PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Can Jalen Carter be the Eagles’ DIFFERENCE-MAKER in rematch against Giants?

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

The Eagles were out-toughed in their loss to the Giants without Jalen Carter and Quinyon Mitchell, so now it’s on the big fella to make a difference against a good Giants offensive line. With A.J. Brown injured and still mired in drama, Jalen Hurts, DeVonta Smith and Saquon Barkley will try to keep up the momentum on offense. Class is in session with Deniz Selman, Bo Wulf and EJ Smith. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

from the Xfinity studio. Welcome to the PHAY Eagles podcast, presented by Bet365 and Ashley. I'm Bo Wolf, joined by the professor himself. Danis. Did I say your last name? Do you care if I say your last name?

That's a nice shirt. Thank you. Appreciate it. You know, last week, E.J. had mentioned we're doing flannel Fridays. Do you think I was going to remember that? I mean, no, but maybe E.J. did.

We'll see. I don't know. I don't remember what he was wearing final today. I did see him, and I, unfortunately didn't make enough of a dent in my memory to to remember what it is he's wearing. Well, at least one of us remembered. I actually have a question for you

because this is, this was the, we're going to hear from E.J. Smith, he's going to join us in a little bit. We're going to break down this game. Professor has a lot of thoughts on the defense. Obviously, we're going to get into what we might see on offense as well. The question that E.J. was batting around with the rest of the reporters before Nick Seriani's press conference today. Give me your Mount Rushmore of solo female artists.

Wow. Solo female artists. Mount Rushmore. Man, this is so hard without any prep whatsoever. Just like... Well, I think about it. I mean, you could have given me like five minutes. You can ruminate on it.

All right, let me come back to it. I'm going to work on it. When I'll tell you what, I'll work on it during the show. Put a pin in it, and then when E.J. joins, that's how we'll begin the conversation. So you've got until then. All time.

All time. Musical. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no. I don't know. I don't know. Emily Dickinson.

Okay, yeah, sure. No performing arts like outside of music. I mean, you could. No, but I, okay. That wasn't the question. It's not the goal, yeah. Okay. See, there are so many bands I like that have female leads.

You know, like the front person is female. Yeah. But solo, like, really makes it harder for me because, yeah. All right. Well, I'll work on it. Okay. Don't think about it. You don't sound so good.

I know the first one. I know one for sure. I mean, just like easily, easily, number one. But the other three I have to think about. Okay. Yeah. Because when people ask me the question, if you could go to any point in time and see a live performance in a given venue,

given time, who would you see? People asking you this a lot? People used to ask. Yeah. Okay. Just on the street, I'd just be walking down. They'd be like, when you,

when you biked past Brandon Brooks and Isaac Sayamalu at a park and you said, The starting guards! They responded if you could see any musical artists. They did not. No, they did not. The Brandon, as we went over,

then Brandon was very, I'm only now appreciating the color coordination you have going on here. Thanks. Light blue under shirt. See, give me a little bit of time. Tone of blue in the flannel

and then the blue hat. Yeah, it's because I spent like three minutes picking out the outfit. You know, if I had three minutes to think about this Mount Rushmore thing, I would have hit it out of the park. But yeah, no, I got one. Okay.

Oh, but you're not going to... No, no, no, we're teasing it. Okay, yeah. All right. Let's talk about the defense because usually we start the show... No, you are the alarmist about the Eagles defense.

I think you are more of an alarmist than pretty much anybody. else. I would call myself a realist. No, I told you last week, I was starting to come around to being alarmed as well. But, you know, step back. It's been seven games. This was the best defense in the NFL last year.

And this year, you know, 17th by DVOA, right? Eighth against the past, 23rd against the run. 13th by APA per drive. 17th and points per drive. You know, you look at success rate. versus the offense being 10th in DPA. And I think if you were to poll, I think if you were to poll Eagles fans

about which unit has been better this year, most of them would say the defense. Yeah, and you made the case on Monday, I don't know how much you thought about it, for success rate mattering more on defense. I think I stand by this. I like it to the degree that if you think

that the main EPA driver on defense is turnovers and turnovers are somewhat random. Right. And maybe more a function of the offense making a mistake. Right. Then the defense, then I'm with you on that. Now, it does depend a little bit on situational. You know me, I'm a big serious conversion rate guy.

Like, I think serious conversion rate is like the most correlated to winning of any of the big metrics. Explain one more time what that means. So basically, series conversion rate is when the other team has a first and ten, do they get a first down? Right. Out of that. It doesn't matter if they get it on first down. Every series of downs counts. Right.

So, like, if you get it on first down, success rate would call that a one for one. if you have three failures and then you get it on fourth down, success rate would be one for four. So there's a big difference. But series conversion rate, it's just one for one either way. And over the course of the season,

we see that series conversion rate is more correlated with all of the other, like, you know, the things that really matter, like points, you know, winning than any of the other things. So my guess is that the Eagles' offensive series conversion rate is lower than their EPA

because of all those three and outs. Yeah, the Eagles offensive series conversion rate is 19th. Okay. And we're used to seeing it in the top five over the course of the last three years. Okay. And so, yeah, and the EPA is, EPA per drive is 12th. Okay.

And how about on defense? Well, on defense, the series conversion rate last year was also top five. And this year, it is 21st. I mean, they're just giving up, like, lots of, you know, long drives, first downs. Now, the reason that they've held the points down to some degree is because they are awesome in the red zone, right? Like third in the red zone. Last week was a great example when the Vikings were one for six in the red zone.

And you see Fangio come up with these really cool calls in the red zone, unconventional things that they're not looking for. So it's not necessarily coincidence that they're getting in the red zone. They might just really be good at it. Right. But at the end of the day, that's a small sample size. You can't always bank on stopping the other team. A tiki tack holding call being thrown.

Tiki tack holding. Quarterback misses a throw. I mean, Hawkinson's wide open on that, on that one where Makuba just didn't cover him more on that in a second. No call me a moron. And Wentz just missed him. I'll call you whatever. Yeah, so I mean, I guess the question is, after seeing that Vikings game, were you still concerned?

Because it was, like, the Vikings literally scored on every drive in the second half. Now, it's easy to say, like, well, you held him to field goals and, you know, you had the lead the whole time, it's okay. But not getting a single stop on the second half is normally not a good thing for the defense. And it wasn't like a field position thing. Like, they were letting them drive down the field every time.

I'm absolutely just, concerned. It felt like that was the the perfect version of what we're talking about is that you know they score a touchdown which is as you know that's awesome that makes a huge difference in the game and was the part of the like that was the final score was that touchdown

and then one for six in the red zone but yeah they're getting it reminded me a little bit of the 2022 defense your Gannon and like the discussion we kept having about Gannon taking so much umbrage at the idea that you couldn't coach turnovers Yeah, maybe the result. The process is so different from the Gannon defense That I can't really get there.

And I think part of the reason to not be so worried Is because of trust in Vic Fangio And there's no doubt that he is putting together You know, save for the Giants game Interesting game plans And you can trust that he's searching for different answers And trying to figure out what it is That his talent does well

And changing the defense to that But you know Jalen Carter and Quinion Mitchell were back for that game didn't make that much of a difference. I talked about this with Anthony this morning. I think the bull case for the defense is, man, after the by week, we just hope we get the Jelan Carter of last year.

Because to me that is like the theory of roster building for the defense this off season, being willing to go in with an obvious weakness at corner, no matter how well you thought Keeley or Adori Jackson was going to perform, a big question mark at safety with a rookie starting and obvious lack of depth on the edge.

What was going to paper over that was Jalen Carter playing at like a defensive player of the year level? And so far he has been mostly just a guy. Yeah, and it hasn't gotten quite as much attention either when you look at the snaps in the last game where they were lined up symmetrically. Like they were both O'Dromo and Jalen Carter were three texts on a given play for example.

And they had plays like that where the center actually slid. to Ojamo. Now, it's not like he's tearing it up either, but I don't think that would happen last year. Like they're leaving Jalen Carter on an island against the left guard who, in Donovan Jackson, who's like, you know, like he's not, he's not like one of the best left guards in the league or anything. Like it's not one of those like the Falcons did where they're like, we have Lindstrom, he can take Jalen Carter one-on-one, we'll deal with the other side. It was just a case of like they just thought they could block it better that way, which means they're not treating Jalen

Carter the way we thought teams would be this year, where he's like an Aaron Donald and they're going to have to game plan around him. Well, this is a problem because there certainly isn't an edge defender on this team than anybody is game planning around or anything close to it. And so that means that you don't really have to, you're not threatening the other team in terms of your pass rush and what's going on around the line. And then that brings us to where this team is getting attacked the most, which is outside the numbers. I mean, you look at the Giants game and the reason the Giants are worth talking about now is first of all, this next games against the Giants as well. But since Jackson,

dart has been starting for the giants, the way that they've been attacking is they've been going through the tight ends. I mean, Darius Slayton was injured during a big part of it. 33% of his throws were to the tight ends last week, which is in line with what he's been in all of his starts, except against the Eagles when he threw to the wide receivers on 77% of his throws, which is like a 96th percentile for any game this year, attacking Keely Ringo, attacking Drew McCuba when he's coming down to defend. the slot receiver. And Carson Wentz

through 28 passes outside the numbers against the Eagles last week. That is wildly high, one of the highest in any game this year by any team. So teams are doing

what we thought they would do, which is try to find the weakness in the Eagles coverage, and that weakness is mostly going to be whoever the second quarterback is, and also wherever Drew McCuba is.

I mean, we have to talk about Drew McCuba because he has been having coverage busts in very similar ways to each other, week in and week out, and he's saving himself,

with kind of random interceptions in the fan's eyes. Okay. But like we have to talk about Drew McCuba a little bit because this is unusual to be this far. We need to talk about Kevin movie poster, but it's Drew McCuba. Yeah, I don't know if you want to talk about Drew McCuba right now. Let's talk about him. Yeah, well, I mean, he, he, it's one thing to get physically beaten, right? Drew McCuba is small and all those.

