive success rate, worse than points per game,

and bottom two to four, and basically any other stat you can. This is a historically bad defense. But the Bears, I give them credit for taking advantage because that's what you've got to do against historically bad defense, especially when your defense

is a little leaky late in the game. Well, the cracks are starting to show. So first and foremost, I want to hear from Chase Brown about that Bengals defense, letting down once again the offense because we'll get to the weirdness of the rest of the game,

but here is Chase Brown, a grumpy Chase Brown after the game. we just got to play complimentary football like we put the ball in the end zone and go up a point at the end finish the fucking game like just end it like that's it like that's that's like that's like that's what we need to do just end the fucking game like make them make them get us the ball back let us fuck go to 22 victory and let's end the game that's how that's like that's how I feel he's not wrong actually because they had the offense more than gave what it could and like I said came back from a double digit deficit it. And especially Joe Flacco playing on this shoulder injury and still slinging the ball

down the field. He got a huge game out of T. Higgins got banged up at the end of the game and left the game at the very end. But before that, he had two touchdowns, both completely insane, unreal, gravity defying rules of physics on adhering to catches that just did not make any sense. And it happened twice. And so this is the whole, this is the whole thing. They had everything set up to even continue to, like, if they had more time, if they got the ball back, even after the Colston Loveland touchdown, who knows what could have happened. This offense was scoring all day long for the Bengals against the Bears' defense. It really was. Whoever gets the ball last is going to win this game. They scored too fast. I thought that immediately, which is crazy.

Well, I think in hindsight, because we see, you know, a quarterback nearing his 40s playing in game where he's out at AC joint sprain, we weren't sure. Zach Taylor said, it was 50-50, but Joe wants to play. He said he couldn't lift his arm over his head during the week. And we saw it on the Hail Mary where I think probably perhaps some pharmaceuticals started to wear. Well, Adi said he got a shot right before the game and then maybe had to have one at half time too.

Yikes. And so like there was that working in the Bears favor. Also, T. Higgins wasn't in the game for that Hill Mary. I would have assumed if T. Higgins was still able to play after what he did against the Bears defense, he probably comes down with whatever. Joe Flacko is able to get down near or close to the end zone and maybe gets in where the Bears got a few gifts in that, not just from the Bengals defense on the day, who missed 15 tackles. By the way, they allowed 135 yards after missed tackles, including 30 plus to Colston Loveland on the play that winds up being the game winner. But there were so many circumstances where Cincinnati could have won this game.

Yes. They had 400. Joe Flacco, I feel like the, the deal. Defense is ruining what is he's having the Super Bowl playoff run right now. And they're not even winning games. 470 yards and four touchdowns. But the Bears' offense was better for most of the day. Monong guy goes for 176.

Brown goes for another 37. Like everything was worked. DJ Moore at a 17-yard touchdown run. Caleb was effective running the ball. Like they were dominant in terms of their offensive performance. Yeah, there was something strange about that. I'll get to in a minute. But basically, bottom line is we're going to have to start calling Kyle Menung guy,

Kyle Menung dude. because he is a big time freaking football player. And it's tough for DeAndre Swift that he's out. Obviously, Ben Johnson really likes to have two running backs. And then Britton Brown comes in and runs for a couple explosives and a touchdown. And he's like the third reserve guy. So it's like this run game is really what actually is the above average borderline elite area right now of what this bear's offensive attack is going to be. Because it was really kind of strange otherwise.

the passing game once again was start stop start stop really great positive big time throws being made followed by a lot of sort of scrambling around and guys aren't open down the field to the to the Bengals credit on defense but then some hesitation from Caleb Williams on whether to run or not made some awesome plays but what really stood out is how Ben Johnson seemed to try to want to coach around that like Caleb Williams had two receptions including a touchdown he ran four trick plays one called back for penalty. Trick play is accounted for 17 of the bear's points today. They were running all kinds of different types of things. And I wonder if it's something where they're, they're trying to jolt their rhythm out of themselves a little bit. They're trying to get out of their own heads and have

some fun, perhaps, or maybe they just need to disrupt their own rhythm. I don't know. But whatever it was, the execution was good other than one that got called back from penalty. It seems like this is a team that really kind of thrives a little bit more when they're doing sort of fun. things like that on the unscripted drives, which is really interesting to me, because I don't think that's necessarily sustainable, but maybe it's what they do to try to just figure out how to work on stuff together a little bit better in the passing game. And it certainly worked today. Caleb Williams caught a pass for a first down from Tyson Baygent, the backup quarterback, for God's sakes. I mean, it just was, it was like, what is happening here today?

They go to quarterback offense and Caleb gets a touchdown on the Philly special where you wonder, like, the bears are having success only when it's weird. Like only when it's a trick play or when Caleb is spinning around six times and going on the run and going on these galloping runs where, you know, the bears thrive and the absurd. They are an absurd organization, the Bengals right now. And this is if it if it was any other organization, I would think like this is the profile of a season that gets a coach fired. They are three and six and they just don't have answers on defense. They go into their buy. They just keep losing these close games that could at least keep them alive.

The bears get to five and three. and we will stay in the NFC and talk about a team that's trying to stay alive in the playoff race too. Yes, it's the Go-Go-49ers. Dolyingos, in the brazo-is-li-so-isture. I'm enchanted the massages,

but that's of the dolor of the impact. Otta, with force, it's a ball, a 10, she's a ball, a four, seven, a three, two, one, zero. Fuego! A despeg!

To! Toh-ho-to-do-to-do-to-do-to-do-to-do-to-tto-tto-tto-tto-tto-tto-tto-tto-jants! That's Nestor Rosario on Cuebuenna, 1280 a.m. Brian Robinson, part of a great rushing attack against the Giants. And yeah, sure, every team has a great rushing attack against the Giants. But it was a get-right game for this 49ers offense, especially on the ground, where they get 159 yards, 34 to 24. Patrick, what impressed you the most out of what the 49ers did today?

