NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - Chargers-Raiders Recap and Top 6 MVP rankings

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

In a virtual room hero Gregg Rosenthal is joined by Amazon Prime Analytics Expert Sam Schwartzstein  to recap the Week 15 Thursday Night Football matchup between the Raiders and the Chargers. First, we break down the dominant performance by the Raiders on both sides of the ball (5:28). Next, we take a look at how this loss impacts the Chargers and what head coach Brandon Staley’s future with the team looks like (13:15). Following the recap, Sam shares with us his NEW QBDI metric (Quarterback Difficulty Index) and what it means (19:31). And finally, we examine the Top 6 MVP rankings (25:12).   Note: time codes approximate. NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. First and goal from the one-yard line and into the end zone for the touchdown. Go Zemir White. Good protection. Going for the end zone, open, making the grab. Trey Tucker for the touchdown. Blitz coming, passes, reached for, and hold in for the touchdown by Jacoby Myers. Second and seven.

Play action. Wide, wide, wide open touchdown. Michael Mayer. Taking the snap will be Brandon Bolden. He'll keep it. He'll run and he'll run all the way to the end zone. First down from the 20-yard line. McConnell to the end zone.

Touchdown Raiders. second and goal Myers is going to throw touchdown Devonte Adams hauls it in no huddle here stick looking lookout from behind and the ball is out it's going to be ruled instead it's alive and going to the end zone right now for what is ruled a touchdown is John Jenkins Oh, baby. Unbelievable. Jack Jones. They do it again.

I mean, there are bad dreams, and there are crazy bad dreams. And for the Chargers, it's been that kind of a night. It was that kind of a night. Eight touchdowns. We usually don't go so long on the highlights leading in, but we just couldn't choose which of the Raiders eight touchdowns. we wanted to choose. They finish it out, 63 to 21.

It was the first game, first team, since the 1950 Rams to have eight different players score a touchdown. We had a 320-plus-pound man, John Jenkins running in for 44 yards, and that wasn't even the best defensive touchdown on the night. Jack Jones got that. I am Greg Rosenthal.

We're going to break down this game a little. We'll talk a little big picture Chargers, Raiders, as well after this. I will give you my MVP ladder with some great statistical help because I'm going to be helped tonight by Sam Schwarzstein. If you watch Prime Vision on Amazon, you've seen Sam's head just pop up in the corner all night. He's just like a part of the family dinner at our house. Sam just popping up. Oh, there he is with some good stats.

He is there in Vegas tonight. Sam, welcome. Thank you. Thanks so much, Greg. And I was, you know, we were talking about it. You talk about the big man touchdown. That was by far my favorite touchdown. I want to know what your favorite touchdown was.

But I got to hop in early with some analytics, some Lytics, as we call them here. That every time we get a big dog touchdown, a thick six, if you will, shout out to my Golic Jr. We got to know how fast he was moving. He was moving at 14.95 miles per hour. That would have been the fourth fastest by a guy over 320 plus who's pushing more than three bills in the fourth fastest in the NGS. since 2016. Great job. Bringing the numbers right off the bat.

Yeah, I wanted Al to get a little more excited there, but I think from his angle, and I could tell from our angle, too, it was like, what happened on that play? Was that actually a touchdown? It was just one of those nights. It was 42-0 at halftime. The second-largest shutout,

or the second-largest margin tied for the second-largest. In the history of the NFL, the only thing that was bigger than that game, I remember well, Tom Brady in the snow, taking it out on Jeff Fisher who had been honking about Bill Belichick

and the Patriots 45 nothing at half time. I think that was back in 2009 and yet that wasn't the most embarrassing moment in the game after it was 42 to nothing. The next three touchdowns for the Raiders were thrown by Jacoby Myers, ran in by John Jenkins and then

returned by Jack Jones the former Patriot who made to me one of the most fun plays of the year reading one of Easton Sticks pass catching it one-handed reading it so well that the past was behind them and going in and at that moment sam they have 63 points and we got pretty much the whole fourth quarter to go and i'm thinking history that we're going to be talking history were you rooting for 73 or more or were you feeling

too bad for the charges at that point uh i just wanted to root for scoregami at that point i'm completely honest we were at scoregamy and we got one and we got one so you know you always have that's something to root for you know whether it's the spread or the over everything's already hit you got to root for something and so score agammy is what we were rooting for at the end of the game i mean i would assume once you get over 63 most everything's uh a score agammy this 66 14 had happened before so okay you know we were we were nervous we were nervous if team wanted to settle for a field goal uh we were nervous yeah i i wanted it because i did feel for Brandon Staling.

