NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - Broncos Browns TNF Recap with Special Guest

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

It's a bird, it's a plane, no.. it's... Conor Orr? Marc Sessler and Conor Orr recap the Browns Broncos game and revisit some Heat & Light podcast topics. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comNFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, everybody. Daniel Jeremiah here. And I'm Bucky Brooks. On Move the 6th, we take you inside the game from breaking down college prospects and NFL rookies to evaluating team building philosophies, coaching trends, and how front offices construct winning rosters. We study the tape, talk to decision makers, and give you a perspective you won't find anywhere else.

It's everything you need to understand the why behind what happens on Sunday. Don't miss it. Listen to the Move the Sticks podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcus Grant. And I'm Michael Florio, and together we host the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast. Ready to dominate your fantasy league this season? Then you need the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast, your ultimate source for player news, draft tips, and winning strategies. Whether you're a rookie manager or a fantasy vet. We've got the insight to help you crush your opponents.

Listen to the NFL Fantasy Football podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Toyota, the official automotive partner of the NFL. Visit Toyota.com slash NFL now to learn more. Johnson cuts back and no signal yet. Touchdown, Cleveland. Canem keeps, flips, pass, caught. Touchdown. Stanton.

Setting up a screen for Williams and touchdown Denver. The handoff, Johnson again. Wow, I think we know who's getting the game ball after this one. Well, and that was it, a notable, notable evening for the Cleveland Browns franchise. In a 17 to 14 victory over the Denver Broncos, their old school rivals from the 80s, led by a flock of people that weren't even starting for this team weeks ago, men in the background, De Ernest Johnson, the story of the night, 146 yards, and a touchdown at 6.6 yards per carry. The offensive line did its job in a gritty, gutsy, tough win over Denver.

And I promised a special guest tonight, and we have delivered. It is a Broncos Hall of Fame quarterback and current general manager John Elway, who is nicely a nut. Okay, no Elway. We have our friend, Connor, who I don't think everyone knows, is a bit of a Brown. You are a Browns fan, Connor. Is that, was your fandom on display this evening? Yeah. You know, it was nice to sit there and watch, like, I was reflecting a little bit.

I remember a couple years ago when I worked for the NFL. you and I were walking up to tape a post-draft podcast after they had selected Cam Irving. And you and I were just like, this is going to fix everything. Like, you know, he can play multiple positions, like the offensive line's finally going to be secure. And that promise was just realized with other players finally, like eight years later. And like watching Jed Wills play the way he played tonight was just like, God, it's nice to have like a capable left tackle, you know, post Joe Thomas. Yeah. And, you know, Connor now working for Sports Illustrated, one of my favorite writers. I'm not just saying that because he's here. But yeah, any Browns fan of longstanding's been through a lot. I know I lived in Denver for a while and had some Broncos fans chiming off tonight that they were annoyed. I mean, it was a game that pitted Teddy Bridgewater against Case Keenham, who was in for Baker Mayfield. Von Miller, who promised and vowed to essentially assassinate whatever tackle he was up against, left the game very early.

and was a non-factor, and we're waiting to see more about what's going on with Von Miller, but it was an ankle injury that looked like a gruesome leg injury. And then Jeremy Fowler, VSPN, reported after that it sounds like Von Miller has no structural damages and is fine. Jarvis Landry left this game. Denzel Ward left this game. So the injuries continue to mount. And, you know, I looked at Denver for a big chunk of this performance and thought they just

simply weren't able to master what Cleveland was doing with these long drives that, I mean, It seemed at some point this game that started at 5.20 p.m. on the West Coast might be over by 715. I think we caught our producer Ricky out picking up a sandwich at the end of this thing. It ended so fast. But the Broncos did, I thought, on offense, look good during 13 and 17 play touchdown drives that made this maybe closer than it would have been in another situation. But, I mean, we came out of halftime with Troy Aikman trying to discern whether Drew Locke or Teddy Bridgewater was going to start because they both had helmets on.

