NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - TNF Recap: Buccaneers Eagles with Nate Tice

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Gregg Rosenthal is joined by Nate Tice of the Athletic Football Show to recap the matchup between the Buccaneers and the Eagles. 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. Brady, he's got all day, and he's got Brown. He's got a touchdown. Four net. Touchdown. That was easy.

Touchdown for net. He's got his second of the game. Hertz has room, has speed, has a touchdown. It is a six-point game after that two-point conversion. And the Buccaneers at kneel downtime. That's right. Thursday night football, 28, 22. defending champion bucks get it done and the best highlight we could close with was a kneel down.

It was that kind of night, Nate Tice, looking like a slightly more weathered, Justin Herbert with his backwards hat. There really is a resemblance here. Good to have you back on the show, Nate of the athletic football podcast. And like so many others, Nate, you were sweating out that final score. You sent me earlier in the day. Yes, I'll do the show, but I'll just be in a bad mood. if the bucks don't cover six and a half points. Now, we can't do that as NFL employees, but that's not you, Nate Tice. Tell me about your pain,

because I feel like that was the most exciting part of the end of this game. Yeah, you also get Nate after dark, so you get the backwards hat. That's me just going, I'm not putting product in. Screw this. I haven't gotten a haircut in three months. This is hat,

backwards hat. But no, one of my adages this season as a newly enabled, newly enabled person that can gamble on sports now, since I'm no longer affiliated with the team, nor is my dad. One of my angles has been betting against the Eagles throughout the season. And the last couple of weeks, it has now bitten me twice. Luckily, there's this thing called live betting where the spread got changed to five and a half in the middle of the game.

So I was able to hedge a little bit. I thought I was doubling down, but it turned out to be a hedge. Yeah, once the Eagles went for two And I made it a six-point game You probably heard me screaming Somebody everybody within a five-mile radius Of Vegas heard me screaming Yeah, I mean, yeah, Nate of course lives in Vegas

So it's easy for him to get it down But this is what a lot of people were talking about online Because ultimately it wasn't that exciting a game It was 28 to 7 is a 21 point game Just felt like Another Bucks game Where they get touchdowns too easy Where life seems too easy

And then again it turned into another Eagles game where Jalen Hertz puts him some late touchdowns and shows again that he has the biggest gap between his fantasy value and his real life value of any player I can really think of it in a long time because there's a lot of places we should talk about this game seriously but I think what a lot of what I'm thinking of watching this game is just thinking about like what are the Eagles and what is Jalen Hertz and after after six weeks I'm struggling with it. I'm struggling with who is Jalen Hertz right now to you as an ex-quarterback.

I'm not a quarterback. You are an ex-quarterback. But you have the call them. So it kind of, you know, that kind of gives you more Koreans than I do. I just have a substack talking about offensive line play. No, the, the, I would, I look at Hertz as more of a high-end backup spot starter. And that's kind of what you saw tonight. He can create some plays with his legs.

But what you saw tonight, and I think more people, people saw a complete game of Jalen Hertz in the Eagles offense as opposed to maybe seeing Red Zone some highlights and then looking at the fantasy scores and going, hey, this guy, hey, he's putting up 24 points for me on fantasy. This guy must be pretty good. It's the Blake Bordle's award. I think that's what it is. It's the, I'm not putting to Jalen Hertz in the Blake Bortles category, but at least

that fantasy award. I just seem he creates me. I mean, Blake Bortles, to be fair, put up like an entire season once, his second season, where at the end of it, everyone was like, hmm. Did he finish a QB1 or something? Blake Borrell's is pretty good. I was one of those people. So just putting that out there.

But I could see Hertz getting on a hot streak like that. I think people are burying him almost too quickly. But this game is similar to a lot of Hertz games this year. I think this was a particularly rough one. But he goes through long stretches where they just don't move the ball. And then he'll get hot. And he, in theory, is a good runner. But I don't know if he has great instincts of when to run.

and when to leave the pocket. And his deep ball is like one of the most exciting plays in the NFL. He throws about seven of them a game. You never know what's going to happen. Usually the ball goes off Jalen Rager's hands at some point. There's a lot of penalties. Like there's a lot of penalties. A lot of penalties.