Well, they got the ball back in the hands of Christian McCaffrey extensively. After really doing not too much in terms of volume for CMC and a loss to the Houston Texans, they got him the ball 28 times on the ground for 106 yards and a touchdown. He also ran more routes than anyone on the game. He had six catches for 67 yards and a score. also 53 yards on the ground for Brian Robertson Jr., which also kind of mitigated the pass rush

from the league's leading sack artist for a time from Brian Burns. But the 49ers defense also made plays that they didn't against C.J. Stroud and the Texans, including a turnover opportunity at the end of the first half where Jackson Dart was holding on for the ball for way too long. Cleland Farrell took an outside rush

like he's six yards into the end zone, and Jackson Dart steps up as if there's nobody back there. Farrell probably could have swipe for the ball, but he was just so excited to get a sack opportunity. He hit him from behind. They would ultimately, the 49ers would get the ball back with a scoring opportunity. But then comes Brian Burns,

where they could have just taken a 10-point lead into the half, but Kyle Shanahan had Mack Jones throwing. Burns won, got a handle the ball. The ball pops out, goes to Abdul Carter, whether or not you want to call it a, whether it was a pass or a fumble. Either way, the ball never hit the ground. But Graham Godot would miss the kick.

kick. So it ultimately wouldn't matter. And then the Giants would go to on to finish the game, 5 of 12 of third down, on third down. Jackson Dart was 3 of 8 of passes over 10 or more air yards, contrasted with McCorickle Jones. Hey now. 18 of 24, Greg,

completing all but one of his passes over 10 or more air yards. Or is this, you know, the 49ers, offense looked like a fully operational squad today. It's not even like a story at this point every week when you find out Brock Purdy's not back. They're just like, okay, go win more bonus money.

Mac Jones, baby! Oh, wait. Oh. Did that actually happen? Or are we like digitally creating? There's a weird thing going on. I'll have a couple more of just QB's names being saying this season. Here's this one.

Matthew Stafford. And then we have Colleen with this one. Daniel Jones. So it's just something I flagged and I'm kind of. We're singing names. I don't know what we're going to get out of Patrick at some point. We need more of this. I want it dropped liberally.

I want operatic things. I wanted some. I needed that after like a Daniel Jones interception today. That would have been amazing. This I've impressed by this 49ers team. It is crazy though to see CMC get another 33 touches. It's just, I don't know. I can't.

It seemed like they were trying to give him a week of, okay, we're going up against an offense. They can't really do too much. In Houston, maybe Christian, like it's going to be a little bit easier today. And then they lost. So it's like, all right, to hell, all that. It's you, buddy.

He has the most scrimmage yards of anyone. Can you guess since when? Through nine weeks. Who had just like a monster yards from scrimmage season? Todd Gurley. Think about it. It's right in front of your face here. From my face.

Yards from Christmas. Since Christian McCaffrey in 2019. That's not fair. His monster panther season. Although Dalvin Cook also had more yards at this point in the season. But it's like the most touches at this point. through this part of the season of anyone in 49ers history. Unfortunately, they did have more injury problems.

Mike L. Williams, their first round pick, had an ACL injury. Just when you can't think it can get any worse for them up front, they lose their next best edge rusher, edge player in Michael Williams, which is really disappointing. This team, they have to be buyers at the deadline. And it's hard because they really made it clear that they were just going to roll with a young and ascending group of guys. they wanted to develop and they were hoping to have, you know, Nick Bosa healthy to help bring

that group along and, and all of this. And Mikel Williams has played well. Like he's, he's grown up very quickly and has had to. And they've been able to move him around a lot too. So that's not only the part of it that that's tough, that he's hurt, but also that it's multiple positions depending on the situation that he's playing for them. And that that is tough because I feel like this team didn't want to necessarily push in on, using resources because this was a little bit of a sprint rebuild

especially on the defensive side for them. But now they might have to because they're too good. They're winning too many games. They could actually make a push so they need more guys on the defensive side.

Yeah, it'll be a tricky one. I wouldn't be surprised about anything that they would do in the next couple of days. And ultimately most teams on balance aren't going to do as much as you expect. We do have a couple Eagles trades

to talk about, by the way. We're going to wrap up all the trading that's been happening transactions with Shook on the Monday night recap. But let's listen to Brian Dable, who, look, they've had a lot of injuries. The defense, especially the run defense, is terrible. It's not all on his quarterback, his offense, but they are two and seven for the third straight year under Brian Dable.

Here is a interaction that I've only heard described from Jordan, and I can't wait to hear it for the first time. Brian, are those tears of emotion Or is that just Who's? Is that what? I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you're saying. You walked in here.

It looked like there were tears coming out of your eyes. No. Is that just allergies? No. No, it wasn't tears. What? There's zero redness in Brian Dable's eyes there at that point. Like, it could have been a Vizene commercial.

Yeah. To me, that feels more like, shouldn't you be crying right now? Yeah, you gotta be, you gotta be sure if someone was crying. I don't know. What a bizarre interaction. He,

I'm gonna, I'm gonna give Daibald the win here. I mean, his eyes are twinkling a little, but he did not look like a man who had just, uh, emoted much of anything other than.

No, he's clearly dead inside. See thee. I mean, he's got a lot of emotions, but I don't think he was crying. On the Brian Daibble scale, that's jovial.

They just lost. Yeah. Weird. Who asked the question? Listen, I feel like if you, I always trust the beat reporters, okay? So if whoever asked that question saw him, saw a man cry, then you saw a man cry, all right? Now that man can deny, said tears. That's within his right.

I'm always just like a feel your feelings, girl, though. He did, he did respond in a way that you would respond if you had been crying. Oh, wait, who? What? Oh, me? He literally asked who is crying. And then he was like, I didn't hear you. we'll break this down further later that i didn't hear you as a classic i need a second to think

about how i want to respond to this i think he was so shocked by the absurdity of the of the sequence that he was legitimate was i crying and i just blacked out this team is uh this team is dead it's unfortunate we're back to like wandell robinson getting 11 targets for 46 yards we're back to jackson darts like the leading rusher even the defensive line isn't doing anything because Mack Jones has a, you know, he's getting rid of the ball so quickly. This is how bad it's gotten. My dear friend, Charlotte Carroll, who covers the Giants, did not ask that question, covers the Giants for the athletic, a wayward camera man, like accidentally smacked her in the head with his camera outside of a scrum today. She's fine. Big ice pack,

got the selfie of the big ice pack on her head. That's how bad it's gotten in the Meadowlands. That's where we're at. They're taking out the reporters at this time. It's just to, familiar. Unfortunately losing, becoming familiar to the New Orleans Saints as well, although they haven't had a season quite like this in a long time. The Rams uniquely haven't had a season quite like this in a long time either. A fast start for the hometown team here right across the street. Tide in right, into the boundary. Three receivers left from that group. Nakua in motion up the snap. Play action. Stafford on platform, sets the laces and drives one down the right side line. Caught by Nakua.