Yes. Yeah, but I mean, like he continues to be confused and seem to. not know his assignment in particular when he rotates down to cover a man and a man coverage call. Fangeo loves to start with the two safeties both playing high to disguise the coverage as we know. And a lot of times what happens is Mikuba as the field safety is on the three receiver side, for example, and he will rotate down to cover the slot. And oftentimes that slot is a wide receiver. Sometimes it's a tight end. And we've seen examples now many times this season where he kind of walks down to cover the guy, but then he loses.

the guy at some point. The best example is probably the Wondale Robinson touchdown against the Giants two weeks ago where he just completely lost him in coverage. That was on a four by one where he had to get him in man. There was nobody else to cover him and he just lost him. Then he also missed the tackle. In this game, there were very similar things that happened. I mean, the third and two end zone drop by Hawkinson that was reviewed and reversed as an incompletion. That's one where it was kind of like a cover zero double Jefferson call, which meant that

Reed Blankenship is doubling Justin Jefferson on the other side. So there's no safety help of any sort. Drew McCuba's coming down and he has to guard Hawkinson and he starts to cover him, but then he just kind of loses him again, trying to peek at the quarterback instead of staying on his guy. And this has been the thing.

Like we know he's a ball hawk. We know that he has ball skills. But what he seems to be doing is in the middle of those man-covered snaps, he's acting as as if he's like a safety playing on top of his own and he's just watching the quarterback. And he's losing Hockinson, a friend of the show,

Wanna BGM will love the segment because he's been on this for weeks on Blue Sky. And it's absolutely true. There was a very similar rep against Theo Johnson against the Giants in week six, very similar where he comes down. He's supposed to have Theo Johnson in man coverage. And then he just starts watching Jackson Dard instead,

and Theo Johnson escapes out wide on a corner route and is wide open for a big completion. And there are just so many other examples of similar things. Cooper to Gene is constantly trying, to communicate with McCuba. He's like turning and giving him a signal. Like, okay, we have a two-man call here where if Jefferson gets behind me, you have to get him.

And that's clearly what he's communicating. He gives him some sort of signal. Maccuba gives him the signal back, indicating that he understood it. And I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what the signal means, but in that coverage, it almost definitely means, given what Cooper and Gene did on the play, after a certain distance, Jefferson is yours.

And on that play, this was a two-man call where the Eagles actually had all three-quartered. corners over to one side, which Fangio had never done before. He did it from the first time. He did it twice in this game. It was the first time he did it. And on the first one, it was executed beautifully in the red zone. I'm now talking about the second one where Jefferson ends up running a deeper route.

The gene lets him go. And then he turns around in a panic and realizes Makuva is nowhere to be seen. Like he had just given him the signal back. And then instead he drifts to the middle of the field peeking out what could be going on the other side. I mean, and Jefferson's wide open. It must be a terrible feeling. I thought we just went over this. Carson ended up scrambling for the first down on that.

But, like, if he had thrown that to Jefferson, it would have been like, what the hell happened? He's, like, wide open. So, just, I don't know. There are a couple of others I have here. I feel like I'm, you know, being a little bit. Yeah, but piling on because he's just a rookie. But, like, again, there are just, like, so many situations like this where there's emotion and Josh Oliver catches one, like, wide open in the flat where Zach Bond just lets him go,

which makes me think, like, that was probably McCuba's guy. You know, like, they're, and maybe I'm wrong on some of them. Maybe it's not his fault, but it just seems to be kind of similar to where it was, it seemed to always be C.J. G.J. Yeah. Like last year, it seems to always be MacCuba, except it's a little bit, um, it's a little bit like lower level stuff than it was with CJGJ. You know, like, CJG could kind of have a like explanation for why he was wrong on something. Oh, you mean lower level at, meaning it. I think it's lower level of difficulty stuff that Maccuba's messing up on.

It's like, look, it's man coverage. That's your man is a little bit easy. than CJGJ like forgetting to catch the, you know, the guy from the other side of the field or something. It's hard because you accept when you have a rookie on the field on defense, they're going to miss some assignments. Safety is like the spot where you really don't want that to happen. Right, right, exactly.

You're the last guy. I didn't even mention the corner. I mean, we all, we've seen all the games, right? So the Tampa Bay, like deep touchdown was obviously on MacGuba as well. That's a mistake that he makes in zone coverage where he's the deep guy and he's trying to cheat. and, you know, like, steal something from the sale route. And if he, and if he make it, that's the throw and he makes that play,

he's like a hero, right? And that's the thing with him. It's like how many, it's kind of like CJGJ in that way too. It's like how many interceptions is he going to get to make up for his mistakes? It's interesting because I think part of the team moving on from CJJ, was that Vic was okay with it, right? Like I think even over the course of the season, you could hear Vic being a little bit frustrated at those gambles

that CJ was taking. And so it's odd that they went and drafted the guy who seems very similar and not someone who would be more reliable. And Vinggio was very excited. Very excited. Yeah, and then given that there were other options who they could have had later

who have as rookies been steadier safeties. Yeah, I haven't been keeping track of that, but I remember there were like six or seven names at safety. Xavier Wats. And Jonas Sanker have both. both been very good. We were both possibilities.

Billy Bowman, who ended up going later, he's mostly been a nickel, but he's been good. And this was the one pick the Eagles made where they really went away from draft consensus. Those guys were all sticking out in consensus, right?

Yeah. So, you know, we said it at the time, this was going to be kind of what this hinged on. It's been seven games. He's got a long... Yeah, no, no. I feel bad. I feel bad that we did this so early in the show

and we're doing it for so long. Are there examples you feel like where he's making... the same mistake twice. Yes. I mean, I just listed like three or four of essentially the same mistake. And typically it's you're rotating down,

you have the number three receiver in man. Like it's a man coverage rep. And you do not need to have eyes on the quarterback. Obviously, you always need to have some sense of what the quarterback's doing. But I feel like he's playing those snaps the same way that he's playing his own snaps and you just can't do that.

Now, Fangio is calling a lot more man this year than he did last year. I mean, the Eagles are nice. We're gonna get to this in a second. Yeah. We gotta take a quick break and then on the other side we'll get to what has been different about the way that Vic is calling defense this year. Hey, Eagles fans, you know who's playing championship level defense?

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And the big takeaway is? Vic is calling the defense differently, Professor. And we can flash up the man coverage graphic, Julia. Yeah, this has been pretty consistent from the beginning of the season that we were wondering how Vic would handle the fact that he doesn't have two, you know, high-end corners this year, right? With the absence of Slay. And we were wondering if he was going to play more cover six, you know,

zones that kind of let that second corner be hidden in the coverage. And he has done some of that. and he's still among the highest cover six in the league, 18% for the Eagles playing cover six, which is fourth highest. But the surprising thing for me is Vanjillo is called man coverage on 29% of opponent dropbacks, which is ninth highest in the NFL.

And that's surprising. I mean, to see him above average. Average in the NFL is 24%. And that's up from 24% last year. Late downs, he's playing man on 40% of snaps, which is 12th in the league. That was 29th last year at 29%. And on when he blitzes, which he's blitzing more of this here as well, the two-thirds of the blitzes have been man behind it, which is fourth highest in the league.

The average, the most blitzes in the NFL are zone blitzes. So these are all changes from what he did just last year. And it's funny because you would think if you have lower-level talent on defense, you would be playing more zone. Right. Now, it depends on what kind of man, this last game. We saw him call, depending on how you chart it, anywhere between four or five snaps. Are we talking a...

That's true. And what kind of man is it? What kind of man are we talking? Yeah, what kind of man is? Well, in this last game, it was a lot of two-man, which was a little surprising. A very rare coverage. Conjoined twins kind of deal?

Sort of like that, yeah. You got the conjoined... Yeah, I don't know where to go with this, but... Yeah, two-man is a pretty rare coverage in the NFL. I know it's France's favorite coverage, but it's played on like 1% of snaps in the league. It's not two buster now. Two Buster would be two men on one side.

That would be conjoined twins. It's regular two on the other. And his brother. That's right. Yeah, you got it. So, yeah, two men, basically the corners can play trail technique and let kind of funnel the receiver to the safeties. There are two safeties playing, waiting for those receivers. And that does kind of hide the, you know, talent to corner a little bit.

But it's not like this is like a bread and butter thing. This was just like a thing against the Vikings that they did on a couple of snaps. But the man coverage is interesting. It's definitely something that, like with Drew McCuba, for example, should make the defense simpler, right? And yet he's making mistakes on these snaps. So, like, I wonder if it is to somehow hide, like, if he's not, if he doesn't think, like, the match, you know,

because, like, you can make mistakes more easily when you're matching people in a zone, right? So if it's cover four match and he's not sure if the, if Kili Ringo is going to figure out whether he's supposed to, to run with a guy or pass him off to Cooper de Gene, then you can have bigger busts. Yeah, with man, you sometimes pass people off to somebody else, but for the most part, you don't, right?

For the most part, you've got a guy. You might lose your matchup, but you're going to know who you're supposed to cover. Yes, and sometimes, like, you know, if there's a motion late or something, you might switch, and they probably should have done that on one of the, on the fourth down catch by Addison to the flat where Cooper DeGine gets caught in traffic,

and Keely Ringo's guy, it was Adam Thielen, actually. They brought Thielen in. Thielen didn't play that much on the game. They brought him in essentially just to run a pick for Addison on that fourth down. And that was one where, like, Kili Ringo looks like he's doing his job. Like, because he has Thelan. And Thielen essentially just like almost like blocks Kili Ringo on the planes that are running a real route.

And that creates like a mass of two humans that Cooper de Gene has to run around. And you wonder there, it's like if it's two more experienced players, do they banjo that? Like, are they able to make it so that, like, you know, Kili Ringo goes to the flat and Cooper de Gene. hangs out with the alien you know um and can two humans be a mass or do you think it needs to be at least three i don't think there's a limit to a mass okay a mass can be of any size okay yeah who would be on your mount rushmore of busters oh man hold on i'm already working on the other mount rushmore um um i feel like buster underused underused name buster douglas buster douglas yeah i think buster

only. I was I was, I was, I was, I was, I was allowed to stay up and watch the Buster Douglas Tyson fight live. Disappointing to you that so quickly. I don't know why. We had like a big like, uh, um,

that one wasn't that quick. The Buster Douglas Tyson? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're thinking of, uh, Spinks. Maybe. It was like 91 seconds or something. Yeah. I don't know why. We were like into boxing. I was again, yeah. I don't want to say the other one. You don't want to say the other one. Okay.

