The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Jets-49ers recap + a game of Is This Real? with Mike Sando: Bengals panic, new NFC South playcallers, the Eagles are back, and more

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Week 1 often leaves us asking this simple question...is this real? Bengals panic after the loss to the Patriots...is this real? The Saints and Buccaneers offenses under new playcallers? Really good! The Falcons offense under a new playcaller? Pretty bad! Is this real? Robert Mays and Mike Sando dig into those situations, and more, on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. Plus, the guys also recap Jets-49ers and scoop up news items coming out of the weekend.RundownJets-49ers recapAnother suit against Deshaun WatsonJustin Fields likely to start for the Steelers in Week 2Malik Willis to start in place of injured Jordan LoveRams injuriesIs This Real? Bengals panicIs This Real? The Saints offense is fun and goodIs This Real? The Buccaneers offense can light it upIs This Real? The Falcons offense looks broeknIs This Real? The Eagles offense is backIs This Real? No more passing touchdownsHost: Robert MaysWith: Mike SandoExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Mike on X: @SandoNFLTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. Brought to you by Thursday Night Football only on Prime Video. I'm Robert Mays. Really fun show for you guys today. Mike Sando is going to be joining us to do the first episode of our little midweek show that we're going to be doing over the course of the season. And we're going to use this space on Wednesdays. Just kind of play around.

We're going to do some bigger picture topics and have some fun guests to come on and do that. We'll talk about news on this show. We're going to be doing a Monday night football recap every single week on this show. So just consider this like a little midweek grab bag where hopefully we can surprise you. over the course of the season. Today, along with wrapping up Monday night football and the Jets Snyder's game and chatting about some of the news

that's come up over the last couple days, we're going to play a little, is this real? Obviously, in week one, it's so difficult to know what actually is something that you can count on moving forward and what is a product of teams jumping on an opponent in week one,

a shitty opponent in week one. It's hard to sift through and understand what we can actually take into the rest of the year after the first set of games. So Mike and I tried to dig through a little bit of that and figure out what's real and what isn't. One thing I wanted to mention before we really get rolling here, this year on the weekly

preview shows, we're going to be doing a segment called the airing of grievances. We want to hear from you. If there is something on the week one recap show or even something that dates back to our awards predictions, some of the stuff we set on our division preview shows that you disagree with, we would like to hear from you. We know that every once in a while, the football internet can get a little bit echoy. There can be a chorus of the same points that come up a little bit too often. We want to hear your disagreements with some of that stuff.

And we have a voicemail line set up for that reason. I'm going to read you guys the number right now. 911 725-1524. One more time. 911-725-1524. Please give us a call. Even if it's a small thing. You don't have to be mean.

You don't have to be worried about offending us. This is a dialogue. And we would like to welcome you guys into the conversation. So please give us a ring on that line, whether it is stuff that you disagree with, or if you just have general questions about your team, about the league. We want to have you guys be more involved in what we're doing on the athletic football show this year. And that is the way to do it. For now, let's get to our conversation with Mike Sando.

Joining us now, it is the athletic zone, Mike, how you doing over there? I'm doing well. How are you? Doing great. We're post week one. Again, just getting back in the rhythm of things. You know, you forget, if I want to rewatch 10 games over a 48 hour period, that takes a long time. So just I think everyone is in their early season shape right now. That includes players. It includes coaches. And it certainly includes me. At least we were working in preseason. A lot of the players didn't play in the preseason game. So they have a little bit of an excuse. But we were still. Podcasting and writing, so we should be sharper. Yeah, theoretically we should be, but I'm trying to give myself a little bit of grace here. We're doing this, this is a new format that we're doing this season in this midweek show. So every single Wednesday, we're going to start this off by recapping the Monday night game.

I know that it's a little bit further removed from when that game ends, but we're going to be recording this on Tuesday. And just feel like it's worth chatting about that game pretty much every single week, especially when it's a marquee matchup, like the one that we saw on Monday night. And then the format of these is going to shift around. You know, we're going to be having guests from all over the place. Some of them would be longer, kind of bigger subjects that we're hitting on. Some of it will be some quicker hitting things about what's in the news.