Touchdown, L.A. He knocks over the pylon on a dazzling darts from Matthew Stafford. 39 yards in L.A. is smashing the easy button. Three touchdowns on the board in the first half. Stafford strikes again. Welcome back Puka Nakua. Oh, smashing the easy button. J.B. Long with the good stuff on KSPN.

maybe a call of the year candidate. Rams roll, 34 to 10. It was a great weekend for the Rams Dodgers lover in your life. Like my wife, Emeka. Tell me, Jordan, what you found most interesting in a completely one-sided game that I guess we could have seen coming. We did. That's why it's our survivor.

Good point. We did. Yes, we did. I spent the whole morning thinking we had picked the Packers as our survivor that we had lost. Well, Greg, I could tell you what I found most interesting about this absolute tail-whooping at the hands of the L.A. Rams. But why tell you when I could tell you in a poem? Oh, wow. A Matthew Stafford, no-look dig.

A touchdown pass to Big Rig Higgs. Heavy personnel at a statistical high, a field goal unit that inspires deep size. A defense that is a pass-rushing. Bazooka. Can we please at all costs protect Puka Nakua? And that's what happened today in the Rams game. Yes. Very good. That's how you know

it was a blowout. Jordan had time to write a whole poem. Write a poem. Yeah, Puka Nakua left the game with a chest injury after completing the most common play

in the Sean McVeigh playbook. Fourth and one sweep. Fourth and one sweep to his rugged wide receiver, which it's hard to say like, oh, why put him at risk in this game? It was fairly early in the game. I mean, it is what Pooka Nikoa does is play content. Yeah, that's like the,

that's the we are going to convert this play all year for them. So I don't have any issue with the play call there. But yeah, I want to talk about the heavy personnel. The Rams were 13 personnel per next gen on 35 of 77 offensive plays. And they had a 51% success rate for touchdowns. out of this personnel grouping, all four of their tight ends at different points were activated, including the rookie Terrence Ferguson, who made some big plays.

This is what exactly what they want to show that they can do. If they're just trying to close a game immediately out of the gate, which they knew they could do against this sort of woebegone saints team, and they wanted to try to do this, take all the teeth out of any sort of defensive scheme that Shaw McPhase, former colleague, Brandon Staley might have been trying to cook up against them. Just none of that was even able, was not feasible for the Saints out of the gate because they mashed them out of 13 personnel all game.

It's like this is a multiple team in the best way because this is a November multiple team. It's not just the sort of style points team that we've seen in the past from the Rams. Like this is a heavy run it up your, you know what team right now. They're a great team. Try not to get beep there, George.

I know. I was really, you know, I'm always so worried about that. We found out, yeah, it can't, it can't go in. You can say it, but it can't go, it can't be going in. Yeah. Or else it's a beat. Yes.

And in this case, it was going up. So, like, yeah. So that would get you peeped 100% of the time where, you know, we can't even say the name of the ideal segment there because it would lead to a beef. And I don't want Eric to have to do any more excess work. But the start for Tyler Shuck look good in spots where, you know, things got protected up. And Shuck was able to find both Chris O'Lod. and Rashid for some big completions,

a nice, relatively nice, Juwan Johnson game, but it was just, there's a talent disparity, you know, a touch overmatched in multiple spots where this game was, was over early.

And despite that, Matthew Stafford was taking steps four minutes to go for some reason. I don't know why. Yeah, there was a while where the Saints were getting a lot of pats on the back for, oh,

you know, if you watch them every week, they're like, they're actually looking pretty competitive in everything. and then now that's that's gone. This is the least competitive. That was your Jordan impression.

I feel like you could have given it more effort. We've all said it. I've said that a million types. I feel like every person that covers football is going to make that point this year. Unfortunately, it hasn't been true the last couple weeks. Tyler Schock did make a couple of good throws, but they could not do anything consistently.

They made some really strange calls. They had Taysam Hill in shotgun on the fourth and goal. So basically saying to the entire world, hey, the quarterback's going to run it. And then they put him in the gun further away from the goal line, then maybe he should be in that play. I do want to actually a shout-up because I've been talking about the Rams secondary,

particularly on the perimeter, as really one of the few weaknesses that this defense has had. And I'm really impressed with Emmanuel Forbes and how he's developed. And I remember last season when Emmanuel Forbes got to the Rams as a late season acquisition after a really bad experience with the commanders.

And I was walking over to the locker room and Aubrey Pleasant, the DB's coach, came out of the cafeteria area. And I said, hey, what do you think about Emmanuel Forbes? he stopped and he looked at me and he smiled and he goes just watch they were so confident in him finally putting all of this together and they need him to do it with a kella witherspoon out and darius williams banged up he had three past deflections and interception in the fourth quarter but to me most impressive because he is a um like narrowly built man right and so his third down

hit on tasum hill in space where you have to come down and crash like they always want their perimeter corners to do he had a great game so i just wanted to give him a little kutum because I've been pretty hard on that ramp secondary over the last several weeks. Yeah, the luxury, they didn't even play Roger McCreary at cornerback in this game. He did play on special teams who they just acquired via trade because they didn't need to. And they only had 40

total snaps on defense. So they'll be nice and fresh for next week. You said they're built for late in the season. That's what I was referring to at the beginning, saying we haven't seen Rams seasons like this because they've so often been having to catch up after a slow start, but they're six and two. That's the first NFC win of the year.

And yeah, they prevent the same from running the ball at all, the Saints had a 7% success rate while the Rams ran for 171 yards. You do not see that very often. Let's stick in Los Angeles and talk about the team on the road today, the Chargers trying to get another victory. There he is.