The fourth one that comes to mind for me. Is it a, Is it a catcher? No, that's a good one though. Okay. I was thinking of more of a grade school joke. Oh, okay, okay. Hyman.

Do you like a Dave & Busters? I've only been once, but I don't mind it. We're invited to a birthday party at Dave and Busters in a few weeks, and I was like, our adults invited because I want to school some people at the shuffleboard. Big shuffleboard. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Like the little table shuffleboard.

That'll do it for the big takeaway. presented by Expinida they may want to cut out the last part Buster rhymes yeah but that's a Busta not a Buster Yeah you gotta be Buster Posey I guess I probably gets the fourth spot

Buster Okay yeah all right Do you think that this will continue the man defense Is it is it coming back to bite them in any way So when you said when you compared to When you said the thing about Gannon Earlier the thing that made me think

Like the thing that drove me crazy about Gannon was that he'd never adjusted, that he kept doing the same things and kept getting beat the same way over and over again. Sure. And in this game, we saw so many unconventional calls from Fangio. So the man coverage being different than last year, the fact that he played two-man and let all three corners travel with the receivers to one side of the field,

that might not seem like a big deal. But that is a Fangio, like, no-go. Like, he never does that. And seeing that was interesting because it makes you think, like, he's willing to change what he normally does. He obviously doesn't want to, right? He wants to play the way he didn't. Super Bowl, right? Like play cover for the whole game, don't blitz it all and just dominate that way.

But he clearly knows that he doesn't have the talent to do that anymore. On the miced up, if any of you saw the mic'd up with Zach Bonn that came out yesterday, after the pick six by Jalick's Hunt, Zach Bonn is talking to somebody on the sideline and he and he says, what a call. And then he goes, like, reach down way to the bottom of the bag to get that call. And you look back at it and it's an exchange pressure, which they do a lot, where they drop the two edge of pressures and then they blitz Zach Bond in the middle and Jalen Carter as a zero technique gets to go one on one against the center.

The interesting thing about that call and Jimmy Kempski asked Fangio about this this week and Fangio confirmed it is that it's a man coverage call. Normally you don't have exchange pressures with man behind it because who are those dropping guys supposed to cover, right? Like sometimes one of them's responsible for the back. That's

what happened on this one and they kept the back in so he didn't actually have to cover him. But the point is that Drew McCuba is coming down to cover Justin Jefferson and man on that And he funnels him inside, whether it's intentionally or unintentionally, I don't know. It looked like Jefferson's running a bit of a choice route there. And he funnels him inside and Jalick's Hunt ends up undercutting it. Carson Wentz never accounts for Hunt and he throws that interception.

Really cool call there to combine a pressure which he often does, dropping the edges and blitzing a linebacker with a man call behind it, which is something that you wouldn't expect if you're Carson Wentz in that situation to have that dropping guy be there. because if Carson can kind of tell that it's man and then he also knows that it's blitz because Zach Bond's coming up the middle, he's not going to expect that edge to drop.

And so I thought it was a really cool, you know, wrinkle to something that he doesn't normally do. He blitzed read Blankenship from depth once, which honestly, I don't know if that's a good idea, like it didn't really work. Just to show it. In fact, like, it voided his own

and Keeley Ringo got beat into that void by a crosser. So it didn't work at all, but it was very different. It was something that he had never done before where he's blitzing, you know, he starts with two high safeties and he ends up blitzing one of them

and the other one ends up as a single high. I'm almost sure he hadn't done that a single time in the two years. So like he's bringing out a bunch of things that he hadn't done before. It's kind of fun to see the unconventional stuff. It means that he's thinking about how to out-schame the opponent because he knows he can't out-talent them.

Yeah, well, he can't out-talent them and that's what coaching's for, right? His, one of the best through lines of him miced up is Zach Bond being impressed. Just like Zach Bond thinking something is cool. Yeah, Zach Bond miced up is awesome. Like, I don't know. Did you see it by any chance? I did.

The Jahad Campbell thing is awesome too. Where Jihad Campbell is like, it's past, it's pass. And in the middle of the thing, he's like, it's third and long, would he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we allowed to say the word he said? Good call. Or no? I actually don't remember what he said.

He said dumb. Yeah. Dumb A. Okay. But it's just, it's just funny because during the play, during the play, Jehad Campbell is like, it's past, it's past. And Zykepon's like, it's third down, you dumb. He's like, I know it's past.

That's great. All right. Time for another break. Here from some sponsors. Continue the discussion on the other side. Maybe we'll flip to the offense and get more into the weeds of this specific familiar matchup. Monarch, not just a butterfly. No, no, no.

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professor but there's a scene where the eagles are on the clock in the second round and there's somebody in the back going hey drach to macuba drive mcuba do it do it do it top macuba touch maccuba reach reach that is not the shady ray that we're talking about no in fact We're talking about our friends at Shady Raise, the best sunglasses company going. And here's the wild part. If you lose or break them, even on day one, Shady Race will send you a brand new pair. No guilt trip, just replacements. So now you can actually wear your sunglasses without fear, at concerts, in a boat, wherever you want to be.

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Well, we should talk a little bit about Nikobi Dean and whether you think how much he's going to play is going to continue. I know you guys talked about it a little bit, but you played all 23 snaps on base with Jahad Campbell on the field as an edge on all of them. And by the way, Jahad Campbell rushed the passer on exactly

one of those, even though a bunch of them were past. So he was the typical dropper on the play. So it essentially turned into like a kind of old school 4-3 base once the drop happened. And then there were two drives. Breaking news from the Novakkaa complex. E.J. just checking in. He says he will be here soon, but

he has to pee. So we'll follow up on that when he gets here. You know, I've been nervous about A.J. Brown, the whole week, which we have to talk about. And so he scared me. All right. There were two drives when it was Bon and Nikobe as the linebackers and Jahad was just on the bench. We were wondering if there'd be any of that and there didn't end up being eight snaps of that. Do you think that's going to be the way it continues?

There should be a lot of base this week. There were 23 snaps of base against the Giants in the week six game. Darius Slayton's coming back but the Giants have been playing a wild amount of heavy personnel. They were only 37 percent 11 last week against Denver. so they're playing heavy a lot. So you'd think you'd have the opportunity to play Nikobe that way. But what about games where the other teams

in 11 the whole game? Is he gonna play? I thought he looked good, by the way. I thought so too. This is one where I don't really know what to expect. Yeah. Definitely like spoiled at that position right now. Yeah.

It doesn't make sense to me to take Jahan Campbell off the field, especially while you're like living with the lumps at safety. But, I mean, he likes Nikobe Dean. Nicopi looks pretty good. Nikobe looks good. I mean, he had a nice TFL. He had a couple of other run-throughs

where he clearly affected the run. Like, against the run, he looked very good. Yeah. And most of the snaps he was out there for were a run, but he looks perfectly comfortable in coverage too. I mean, he had a really nice year last year doing everything. And, yeah, I mean, Jihad Campbell is obviously athletically superior to him. And in the long run, as a first round pick,

you'd expect him to be the one, that the team has future plans for. My question for you. But, yeah. I think we all agree, Jihad Campbell has looked good. Yeah. Seems like a good pick.

But if you knew that Nicoby Dean was going to be back halfway through the season looking fine, would you have rather drafted an offensive lineman? For this, for this season, maybe, but for the long run,

I don't know. He's such good value. I know. I know, but if you're thinking long, run and you think about Nikobe's injury risk. I mean, there's, I mean, there, what are the odds that Nikobe Dean is going to be both healthy and 100% in terms of his, he's already limited athletically. If you add the injuries to that, at some point he's going to start to be a guy you want

to keep around to be a coach or something. Yeah, I mean, yeah, people are talking about like trading Nikobe. Like I would not trade Nikobe. I think like the combination of his leadership, you know, like, like that kind of stuff. And also, I mean, he just, like when he's on the field, he's good. You know, he's a good player. He's like a plus for the defense. So, yeah, it's a weird one.

Again, this week shouldn't be an issue. There should be a lot of base. They can both be out there. Okay. Jahad Campbell is a little small at edge, you know, and teams have been running outside and kind of blocking him pretty easily on those outside runs. And so that's another thing. Like, you know, do you think Jahad Campbell will eventually want to put on some weight so he can play?

more edge going forward? Do you think he's going to end up as an edge? No. These are all questions. Yeah, I don't really think so either. Do you think when EJ says be there soon but I got to pee, that means he's going to leave, because it's a short drive. That's a weird one.

I mean, is he like? He's he saying, I have to pee first and then I'm going to get there and then when you get in the car and leave there. Or does he mean I'm actually going to pull up soon, but when I get there, I have to pay. Well, we'll see that, right. I think it's the ladder. When he gets here. My guess is it's the ladder. You think he's going to pee when he gets here?

texting from the car saying he will be there soon, but when he gets here, he has to pee. Interesting. I would agree that's more likely. Yeah. And if he does pee, it'll likely be right here. Right. We'll see him going. I mean, in the, there's a bathroom, you know, like you can see.

You can see, I don't know what you guys are thinking. There's a door to the bathroom that we can see from here. All right. You know, when he gets here, it's going to have a tough decision. Yeah, no, that's right. Especially if he's listening to pee or not. or not to pee. That's right. That's the decision. Giants' offenses looked good. They were 88th percentile against the Eagles,

81st percentile against Denver, an EPA per drive, and their success rate wasn't as good against Denver, but they made some big plays. Jackson Dart, as annoying as he is and, you know, has looked pretty good when you look at the numbers. They're these like, you know. You like him more than Bow Nix? I agree with Fangio. They're very similar, right? They're very similar like quarterbacks.

Well, yeah, I mean, they both look like they would be comfortable as a background character in Jersey Shores. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what Fangio meant. Yeah. And that's what I agree with, yeah. Yeah.