But, you know, just envision this is kind of like a midweek sandbox for us to play around in here on the athletic football show. So let's kick this off with a conversation about what happened in Jets Niners. Obviously a game that a lot of people were excited about, Aaron Rogers's return, a team that went to the Super Bowl last year and has those same sort of aspirations in San Francisco. what were your main takeaways? What would you say your main takeaway was after watching the Niners beat up on the Jets a little bit Monday night? I thought Aaron Rogers looked pretty good. We know that we already knew the 49ers are very good. So to me, the story was just that the Jets defense really was overwhelmed and that Rogers, to me,

looked like there's something to work with there. He wasn't, it's not like they were scoring on every drive, but there were two or three just pivotal plays beyond his control, you know, with a fumble, one of them. You know, the interception was even batted around. But I thought he threw the ball really well. He looked like he was having fun. Like he was kind of in control of the way, just the way he can kind of control an offense.

So I thought for where they've been, that was a great takeaway for them for the season. Very disappointing on the defensive side for the Jets, just to be every single drives a score for the 49ers for so long in the game. I think you were hoping for better than that. Let's stick on the offensive side first. I'm with you in that I don't think that there's a lot of panic to be had about the results from that performance from the Jets offense on Monday night.

I will say this. A lot of the things I thought about the Jets offense coming into the year kind of showed up on Monday night. And what I mean by that is I thought that physically, the last time we saw Rogers, he was still able to make all the throws that you want him to. The arm was still there. It was a question of engagement and structure with that Packers' offense in 2022. I kind of feel that way again, right? I think that physically he looked like he could make all the throws that you want him to, but I had questions about what this was going to look like from a game planning and just overall X's and O's perspective with that Jets' offense. You have Nathaniel Hackett there. It has not been a good couple seasons. They were one of the worst offenses

in the league last year. And even if you feel pretty good about what Rogers can do physically, you think about how dynamic the Niners offense feels, all the motions, getting, just like creating separation by design over and over and over again. And you think about what that Jets offense feels like, the splash plays they had, the explosive plays they had were a slot fade that was heavily contested that Garrett Wilson had to go up and get, and then a free play on an off-size that they threw a touchdown to on Alan Lazzard. That's where the separation and explosion was coming from. So I just feel like even if Rogers is going to look okay physically, and even if we're

excited about guys like Breeze Hall, like Garrett Wilson, is this offense going to consistently make it easy enough on those guys for them to compete with defense? like the Niners and with the teams that are going to be the best in the week. I think you're totally onto something because the focus has all been, is Rogers going to be available? Okay, once we establish a baseline that Rogers is available and he can make all the throws, like you said, then we're going to criticize other things. We're going to focus on other things. So I agree. They came out, and I understand that it felt like early on they're just running the ball in first and second down, first couple drives. And I get it. You got this

quarterback who lasted four plays. Maybe they're just trying to get him to five plays. So it wouldn't be but it wasn't like they just came out and said, we got Rogers back and let's light the world on fire. It was definitely sort of dipping your finger on the water before you get in there to see if you want to go. And I agree. I felt like Aaron Rogers was not what was holding back the offense. And you've got to give credit to the 49ers.

They're very good. I'm sure as a caller, Nathaniel Hackett was mindful of not getting Rogers blown up early in the game. And there's matchups there that could be problematic for this line that's never blocked for him and first game you're on the road, all of that type of stuff. But I'll definitely be watching these next couple of weeks to see, okay, how does this grow around the fact that Rogers is back? Because it needs to be better than that production-wise.

Let's give that credit to the 49ers. They have ridiculous players. And it sounds so silly to say this because we've known this team and we've had so much familiarity with this team over the last few years. But then you actually watch it in practice again. And the guy who was jumping off the screen on the first couple drives, like Fred Warner just plays like an absolute madman. He had the punchout on the first drive,

but there's so many snaps in the first half of that game where he's just flying around. And you remember what that actually looks like in real time? Bosa is just such a monster. And then the other guy who really jumped out to me yesterday, Diomador-Lanora made several huge plays. I mean, obviously he gets the pick, but even individually in certain matchups one-on-one against Garrett Wilson,

And I think they played 12 snaps and base personnel yesterday, again, when the Jets had two tight ends out there. And so he's outside as a perimeter corner in those looks and just looks extremely comfortable. So him being a guy that can play inside out for this team and then just finding another like borderline elite player potentially in the woodwork after he's been ascending over the last couple years. That's kind of the story of why this team has been able to sustain the way that they have over the last few years. They're just so good. They're that team that, you know, there's a few teams like this that are really only measured now. on what they do in the postseason. We know they're going to be good.

And of course, we're going to analyze that as we go. But you're sort of just looking, is there a drop-off? Or are they going to be healthy, right? Are they going to lose this player, that player? We're talking about like windows, you know, what they're doing with their contracts, how long they can keep this going, not are they good? Because they're really, really good. I thought it looked too easy for them.