We'll get to him quickly. But before we just kind of move to bigger picture stuff and some more fun stuff, I do want to give Raiders credit. You know, they've played with Antonio Pierce now for six weeks. They're three and three. Their defensive numbers are good.

I think they're giving up something like 15, 16 points a game now with Antonio Pierce. So he's a defensive coach. They've had some good defensive games for the most part. They're three and three. they kept going after it in this game. They were throwing, nothing crazy, but they were throwing with the lead,

which I think that's respecting your opponent to me. It's fine. You don't need to just lay down. But I think he knows, hey, look, I have four games. If I do something historical, if I'm showing Mark Davis on national television, what I can do, him and Champ Kelly, their interim GM are fighting to try to stay there.

And I think they have a chance. I don't pretend that I have inside information on this, but I think Mark Davis said publicly, I'm going to give these guys a champs. I'm going to make an evaluation from everything they do. They've had six games. They still have three fairly difficult games left. But if they happen to play well in those three games,

maybe beat the Chiefs, you go two and one, something like that. I think they'll have a chance. So I do think there is some meaning bigger picture to take out of this game other than it was just a fun night in Vegas. Yeah, you talked about passing throughout the game. In that two, when it was a two possession game at the start, there was a plus 9.2% pass rate over expected. That's a next-gen stats metric looking at on every down and distance,

where all the players line up, do we expect the team to pass or not? And so there was one of the highest ones of the season at that point. So it was really bad. Like the whole game or at what point in the game? What do you mean? Starting in a two-possession game. Okay. So, yeah, that was where it's like it really started to kind of show.

Like, hey, is this guy taking the foot up the gas? It's kind of getting out of hand already. It was the first quarter. And so when we're looking at pass right over-expected, it's like, yeah, most teams in similar scenarios would not have passed. and he's nearly 10% higher. So, you know, I think both, this team is a unique team, right? You know, in O'Connell, fourth round pick, not really, you know, the guy you'd expect to

and take you to the next level. Everyone got, when they got blanked last week by Brian Flores, people don't realize Brian Flores and the Vikings is really the most unique defense in the NFL right now. You've recovered zero or drop eight. So that's really hard for young quarterbacks to take advantage of, especially if you can't run the ball. So good, good, good, good, uh, game for them. I don't think as much as last game didn't tell us who this coaching staff was.

This game also doesn't tell us who this coaching staff was. I'm not going to say, you know, maybe there's somewhere in the middle. They're definitely not either, either team that we've seen so far the past two weeks. No, but I love the response. It's Aidan O'Connell, you know, you mentioned mid-round rookie. I think it's acquitted himself well overall. He looks like he's going to have a career. Been better than average, I would say, for a rookie quarterback.

And he's a mid-round guy. 248 yards, four touchdowns, 20 for 34. But Pierce was asked by your colleague, Kaylee Harttong, got a halftime, what's the attitude here? And he said, like, to not let your foot off the pedal. And I love that. To me, that's very Raiders. That's something Mark Davis will appreciate it.

That's something Al Davis will appreciate it. And the crowd was appreciating. I mean, it's the most expensive seat in sports for two, five, and eight teams put on a show. They were booing Antonio Pierce when they didn't go for it on fourth and short in the second half. which I loved. He did not. He punted a couple times on fourth and short. So he did not get carried away. But I love it. I think, look, these guys are evaluated on statistics. Everyone is playing for their next contract, not just the coaches, but Devonte Adams wants to have a nice, a big night for once. He gets 101, eight catches. Zemir White's making one of his, maybe his first career start, certainly the most he's been used in a long time. Everyone wants to ball out. Jack Jones trying to keep his career going. Everyone wants to ball out. What are you going to do? Stop, stop playing. I don't think Brandon Staley, who surprisingly talked to Kaylee Hart's on going into

half time, I give him some credit for that. And wasn't giving away anything emotionally on the sideline. I don't think he would mind. And I saw it on Twitter, so that's what I'm reacting to. I think people need to calm down with Antonio Pierce somehow breaking some sort of code. Give me a break. Yeah, I mean, I think it goes both ways, though. I would not have been a surprise if Brandon Staley won't cover zero the entire rest of the game as well.

right sure oh you're sure like and that's like that the code is that uh you have a choice and i have a choice um when you do a double pass what i loved is that they installed one double pass this game and they just ran the same one twice that's like you know like when they did a different overt motion on it so that's probably like a sideline thing well it worked the first time i know it was just two for two for 12 yards uh but he got the touchdown on it jacobie mire's perfect oh not quite perfect passer rating but pretty nice tonight do you do nGS numbers on like Jacobi Myers as a passer. I didn't.