Now, they're similar. There's a chance he ends up better than Boenix, I think. I think so. Yeah. He didn't scramble at all against Denver, by the way, which is very unusual. He's one of the highest scrambling quarterbacks in the league. Otherwise, the Broncos seem to be intentionally trying to keep him in the pocket. Definitely something to,

watch in terms of Fangio's game plan in this game because DART did hurt the Eagles a lot with his scrambling in that first game, the 20-yard touchdown. There were a couple of other ones. And Carson Wentz, I mean, with those two third-down scrambles for first downs in this last game. So that's been an issue throughout the season. I don't really remember this being an issue last year, like letting the opposing team scramble much. I mean, Jaden Daniels had some, but he was doing that against everybody. So this has been an issue with Dart. And then they were saying, you know, Russell Wilson was hitting all those deep balls when he was playing and Jackson Dart wasn't. He started 0 for eight on his deep balls.

But he's five for his last 11, including two of three against the Eagles where he burned Keely Ringo twice. Got it. Oh, is Keel Ringo starting? Do you think? You've been in the building? I think so. Just the way that Vic was talking about practice mattering, Virginia, and Bennett. My supposition, this is just guesswork, is Keely Star.

but there's a potential quick hook for him if it starts ugly. Based on nothing other than just kind of vibes, I think we're going to see Jacori and Bennett, whether it's starting or coming in in a maybe planned way. Like, not necessarily because if Keely's like doing great, maybe they would leave him in, but like I think there might be a little bit of a plan

to get Jacori and Bennett in there. Because Fangio specifically said this week that he just hasn't seen him enough. to know what he is. Yeah. And I think, I don't think he just means practice. Like,

I think he needs to see him in games, and you're not going to see him in games, unless you put him in games. And for him to end up being better than Keely Ringo has been would not be, it's not that high threshold. Yeah. Like, Keel Ringo has just not been good.

He has so much trouble stopping and triggering on any kind of stop route, any kind of hitch. And that's been the thing on him the whole time, right? That it, like, that he's stiff and he can't turn and all those things. and those things are coming up over and over again. And so I'm worried about that continuing.

All right. In just a minute, we're going to go to break. I can tell you that E.J. Smith is here behind the glass. And the bad news is it looks like he is covered in pee. Let's go to break. Whether your favorite team wins or not, they win by a lot or metaphorically pee all over themselves, there's another way to win on the Bet Parks online casino app.

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Head to braidedbills.com and use code BB, PHLY, for 15% off your first order. All right, back on the PHY Eagles podcast, EJ, how was the P? The P was great. I'm not covered in, I love when I walked into the studio, I make eye contact with Julia, and she can't even look at me. She just is trying to stifle a laugh because she's seeing everybody in the chat.

PJ Smith is good. I got to give it up to the chatter. No, I didn't see yours. What was yours? That's pretty good, Julia. That's very good. And then somebody said, I'm at the elevator knife emoji. You're at the what?

I'm at the elevator with a knife emoji. Like, I'm threatening you guys. All right. The elevator is working on, which is great. Yes. Let's check in on the temperature of things in the locker room, EJ, with the Ace Hardware Home Services temperature check. Bow, pow, pow, boop, pow.

Visit Ace Hardwarehomeservices.com to get started on your next project. Okay. Were things steamy in the locker room? Were they cool? What can you tell us? They were not steamy, but I do think it's important to say right at the top. We did not hear from AJ Brown today. I did not practice.

You know, it's interesting. Like, Nick Siriani didn't rule out him playing, even though he has not practiced all week. But it would be unprecedented based off of, you know, next tenure. We have not seen a player play without practicing at all during the week. So I think, like, The only thing I want to say, especially, like, we talked about AJ a lot last yesterday and last, in yesterday's show.

But I just want to say, like, I do think, like, the temperature in the locker room is not reflective of, like, the discussion about AJ externally. I think that those are kind of two separate things at this point. What do you mean by that? I just don't think that it sends as much as many ripples in the Eagles locker room as, as it does. Like, that Instagram caption. You mean his Instagram post and not practicing this week? Or? I think, well, I think mostly the Instagram post.

but I mean, him not practicing. I mean, that's an injury. To me, like, I just, I think that there's, like, a perception that it, like, drives a wedge in the locker room. I mean, maybe, but I do think that, like, I think everyone's kind of used to AJ, being AJ, for better or worse there. So I just, I don't think.

I don't think there's not tension in the locker room is what I would say. I don't know if I agree with that. You know, like, there's any tension in the locker room? Maybe with selective individuals. I agree with you that, like, His posts are not driving a wedge in a locker room, but I think they're reflective of a wedge that already exists. I would agree with that.

Yes. I would say that AJ, maybe the Instagram caption is like the smoke, but like it is not the fire, if that makes sense. Well, I mean, if they're seeing, if you already see the fire, you're not going to be impacted by the smoke, right? So if the players already know that there's a discontent, it's not new information.

When they see the post, the post might be new information to fans. but it's not new information to the players who already know how AJ feels. Yeah, it's like a window into it for fans. But yeah, and I think that's very well put. Now, there's definitely a segment of the fan base that is under the impression that AJ would be practicing this week if he weren't upset about things.

Do you give that any, how many turkeys would you put on that being the case? I mean, and this is pure speculation, like 20, maybe 25. Like, I can't know. That he's healthy and not practicing. I don't think that you can. That doesn't start. Not necessarily fully healthy. But in a world,

in a world where he's, in a world where he's happy with everything and everything's great. Yeah. That he would at least practice on Friday so he can play. You know what I mean? Like, like maybe, maybe still sit out Wednesday,

maybe even Thursday, but at least practice once so he can play. He is too prideful for that. Yeah, that's just a big, I don't want to say accusation. Yeah. Too strong.

But like that is it, there's a lot. That's a big implication. Yeah. So I just, I wouldn't, I'd say there's a non-zero chance, but I wouldn't go so far as saying I think it's what's happening here. I agree with that. Yeah.

It's also confusing because, I mean, he was only targeted twice before the fourth quarter, but he did have that massive fourth quarter. I think at this point would you agree? And it seems like you guys agree with this based on your discussion with Fran, that at this point it's not about the exact specific specifics of what happened on the field in the last game, right? It's more, it's a little, it's something else? I think it's the way that he wants the offense to look.

And I think he's been pretty open and clear about he wants to be the driving force when things aren't going well. I would have thought the way that the way that the Vikings game went, he would have been happy with that. Yeah. I mean, the passing game looked very good against one of the best passing defenses in the league. And he had two touchdowns and over 100 yards. So like what does he want it to look like? That's a good question. I wish I could have talked to him about that.

That's what makes me wonder. And he also didn't talk after the game, right? So that's a full week of him not talking. He didn't decline to talk, I think is important to say. He just did not talk after the game. And what's the difference? Well, it's like there wasn't a reporter to my knowledge that went to him and said, can I grab you for a second?

It was, he kind of left. He was in and out of the locker room and he left while Devante was talking. So just the nature of him leaving. I don't, maybe somebody did approach him, and I don't know, but not to my knowledge. That'll do it for the A-Sart. our temperature check. He just seems so sad.

He does. Yeah. He seems checked out. I think that's fair to say. Before we get to the offensive side of the ball, professor, I wanted to check in on you. How do you feel about BG being back? Oh, I was, I think so Emily, my wife is very upset about it. Like she thinks that for his health and his family and everything else that he shouldn't risk further injury and

all those things. I think I'm a little bit more on the like it's only a few months right a few months of your life like unless something like major happens injury wise knock on wood like it might not have that big an impact going forward so if it's how he wanted to if it's what he wanted to do then then he should do it like I agree that like the story book ending thing is like if that's not how he feels about it you know like and and I thought he put it well this week right he said by the way great show with him earlier this week I know everyone's already told you that but Well, not you.

Well, that's true. Yeah, I was waiting to see you in person. Yeah, no, it was awesome. No, I think they've all been good. All the BGM blocks have been good. But he said that the story book will still be there, you know? Right. Like, it's not like when they show clips of that Super Bowl and him holding two Lombardies.

Yeah. Like, if this season doesn't end in a third Lombardi, like, it's not like they're going to be like, oh, yeah, but like, yeah, but he had a down game like, you know, week 13 the next year. I mean, yeah, that's not going to matter. And he talked about like Tom Brady coming back. And it's not like Tom Brady coming back for that last year is going to keep him out of the Hall of Fame. Like, you know, like, there's just like a,

there's a part of that where it's like if it goes, the upside is higher than the downside from coming back. Right. Because if there is a third Super Bowl and he's on that team, like think about how historic that is, right? And this team is still certainly a contender. So we have the Brandon Graham diehard sale, which you can take part of,

55% off if you want to become a diehard member. great column this morning from Les Bowen E.J. Smith has you covered Kyle Newbeck, Charlie O'Connor, Fran Duffy's draft guide, worth it on the just alone. And the draft newsletter's good too. I mean, you're missing out if you're not doing that. So I didn't hear, and I don't mean, I'll give you one

non-football thing and then I'll get back to football here. I didn't hear the top of the show. Did you implicate me in the female artist? No, we're going to get to that. Okay. Save that for overtime. Okay, because I got some texts about this. Okay. Can I give you a football thing?

As we transition to the offensive side of the ball? Let's talk BG first. Okay. Because I was thinking about this and the information from BG in that episode that he wanted to come back. The Eagles didn't want him to come back. And it's interesting from a standpoint of one, like it's a little bit disappointing that a player with that standing in the organization isn't able to go out on his own terms. I think that's like a little bit. Nasty is the wrong word.

but like, I don't know, that doesn't feel. I was surprised to hear him. That doesn't feel right. That doesn't feel right. That's what happened. Yeah. I would say callous is probably the one. I think so.

Yeah. But if you are, if you are just being cold and calculated about it, you can understand it. But it's not like they did. I mean, now they're in the part where they had to come crawling back to him. They spent $4 million on his Eidzo Jolari,

who was inactive for four games, played three games, and now he's hurt. They brought Zedarius Smith out. He retired. They drafted one guy in the, seventh round, he's on the practice squad. They signed Ushay and Ogbo Caronquo and Ushay's played seven games,

has one sack and Ogbo got hurt in his first game. Like, it's not like they couldn't have used him. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. And like, maybe they went into the offseason thinking that it would look different by the time that they got to training camp. But like, especially the player that he was last year, like, to turn down the opportunity to bring him back and then like take a flyer on a guy like Aziz Ojalari. Yeah, it is in hindsight.