Really, I'm on both sides of the ball. You come away from this game going, wow. That's a Super Bowl contender. I feel dumb for, you know, if you picked a different team in the NFC, just to mix it up, you sort of after that game go, oh, maybe I should just pick these guys. You mean me who picked the Lions just because he was a little bit bored? I think that's exactly how I'm feeling right now. I was bored too. And so when I was pressed before the season, I think I did it for the athletic, you know, hey, who are you picking?

The Chiefs, I'm not going against the Chiefs. But I mixed it up and said, you know, what about Green Bay? Maybe they're a young team that'll grow into it, despite they have way more question marks than the 49ers. I mean, they do. their whole defense, you know, what's Love going to do over a whole season? And the 49ers really don't. They really are the chalk pick.

Let's talk about the other side of the ball for a little bit, because if I'm going to find some spots where I actually am worried about the Jets moving forward, I am worried about some of the spots on the defense because we know that the Niners are probably going to be, if not the best offense in the league, than one of the best offenses in the league. And Kyle Shanahan was absolutely cooking from moment one yesterday. I mean, just all the ways they were getting the ball on the perimeter, the way that the run game looked.

I mean, that the wheel route touch, the real route chunk play to Kyle Ustech. I mean, that to me is cinema. But again, to drop that stuff out in week one, the amount of space that they were able to work with within that defense, even if it is against the Niners, there were some specific elements of what the Jets looked like on that side of the ball that do have me a little bit worried

about their personnel on that side compared to the last couple years. Yeah. I can see that especially. I think this was just tough because it was Sala against Shanahan. You know, they were both wanted to put their best foot forward. Yeah. Sala just got absolutely drowned in the ocean on this one. So, you know, I still think they're going to be good on defense.

I mean, that's a tough one out of the gates. I'm sort of willing to, you know, roll with it and regroup and see how it develops over the course of the season. But they're not going to be hurting for storylines there either. You know, the Hassan Redick thing is still there. So if they're not as good as they should be and are perceived to be missing him, they're going to hear about that too. Yeah. And the satiric thing should theoretically help them get after the passer, which they were not,

they didn't look like a dominant front yesterday. But one of the issues that I thought was most prevalent, especially in the first half, is they were just getting pushed around on the ground. And a lot of that was coming on the edge. You have guys like Tack McKinley. You have guys like Will McDonald. And the Niners are the best team in the NFL, which is caving in the edges as they try to attack the perimeter.

And they were doing that over and over and over again. They had a 50% rushing success rate in the first half, which would lead the league over the course of the entire season. In the second half, as the Jets started either creating five-man fronts by walking a linebacker down or using more run blitzes, they had a fighting chance against a lot of that stuff. But when they were just in their four-down fronts, the Niners were absolutely bludgeoning them. And you just didn't really see that happen with this Jets team over the last couple years.

They were so scary up front. And we talked about this in the off season. You switch out at John Franklin Myers for some of those other guys, whether it's McDonald or Hassan Reddick. They just don't have the size that they used to up front. And I think that the Niners consistently took advantage of that. Again, against other teams, it may not be as much of a problem over the course of the season. But it's just one thing that I'm going to be keeping my eye on as we move forward. With Trent Williams just walking in off of his living room and Dominic Coney, a row.

A rookie at the right guard spot. They looked excellent. I mean, they were moving some people around. They looked. Poonie looked excellent. Trent Williams is always going to look really good. And what stood out to me is just that they were absolutely no resistance in climbing to the second level, especially in the first half. I mean, they were handling guys one-on-one, whether it's on reach blocks, just at the point of attack.

And I think, again, it's just that's not the way that's Jets defense typically feels. And then the other side of it is that SvJ. Mosley missed a little bit of time in this game. And I think that especially when he was out, the way that the Niners were able to attack the middle of the field, you noticed it. And, you know, Chuck Clark is somebody that's been a nice rotational piece during most of his NFL career. But he missed last season. He's a little bit older now. So I think the Jets will figure it out against lesser offenses. But some of these slight concerns we had about, all right, does the personnel actually stack up in the ways that it has when this looks like the best defense in the NFL over the last couple years?

I think that my concerns about that and my worries about that haven't been totally papered over after watching that game on Monday night. This was just a worst case scenario too. I think Rich Simeini had a great tweet that this was the lowest time of possession for a game in Rogers career, 21, so 21 minutes, something like that. So when you talk about the Breece Hall fumble or Hall not really running or certain plays, you know, Lizar drops one early when he slipped out of his break. Hall had a drop two. Had a couple drops in there on third downs. they really needed to be on point because when you start losing against the 49ers, the roof caves in.