They both were ranging up and down the field. And Teddy had not done enough in the first half to suggest that he maybe keep the job in the second half. And that was what was so surprising to me. Like I thought that he'd won the job decidedly out of camp. And, you know, I think the one thing that you heard about Drew Locke was that there was an immense amount of arm talent, but most of his success had come in situations where he was sort of, you know, I hate to use such a condescending word, but sort of like puppeteered a little bit like Jared Gough, right, with Sean McVeigh where, you know, he has a lot of instruction pre-snap and he knows

where he's supposed to go with the ball. You know, he went on that little run there initially as their starter. But beyond that, we haven't seen him sort of take command of the game and he's been what he has been. He's been raw arm talent that's never been formulated. And I always thought Teddy Bridgewater would have been perfect for Pat Schumer's offense. And in some ways he has, but it's still a Pat Schumer offense. And, you know, I think that's where you keep kind of running into brick walls here where

it's not going to be anything remotely sexy or exciting and certainly not enough to beat a Browns team that is as versatile defensively as they are. Yeah, I mean, remotely sexy would have been an outrageous descriptor for what Pat Schumer does. I mean, and Pat Schirm obviously was the Browns coach. And I thought it was kind of stunning to watch, you know, his offense, in comparison to his offense was not stunning. But Kevin Stefansky, I thought, played with some, he coached with some fire tonight. I think they just sort of, after two weeks of chaos, I mean, to go out and lose to the chargers the way they did and then to get flattened by the Cardinals. I mean, I did Cleveland radio today, and I just thought the mood in general seemed to be down on a team that maybe like

some of these other teams that get a bit of success, you find out they're not all the way there. And I thought they just, they were who they were tonight. They stuck to their identity. Bill Callahan may be the most valuable assistant coach in the AFC on some level. I mean, what he cooks up, even with four or five starters in the lineup, was remarkable tonight. And, you know, Stump Mitchell, basically, the running backs coach saying, I finally got to do some coaching because with Kareem Hunt and Nick Chubb, you know, you look real good, but I'm not sure he's telling Nick Chubb what to do with this point. But De Ernest Johnson, again, I mean, I think that, you know, Brown's fans have seen him

in the preseason, they've seen little flashes here and there, but to think that this guy is sitting on your roster this whole time and just to plug him in the way that he did and to form it the way he did, I thought he created a lot of extra yardage for himself. broke tackles and did a wonderful job with this opportunity. Dmitric Felton's an interesting back as well. So you look at the team building in Cleveland and you say, look, even when guys go out, they've found these guys that are behind them that fit the system, that come in and produce. And that, you know, for people that have followed a middling team and middling is strong, you just don't, you're not used to that. That's something you see from other franchises.

So I thought it was a nice signature victory, an ugly victory to some degree by Kevin Stefanski, who really, you know, he only lost two games in a row for the first time these past two weeks. He wasn't going to allow it to be a third. Yeah, you bring up an interesting point with Bill Callahan. I did a story this offseason on the scarcity of offensive line coaches, good offensive line coaches. And what I heard back when, you know, I was texting people about this was that bidding more. Like he instantly creates a bidding more every time he hits the open market. And it's almost like he gets hired before offensive coordinators because he's so important and so

valuable. And he gets abnormally long contracts for position coaches. He gets, you know, coordinator money, you know, and has like helped kind of rise the tide of offensive line coaching salary. You know, it's pretty incredible thing. But you're right. I mean, what he was able to do and create on a regular basis is, is pretty phenomenal. And I'll say this too about Cleveland's offense in general. They just look so much better when the ball is out on time. When it's three steps, your back heel hits the ground, and the ball comes out. And that's when Baker Mayfield looked the best, right? And I don't know about you, but it felt like the last two or three weeks, it was back to Freddie Kitchens era football where you kind of felt him hit that third

step and then float backwards and try to, you know, make these plays. And the route concepts were painfully long and it just, you know, it didn't make any sense. And I don't know if they were trying to play a different brand of football or with injuries force them to pigeonhole into that. But tonight was one of those things where it was just another meat and potatoes game plan for Case Keenham. And that's why you have Case Keenham, right? The ball's going to be out on the third step. It's not going to be anything wonderful.

I think it was like 199 yards and a touchdown or something like that tonight. But it's, you know, that's how this offense functions. It's not supposed to be beautiful. And it stinks that you have Odell Beckham and you're not really going to be able to use them the right way. but, you know, it's almost better off that way. And Baker Mayfield was better off that way. Well, I'll give you the last word on this game because I already can, you know,

you already seen this creep up. You know, our friend Dave Damasek put a tweet out there called Baker Pip based off the old Wally Pit play. I mean, isn't it this just a backup quarterback coming in and doing what you'd want? And on the Baker side and the O'Dell thing, these are just these sort of radioactive topics that aren't going to go away and cleave one anytime soon. I mean, I don't know when we'll see Baker again. I mean, they seem to be in really good hands with Case Keenham, who I'd call the best backup in the league.