I get it. I get it. But it's also not like, you know, they didn't have to bring him back and expect he was going to be what he was last year. They could have just brought him back as part of the rotation. Yeah. And I think it'll be very interesting to see how he looks this year, especially. Because if he comes back and he plays at a high level, it's like, and especially

like Vic has kept talk, has continuously talked about that he always felt like BG had a few more years left. So, yeah, it'll be interesting. Turkey's on him dressing Sunday. I talked to Anthony about it this morning. Breaking news, I got this. Barring a setback in practice today, he is playing on Sunday. I told him that...

That's what I would have thought, too. I was like, your podcast co-host, he's got a little scoop on you today. He was like, what? I was like, you got to watch Cousin's show. Yeah, but it makes sense too because like... The truth is, well, they need him. Ojilari's out. But also, like, the...

flip side is you really don't know what you're going to get from Brandon Graham. So if you if he looks good in practice this week, you might as well play him. Ross, roster math wise, the eagles are at 53 with Brandon Graham. If they want to bring Jacorian Bennett up to the 53 from IR, which certainly seems like they're going to do that. They will have to cut somebody. So I don't know who that somebody would be. I could put OJallari on IR. I don't know how serious that OJolari injury is, but OJolari on IR seems to be the most likely to me. AJ Dillon seems to not have a role anymore. I think AJ Dillon is the 52nd guy right now because BG's got the roster exemption.

Right. And yeah, because I mean, you know, Bigsby and Will Shipley were the second and third running backs last week. Yeah. Yeah, Nick talked about how Tank Bigsby practices so hard. And then he had to be like, well, everybody else practices hard too, but man, I mean, the way tank practices. The one other complication is that...

I said all fasts. Why did your mind go? Because he's He's bragging about a thing that nobody can prove Since we're doing roster math We should mention that if AJ Brown's on playing Darius Cooper is going to have to come up as well

Right? Because there isn't like Right now without AJ Brown It's Devante Smith Jahan Dotson John Mechie And that's it Xavier Gibson is the But roster math wise If you don't want to cut somebody

You could just elevate a wide receiver From the practice squad Terrace Marshall Quez Watkins Britain Covey Which one of those guys Do you want playing on offense I don't want any of them, but I would imagine it would be Terrace Marshall.

Okay. Yeah, I think if Darius Cooper is coming up and they activated his practice window on a Thursday, which is weird, right? Then they would have to cut one additional player. You know how I feel. If Darius Cooper is active, he should get the ball. I'm just saying if you don't want to cut somebody, they could do that. I think we're going to get Mac McWilliams coming up with like a weird

toe sprain or something. Oh, yeah. On today's injury report and then head to IRR. tomorrow. Okay. That would be the way that they do that. That's the way they've always done it. The dreaded Janarius Robinson syndrome. Genarius Robinson syndrome, of course, is when you get injured just before someone's about to get back on the roster and you're the 53rd guy on the roster and you just happen to get injured that Friday, that is Janarius Robinson syndrome. And it's shocking how much it happens at the NoviCare. It's sad with those to families.

Yeah. Some of those injuries, you know, they never recover from those. All right. What did you have from from a football standpoint. All right. So on the offensive side of the ball, Cam Juergens was not at practice today. And I wanted to, like, we've talked a lot about, because Brett Tooth did, this is really the news, I guess,

is that Brett Tooth said that he's expecting to start. I think every indication was that that's where it was headed. At center. Yeah, at center. And we've talked a lot about like why, why is Brett Toh the option at center? I think. So what I would say I learned today is that this is tied to Land,

Dickerson and his health and his comfortability playing center. And I don't think it's a coincidence that I think two things are true. I think that it's not a coincidence that like the Eagles consistently bring in smaller, more athletic centers. I think it has to do with like a weight transfer thing. If you think about just like the mechanics of playing guard versus center, you're neutral with your feet at center where at guard you can kind of rely on one leg. Like you have one leg back.

and I think for Landon, it's probably more of a comfortability thing playing at guard. So I think that, and just the sheer nature of like, again, like smaller, like smaller players have an easier time shifting their weight. If they are neutral, you know, it's a two-way go at center versus at guard, you kind of know where the rush is coming from. So I think that there's an athleticism requirement that the Eagles view at center, and that is at what's at play at center, why Brett Tooth would be the choice at center. The other thing that I learned, and this is, I'm just going to attribute this to Brett Toff

that he like drops and gains weight really quickly or drops and gains weight more quickly than the rest of the offensive lineman. He told me today that it's because he like, at West Point you had to do that sometimes. And he said when he graduated, he had to go from 310 to 260 because like it's a body weight requirement

that the army requires you to be at. And he like, you didn't know if he's going to play football again. So he's like, I had to go from 310 to 260 in like a very short amount of time. And yeah, he says, in a week he could go from like, I think he said it was 3.30 to 305. He could drop.

What? It's crazy. I know. I bet I could go from 260 to 310 pretty fast. Yeah, no, he said like, he actually said it's easier to drop because it's like he doesn't want to gain bad weight. But yeah,

I think that that's also like an interesting thing about like, because if you're a five, if you're back up at five positions. I believe that to an extent. I think there's, it feels a little bit myth-making. I'll take the guy at his word. I'll take the guy at his word.

I mean, that's cool. It's a fun superpower to have. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't just him that, like, marveled at the fact that he can gain and lose weight. So is he trying to take off weight this week? Yes. Okay. One of the things missing from the Eagles run game this year has been that because Cam Juergens has not been healthy,

those pin pull runs where they do the same side, guard, and center, pulling to the front side of the run. We basically haven't seen a single one of those this year. Cam Juergens has. pulled around the guard and like what Brandon Brooks called a crawl call, like on the zone runs. We've seen that a couple of times, but they're not designing runs to take advantage of his athleticism because I don't think they think he can do it this year, right?

And that's been an issue. And speaking of taking things off, let's head to Bovertime. It's good to have Julia back. OJ. You see what I got to do? Watch how they switch sides. Oh, Julia, yeah, you got some shots yesterday.

in the shell. He hit you with the Zach Berman. Who? I don't even know who that is. And then, I mean, listen, Lindsay was awesome. I view these in a vacuum with each other. Lindsay had to do like a competent job for half a show, Julia, for Bo to go to... The way Lindsay's doing today, I don't know, even know who you're talking about.

So mean. So I just wanted to give Julia a shout out because I think the conversation started around overtime, didn't it? I don't remember. I think it was about overtime. time. Because yeah, you said that Lindsay did a good job of reminding you it was Bovertime and that Julia would never have done that. No, I did. No, no, no, no, no. That's not true.

That's not true. Everything else was true. I said, I never need it, but Julia usually does it and it's very rare that I miss it and that was the one time I did miss it. I'm going to use an expression that my parents used when I grew up. Shame the devil and tell the truth. You have needed a bovertime reminder before. But I'm like one out of 50. Oh, come on. Who cares about like the rate at which you need it?

You've needed it before. And Julia was there for you. And you just cast her aside. You want to get on me for a pocafunking Julia, fine. Don't question my bovertam ability. See where a man's priorities are here. You think you know a guy, right, Julia? All right.

The chat has been discussing this since we brought it up in the beginning of the show. It's time to get down to brass tacks. Before we talk about the Eagles offense against the Giants defense, Mount Rushmore of your solo female artists. Okay. And let me clarify a couple things right off the jump here. I'm talking artists, not like just singers, not just songwriters. Like I'm talking the full body of work.

Like the, it has to be more than just like who's the biggest. It's like, to me, it's like the greatest. Okay. Understood? Understood. Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Beyonce. And that fourth spot, I could go a lot of different ways. I think I'm going to go Madonna.

Someone in the chat had predicted you were going to go Madonna. Yeah. But I'll be honest with you. Like, if it were my personal, like the music I listened to, I probably wouldn't have Madonna in there. Sure. But I don't know who I'd have, honestly. I think that's a pretty...

Can I give you a really hot take now that I've given like a safe answer? Yeah. If it's like my personal, like four... favorite female artist that's a tongue twister I think that's what the question should be I might sneak somebody completely out of left field on you here

Alicia Keys yeah it's not that out of left field I just like yeah I just love Alicia Keys now this is coming off the heels of EJ going to the Billy Elish concert last night and proclaiming that she's the best artist of the past decade the best female artists in the last 10 years I do think the Billy

Elish has a claim for that I think and I want to emphasize the word artist I think people are surprised at like Billy Eilish. And let me just like clarify. Like guys, I listen to a lot of different types of music. I know everybody says that, but I'm an appreciator of the art behind some musicians. And I think that Billy...

And yet you had never heard of me and Julio down by the schoolyard. I have not heard of that song. I'm sorry. I really think that's like a two Americans thing. Like, I just, I told you. I was like, I don't really think my parents were listening to that type of music when I was growing up. So I didn't get the exposure for that one.

But to me, like, Billy's music is beyond just. like pop music. It is a very, like, there's an artistic expression there that I can really appreciate, like the way she uses melodies, just her as a singer in general. Yeah. No, I think that you could, like, I'm not talking biggest because that's obviously Taylor Swift. But like, if you're telling me, it's like Ariana Grande, her, I think Lady Gaga probably still in there. And then obviously shout out Siza. I actually think that she, if you talk like the last five years, she's probably in there. But now I put Billy's like discography, which has really happened in the last 10 years, I would put that at the top.

I'm not cool enough to have a take on the last decade. I'm more interested in the Mount Rushmore. What do you got, Professor? Went to two shows this week. Flex. Monday night, went to see Jeff Tweety and ran into McLean.

McLean and I have very similar musical taste. And then Wednesday night, we went to see Big Thief. And Big Thief might be my favorite band right now. And the front woman of Big Thief, Adrian Lanker, has solo albums. And I think that she's the best songwriter in the world right now under the age of 80.

Wow. Bob Dylan's still alive, so. You're a big Dylan guy, huh? Yeah, yeah. Could you talk to McLean? Because he's also sick. You at least sound sick. Oh, I talked to McLean.