Sometimes guys go out of bounds. Sometimes it's in bounds. It's just like a lot. You never really know what's going to happen. It's like pulling that jackpot rubber. Yeah, it's, it's Baylor's offense for years and years was this. It was go balls and screen. And that's what it kind of just seems like it's always a large fan I always look up the like the little advanced stats and I'm like, oh, his average deficit targets probably like two yards, but it's always super high because he just chucks up those go balls throughout the game. So it just gets inflated throughout the game. Um, but that is, I mean, that's what the offense has been throughout the season. They had a great game playing against the Falcons because the Falcons were Dean Peace and he was trying to blitz them. And that's like the worst thing you do against this because it's just all those bubbles have space to work. And I think throughout the year, more.

and more teams were just like, let's just sit here and make them, you know, make him try and to actually progress on these concepts because there's a couple times you can see tonight where it hurts, hurts drops back. And then he's like one one reads not open, he starts scrambling. And I think that's a great point you brought up. It's not like Russell Wilson scrambling. Like it's a different feel to it. It's like, oh, it's a panic as opposed to like, I'm creating. And that's kind of it happens over and over. When it's a design running player, or he's just on the edge, you know, looking to get up the sideline, obviously. he's a good runner but there's a difference between that yeah it's kind of like Daniel

Jones a little bit like I don't consider Daniel Jones like a great runner he's really fast and if you call the right play like he can hit it but I don't think he has great instincts of when to run and maybe Jalen Hertz can make you miss a little bit more but right now it seems like the rest of Jalen Hertz is scrambling so much that he doesn't have the feel and they haven't integrated his running into the offense. And I am, I am the last guy that is like run the ball more guy. I've never been that guy. And yet this Eagles team watching them, even against the Bucs, who I know have a great rush defense, you do feel like, this team's so good at running the ball when they do it. They're very efficient. They rank high that you would think they could integrate

hurts, but it just hasn't happened. And tonight it didn't happen. He ends up with under 50% completion. And yes, the final score ends up being 28, 22. but this this looked like as big of a mismatch as we kind of expected going in and that's how the flow of it felt and that's uh the run game of the eagles has been so frustrating i'm sure as miles sanders fantasy owners could tell you but it's the going from the cowboys game a couple weeks ago to uh last week uh you know just against carolina like they could they will be able to run like you'll see a couple good plays and then they're just like a screen bubble screen receiver screen and then you know uh screen bubbles you know pump the screen and throw a go ball off of it and it's like they just

abandon it as soon as one of those zone reads or one of those readplay stops working they're just like oh screw this not we can't run the ball and actually it's funny you say that because in theory they actually look okay running the ball like they actually look good they're top five they're top five in yards per carry i mean mild sanders is a good runner gainwell's a good runner like both of them they have a good offensive line in theory when it's healthy i don't know if lane johnson's coming back anytime soon which is a huge problem that's kind of been under the radar that just lumped in with the injuries. He has some sort of personal issue.

And Siriani said he doesn't know if he's going to be back this year. So that's a concern. That's a lot of time we just spent on the Eagles offense and a two and four team that's probably not going anywhere. We should give a little love to the winning team here. It's like that first drive of the game with the Bucks and Brady's throwing those in cuts to Evans and Godwin. My first thought was, you know,

there, like no one gets 20 yards as easily as, the bucks and someone who really understands the schematics and understands brady and these guys like why does it look so easy why does their 20 yards look easier than anyone else's and why does their like opening drive touchdown drives look so much easier than everyone else's like if we've watched brady for years everything comes out right on time so they're making this incredibly hard offense look incredibly easy and that's what it just what you're saying but like in a this offense is it's pushing the ball it's at you always passing the game and running the ball and i think i think a good good way to put it

is last week against the dolphins like this is just one little play most teams will run a uh if you get man coverage and you're trying to run something outside you run a stop route which is 10 to 12 yards hey throw it up there pin it on them you've seen deandre hopkins mike williams catch these this year they run a deep hinge at 24 yards with mike evans he's selling a go all the way down and then tom brady's just throwing it out seven step drop back stuff like old school offense but not a play not like most play fakes are seven step concepts they're not even play faking they're just dropped back seven steps and brady's finding the right guy and it comes out on time so it's like old school like what who who else was running this back in the day is it's

like old school nor north turner 90s kind of yeah cowboys maybe i think that's maybe a good comparison um ericorl like if you want to go way back like that's kind of what it is and it's very uh yeah it's all the old school seven step stuff and then all all the run game is just a duo, which is power, power without the polar, and then zone. It's like they just don't dress it up too much. It's a simple motion that's man or zone tell. And then it's like going from there, it's like, okay, we'll just push the ball with digs and overs and posts as opposed to slants and outs.