That's me showing how unprepared I am for postgame with you. I, again, and we'll move kind of to the bigger picture stuff soon. And I do want to get into your role and everything, because it is very fascinating to me. I really do enjoy, and maybe that's why your producer reached out.

I don't know. I've been talking up watching it this way. To me, just the coaches film alone, getting to watch a game like that is beautiful, but all the things Amazon does to supplement that really helps, especially the names and the circles and everything.

I do want to shout out Malcolm Coons, who was awesome in this game, was crushing one of the best healthy players the Chargers have left. They were kind of a mass unit, not many healthy players. He was awesome, rushing the passer, beat Rashan Slater a number of times. I don't know what he ended up with with quarterback hits, but two sacks. He had that force fumble, and he was crushing it, and he was a big reason why they lost.

And look, the defense, there was a couple fumbles early by the, Chargers, special teams, and on offense, and Raiders converted it early, but the Chargers defense to me was a big part of this story in the first half of this game. And, you know, the conversation coming out of it will be whether Brandon Staley keeps his job through this weekend, because I think we know he's very likely to lose it after the end of the season. And I just kind of look back on him and his run, because when he came in, he was a little bit of analytics darling in just that he was so aggressive. I thought he somehow lost the plot sometimes that he went for it so much and then he

pulled back so much and sometimes he seemed to be reacting to what the public was saying and that's always dangerous. But the thing I always come back to with him, and I'm sure he knows this in his heart once he has time to look back. And he's a defensive coach and the defense just was never good enough. And his three years as Chargers coach, I don't know if you like don't like me using DVOA. Are they like a rival? I love Aaron Sheds.

Yeah, I love TVOW. Some in the analytics game, they don't like each other. There's different beefs. It's a tough. Either the streets are tough on them. There's also friendships out there, too. I am one of those people in the analytics world, especially because I come from a football background,

that any number that will help us get better explaining football to people, that's what I'm a fan of. Yes, and he's been doing it. That's all you should. And Aaron is an amazing job. And the results are there. One of the best predictors, you can get on an individual player basis. It's a great stat.

Right. And they've been doing it for so long. And I was going to mention Chargers defense under Staley 26th in 2021, 21st last year. And coming into this game, they were 27th. Obviously, Herbert kind of peaked, I would say, in terms of his production, his efficiency, his everything in 2021. And his numbers kind of have gone down the last couple of years. So that's the most important thing is to develop your guy.

So I'm giving a little bit of a retrospective, Sam, just because there's a decent chance. He might not have his job by the time we tape next, and we're going to be just recapping games on Sunday. It won't even be, it'll be kind of an afterthought then. So tonight put me in a little bit of a reflective mood looking back on this daily era. Yeah, to start on tonight, one of the stats I, we didn't get to bring in to the game. But, you know, to me, it was a beautiful night of rudimentary football, getting down to the brass tacks on it. And what I mean by that is what the Raiders game plan was to attack Mike Davis, the cornerback for the Chargers.

And, you know, when you're watching film, getting ready for a game, it's about finding the fish, right? Who's the weak link and how do we take advantage of them? It's not always, hey, we have the best concepts. Look at all these unique plays. It was, where's Mike Davis? And Mike Davis is not hard to find, even though they're trying to hide him. He plays into the boundary more than, or in the 80% of the time.

time or nearly 80% of the time he's in the boundary and they you put a guy there because he can't cover the whole field and they still attacked him he still has the most touchdowns over his six touchdowns on him uh when targeted over 10 air yards he had two tonight you know they knew tray tucker with his speed they were going to attack him there it was seriously a very simple game plan third down go to mayor big play find mike davis and uh i love i love when football can be like that and you can make it easy. And like you said analytically, he was seemed like a darling, but he was mostly going off vibes, you know?