I shook his hand. At the concert. Shook his hand. You think he got me sick? No, yeah. He sounded awful in the media. Yeah, no, I saw him in the locker room scrum video and it looked like his eyes were like,

yeah. So you didn't look good. He did not seem sick on Monday night. That's how to get you. Neither did I. So I don't know. Maybe I got him sick. Maybe.

And we just, we only talked for like two minutes, but, um, the best songwriter under 80. Yes. Adrian Linker. Check out her solo stuff.

All the big thief stuff too. It was amazing. So she was ridiculously good. I was at the Met Philly. We had pit tickets. It was right by the stage. It was awesome. Um, she's one of the four.

Wow. The number one is Billy Holiday for me. Oh. And, um, Billy Holiday is the only one on my list who I have not seen live for obvious reasons. our lives did not overlap. You didn't agree with her about her politics?

But she's the answer to the question that I said people ask me, which is if you could go back in time and see any live show. Interesting. And people say they'd want to see the Beatles, like, in the 60s. Not E.J. No, not E.J. J.J. is like... Jimmy Hendricks.

Yeah, Jimmy Hendricks is another common answer to that, I think. I would say I would want to see Billy Holiday just play in, like, a small club, like in Harlem. or something, you know, like, just like, sit in the first row with like, you know, old-fashioned, like a little table and watch Billie Holiday. That would be like the coolest thing ever. So, yeah, Billy Holiday's number one, Adrian Lunker. I have three others.

I have to eliminate one, right? That's how this works. Like it four. Yeah, so I have to eliminate one. Okay. I'm going to do PJ Harvey as one of them. The former power forward? No, that would be PJ Brown.

Okay. Yeah, this is PJ Harvey, the British singer, whose first album, drag came out in 1993 when I was in high school. The Broncos running back? Part of that is, that's RJ Harvey. Part of that is I'm actually surprised that I know who you're talking about on each of these.

But, yeah, I think PJ Harvey, I don't really like her newer stuff, but like the beginning of her career was so good that I have to put her on this. And then I can't decide my... I have two candidates for my fourth one. I'm just not allowed to say one of them, right? That's how this works?

Yeah. I'm gonna go with Bjorke. I saw Burek live in Rakevick in her hometown. Really? Everybody, like, around me was, like, friends with her parents and stuff. And that was a really cool experience. And I think she's awesome. So, yeah, I would put Bjorke forth.

It pains me to leave out the fifth one, but... What can I do? People in the chat mentioned Lauren Hill, and I'm wondering if, I mean, at least an honorable mention, that's bad work by me. She belongs somewhere in the conversation. For you? For me. Like that's an Colfax. Yeah, Alicia Keys, like my personal preference, Lauren Hill, I probably put her as an honorable mention there.

All right, let's hear yours. I don't have a good answer. You need to buy you some time. I can go through musical acts I would have loved to see live. No, I don't have, it's not, it wouldn't be as personal for me. I would be more going for like the, I would go, Arita. Yeah. If it's like a Hall of Fame vote, my inaugural class kind of deal.

Yeah, I would go, Aretha, Beyonce, I don't know. You guys are going so mainstream with the modern ones. I think it's, it was part of the equation. for me. No. I think Madonna is like, that's, I think she probably belongs

on that version of the list. And then the one, Whitney is like, if I could have 10, Madonna would be on my list too. Yeah. I don't know.

We were talking, you could make, Ella Fitzgerald is a good one. That is a good one. You could go, you could go really white and go like Joni Mitchell. That's pretty white.

You could go Dali Parton. You could go, I wrote that down. You go to Dali Parton. I don't know. I feel like Whitney is kind of like... I think she's on there. She's like...

She's like... She's like this... The Sosa McGuire, summer of 98. Just like dropping bombs. Well, like, not, but not like... Nefariously. Like, not like...

Like, she got it. It was not like performance enhancing vocal pipes or something like that. I don't know. I don't have a good answer. Ed of James is a great. Ed of James is great. Yeah, that is, yes.

Maybe we need our tight end expert at some point to weigh in on. Somebody put Kim Gordon, not good enough a solo career. I mean, Kim Gordon, obviously. Wait, did you say, Janice Joplin on there? You're so right. Janice Joplin, so the live act that I would want to see is not, it's not Janice Joplin, but it is not far off, well, in terms of like, era. I would want to go see Carlos Santana play Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock.

Practically the same person as Janus Joplin. Well, Janice Joplin, I think Woodstock. And, like, I think I would just go for that performance, and then I'd probably get out of Woodstock before, you know, all of the things. But you'd want to see Hendricks. Yeah, yeah, obviously. I mean, yeah. Hendricks is the answer, but Carlos Santana, that performance, it's amazing.

In the nerdy guitar way, because we play guitar. Yeah, but just in, like, a... Friends, right, my last spot goes to Miss Anna. Who's saying, I dreamed wet dreams at the Ospreys. Yeah, so probably Hendricks. But I would say that Santana as like that like jam band format is like I think most guitar players just like love that stuff. It's like the Justin Herbert of music, right? Like when someone's like really good at guitar.

Yes. And you're like, yeah, but. Justin Herbert. I don't need to ever hear that song again. I'm not saying Santana's like that. No, there are guitarists like that. There are people who play like stunt guitar. And it's like, it's cool, but it's like, yeah, I don't know.

It's cool, but you're losing by 30, you know. All right. We should talk about the offensive side of the ball in this matchup. I feel like we start with the offense every show. I agree. Talk about it for an hour. There's a lot of stuff to talk about. There's a couple graphics, Julian, made, that we should, you know, not make wasted work.

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Why don't we go, go, let's see what the graphics are and just talk about the graphics. That way we'll... What were the graphics? I don't know what graphics you made. They were stuff that I sent, right? So I'm happy to talk about him.

I just don't. Just flash one up. There's a play action one. Maybe we can start with that. I want to ask you guys, is the under center play action here to stay? Is the sixth offensive lineman here to stay? The graphic,

there's the graphic. Eagles are still 21st in play action usage. They're 12th in success rate with play action. 28th in success rate without play action. These are on past plays. So 53% with play action. Now there's a sample size issue here. They've only done it 45 times.

Less than 40% without play action. That's 235 times. The under center play action. Jesus. You okay? Oh my God. Are you all right? You both just spit up like a gallon of...

Oh, my God. I thought this was a bit. No. But that reminds me as I was looking down. Thank you to whoever the sicko is. Who sent this? What is it saying? Please do not put poop bags in my trash can.

Oh, nice. I like that. I think so. What's going on right now? I think wrong pipe. Wrong pipe. You never drank something. Got it on the wrong pipe?

90 seconds. You're like, can we get to the offense? You're doing spit takes and showing poop bag signs. Given the envelope that you took that out of, I think the proper way to thank the person who sent it to you was shout out to Amazon. Shout out to Amazon. Yeah, sure. All right.

All right. Do we have the footage of that? Because, I mean, I would like to see it. Well, we have the footage, obviously. Well, no, I wasn't being shown. It was on to two of you. Oh, really? Okay.

You had to be there. I can always say it was the closest person to that. Yeah, do you guys think that stuff's going to continue? Like the undercenter play action stuff, or was it a unique response to a very unique Ryan Flores defense who insisted on rushing six guys and leaving everybody open behind it? And basically it was all a matter of,

if we can block these six guys, it's going to be wide open because they're playing basically like a cover two with only five guys, which meant the entire middle of the field was open throughout the game. So was it specific to that, or do you think they'll keep doing it? What do you think, Bo? I think it was more a result of that game than a new identity,

but I do think we will see an uptick in it. I agree. Like I think it was a like, to use a football podcast word here, I think it was a bespoke plan for the Vikings, but maybe they stumbled into an identity like in the process. I don't even know that it was a specific plan for the Vikings as much as it was. Yeah. They kind of.

The way Jalen talked about it. Jaylon said we wanted to be under center more, but it was almost like he was talking about the way to establish the run. Right. So I think it was a happy accident. What I would say is like I haven't gotten like a strong sense from being around the team this week that it's like,

this is who we are. Right. Now, I mean, if they, even if they believe that strongly, would we know that? Maybe not. So I'm leaving space open for that to happen. But I just,

I don't know. I was kind of expecting to hear that like, yeah, this is something we can lead into. And I didn't quite hear that this week. Yeah. The way the chess match played out in that game, I mean, the Eagles came out running under center,

they ran outside zone, they ran toss, and the Vikings were just in a regular four-man front with Big Nickel behind it. And then after those first couple of runs were somewhat successful, the Vikings switched, and they started to play essentially like a 6-1 front with three defensive tackles,

only one edge-resher on the field. So instead of two adreshers and two defensive tackles, they switched, and they kind of stayed in that against heavy personnel the rest of the way, and it kind of took away the run game. Some of the runs started to be unsuccessful. And that's when they kind of started to go more to the,

they only tried one under center play action the first half. It was a bootleg to Dallas Cutter for two yards. And then all the reporting that Devonte Smith is the one who called for the other stuff. And I don't think there's ever been a sense that this is the kind of staff that puts together a game plan that they're waiting to the second half to unveil their game plan. That's exactly right. Normally, like, the stuff that they worked on you're going to see in those first couple of drives. And we didn't see it.

action right after the toss play. I think it was against the Rams. Right. So there it's like in the first couple games of the year, too, they did like, we joke about how the first under center play would be play action. And then they'd run, you know, the next 17 times in a row out of it. This idea that under center is new isn't exactly accurate. They were doing a lot of under center in the first couple of weeks.

They just weren't throwing out of it. They had done five under center play action plays the whole year. And then we did four this game. Like it's not like, you know, like we're acting as if like, they were like the Rams in this game. They weren't. I mean, like the Rams average more than 10 a game. There were only four. Three of them were successful long passes to Devante Smith.

And so, of course, it's a big thing that we're talking about. But all of those were against that coverage that you're not going to, you're literally never going to see again all year. Like no one plays cover two with five guys in coverage. Like no one else other than Brian Flores does that. So you're not going to necessarily have the coverage there for that. Keeping guys into block and blocking the six. blocking the six guys was what worked this week.