So it's like this, it's just very vertical. And I think that's like, is it in theory predictable? Like is it a little more like the cults, not like it's like the old Colts offense, but the Colts offense was an execution offense. Yeah. It was like, and I think as fans, and I'm guilty of this, it gets so caught up of like, which coaches are like being really creative or tricking the other team in, but then you think of those Colts offenses, which are some of the greatest offenses of all time, which was the most

predictable offenses. They ran like five plays. Right. And it worked. And are the bucks like a little bit like that? I would say a little bit like that. And that's what Ariens kind of does. It's good concepts.

If there's a few concepts that have like. answers to everything but the problem with them is that you have to protect or you have to have guys that win one-on-ones or et cetera if they want to play certain coverages the bucks have all those guys and they can protect so they're able to do they have all the cogs to run this type of offense and it's just like I think that's the best way to put it is just like those old cult's offenses seriously because it's just like they only run like seven concepts and then they're just like okay we're going to do it out two tight ends and then next play we'll do three wide receivers and now they're like now they've gotten more reps at it too and yeah

watched tonight and O.J. Howard looks better. Crox's not even playing. Right, but I've watched Howard pretty closely this year and he hasn't moved well and I think he's moving better. I ain't been set as much. I really think that could help them a lot. Antonio Brown, I don't know if he's moving better, but he seems to be approaching peak whatever 2021 Antonio Brown is.

I saw someone tweet out. It's like, this is the best Antonio Brown's ever looked. No. You can say that about a Brady if you really wanted to get cute like he's producing at about as high a level as he ever as. To me, he's the best quarterback in the league right now. And so whatever. But he was doing that 10 years ago.

Antonio Brown is not near where he was. Antonio Brown is the greatest receiver I've ever seen. That's my personal opinion. At his peak. His peak. He is not there. But he's kind of getting there now. I think he's now their leading receiver on the season,

even though he missed a game. miss the game. It's outrageous. It's not fair. They get to switch Godwin and him and Brown because they both can work from the slot and outside. So it's just kind of like pick your poison. It's like it's like and not only they have three awesome receivers.

It's like all of them like synergize really well. It's like it's not fair. Like Antonio Brown's your sometimes you're third targeted receiver. And it's like last week against the Dolphins. It was like eight targets, eight targets, eight targets, eight targets. Or like 10 targets, 10 targets, eight targets, something like that between Godwin, Evans and brown and it's like just right well evans went two for 27 this week so i can almost guarantee you he's going over 100 next week that's basically what it does they just he's like okay he didn't get a

taste this week i got to hook him up uh you know who i was thinking about watching this game was tom cofflin and david caldwell the former uh jaguars gm and i was thinking they're watching Lenny Fournett light up the Eagles get to what a hundred and twenty seven yards and two touchdowns from scrimmage and they were thinking see we were right we were right to go with Lenny and Bordels instead of drafting Mahomes never wrong just early a little underrated moment in NFL history there that no one really gives them grief for that everyone was like oh yeah that was that was fine let's take four net instead of drafting a quarterback because we're totally we're totally in on Bordels extended

Bortles too and then did that. Right. I think the extension was like a year later, but yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. So it was a nice double whammy. I think that was the same draft CMC came out. You didn't even get the best. Like,

it's just, you know, there's a couple other guys you could leave. Lenny looks, I do think Lenny looks better than he's ever looked in his career right now. Because he's catching the ball. That's the, that he led the league and drop percentage last year,

which was pretty crazy. But he's a little slimmer. He does look good. He's moving a little better. He's running people over. obviously in a good situation but like he's a legit good starting running back like a very good starting running back right now Halloween Lenny yeah Halloween Lenny looks good he really does he does look about like last week I mean it just looks so much skinnier and better it's it's crazy

what else is there to say about this this bucks team you were making fun on Troy Aikman a little bit what was it that Troy was bothering you about he didn't bother me it was just it was more like salt in the wound that not only were the eagles going for two to also cover that I had to hear Troy Aikman try to misunderstand the math for when to go for two when you're down 14 and then you score a touchdown. And it was just hearing Aikman and Buck get confused about that really kind of was like pushing to be over the edge. Buck had it nailed. Buck actually like heard the people on analytics like yelling at him

in his mentions and explained it all for him. But Quez killed you. Quez ruined your child's college fund. Quez took a lot of money out of the pockets of Buck's investors, made a tough catching that two book conversions i got to say quez wakins is a player they i actually like the walkins devante smith even rager a little bit um group i don't know if they all make sense together but quez wakins is a player you got some players in philly it's just it's just not going to happen for you this year i also enjoyed troy calling um now i'm forgetting his name oh he butcher the name

oh what was it it was the detackle right yeah he called them notches roaches roaches Noches Roches He called him Notches Rouches But I don't have his right name It's like a Chris Berman nickname That's what he's going for I know better either You mentioned the substack earlier