Herbert takes the toss. Rolls to his right, looking for McConkey, and Herbert into the end zone. He slides. Perfect touchdown. Down Chargers. Justin Herbert's first rushing touchdown of the season, the 13th of his career.

And a little bit of history here, DJ. He is now tied Hall of Fame quarterback John Adel for the most such performances in Charger history. The 12th time, he's thrown and rushed for one. Absolute style by Justin Herbert. He's out of the house. When he did that slide, I thought of you immediately, Jordan, just how he's been just throwing like a little extra.

And we could have run that highlight a little extra and given Daniel Jeremiah some love. But no, Eric, just shut them down. We do have a 40s in free agents with DJ coming up later this week. Maybe we'll talk Chargers. They win 27 to 20 in a game that probably shouldn't have been as close. Herbert throws a pick six right off the bat to marry Dike, who has a chance, I think, to be the all-pro returner this year.

Great kick returner. And today he had a punt return touchdown. Gets 14 points on the board for the Titans, but the Chargers win anyways. And that slide touchdown for Herbert to me just shows what this game was all about. It was a 99-yard drive after they stuffed the Titans over and over on the goal line. And that's not a defense that you think is going to be able to do that. but they were just tougher than the Titans.

Stuff them a couple times. And on that 99-yard drive, Herbert at one point decides to try to pick up a first down by taking on head-first a defensive end and falling forward a solid four yards. Like, he got the leverage on the defensive end of the Titans and picked up 12 or 13 yards. He had a 100% success rate running the ball today.

8 for 8, 100% until his kneeled down at the very end of the game. And as part of that 99-yard drive, also a third and four where he just completes an absolutely beautiful back-shoulder throw down the field to Quentin Johnston. So to me, this was, hey, Herbo, just go in, like, destroy mode.

And that is how we will win a game where, unfortunately, the injury to Joe Alt, to me, just hangs over this team now. Yeah. And so it's going to have to be more of Herbo playing Destructo ball, getting out on the edge and having those run plays. where you're glad to see Quentin Johnston get back on the end zone

and actually get another catch because he got shut out last week and I believe the week before that as well but it's the injuries are mounting on the offensive line and they already have been coming into the season where they've already made the adjustments

and now you've got to make an adjustment with the adjustments. So he, Joe Alt was carted off the field with an ankle injury which is being reported as a high ankle sprain, but it sounds like this could be one that requires surgery, more serious. He already missed so much time. They also lost their starting right tackle today, Bobby Hart earlier in the game. Herbert was under so much pressure even before Alt left, and I'm thinking, man, like,

even against the Titans, and it wasn't like him holding the ball. It was Draymont Jones and I forget who the other rusher was. It was just dominating with quick pressures. They had like seven in the first quarter and a half, and I'm thinking, this is not sustainable. But I'll Also, it was kind of fun to watch. It was kind of an incredible Herbert performance when you go back to watch this. Yeah, I like it and I hate it for him, right? Because you know that this is not sustainable, especially toward the postseason. You know, he is not in his later years.

He's just entering his prime, in my opinion. But you still want to avoid him having to take those hits. You still want to avoid putting him in these crazy stressful situations. This is a team that when it has it all together and when Joe Alde, especially is such a huge difference. maker on the field when they're playing the type of football they want to play it is legitimately gorgeous in like a fear inspiring way because of a who the quarterback is and be the things they can do on the ground and in their blocking surface and it just it seems unfair honestly because it's like they they have you see that the the theory and the ideation and

what they're capable of and it's not there it's not even their fault that this just keeps happening to them i i was saying for so long like every win they get before Joe Out comes back is going to count double. And now we're in a position where we don't know when he's going to be back. So this was a Pyrrhic victory. They get to six and three. It was important to pocket it. And they did it on a day where, like, you know, Herbert's time to throw.

He's holding onto the ball forever. He's taking a lot of sacks, but he's also throwing the ball down to the field and making awesome plays. And your guy, Trey Harris, he's got a little shit to him. Big play where he runs over and carries three Titans defenders to pick. pick up a big first down late. I also just have to ask Mike McCoy, their interim head coach,

why are you doing so many direct snaps to your running backs? I think they went 0 for five on it today. Kim Ward is athletic. Kim Ward is good. Your regular running game is good. Taji Spears looked awesome today, and Tony Pollard's over five yards per carry. And for whatever reason,

in every big spot of this game, they did a direct snap to the running back. And I think it went 0 for 4 or 5. It was just, it was driving me crazy. sorry to the Titans 1 and 8 to we hear another Matt Money Smith call just for the hell of it

that Quentin Johnston catch is on the border line to me of throw of the year it's probably not there but it was just so beautiful I wanted it to be part of this show Herbert they rush four standing tall to the end zone

looking for Q caught what a grab ball Q touchdown Chargers 20 yards Herbert to John For Q, his sixth touchdown of the season for Herbert is 18th.

Love that, man. Brilliant. It was a fun game. This was fun. This is the part of the show where I say goodbye to you guys. And then we welcome in Nick Shook. What are you going to do tonight, Jordan? Watch more football, Greg.

Okay, yes, that's a good idea. Watch some football. Also going to finalize the conversation. Oh. That starts on Wednesday. Ooh. What A.T's. by a pro.

We'll be back after the break to, yes, talk about the biggest upset on this side. Fitzgerald hit the game winner against Dallas from 33. Here at Lambeau from 49 for the win. Jansen the snap, Martin the hole. Fitzgerald drives the leg. The kick is up. It is good. Ryan Fitzgerald delivers, and Carolina silences Lambeau Field.

Ooh, the Panthers. They looked at my prediction of 33 to 11 for this game, and they stuck it in my ear. That was Anish Straff on WRFX. Maybe the two biggest upsets of the year, Shook, have both taken place at Lambeau Field. I should have checked this. Very similar scores. This one was 16 to 13 Panthers about a month and a half after the Browns stunned the Packers and he had knocked them out of the one seed in the NFC.