I think you could throw Andy Dalton into that mix. Is there any controversy here? They just need to ride this out, I mean, with the Odell and the Baker business. I think that Baker, you know, the way that he motivates himself, kind of, you know, it puts you in the crosshairs a little bit. But I like the fire. I think you do too. I think we've come from decades of like soft and just defeated men. to run this position and the fact that he's showing a little bit of life I think we need to

appreciate is he you know is he making a candidacy for a 45 plus million dollar extension at this point probably not you know and I think that you know all along Paul D. Podesta and Andrew Barry were probably open to the idea as a lot of coaches are that you're starting to hear this around the league that like there are a million of these guys like there used to be five franchise quarterbacks and now there's like a hundred and i was talking to a quarterbacks coach the other day and he said like i have like i have an 11 year old that could probably play in college right now as a freshman you know and like that's how good these kids are becoming quicker with special i have a nine year old who could not but i but that's intriguing oh yeah so it's like you know they're kind

of thinking do we you know especially in a night like tonight where you win the way that you would like to win, right? You run the ball, you know, you create those running lanes and then you just let Case Keenham basically complete play action passes, you know, of a middle range distance and you can win, you know, then I don't think it builds a grand, you know, candidacy for this extension. But at the same point, Baker, I think, is still a special player. He's exceptionally accurate. And I think that given time to blossom in this system, I think he can. But it's like, you know, when that's going to come to a head, I don't know. On the, Odell front, like, I'm particularly callous, and I know I'm like kind of a one-note writer

sometimes. I wrote that the Giants should trade Saquan Barclay last week. I think the Brown should trade O'Dell Beckham. There's just, you know, he doesn't fit what you need, you know, and he would be great in other places, you know, I think it would be fantastic to see him on the Cardinals or something wild like that, you know, after they loaded up the way that they did and make them uncoverable. But, you know, he's just not doing anything right now. I feel like with O'Dell Beckham, it's like, when you go camping, I could just, I'm fine with like a plastic fork or a spork, like just bare essentials. I don't need to bring fine china. And it's like, O'Dell Beckham, in theory, is fine china. And I don't think that they- When was the last time you went camping?

Well, it's been a while. But I mean, we, you know, with, we, I have been camping if you're, I have had the experience as you, Ricky, you know, to, you know, have we been unbiased enough in our coverage here have we covered a little bit of everything or was it yeah i mean have you guys talked about the broncos yet or what we mentioned the whole pat shirmer teddy bridgewater business they were very banged up at linebacker but let's get down to one thing that we uh that we'd like to discuss before we get out of here rickie some of you may know not all of you Some of you are wondering what you're doing here, but in the years past, Connor Orr and I had a, I'd call it a side project.

I'm not going to call it a vanity project because it was about the good of others, not our own good, called the Heat and Light podcast that covered a wide variety of topics. Maybe a little bit of an Art Bell type production. We dug into a series of very thorny topics that included top secret government projects alien life. At one point, we unveiled incredible proof suggesting that there is a second Beatles frontman, Paul McCartney, that the actual Paul McCartney perished back in the 60s or 70s. It got too hot, Connor. I mean, at one point, people were like, why did the podcast go away? It wasn't by our choice. We got touched. We got reached. Someone basically said,

you need to shut it down. Now, we have worked through some red tape. some blue tape, all the tape, and we are going to be coming back in March of 2022. That is an announcement that we're making right here. Well, that's what we're telling you right now. That's the plan. And Connor, I know you've been, you're a dogged reporter? You've been looking into a few things. Do you want to maybe preview something that you've seen of late that made,

maybe it makes its way on to one of these heat and light. Episode two reboot shows? First, we need to set the stage of the fact that when we started doing this, I can't understate how fingernail thin my thread was at NFL Network and how, like, how close I was to being fired on a regular basis. And then we decided to drop like a JFK assassination pod and like, it did you no favors. There's no doubt about that. There was just like, there was already like a massive concern with how I was spending my day. And then just, just in the middle of nowhere and uh yeah i didn't shoot up the corporate ladder um necessarily but um yeah

i'd say that um you know we're we're going to be looking a lot into antarctica you know uh obviously the um the final frontier for secrets and um but while i was prepping for the show i looked on amazon for some really good um you know some deep antarctica reads and uh there was a Antarctica Conspiracy Theory's book, and it had a two-star rating on Amazon, and the lone comment was a bit disappointing as there are just several blank pages in the middle. And I was like, you know, you could read that one way, or you could read it as that's what the government wants you to think. Heavily redacted content, that's how I'd view that.