I've been critical of the Eagles for keeping too many guys into block in past weeks. But I hadn't quite realize how extreme the keeping guys in has been. Of the 160 teams in the last five seasons in the NFL, the Eagles are keeping extra guys into block at the second highest rate out of those 160 teams. The 222 Falcons are the only team that kept guys. The 22nd Falcons. They're the only team that kept more guys in the block than the Eagles are now. Now they are also the only team to have been blitzed more than the Eagles are now. So there is a relationship between the two.

But the Eagles are being blitz like 34% of the time up from 30 last year. I was trying to remember like who was. Yeah, I forgot to look. Was it 22? I think that might be right. Or was it a year too early. It was the year where everybody was gazzing them up heading into the season pretending like Desmond Ritter was going to be an answer.

A quarterback. 22, yeah, it was Desmond. Well, he started four games that year. It wasn't Kurt Cousins? I think. Here, I'll tell you. It was Mariotta. Oh, okay, okay. That makes more sense.

Okay, 23 was the year when it was going into the season. It was going to be ridder. This is the one where it's like how many people do they leave into block, Julia. So, I mean, like we talk about how this coaching staff loves extremes while they say they don't. But they were second in the league at putting all five guys out in the route in 20. first in the league in 22. Drop back percentage with all five. And then slowly dropping

5th, 15th and now 32nd by a mile. Like no one is close to that 58%. And I was surprised that Flores blitzed as much in this game because like the Eagles are keeping guys in. They have six offensive linemen on the field. Like they're going to be able to block your six guys. I thought it was weird that they, that he didn't do more sim pressures and dropping people out

and having Jalen have to have to read. Now, they did do that a couple of times with drop eight and they were able to hit the scramble drills, which was a nice thing to see. And as you look at this, it's interesting because if you're listening on audio, it's in 21, Seriani's first year, they were second in the league

in terms of how 80% of the time all five receivers were in a route. And they were getting blitzed above average in all five of these years, by the way. So it's not like they weren't getting blitzed. Right. They were first in the league in 22, fifth in the league in 23.

Last year, they go to middle of their league and 15th, and this year they're all the way, as you've explained, dead last. and that trend coincides with Jalen Hertz taking over the protection calls. And yes, they are getting blitz at a very high rate, but it is very difficult to read into this anything other than this is a Jalen thing because he's setting the protections in that first year. Like that's Nick Siriani's offense being installed.

They're putting all five guys out into the routes. And it kind of makes sense from like, okay, if you've got Jason Kelsey, the wily veteran who can probably tell pre-snap how many people are coming. He's more confident in his ability to predict how many people need to stay into block. That makes sense. And then as it goes to Jalen, especially if you're thinking as Jalen, like, you know, I'm probably only only throwing a one of three guys anyway. Might as well keep a guy in just in case.

He's never really been, he's never really been a checkdown quarterback either, right? Like he's never really been someone who throws it to the Reddingback in the flat as a checkdown. at a very high rate. Even when that guy does go to the flat, and let's be honest, what's the running back going to do in this offense if he doesn't stay in the protect? He's probably just going to run to the flat

or do a little, you know, like check release over the ball. So if you're not going to throw that anyway, I guess you want to feel comfortable with the protection. The one thing that we should mention, in addition to being blitzed at the highest rate of any team this year, the Eagles are also being sim pressured

at the highest rate of any team this year. So if you add the blitzes plus the sim pressure, that's over 50% of dropbacks where someone other than a defensive lineman is rushing the passer, and that's usually who the running back is responsible for in the protection call. And so if you think there's a good chance that they're going to

bring somebody other than a defensive lineman, you want to keep the running back in for that. And that explains it. It's just not the way that they've answered the blitz in the past. In the past, it's been, well, it was a disaster for like 2023, for example.

So it's not like it was good. But last year, the answer or wasn't keep everybody in at this high rate. Yeah. I mean, but they have been better against the Blitz this year, but I think you are seeing the effect of like how few players they have on routes

in the passing game for sure. No, this is a good answer to the Blitz. My issue with this is when they don't blitz. Like, and you still are keeping six in. Or, you know, they're rushing three and you're keeping seven in, you know, things like that. Because we've seen a bunch of that this year. This isn't the best week to talk about it

because we really didn't see it at all against the Vikings because of the way that Flores played. but in the past, we talked about it last week, they've been guessing wrong and leaving guys in, and then there's just nobody to throw to. And Maelada even talked about how, like, against Tampa Bay, for example, in the first half, it was going great. And then in the second half, when Bulls stopped blitzing,

and the Eagles just started going three and out every series. Yeah. Like, the way he put it, he was like, oh, it was like, great, they're not blitzing anymore, but wait, there's nobody to throw it to now, right? And so it's just a matter of thinking quickly, winning that chess match. Look, sometimes it's like rock paper scissors, right? You're not sure what they're going to do. You guess wrong and you lose and you wish you had done something different.

But I feel like this staff, I think this is fair, is not necessarily, this offensive staff is not necessarily the quickest to adjust in game. We haven't really seen them adjust in game to something the defense has done. Sometimes the initial script works. Sometimes it kind of works out by chance. But we haven't really seen them adjust the way that we've seen the defensive stuff adjust, for example. So what is on your mind just from a matchup standpoint heading into the game? Yeah, well, I mean, look, this defense for the Giants,

they're still 32nd and EPA per rush allowed. They're 28th and rushing success allowed. But I'm not going to fall for this again, right? We talked about this two weeks ago. The Eagles ran the ball, the first four plays in that game. The third and fourth ones didn't work, and they just kind of never ran it again in the first half. And then in the second half,

they had two, three and outs that started with two runs each that just weren't executed right for whatever reason. At this point, I just don't trust. team to run the ball well. I mean, like, I don't know if, do we have those Sequin graphics? I mean, if you, like, these graphics are painful to look at. Sequin Barclay is near bottom of the league in success rate. He's bottom of the league in success rate when he doesn't have yards before contact. He's also bottom of the league in success rate when he does have yards before contact. And that sometimes, that's not necessarily

on him. It just means that like even when he's getting the yards before contact, he's not getting them in a way where it's setting up like a big run for him. We see him turn like a minus three run into a plus two run one, you know, like once a game still. But he should not be at the very bottom of this. And I think part of it's him. I think he's not quite, he's just not making some of the plays he was before. But a lot of that's probably just because he's not comfortable. Like he's not trusting the blocking.

I agree with that. Yeah. You hear like the stories about him in New York is like sometimes he developed some bad habits because of the lines he played in front of and or the lines that were in front of him. And I feel like maybe you're starting to see that sometimes. But I don't know, there are still those instances where it's like, man, like he was stopped dead in his tracks, three yards behind the line, and he like makes two guys miss just to get two yards.

Yeah, no, exactly. And I mean, look, I said this all the last year, that him being on the Eagles is doing more for him than it's doing for the Eagles. I continue to think that that's true. Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's being proven true right now. If you think he's the same guy, why does he look like he's the 31st best running back? I mean, I don't think he's the 31st best running back, but there's only so much a running back can do it.

I think he's far off. I'm just saying there's only so much you're running back can do. By the way, I keep saying this, but there's no point in saying it. They're just not doing it. Set up throws to him. Like run past place for him.

You know, like he's so good in space. If you can't get him in space in the run game, get him in space in the past game. They're not going to be expecting it. You never do it. Might jump over somebody guys with his butt. Even if it's not like a basic screen. Yeah, I mean, that was a checkdown to him

on the reverse hurdle, right? For example, get him out in space and do it that way. I am not a hater, Claire. Be quiet. All right. Sorry. I will personally apologize to Claire later when I see her a drop off.

All right. He doesn't kill you first. Yeah, well, that's true. Paul Sinadebo is going to be out this game. So is Javon Holland, the post safety for the Giants. They were both out in the second half against Denver, and it really limited what they could do. I mean, the Giants played 21 snaps of big dime against the Eagles in week six.

That's what they go to on passing downs. And what happened in that game with Holland out, is Dane Belton, who normally comes in as the dime safety, had to play as one of the safeties. Belton and Nubin, the two safeties they have healthy. Neither one of them are a natural post safety. So they played sides, which they don't normally do. They played left and right.

And that made them less versatile in coverage. And it really hurt them in the middle of the field against Denver when they were giving up those 33 points in the fourth quarter in that collapse last week. It means their second linebacker has to stay on the field. He's not like a coverage guy. And so that's something that hurt the Giants last. week. So I don't know what any of this means for the way the Eagles are going to attack,

but they're going to lose some versatility on us in a secondary that's already not very good. Now, if AJ Brown's not playing, I don't know what any of this means because if John Mechie is your third wide receiver, you know. Yeah, I mean, receiver depth aside, they just have not, I mean, I'm sure you guys probably talked about it earlier, but like the Eagles offense has not really been functional since getting AJ Brown without AJ Brown. So it definitely it will be interesting to see how they look because obviously Devante is having well now with the career game

like his season looks much better but yeah I mean they have been significantly worse without AJ since acquiring him oh the games have been complete disasters without AJ yeah do you remember watching Paulson Adibo's father play well can you remind me of his father's

Paul Adibo what team was he on man I can't believe I fell for that so that is Paul son joke I've ever told. That was terrible. I don't...

It does seem like a big chunk of players are sons of former players and so it seemed like it was possible but now I feel... It was very silly. It was painful to watch you go down that road. Paul's son, I beat him. Like, the second you said...

Congrats, but... Something about like the toning your voice. I was like, he's taking you for a ride. It made the rest of his day, so it's fine. I will not remember this in five minutes. Looby Friday. It's just, you know, there's so many shows who can remember them.

I remember them. For now. For now, you do. Yeah, you've only, how many shows have you done? I mean, it's been two months, and I, I'm going to sound like my predecessor here. I come into the studio every day excited to do a podcast. So maybe it's the caprice of youth. Are you surprised on like Saturday when nobody's here?

That's from House of the Dragon. I wouldn't have used that naturally. Am I happy to what? I just asked if you're surprised on Saturday that nobody else is here. I've been in the studio a couple of times like with just myself here. It's nice. You got three TVs. Got great delivery options.

You can tip. Right next to your delivery person and have a nice time. Yeah. Okay. Anything else? Julia, what did you think about your Mountain Rushmore? Ooh. I don't need to hear this.