How did this happen? Well, that Browns home was in Cleveland, but that's neither here nor there. The big part about this is the fact that the Packers wasted so many opportunities. And the Panthers capitalized. and Rico Dattle proved himself as the superior back in the Panthers backfield, and he carried the ball 25 times for 130 yards and two touchdowns, and he paced this offense, and Bryce Young only had to complete 11 passes, and their defense played phenomenally in the biggest spots,

and everybody's going to paint this as the Packers playing with their food and, you know, committing a number of unforgivable mistakes in football crimes, and that's all fine. But let's give the Panthers some credit because they battled their tails off. They got waxed last week by the Buffalo Bills. They had every reason in the world to get on the plane this week and lay down against the Packers. They did the exact opposite and come away victorious.

I mean, and they did it, and this is, I'm really going to be leaning on you here because I only saw very little of this game. But they did it in a day that, you know, Bryce Young ends up with like 100 yards. And a total groaner of an interception. And it really shows a couple things, how their running game is, you know,

it travels and it's when it's rolling one of the best in the league and that the defensive improvement even if it's not going to be every week is real to the point where they could even have a game like this how did the packers only end up with 13 points in this game well they fumbled away their first possession on a very impressive promising an impressive drive then they settle for a field goal in their next two trips into panthers territory and essentially they wasted some opportunities to put touchdowns on the board because they couldn't convert and you have to give credit to the panthers defense for standing tall in those situations. But it's not like the Packers couldn't move the football. They just couldn't finish drives. And whether it was, you know,

some mystifying play calling, the turnover early, or the fourth down in which it's fourth and eight and they're feeling a little desperate and nobody's open. And the Panthers are playing fantastic coverage all the way through the scramble drill. Jordan Love holds on the ball for 11 and a half seconds before he gets rid of it. Like this is what happened. Like, yeah, the Panthers, the Packers let the Panthers stay in the game early. They did kind of play. play with their food in the first half, and that's fine. But when the second half arrived, they realized, oh, this is, we can't just

flip a switch. We can't do what we did against Pittsburgh. This competition that we're facing today is a little bit tougher. The Panthers brought the fight to the Packers. The Packers kind of took the field as if, all right, well, we're playing Carolina will be fine, and they were not fine. Yeah, the success rate, you know, dropping

back to pass, only 44%, which is not great for them. Jordan Love does not get a touchdown in this game, 26, for 37, 273 yards. And you mentioned that play, which was symbolic of the day. Let's listen to it because it was a journey. Fourth down at eight. Here we go. The Carolina

13, Love in the shotgun. Wilson to his left. Three receivers right. Musgrave, tight end, left side of the line. Snap to Love. Love scrambles to his right. Looking to buy time. Still looking. Stambles back the other way. Love on the run.

Still looking. Watson, right side on the end. I think we got to put that on worst throw of the year, nominee. He throws it, and I'm thinking like, there's got to be someone there. And then the camera pans, and I'm like, there's nobody there. Well, he's pointing, and I'd have to go watch the dots. He's pointing for the receiver to run at that angle. There is a receiver at the back of the end zone there.

I think he might have gone out of bounds. And so he knew he was done anyway. So he's thinking the receiver is going to maybe go try to win a jump ball there. But it's absolutely rough. We're throwing, put it on the list there. I got to give a shout to the Panthers defense pursuing Jordan Love on that play. Nick Scorton in particular, because I watch him go left. And I'm watching this live and I'm like, get after him.

Scorton, you're there. You're this type of player. And then he changes direction and goes left. And I'm like, okay, Scorton's lost. Oh, wait, there's Scorton again, 67.6 yards traveled on that play. Wow. that is absolutely nuts and yeah he only ends up with two pressures on the day but they do get four from to Sean Wharton right after I kind of called him out during the week as not having a great season

as a free agent pickup and on the other side that the Packers only get a couple of quick pressures in large part I would assume because Bryce Young's getting rid of the ball quickly and they're just running the ball yep yep and the Anthony Manrico Dattle has the difference between the running game with Chuba Hubbard versus Rico, Rico Dattle is night and day. Like, I can't believe that it took Dave Canales this long to commit to Rico Dattle, who out touched Hubbard,

I think was 27 to 5. That is your offense. That's what you should be. Dowdell runs with such violence and burst. This should be your leadback. And he can pace the offense and keep them in games like he did today. Well, it's a bad job by me, not mentioning until now that Tucker Craft left this game

with, you know, a potential torning. ACL because that moving forward is the biggest deal like yeah it's not great for the Packers to take this second loss remember they have the tie as well but that's the guy when we're talking about well do the Packers really have like a guy who can can change how you're going to play them Christian Watson offers something that other players on that team doesn't and he had a 50 yard plus catch today but Kraft is the guy and and and there's also the issue that when Kraft is out of the mix, Jordan Love trusts Christian Watson a little bit too much.

He threw a pass into triple coverage. They got picked off today trying to go deep to Christian Watson. Like, they were in a game where they were trying to earn the shot play, create the big play, force the big play. And I worry that without Kraft in the mix, Watson's involvement, like Love cannot rely on him heavily too much if Kraft is not in the mix. So they're going to have to kind of recalibrate if they don't have craft available the rest of the year.

Yeah, that is a absolute bummer. a killer. And they're still atop the division by half a game over Detroit, but they're letting Chicago back in. They're letting Minnesota back in. And I do think that lowers the ceiling just a little bit. And I'm not like that shocked because to quote Walker Rosenthal, my son, if Jordan was here, she'd be, she'd be marking it down. I asked what he thought of the Packers' uniforms today. And he said, it looks like my poop. To Houston. Walker. Denver, three for four and two-point conversions.

Nixon's under center. Sutton wide left. Here comes Pat Bryan in motion from right to left. Now he goes back. Sutton pumps, throws a ball to the end zone. Catch. Two-point conversion is good. That's Troy Franklin with the catch.

Kalin Bullock on the coverage. I said we've seen it before with this Broncos offense and Bo Knicks at the helm. They've got a little bit of magic to them in the fourth quarter and we've seen it early. We have seen it. That was Dave Logan on K-O-A. You know it's a weird game

when we go with a two-point conversion to tie it at 15 as the highlight. But it was my choice. You know, we're sick of these chip-shot field goals to win it. We've heard it once. We've heard it a thousand times. And I think the two-point conversion tells the story here, Chuck, because they've hit so many of them this year,

literally two-point conversions that mattered and getting wins. That's now 5-1 score win for the Broncos. They've been in these tight games. And even when Bo Nex is struggling, they just fine enough to win it at the end, 18 to 15. The Broncos get it done.