I'm going to be completely honest. Explain that. When you look at when you look, so in game, they have an analytics expert on their staff that is helping coach make decisions and he's guiding him, but they don't have access to the same data that you or I will see on Twitter or that I have access to with an next-gen stats decision guide. So the in-game, they're just to printing out a book

that has the possible scenarios they might run into. Analytics expert is giving a recommendation, and then it's up to the coach. And so when you look at the next step's decision guide, which will have live data, now we don't know what their game plan is, so I don't have game plan data for them. But when you look at the next chance of that's decision guide,

it is as robust as can be on giving the right recommendations. And Brandon Staley has lost more win probability on situations to go for it when the, then when he choose to go for it with the model. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. So he's being too aggressive. And so when you say, oh, is he really following analytics? He's not, he's just kind of going on vibes, whether it was the first game or his first season, he had a defense he didn't trust. Then he spent $109 million on defense with Khalil Mack. And he goes, oh, okay, now I have to trust my defense. And so he just kind of waffles and goes off of vibes in those moments, not really focusing on being as analytically savvy as it might have seen in the first year. Yeah, it's a shame because they've had great players, but Bosa hasn't been able to stay on the field. Derwin James, for whatever reason, this year, maybe it's just usage. Often they're using him kind of as a single high guy, and that's not really his strength, hasn't been as impactful this season.

And I just think a couple moments before we move on from the charges, because again, I'm just anticipating what may happen here. You know, the 27-0 loss last year was concerning. But to me, Staley's responses to questions about that loss this season were almost more concerning. Like, he was just feeling it. He was tight. And I just think back to that last game of the regular season, I guess that would have been in 21, when Justin Herbert is just at that point, playing as well as he's ever played as a pro, playing out of his mind, playing one of the best games I can think of that a quarterback could play that year. Hell, he got an MVP vote or two, or maybe it was just one vote that year. I think it was mine.

Yeah, and they still lose. They still lose because they can't stop Derek Carr in the Raiders, and that defense can't get one stop late in that game. So it ends up just being a great shootout, and they don't get rewarded for it. So we got to get you an MVP vote. Do you really have one? No, I don't.

I don't, but I would. I think the guy is special. I think he did a lot of fun stuff on the field and the way he fights through injuries. I know, and he probably will be starting over unless they want it to get really crazy and go to Kellynne Moore as the head coach or maybe the interim head coach.

Who knows? I see a lot of Bill Belichick stuff out there. I would not hold your breath on that. I think what people have to see is that this is not fantasy football where everyone's treated equal. Like, you know, one of the things I should say about Brandon Staley, why he went forward

so much on fourth down was his first year, he had a four-year deal. It's very hard to get fired in your first year because having run a football league before, you don't have in the budget double paying the head coach you just it's it's it's not a thing that you account for when going forward so um i think you know paying the the money that belichick will demand in i think that's something that the chargers aren't going to do right and i i look at it too was just belichick famously said about uh woody johnson in a book or what it was quoted

sorts was i'm not going to work for that bleeping guy uh when he ended up you know retiring five five days after he was hired or two days after whatever it was. And I just think you look at the situation, Tom Telesco, the GM, will he be there? Will he won't? Belichick's going to have all the power. And there's a certain amount of ego that's involved. There's a certain amount of like who would even want to take them on. And to me, the chargers are just not the ownership or if Telasco is there as the GM,

someone that's going to want to take him on. We do have a quote from Brandon Staley after this game. I'm just going to read for you quickly. He said games like this happen in the NFL to every. coach that's ever coach in this league. You can look at any great coach that's ever coach in league. Sometimes games like this happen. I don't need to retrace history, but it's part of sports. Sometimes there are games where it doesn't go right, none of it. You have to put it behind you. You've got to move on to the next thing. It's philosophical. It's even true, but it's not

what any Chargers fan or I suspect Dean Spanos is going to want to hear tonight. Let's talk something more fun. Let's get out of tonight. What's up, everybody? Daniel Jeremiah here. And I'm Bucky Brooks. On Move the Sticks, we take you inside the game from scouting reports and player development to team building philosophies coaching trends in how front offices construct winning rosters every week we study the tape talk to decision makers and share the insights you won't find anywhere else is the kind of conversation that connects the dots from college football prospects to the NFL stars of tomorrow we break down the draft analyze matchups and evaluate how teams put it all together on game day plus we dig in the

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Toyota, the official automotive partner of the NFL. Visit Toyota.com slash NFL now. to learn more. You, you, uh, you broke out a stat between the third and the fourth quarter. I mean, breaking news. It was called QBDI. Uh, explain this stat for me. Yeah.