That was very subtle That was good It actually got double mentioned Because Mark Sessler brought it up He's a subscriber as well He is Thank you Mark But tell me about the subs stack

Because substack it's for the kids You know It's really young kids I'm glad you said for the kids I think you're about to say It's for the birds Uh, no, but it's a, uh, my substack is called the silent count. Got to get a little football reference in there. And yeah, I, I, as opposed to a Twitter thread, I decided to kind of go more long form. And my most recent articles this week was, uh, or newsletters, I think is the prefer term on substack is, uh, if you subscribe to it, I'll, you get pushed to the email or you go onto the website to read this. But I, I broke down Trey Lance's first start, um, against the Arizona Cardinals, a little more optimistic about it than I thought I would be. And I also do, I'll start. I'll start. I've started. are doing a little more voiceovers on there where I can kind of break down to play with a little more

narration. Oh, I didn't even check. I didn't even check out the voiceovers, but I read that and that was really good because I was wondering what to think about that Lance start. I felt the same way that I think there were some some good things in there. And I want to see more. But people should check it out. I am a subscriber. Nate is a busy man. This is his third podcast of the day. Wait, I don't get it though. You do the athletic, you know. And then I did a I did in the air. They did the Cleveland's athletic podcast. Okay. And so that was another one.

I did someone else's podcast. Correct. Um, is one of the best in the business. Um, he is, you know, like I like to call him the Cordarelle Patterson of the, uh, the NFL media landscape. Like he can do everything and no one's exactly sure how to use him. And he's just waiting for his Arthur Smith to come on board. I just don't know when we're going to have you on again.

So I just want to get Cordarell in because me and you. you have, you know, long talked about how every coach gets Cordarell disease. They have a game or two where they think they think they've really got something. It works at first. And then it's diminishing return to the rest of the year. But I was in London and I'm watching Cordarelle Patterson. And this is like the sixth straight week. He's been a baller.

And he finally found his home. So I think there's a lesson in there somewhere. Like if you've got a skill set and people just keep trying and they can. can't figure it out. You never know. Maybe you just need to find your Arthur Smith. Some of us peak after 30. You know, you just got to find it. He's just got to find your call. He's a badass. Can you explain it for me? I mean, why not? I don't know. It was I knew Arthur Smith like Patterson. He caught the he caught the pathogen, whatever the the cordero pathogen. He caught it when on the first drive, Falcons drive of the season, they wind him up at

running back, full back, wingtide end and receiver on the first drive. And I was like, oh boy, he caught he got a full-blown he got a bad but this time it's going both both ways he is he is a legitimate weapon who has changed their offense and there was a moment in that game and i know we're way off topic here and we're going to we're going to say goodbye soon it wasn't that great a game where you know patterson picks up a key first down to basically salt the game away i forget which jet's safety or cornerback it was but he tried to give him a little business and i'm standing on the sideline like a real sideline reporter and you know they give him he gives a little shove extra at the end to corduro as they're going out of bound and cordel's a big guy big dude cordel just freaking shut

gives him a forearm to the neck and pushes him off him just like get off me I'm a man and I was like damn that's my guy that's my guy because it's just the other the little cornerback he shuffled off and it was just like don't even mess with me hitting me out of it's uh out of bounds and it was it was something they moved fast these big NFL guys in person they do very impressive and the guy like Patterson too like you said he's more put together than you realize he's he's 2 30 he is he is a beast he broke the like testing in the Raiders they had like they had some force testing and he was like banging like he had like a quad injury and he still did it and he like shattered their record for it with a quad injury

and it was like they're like and I remember the strength coach going like he's put together guys he's he was pretty athletic it was like oh yeah that's why we signed him. That's awesome. Nate Tice, you said it all. You're the man and so is Rakeem Nunez Roches. I was feeling bad about that. We never gave him his actual name. You know, great, great backup defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez Roaches, who was called by Troy Aikman Roaches Noches. I don't know why. It really made me laugh. You know, you need something to get us through the night. Who knows? The Lenny Fournet glow up.

He's only 26 years old. We're all getting better as we're getting older. Nate Tice is I am. We will be back on Sunday and try to do better on our Sunday recap show. Until then, need the car. Hey, On Move the 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 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 Podcast, 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.