Yeah, this is a game that was very indicative of the way the Broncos' offense has operated for most of the season, save for their performance against the Cowboys last week, in that they did not find a rhythm until it really mattered in the fourth quarter. And they were very much a quick strike offense. Like, the fact that they were even,

in this game in half time, because you go into halftime, they're trailing 12 to 7. They've possessed the ball for like seven and a half minutes. That's how badly they were out possessed by Houston in the first half. So they didn't have opportunities, but they also didn't have opportunities because they weren't giving themselves any because they weren't sustaining drives. But when they did score, it was a quick pass to Cortland Sutton down the side. And it was actually a series of passes in which Nick shows off his arm and it ends up in the hands of Sutton.

They score again in the second half. Pass to RJ Harvey on a wheel route out of the backfield. that he burns Henry Tooto and gets in the end zone for a touchdown. Like, they didn't need to have the ball that long because they can do this. It's also that they were in a war of attrition in the fourth quarter. They forced like five straight punts from the Texans. And it looked like the Broncos were not going to come close to taking the lead in this game. Like, we were headed for overtime until Knicks dialed up the fourth quarter magic,

had a long scramble, had one more scramble, J.K. Dobbins with a long run. You hit the chip shot field goal. You win the game that you thought, I don't even know if there's ever going to be a resolution to this game. That is who the Broncos are. They don't win pretty, but they still win and they always do it in the fourth quarter. That is outrageous, six straight puns to end the game for the Texans in the end in a game in a game where I'm counting it and I think they had 15 drives. And it's just outrageous and it's so disappointing because they started the game looking better.

And I know they were long drives and that end up with field goal attempts, you know, taking seven to half minutes off the clock and then another eight play drive where they get the field goal. But they look better when C.J. Stroud was in the game, but C.J. Stroud leaves, was tested for a concussion, did not come back. His mom did send out, you know, an Instagram post later said C.J. is good. And he's, he's smiling. So you hope it's not something that's like a long-term problem.

But they're obviously not going to win many games with Davis Mills at quarterback. And it's just, it's just disappointing because this defense is playing its heart out week after week, and they're three and five. Yeah, yeah. Kaelin Bullock made a nice interception, deep, you know, playing essentially playing center field. They did everything that they should defensively to keep the Texans in the game and give them a chance to win. But again, I had horrors and visions of week two, the loss to Tampa Bay,

where you're on the goal line and you're trying to slam it into a brick wall and you can't get the end zone. They did that again twice. They did it, two handoffs, Nick Chubb, one to British Brooks. Then you get flagged for a false start. Ersery, the rookie gets flagged for a false start. You end up settling for a field goal. You get back down there later.

Davis is in a quarterback. has one of the worst quarterback sneak attempts I've seen all season, although I saw a worst one last week, in a different game. And again, they settled for a field goal. They miss a field goal. Like, it was just the Kami Fairbairns kicks that went in, barely went in today. It's such a challenge with this offense, and it is so, it's just an injustice to this defense, like you said,

because the defense is so good. And they keep them in these games, and they're just not going to be able to do enough to keep them in there without CG's. I mean, the best offense for the Broncos were passes out of the backfield to Harvey, who leads them in receiving. At one point, Bo Nix, I wrote this down, was 7 for 19 for 81 yards.

But when it's money time, he gets the scramble late, he hits a 3rd and 11 pass late. Like, it just keeps happening this way, despite the inefficiency. Six targets for Cortland Sutton, he catches 1. 10 targets for Troy Franklin.

He catches 4, and the Broncos don't really care, because they just keep catching Ws, 7 and 2, And with the Chief's loss, you know, a couple games ahead of Kansas City. I know the Chargers are only one back, but I think they're loving that they're two games up on the charges. And I'm not crossing off the Texans at 3 and 5, but they need C.J. Stroud to get back healthy. And they got to figure out how to get a yard when they absolutely need it.

You know who else doesn't get a yard when they need it? The Las Vegas Raiders, or to be more specific at the end of this game, two yards. Here we go from the two-yard lawn to two-point conversion attempt. Gino Smith drops Looks, looks, looks Pump fake fire Knocked out Knocked down

Knockedown Knocked down Come on Hamilton knocked it down It's still good The Jaguars win it The Jaguars win it How good is that?

That's what I'm talking about Frank Frangy You've got to have a game winning play Let's give us some energy Let's have a voice crack Good job by the spotter In that radio booth Unless it was Frank

Picking that up quickly Getting Devon Hamilton's name out really quickly identifying because, man, I swear Devon Hamilton must be 320 pounds, but it felt like he was in the air forever. He's just a tall man because his hands were up for like four seconds. I was like, Gino, don't you, do you see him? But it's not to be. The Jaguars win a crazy game, 30 to 29. It was 9 to 6 entering the fourth quarter and the game ends in overtime. 30 to 29, both Gino Smith and Trevor Lawrence, who have taken a lot of

of slings and arrows this year had about six straight legacy drives where they ended in touchdowns unfortunately Gino needed a two point or two to end it. Pete Carroll thankfully didn't want the tie. What do you even make of this game and the Jaguars escaping

and now five and three on the season? What do I make of it? I think the Jaguars demonstrated that you can in fact get contributions from absolutely everybody and win a one point game on the road. A game that you did nothing in the first half except Trevor threw a pick in the end zone to Isaiah Polamow.

And yet Cam Little hits a 68-yard field goal, by the way, NFL new record longest field goal to give you three points going into half. A little bit of life, right? And then you come out a half-time and you go, I believe you go, field goal, touchdown, touchdown, field goal touchdown. The rest of the game. And they needed every single one of those scores to keep pace with the Raiders' offense that suddenly found a way to move the football itself.

They go field goal, touchdown, touchdown. end of regulation, touchdown. 13 points scored in overtime. Most points ever scored in overtime. First time, both teams have scored a touchdown in overtime with these new rules. This was a game that was sleepy and was suddenly wide awake

and just rolling on energy drinks through the fourth quarter and overtime. And when it comes to the Jaguars, Travis E.TN really ran the ball well. Bachel Tootin ran the ball aggressively, especially getting into the end zone in the second half. Parker Washington was there to make all these catches underneath, you know, just no matter where he was, his hands were great.