So QB difficulty index and we call a QBDI for short. Um, it kind of set out, uh, it was like a little bit of a pipe dream. You know, we have a great team at Amazon of the things that we can kind of create. But we have so many different metrics, whether the composites or machine learning. metrics like EPA per dropback or different things that can measure the performance of a quarterback and like none of them are everyone picks and choose which is one they want to use passer rating nngs passing score you know passer rating they don't have sacks QBR that has sacks but we don't know exactly how it's made right all these percentage over expected right like there's a bunch of

different things that measure the performance so we thought well let's measure the world around the quarterback and see if we can create a level playing field and this quarterback has a more difficult time than this one. And so then we can then look at that as a baseline and say, okay, now we're trying to compare it. And what's great about this stat this year is this is something we thought of last year in one of our games. And now the conversation about MVP is all about Brock Purdy's life is so easy.

He's got the easiest game plan. Everything's made the easy for him. And QBDI is trained on expert annotations myself, other NFL players that have done this, that kind of know football. annotating which plays are most easy for a quarterback to complete. And we take that, we run some machine learning on it. We have some stack rank metrics that we're applying to things that the quarterback doesn't typically control.

And then it spits out a number. And so it has a pretty high agreeance with how experts annotate plays. Can't get the exact number, but it's very high where the model agrees with the experts. So we feel confident that the numbers that we're able to. able to give out correctly identify which quarterbacks have the most difficult games of which quarterbacks have the easiest yeah and to give our our listeners some background i do know you are a former player used to play offensive line at stanford with uh andrew luck and i'm sure that's all going into it i am curious does it so what does it take into account it takes account how easy

the past is scheme does it take in like opponent into account uh so i got to put this the right way the thing about machine learning is it's not you can't always pick out what components are taking place right so even when you see on prime vision if you're a prime vision watcher we have defensive alert when it's giving out a recommendation of this player is likely to blitz or not i can't go in and say this is the moment using the component they're telling it we're able to do is every single player in the NFL is tracking chips in their shoulder pads in the ball on it we have a wire a frame of the field a web of the field and we're tracking those player movements and then we annotate plays off of identifying these plays are more difficult than these plays and we stack rank different plays and then the model trains off that information so I can't when you're starting it out are you sort of starting it out like that it's more difficult because the defense is playing well I'm just curious if it's including the defense at all in that way the model works as a dork I'm curious yeah no no yeah no you're talking to the biggest football

dork come on the way we view it is identifies how easy the game plan is, which we saw tonight for Easton Stick. Screen passes, easy throws, get them all out quick. We know that is involved, and we're able to match that up. We're able to then also see as offensive line blocking correctly. Is this quarterback being pressured a lot? Right. You've seen that plays with pressure, have higher difficulties.

Very easy. And then we have a stat that we co-developed with next gen stats called Prime Targets, which is identifying players that are over. or likely to convert a first down if they caught the ball in that moment. If you're watching the broadcast, these are the players that light up green with a green orb. Because we're measuring not just who the quarterback throws to, but is any other player on the field open. Oh, the more prime targets, the easier the play is. And so there's different metrics that go into it, but all the player tracking data is also being measured on top of it.

So we're able to confidently say that the coordinator, your offensive line, and your skill position players are doing their jobs, then you're going to have an easier game. There's also a way that quarterbacks can be unique is if you're a quarterback that your coach calls quick game and you do not throw that quick game pass, you're going to have a difficult game. So that's the only way the quarterback really is controlling how difficult their game is. And we've seen quarterbacks do that where they're just going to hold onto the ball

and try and hero ball a lot. That game makes the play more difficult. Guys like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, who we see do hero ball things, They're not doing it on the quick passes. Right. They're doing it on the right passes. And yeah, I saw you mentioned Easton Stick had a, you know, I guess it would be a high score there in terms of it was easy.