Those books typically come with a flood of spelling mistakes and, you know, sentences that just end with no period. So the people putting those together are sometimes suspicious. We will be back in March of 2022. It's a podcast that promises to grow almost as big as this one, but not nearly as big as split ends, Erica and Colin Wolf's new pod, which is just taking the NFL by storm. I want to mention one thing before we get out of here is that for those of you that watch our digital show on Friday, which is our essentially our around the NFL broadcast show, which will appear on Saturday on NFL network, TBD on the time. It's very early in the 1.5 a.m.

Is that right, Erica, on the West Coast, 8 on the east? That's how that works. 4 a.m. 3 a.m. Right. It's early, but, you know, just you tape that thing on your TV. There is a very special feature coming out on tomorrow's show, Lakeisha Jackson Wesleyan, the wife of our dear friend, Chris Wesleyan, who passed away in February. She has put together a feature on the life of Chris Wesleyan, the accomplishments, his incredible personality.

We haven't seen it yet. We're going to see it with her live on the show. We can't wait. So it's something that you can all watch too. So I just want to put it out there on your radar. Connor, I know you were very close to Wes as well. And we have so many wonderful memories. And it's just like, you know, every time you think about them,

all this stuff comes back. But this promises to be a special production. It's, that's awesome. That's really cool to hear. And it's, you know, he's, he's one of those people that is so special that, you know, he'll just keep recirculating in your memory, you know, like, you know, when I go for a run, I always, I always put, this must be the place by the talking heads on my playlist because that was like a song that we would meet

each other at the cozy when I would come out to visit NFL network. And whenever I knew he was coming, I would put it on touch tunes. But then he would come and put it on touch tunes. And and then skip my, because he just wanted to hear it immediately when he sat down. So, like, it would be like a scenario where it would be like three or four times in a row. We'd hear the same song. But, you know, every time that comes on, it's just like a flood of memories come back. And we, you know, he's missed dearly in the football space, but he also left a mark where, you know, nobody's been able to occupy that.

And I think that that's a really cool thing that you can say about somebody. Yeah, it will not be occupied by anyone else. And, you know, it was back on November 16th, 2015, in a tweet to Matt Harmon, our friend in NFL fantasy guru, where Chris Wesleyan tweeted out that night, let your case Keenum flag fly. He was one of the earliest case Keenamites out there. I think he would have enjoyed this performance quite a bit. As did Browns fans and not so much Broncos fans, both teams will return to see another day. Thanks for joining us, Connor.

Great to have you. Ricky, thank you for everything. Connor, what's coming up on your podcast this week? Well, that makes some sense to ask that. Thank you. I would, well, first I want to say that I appreciate just so many of the listeners who have come from the around the NFL podcast and also subscribe to the MMQB podcast. I hear from a ton of you guys regularly and it just means the world to me and to us as, you know, we're, and so, yeah. I would say every Monday morning and Wednesday morning, we have new shows.

Monday is a Sunday recap, obviously first thing in the morning and then Wednesday is sort of like a deeper produced feature that kind of is in the vein of our sort of magazine tradition. So it's a lot of fun. And I would, you know, I would suggest joining it. I don't, like we don't want to drum up too much interest or at least if there's the group of people that can only have time for one show that I, this whole, they're listening to both business sounds a bit dodgy. They start to get tired of us. So nice job, Connor, but that's enough on that subject. All right. Love you guys. We'll talk soon.

Kevin Stefansky is the nicest human. Couldn't be a bigger fan. Text from Colleen Wolf to us just now. So, Mark, you got a long night ahead of you. Good looking man, too. All right. Farewell. You know, So, Hey, everybody, Daniel Jeremiah here. And I'm Bucky Brooks. On Move to Six, we take you inside the game from breaking down college prospects and NFL rookies

to evaluating team building philosophies, coaching trends, and how front opposites construct winning rosters. We study the tape. Talk to decision makers and give you a perspective you won't find anywhere else. It's everything you need to understand the why behind what happens on Sunday. Don't miss it. Listen to the Move the Sticks podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcus Grant. And I'm Michael Florio, and together we host the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast.

Ready to dominate your fantasy league this season? Then you need the NFL Fantasy Football. Football Podcast, your ultimate source for player news, draft tips, and winning strategies. Whether you're a rookie manager or a fantasy vet, we've got the insight to help you crush your opponents. Listen to the NFL Fantasy Football podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Toyota, the official automotive partner of the NFL. Visit Toyota.com slash NFL now to learn more. This is an IHeart podcast.