He was very consistent. Brian Thomas Jr., not a big factor in this game, but catches a huge pass in the fourth quarter to get the Jags in field goal range for Little to hit that field goal. Logan Cook, the punter, has to take a low snap and recover the low snap just in time for Kim Little to hit the game tying field goal. Complete contributions from everybody, offense, special teams, a little bit of defense. They come away with a one. Yeah, we're back to messy fun for this Jaguars team.

Now, Brian Thomas Jr. on ankle injury, he did return. Did he finish the game? Do you know? He returned and made that catch. But then after that, there was basically no, like, real contributions from him. So Parker Washington is their wide receiver one in this game. Look, they did not have much of a pass rush on Gino Smith, who throws four touchdowns and has 284 yards. And whenever he needed to play late, he got it. And they almost all were to Brock Bowers. What a difference. Brock Bowers. makes a healthy Brock Bowers, 12 for 127 and three touchdowns. And on that last touchdown that he had, not the one in overtime, rather, the one at the end of regulation.

And yeah, they scored with under two minutes to go to take the lead by three. Man, the juice that he has, I just don't know if I've seen a tight end run as fast on the field as Brock Bowers. He just is so smooth. It's great. I know there's been faster 40 times, like Vernon Davis or whoever,

but like on the field he he is just different unfortunately like that that was their whole offense was him and gentie who was pretty good out of the backfield too uh they don't have a running game i mentioned the raiders just could not get the ball in on the goal line early and they end up settling for a field goal from like the one yard line or something it's just man they make just enough mistakes and then they just give you a little bit of hope i thought gino was going to pull one out here yeah but it was still really nice to see them actually put points on the board with Brock Bowers back in the mix. That's how depressing this offense was without him. 95 total yards in that 31 and nothing lost to the Chiefs. They go into the biweek. They come out. Bowers is back. He finally looks

healthy for the first time since week one and suddenly they can score again. Now it took him to get to the second half to really be able to score, but they still did. And it at least gives you a bit of evidence that Gino's really not that bad. It's just that they don't really have any options and they can't run the ball. And now that you get Brock Bowers back in the mix, at least things get a little entertaining. I'm not going to say that Gino's back quite yet. Not a lot of pass rush for the Jaguars, which I think

is a concern. Gino also had one groaner of an interception, which he does basically every week. So not much pass rush for the Jaguars. And yeah, if you look at the wind probability chart for this game, it was just awesome. It was like a seismograph of a giant

earthquake or just a horrible lie detector test. Once you got in like past halftime. It was absolutely outrageous as they just answered touchdown for touchdown. And we should mention a little history was made. Let's listen to the call of, yeah, Cam Little setting the all-time record in a game the only one by one. The longest field goal ever now belongs to Cam Little. So here we go, a 68-yarder from the left hash out of the hold of Logan Cook.

Logan puts it down. Cam Little kicks it up. The 68-yard field goal is good. He drilled it from 68 yards on the last play in the half. How good is that? Cam Little from 68 yards. And we've reached a half. Hey, the season very much does not end today.

Someone could pass Cam Little before the end. Heck, Cam Little could pass Cam Little before the end. Heck, Cam Little could pass Cam Little before the half. the end of the season because that thing was good from 73. You could put Trey Tucker back there. He's not returning anything. That thing's going through the uprights. But if the season did end today,

Shook, the Jacksonville Jaguars would be in the playoffs at 5 and 3 over the Kansas City Chiefs. So there's something to be happy about it. It's a race of the playoffs for the Jaguars. And much like the space race, we also have a kicking race going on now. Don't think that this is going to be the last time somebody tries to break that record. So the Raiders fall to 2 and 6. You can cross them out.

And unfortunately, I think you can cross out the home team on Sunday night football, too, to Sunday night. Donald slows things down, ball at the 40-yard line of Seattle, play fake to Walker. Donald's going to roll. He's got his man. It's white. Breaks a tackle going down the far sidelines. He could go. He is in for a touchdown.

Seahawks, 60 yards. And the Seahawks, 27-0, over one. Washington on Sunday night football. Holy catfish! It's one of our favorites, Steve Rabel on K-I-R-O. And man, the Seahawks put it on the commanders on Sunday night football, 38 to 14. That was part of a dizzy second quarter where the Seahawks went from 7-0 to 28-0 in the span of about five minutes.

They had two touchdowns at one point, 11 seconds apart, and I've said it a lot on this program. I think the Seattle Seahawks are the best team in the NFC. We'll see if they make the Super Bowl, but they're one of the big contenders, 38 to 14. They win to get to 6 and 2. Unfortunately, Shook, the biggest story in this game is Commander-related, and it's Jaden Daniels suffering an elbow injury in the fourth quarter of that game. 38 to 7. It did not look good, to put it mildly.

We're taping this immediately after the game. So we don't have official word, but we won't expect to see Jane Daniels anytime soon. And I think it's absolutely fair to wonder why was he in 30 in the game down 38 to 7 in the fourth quarter? It's especially fair to wonder that given all the injury issues that they're already dealing with. They are already very thin on both sides of the ball

at multiple positions. They lost, you know, they don't have Terry McLaren. They lost Luke McCaffrey tonight. You can keep going

down the list. It's a long one. So that makes me think, yeah, why was he out there? But I can also see the side of it in which you're trying to,

you know, get something going. Put something good together because it was such a lopsided game. You'd like just a little bit of momentum taking it forward because, you know, we're still,

this is halfway through the season. But I agree. And hindsight's 2020, so we can all be like, I was first guessing. We were in there watching. And if you go and look, I saw like Charles McDonald

a couple other people were questioning it even before that I we were talking about it in the theater here like why why is he in that game to start the drive and one of the reasons why is because he was not protecting himself he was getting hit a lot and it was one of my big takeaways from this game

is his eye level came down in the second half of the game maybe really threw out where if that first read wasn't there he was looking around a little panicked and he was often getting out of the grasp of Seahawks defenders and then gaining like three yards and taking hits and going up the middle and just out of the grass.