Should I say the ones that aren't, that you guys didn't name yet? No, do yours. No, yeah, do yours. It's impossible, but I would definitely have Kate Bush. Kate Bush. Sheet O'Connor.

I'm like teetering now because I think Edda James and Fiona Apple. Oh, wow, Fiona Apple. Okay. All like good, like you have a good variety there. It's like you got some deep cuts. Edit James is, I think we kind of disrespected her.

I'm saying we disrespect Edna James and now you're like doing a bad Edna James impersonation. He's just making your point for you. I think Edith James has to go in my fourth spot over Alicia Keys. I mean, that sounds ridiculous. Are you whacking Madonna? No, Alicia Keys. But you had. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I took Madonna off because it was just like not my personal. I mean, no shade to Madonna. The one that it pains me to cut out was cat power, by the way. That's painful. The least powerful superpower. Cat power. There you go. You hate animals.

This is, uh... Oh, go ahead, Dennis. You normally ask me about jerseys. We all know this is the Kelly Green game. And my mom is going to take a rent of the game. Oh, you're not going? Well, no. I mean, Emily and I are going to be sitting.

You couldn't possibly be bothered to take liver on yourself. You have too much to do. I can't. Yeah, well, we're all going together. We're going to watch warmups together. But then he and my mom are going to sit. Nice. They'll be in our section, but, you know.

What do you mean? But I won't be responsible for taking care of him. If he has to go to the bathroom or something, you know, that's not going to be on me. But, you know, he came to the Browns game last year. And, you know, that's when the season kind of turned around. Yeah, that's true. Fran was talking about this being a pivot point in the season. yelling at him.

Yeah, that's right. Nick was yelling at everybody. No, but it was, he was very excited that he gets to go to the Kelly Green game. Speaking of parenting, Dennis, do you feel like it's fair for me to put a stipulation in one of my swippers next week? Like, the winner of this item may not spend any time with their children. Now, as someone who doesn't know much about college football, I had no idea what the significance of Fran.

I'm a Texas fan. Oh, okay. And he, I mean, Fran, Fran watches Texas. because he is obviously always doing guys, but I don't think he, he can watch the replay of that game just as easily as he's watching. Franz watching the film later. He's not watching it live.

Yeah, exactly. He's not watching it live. But like, Texas is one of the teams that, I mean, I know that now I'm making it sound like I only root for like these random teams because I talk about Asson Villa and Texas on this podcast, but like, I do root for the Philadelphia teams. I just, I went to Temple and covered the Temple football team. So I never like rooted for them.

and I've been a Texas fan since I was a kid. I wasn't sure how to feel about Fran's item because can you do like whoever wins this item has to fast all day, Saturday or something? Yeah. Like if you're already planning on fast. What kind of precedent I'm saying here?

Yeah, what do you know? Given how upset he was about given how upset he was about the strip items last year. Yeah, I'm just saying. Franz looking for his swooper identity still. You know, I know he got the, I know he got the point last week, just like the Eagles Ransom

under center play action. I agree with that. You know, he's still in last place. He's still kind of struggling to figure out what his opening script is, like what his approach is. Yeah, I'm not sure. The advanced analytics are not,

are not friendly to France super season so far. I need your scouting report on me, but we can do it off, off air. So these guys don't hear your pointers for me. We've got some super jats to close with. Dan Baxter says VJ. Edgecombe dropped a comparison as a thief of joy. somewhere, Bjorn is smiling.

I agree with that. Sensei says, ask the professor about AJ. Can you game theory his irrational acts? I think AJ's recent behavior is best analyzed through behavioral economics, not game theory, where you have to go outside of just regular rational optimization

and go with, you know, psychological part of what's what's driving him because we don't really know what his objectives are. Okay. Fresh Prince. Are you skeptical when Jalen said that he has been pushing for under center play action? This reminds me of the ESPN article about the collapse in 2023 when Jalen wanted more, when it said that Jalen wanted more

intermediate passes over the middle. I don't think he didn't say that's an interesting comparison. But he didn't say he was pushing for under center. No, he didn't say he was pushing for play action. He said he was pushing for under center. which I do think is interesting. And when he was asked about it again, he said,

we really wanted to establish the run. Yeah. And he didn't say the play action. Okay. So that aside, Jalen's saying he pushed for under center is still a good comparison to that 2023 ESPN article.

I mean, like, I can't say for a fact that Jalen has been pushing for shotgun snaps all these years, but it definitely is something that you've heard. You know,

like the, that the team, the offense would, the coaching staff would want it more under center and that Jalen didn't have a preference for it and not as comfortable with it. So it is an interesting question. I think that that is fair. Can I ask you an outlandish turkey's question? Okay. If A.J. Brown is not traded at the deadline.

Okay. So this is taken as A.J. Brown is still an eagle when the season's over. No. How many turkeys would? would you put on zero. Jalen Hertz not being the quarterback in 2026. Zero. It's not zero.

I mean, in the sense, nothing's zero. Like a meteor get at the earth and no one would be the quarterback. I mean, with the caveat that I don't want to do this. 15? Wow. No way. No way. 15?

Well, with the presumption that AJ still. That's like you're rolling a. and getting like one of us, one of the six numbers. No way. There's no way. What would you have said? Nine. I feel okay about 15.

Okay. Like, again, I don't want to do this. I don't want to be alarmist. And I think I've been on record on this show before is saying that I think like the AJ Brown trade conversation, I still feel more strongly that that happens in the offseason. Maybe I don't feel as strongly. But I would still say that, like, I think that could be a conversation in the off season.

So if you're taking that off the table, then that skews the turkeys. If you just said in, like, in the, without the qualification, I probably would be at, like, five, like four. CDP wants to know in a super chat. What's the funniest team to trade AJ 2 midseason? That's a good question. The Jets. I was going to say the dolphins. You guys are just looking for bad teams?

Like bad team, but also like... I guess actually the Titans would be kind of funny, but... Jets is good because, like, it kind of doesn't know if earmuffs, Lindsay, if you're out there, like, there's like no hope, you know? Yeah. Don't make the people think Lindsay is a Jets fan. Her husband is Jets fan. Yeah, no, you're right.

I apologize. But I think... Don't put that stink on her. But she chose her husband, though, so... Um... Could have been arranged. We don't know. Jesus.

What do you mean? That's not bad. It could have been. We haven't gotten the story. About as likely as Jalen Hertz not being the quarterback, yes. Possible. Funniest team that I did get traded to. The Browns?

Browns would be funny. Aside. Yeah. I'm not finding any of these funny. Yeah. As someone who wants them to just stay here and somehow against all odds, become happy again.

Uh. Yeah, there was there was talk of how AJ and Jalen Hertz weren't talking to each other last year The Bengals the Bengals would be funny BG because they've already got to like he would still be mad about not getting the ball enough But he I don't know no, he would win yeah yeah Just because they have other good receivers yeah I feel like that would you know they throw the ball like 40 times a game Yeah, yeah This thing with like him and Jalen being the issue wasn't this an issue last year and then they were doing like kid and play dances in December? It's been an issue for years.

I think that that is fair to point out. Right. But I think it both things, both things can be true that it's been an issue for years. But it's just worse now. But it has been, it seems to be harder to navigate for them right now. What a way to end the show. This conversation, like this AJ Brown conversation has really like, like run from it, hide from it all you want.

Like it comes all the same. like I feel like like I don't know I'm not doing a good job of explaining it it just kind of seemed like this is going to be a week where we didn't talk about it and it's not and I understand like there will be people in the chat saying why are you guys

talking about this like why are you dignifying it or whatever but it's like again like you said this very well like a month ago like if you think that these conversations are happening in the building like you're kidding yourself so I just it's a conversation that won't go away it's why it's our favorite TV show

Always a soap opera. What is that how he say? This isn't days of our lives. Is that what he says so? Yeah, he said that before. Except it is. This isn't days of our lives. It clearly is.

That seems to be how they like it. Happy burn. No, no. Not like that. Not like that. Normal. Please. Oh, quickly and adamantly, E.

He just started begging him to stop. Because I knew exactly, I mean, like, the second I heard. It's an accent of his choice. Oh, my goodness. You know he's just going to do it now. Mr. Mother. Birthday.

Mr. Happy birthday. Mr. Mater. Does the audience even know what you're responding to? The podcast audience. Oh, yes. Yeah.

Julius got on the bottom third. Yeah, the pot. Nate Berge, saving us with a super chat at the end, says, have you guys discussed the cap issues with this trade? Oh, my God. Yeah, it's not good. They're going to take a ton of dead money. But if you're going to get the right,

there's, you know, if you're going to get a one and a two, it's worth it. Yeah, I think, again, it's like the cap isn't going to be the thing that keeps them from doing something like that. I mean, before the trade deadline, I think that that's more valid. But, I mean, at some point, you're going to have to hit... If you decide that you need to trade AJ Brown, like, you're taking the cap hit at some point regardless, pretty much.

I know that it's softened in the off-season, but still, like, at that point, to your point, like, you focus on getting the most you can for him. You don't focus on, like, the cap hit. Yeah. All right. You almost killed two people in the studio with... with this impersonation. It's not my fault.

I just like, like, I just hear Julia coughing uncontrollably. Yeah, about four hours ago, Julia said, Jamie asked her if she was okay to come in. She said, because she was very sick yesterday. She said,

I am okay, I just said, it hurts to laugh. So don't make me laugh today. Thanks a lot. Sorry. All right. What a show.

That'll do it for this episode of the P.H.O.I. Eagles podcast. We have you covered on Sunday full kickoff show, half-time show, post-game show. Ho-Flax with the Super Chat says, I demand more Earth a Kit-based analysis. Sorry, too late. I'm more of a Jupiter, a-kit fan myself. No. No. Bigger.

No. What are we doing here? I used to like Pluto a kit, then all of a sudden she didn't exist anymore. Are you like stalling for the injury report to come out at this point? That'll do it. We will talk to you on Sunday. More content coming this weekend on the P.H.O.I. channels. As always.

Joe Rockhead. ESPN keeps saying E.J. is not limping. Any truth. I don't know. We love you. You all silly like the mayor