It was easy. So the lower the number, the easiest score. So we scale everything from 1 to 10. He would hit a little bit above a three, which would want one of the easier games this year. But to be fair, East and Stick, not an embarrassment tonight, despite the fact that they had like no points throughout the game. He actually ended up with 257.

and three touchdowns. And even early when I know there was a fumble and it wasn't looking great to me. Didn't do the bad. Congratulations to all the fantasy owners, by the way, who had the guts to play Aiden O'Connell or Easton Stick, three touchdowns, four touchdowns for O'Connell,

or Zamere White, nice night, or Josh Palmer got the long touchdown. It's like if you had the stones to do any of that, this actually ended up being a scorefest. Let's use your new stat to break down my MVP ladder. We actually haven't done this on the show. We've talked like Dak Purdy, but it's just kind of in general.

conversations. I hadn't thought to sit down and do it. I used to always write this as a weekly column at the end of the season. I just want to throw Patrick Mahomes in as like an honorable mention because really he's playing outstanding despite everything that's happening around him. But I wrote down six names because I could not bear to not include Josh Allen as my number six. I actually think there's a chance he finishes this season completely on fire and is playing as high level this season as just about anyone and that could get into people's minds for the MVP. Tied for fourth and fifth, I have the two 49ers. Kyle Sheenan said he did not want to pick between Christian McCaffrey and Brock Purdy. And I'm not going to either. I'm going to give some

reasons for that, but I am curious how Purdy and this group matches up with your numbers in terms of the new stat you came up with. Yeah, so I, so which guys did you want to know first on the difficulty range? Let's go, let's go Purdy, but you can just tell me kind of compare it to the rest of the field, and I'll run through the rest of mine later. Like, how does Purdy rate out here? Yeah, Purdy would be in the upper third, right at right at the edge of easiest quarterbacks. he's at a 4.96.

Tua is the lowest at 3.91, right? And a large part of what we're seeing with Tua is the quick game and those guys are getting open and he's not really diverting off the quick game quite a bit. And he's throwing behind the line scrimmage, you know, over 100% of his yards in the, or near it, not over 100%. That's just where he most are in the red zone.

90 plus percent of his yards are yak, right? So easy plays or screen plays or easy plays. And so we're seeing a lot of that from him. But Brock Purdy, his office, offensive line isn't blocking as well as some of the other offensive lines out there. And so when you're looking at how difficult it is, that's part of it. Now, is it making it easier for him because there are open receivers quite a bit? Absolutely.

Is he being called upon to play as much as other as to pass as much as some of the other guys? Not as much. So we're seeing that on a total difficulty plays, he's not seen as many difficult plays, but he's still able to operate within those plays. And, you know, the Brock Prody, Dak Prescott has the two leading favorites or the, you know, the betting favorites right now. They're right around each other. They're in the exact same territory.

So those guys... Where's Lamar? Lamar, let me look at the list. He's one of the more difficult ones because he's running around quite a bit. Yeah, probably one of the highest guys in the NFL of the eligible players. So looking at our list right now, Lamar is up there.

So if you're looking for Lamar as your MVP, this is the stat to help back up your MVP. Well, you can just put his rushing numbers in there too And his rushing QBR value I have Lamar number three right now And before 49ers fans go crazy That I would have, you know, Purdy fourth or fifth A lot of it

First of all, it's eye It is some eye test in evaluating Like how well this player is playing relative But having someone in the top five MVP And for me that would be the top three quarterbacks Is saying he is playing at an exceptionally high level I just like the other people playing at an exceptionally high level, like a little more.

And a big part of that is what you mentioned, which is opportunity. He has less than about 100 less dropbacks than Dak Prescott. That's like two to three games for Brock Purdy. So when I think about that they are asking Dak Prescott to do more, which they clearly are. He essentially runs the offense himself. He's changing all the plays. He's changing the protection. He has so much more on his plate.

It's just a fact. And then you're also adding that just volume-wise, him and Lamar and some other quarterbacks have such a higher number of dropbacks. Lamar obviously has the running game. So that's why I'm giving like a slight edge. I have Lamar three, Tyreek Hill, two, because to me his value, what he's doing is just special at his position compared to maybe what any quarterback season is having. If he can get over 2000, I give him a chance. And then Dak would be my number one. Where would you lean at this point in the season?

Look, I have a tough time I'm breaking the trend of EPA per dropback deciding who our MVP is going to be. It's done a pretty good job over the years. I know, but that's looking back. Like, isn't that a team, not to jump in, sorry. Isn't that, to me, is it a EPA for dropback a little bit of a team stat more than a quarterback stat?

Oh, it's a holistic stat. Absolutely. Quarterbacks, but you can't argue that quarterbacks don't have the most impact. And then for the past seven years, I think going back to Cam Newton, the EPA per dropback leader has won the MVP. So it passes the eyeball test in terms of quarterback performance. And then I'll tell you this, this is probably my favorite reasoning on why Brock Purdy should win it.