And he ends up running 10 times in this game for 51 yards. And that play, it's like a RPO, you know, near the goal line. That's not a play call that's protecting your guy. And I just hate that they're so careful with these players in training camp and then the preseason. And then you're down 38 to 7. I say it no matter who's the quarterback, much less Jane Daniels, who's had the injuries.

And so I don't think I'm just guessing the result. It's just frustrating. I think that was the lowest, that was the worst moment of the season because they're a crossed off team now because of it. And they're just, you know, you just hate it for the young man who's now had three different big injuries this season. And it's going to be a lot less fun watching this commander's team the rest of the year.

It's going to be Mario de quarterback. Yeah, you know, it's probably the worst. four quarters, any teams experienced all season. If you think about it, just the lopsided result, the way that they were dominated, you know, by the Seahawks on both sides of the ball, and then you lose your star quarterback. A guy who's already missed multiple games

with multiple injuries. It really can't get much worse than that. You can see the look of despair on his teammates' faces, whether Zachard, Sedebo, Samuel, or even Dan Quinn, just realizing, oh, my God, this already bad situation in what was supposed to be such a promising, exciting season, has just gotten infinitely worse

because we've lost our best player, possibly for the season. Not good. Not good. Okay, let's spin it back to the Seahawks because I do love watching this team play. This uniform matchup was 10 out of 10. Love the Seahawks uniforms. Love the Washington old school get up. So that was fantastic.

And Sam freaking Darnold shows up. And I know the commander's defense isn't great, but he was 16 for 16 at one point with four touchdowns. I mean, that's just, it's one of the best first halves you can possibly have. And he's getting protected. And that's not to take anything away from him. Charles Cross is playing great. Abe Lucas is playing great.

There's some plays where he just sees the matchup and he gets the ball out so fast that Jackson Smith and Jigba, who had eight catches for 129 yards, almost all of them in the first half. And Tori Horton has a couple great moves. Ends up with a couple touchdowns. Kenneth Walker gets it. going just this team to me is the best so far. I'm not saying they're the most likely to win the Super Bowl,

but they're the best team I've seen so far this season because I think they can be so explosive on either side of the ball. Best defense in the league, I think, top to bottom, and the explosion in terms of the passing game tonight was there to behold. Yeah, and we've watched Sam Darnold find success in thrive in this offense all season. And we've talked about how he fits the style of what, you know, Clint Cuviat wants to do with this offense, which is why it's such a perfect marriage.

And how he's, you know, helping Jackson Smith and Jigvigvigit get off to the hottest start. I believe that you said you've ever, could ever remember for a receiver in the first half of the season. Yeah, which is I'm probably like getting ahead of myself. There were some crazy.

Every week he's 100 plus yards. I know, but then you think about it. And like Calvin Johnson once had a half season, like Antonio Brown's had his runs. But either way, he is clearly the best receiver in the league this year. And it's just incredible.

Yeah, but you know what the cool thing about this team is, is how their defense has kind of evolved as we've gone week by week. They went from a team that was, okay, you can see the potential there. And you obviously have the defensive mind of Mike McDonald, but there were some, you know, missing parts where Rick Woolen wasn't playing well. And they were going to replace them to Josh Job and, you know, things that needed to be adjusted or whatever.

Now they've become this, like, aggressive blitzing defense and they can come at you from a number of different ways. They had a pressure rate that was north of 55% tonight on Jaden Daniels. And it was because not just because they're good at getting after the past, but the way that they scheme up these blitzes to where he might try to adjust the protection or something. And next thing you know, you've got a guy swooping around on a stunt or a linebacker or a DB coming through an open lane, free rusher, and you had no idea he was going to

be coming from that direction. That's what really makes them so impressive because they have the personnel, they have the defensive mind to scheme them upright, and the offense is working so well. My only question, Greg, can they, because they love to build out of, you know, under center, a little bit of play action, stuff like that. can they run the ball consistently enough for it to travel getting way ahead of myself in the postseason? Because they're going to get there.

Yeah. But can they do that part well? It hasn't been great. Even tonight, it wasn't perfect. I think that's fair to point out. But when you have seven different players with at least three pressures, I mean, that is incredible.

And Nick I'm in Worry is just turned into this just great chess piece that they're using. And it was terrific to see Devin Witherspoon out there making some big run stop. So this is a wow. I've been surprised to see that, like, Bois Maffei and Rik Willen might be available on the trade market. Really? Why? Why? I know they might not be part of the long-term future, but unless you're trading player for player, we'll see. The Seahawks, this is a year to push because they've got

some older players on their defense. Take advantage while you can. Washington is a good reminder that you never know what's going to happen next season. And I think we can cross them off three and six. All right. Let's talk about tomorrow night just quickly. Me and you, little Cardinals, little cowboys. We're going to be live on YouTube. We want all the NFL daily listeners who are with us to the end of the recap show, come join us in the chat because we're going to talk about that game, but we're also going to talk about the trade deadline.

Deals will start to happen on Monday. So I think we'll have a lot to already talk about and we'll talk about maybe what's going to be ahead. We're going to have a special trade deadline show on Tuesday. We'll talk a little bit about Chris Greene. The Dolphins fired their general manager since we last tape. I think that's a bigger deal than people even realize a total sea change from the last two decades. I regretted that I forgot to mention, by the way, Travis Hunter went to injured reserve.

That was a big problem for the Jaguards. Will they make a move perhaps at wide receiver? Jalen Waddle could now be available because they got rid of the GM in Miami. And you saw with the national reports today, some interesting names are out there, including the BTJ stuff just just keeps happening. Jaya Alexander already went to Philadelphia, by the way. We've had some interesting moves. And yeah, we'll talk about it then.

Looking forward to seeing you, Chucky. Go watch some more games, okay? Yeah, we got tape to grind and we got news to get through tomorrow. It's going to be a wild one. Okay, let's go. For Jordan, Roderig. I mean, who know? Who knew she was going to be the Poet Laureate of NFL Daily?

Great job there. I do. Yeah, I guess if I was going to pick someone, it would be here. She did a great job with that. Patrick. was awesome. As always, yeah, the injuries stink, but man, we had a fun Sunday. We will see you on Monday night. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech

at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit. Push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors. For the next era of gaming. Upgrade to smooth high quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com.