When Kyle Shanahan was asked preseason two years ago, if Jimmy Groppo was the starter, he said, I don't know if we're all going to be alive tomorrow. How can I tell you that? And then he was asked this year if Brock Purdy was the starter coming off of a UCL he said Brock Purdy would have to melt off the face of the earth for him not to be the starter. So in terms of, we're all saying that Kyle Shanhan's the guru, the greatest, how does he view with this quarterback compared to the ones he's had in the past? I don't know. So should we take Matt Ryan's MVP away from him, right? Because he also let the league and MVP. Okay. And so that's

where I look at for Brock Petty. Now, if you're asking me, would I trade Brock Purdy for Patrick Mahomes, if I were the, uh, the Niners? You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, think I might take patchable homes on my team more. It's just, you know, it's hard to separate out the teams and the situations. And then probably my last tongue-in-cheek reason for Brock Purdy, he's the 81st highest-paid quarterback in the NFL. So when you talk about value you're getting for performance, no more point per dollar greater. So if we're going to go semantics on MVP, he is definitely the most valuable quarterback in the NFL. That is a completely fair point. and would be a fun column like the most valuable players in the NFL like relative to how much

money they're making and he would run away with that. I hear I hear everything you're saying but I think like multiple things can be true. I think Matt Ryan that year for instance was so far ahead of the pack and was so exceptional in every way that it's okay to in that year that he made sense for that award and to look around the league right now. And again, the volume thing really does matter a lot to me personally. And I think Dak and Lamar are having exceptional seasons. But I'm kind of splitting nits. And I also would say like four weeks is an exceptionally long time in an MVP race. A lot of times what you think with four weeks to go, it completely changes. And for me, having purdy third among quarterbacks, it's like three among great

quarterbacks having great seasons. And there's very little difference between them. And I'm very open-minded to seeing kind of how this goes. But I think it's okay to break from what voters do in the past, too. People say like, well, you know, Tyreek, you can't consider that because they haven't done in the past. Like, why do we have to, why do we have to be slaves to what is often an unthinking process for a lot of the voters? Because I know some of their thought processes. And they're just like asking the assistance at the place they work at to do it for them. Sometimes, um, sometimes. Like, I don't, we can break from the EPA has to be the, the, the choice. We actually can.

I think it's just, it's a little bit of a, a tough pill to swallow when all of a sudden for Brock Purdy, it struggles. Like, we don't have many non-first-round pick MVPs. I think it's Tom Brady. Did Tom Brady win the MVP? Yes, you want to see it. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have Rich Gannon, right, was the last after that.

So, uh, we have a little first round pick bias. So, Dak Prescott doesn't follow that. but I think that could be a little bit of it too. So look, and I know, I know the Brock Purdy stuff. If you really want to get me to start on someone, it's probably Josh Allen, but I think you have to make the playoffs, and they're still outside looking in. So Josh Allen probably does more for his team than anyone right now. I'm kind of with you on that.

And that's a good point. Dak Prescott, fourth round pick, Tyree Kill, fifth round pick, Brock Purdy, Mr. Irrelevant. So it's not all about that. draft. Sam, I would love to dive deep into all things Prime Vision, but I want to get you out of there before it gets too late. I appreciate you joining me. And look, if you're an overseas listener and you don't get Prime, I feel bad for you. But if you're here, because we do have a lot of listeners overseas, if you're in the States and you haven't been checking out, just hit that down button on the main broadcast. And it really does change. I wish it was an option, but maybe

it's just nice as a once a week kind of like dessert or something like that. Watching the coaches film and everything that goes on with the Prime Vision live is a much different experience than when you've tried to watch coaches film or if you've watched coaches film like after the fact and on Game Pass or on NFL Plus or anything. It really is a fun different way. It's like being there and it's been fun and you've added a lot to the broadcast this year. Appreciate you, Sam. Thanks so much.

Now you have my number. You have Alex Strand's number. You have their information. So you have ideas. You want to see something during the game. You send it over. Oh, my son's got lots of ideas. He is hooked on Prime Vision.

So he loves it too. So I will be bugging you with that. And our listeners, we will be bugging you again on Sunday. The recap show will be live. Wow. Week 15. 16 games. We'll hit all the Saturday games on Sunday night.

Until then, for Sam Schwartzstein. He'd the call.