It really is an entire team effort. So if the Jets defense, they needed their offense to sustain a couple of those, you know, because get another drive, get another drive going, right? It would have been everything. And instead, the BRAC just got broken, the damn burst, and you're just helpless to it. All right, let's move on to a couple of the news items, you know, that have come up over the last couple of days. And let's start with the biggest one, and that is the additional loss.

that has been filed against Deshaun Watson. He was sued by a woman in Harris County, Texas for an alleged incident. In October 2020, the suit accuses Watson of sexual assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. From the NFL's perspective here, the league came out and said that Watson has not been placed on the commissioner's exemplist. So we're reviewing the complaint and we will look into the matter under the personal conduct policy, a league spokesman said.

Not looking at commissioner's exemplars, there's been no formal charges and the league's review has just begun. The Brown said on Tuesday that the organization, would follow the NFL's guidelines on this matter, nothing else from the Browns or the league as we kind of check on this again in the late afternoon on Tuesday. So as this news has kind of come up over the last couple days and you've been paying attention to keeping up with this mic, what is the number one thing that you're kind of looking at here with this latest development in the Washington situation?

I think this is a big reminder, Robert, that everything's on the table here. So much focus has been on the fact that Deshauner. Watson has this fully guaranteed contract, okay? And oh, they're tied to him forever. That's just not true. So as new allegations come up and or his play on the field is not up to standards, there's a lot of ways this thing can go. And I think before this lawsuit came out, we were thinking, all right, like, could they even move on from him after this season? You can't just keep coming back if it's going to look so bad on offense. So we're already starting to think of that from a football standpoint. point. Now if there's going to be new lawsuits and potential penalties from the league coming in,

that's a whole other dimension to making this untenable. And that's kind of what I've been thinking about with Watson is it's only one game, obviously, in the season, and we don't know how this lawsuit's going to be resolved or if the claims are true or false or what the league's going to do. But to me, it's just one more big thing working against this all-referial. flawed, already unproductive marriage going the distance, even though it's supposed to be fully guaranteed. I don't think there's a lot of guarantees right now. Every single time you think that this can't get worse for what's going on with Watson and what's going on with Cleveland, there's another layer to it. And that's just how it feels

over the last 48 hours or so coming off the heels of that performance against the Cowboys, where it feels like every single thing was starting to turn, like the booze in the stadium. and it had become completely untenable on so many different levels. And reading about just the logistics of this and some of the potential loopholes and things like that, it sounds like after reading the pro football talk breakdown on it that the contract language states that if it's something that Watson had brought to the Browns or through the league previously, that this incident had happened and this would potentially be coming, that there's nothing that they can really do about it. But if he hadn't, and this is something that had been not mentioned or unforestation, scene and he does eventually get suspended because of it because this is now a new case under

the personal conduct policy. It does seem like there is a potential opening here for his future guarantees to be voided if he is suspended because of this because it's a separate incident. And if you're the Browns and you're saying, hey, all those other 197 things, you know, we were, you know, that was, but this extra one here really is what puts us over the top. I mean, I mean, it's cynical and awful. I mean, the fact that they could use this as a potential trapdoor to get out of this. I don't think that.

And I'm curious whether the league gives them that out because I think that there was a lot of pushback on whether they should have handled it this way, whether the contract should have been fully guaranteed. So I'm wondering what sort of considerations the league has is they're looking at how they want to approach this and whether they want to give the Browns that potential kind of kind of trapdoor to get out of this whole thing. I don't know the answer to that. But I think that's going to be the talking point moving forward as we see how this all plays out. Absolutely. Get to some other news here that's kind of come up over the last couple of days, sticking in the AFC North. It sounds like Justin Fields is going to be the starting quarterback again for the Steelers in week two.

Right now, it doesn't seem like Russell Wilson is physically ready to get back and play. But Mike Tomlin was given a couple openings today and asked if Russell Wilson was the starter wall healthy, and it didn't seem like he was willing to quickly walk through that door. So it really kind of does feel like Wilson, with this injury and with, the way that Justin Fields played, playing well enough for the Steelers to win in week one. It does seem like there is an opportunity here for Fields to take this job and potentially run with it over the course of the season. Well, what equity would Russell Wilson have? He's on a super cheap contract with him. He has hardly played for them. He hasn't looked great when he did play for them. I mean, Tomlin doesn't owe him anything here. Tomlin owes to the team to evaluate which quarterback gives him the best chance to win. And so I think he's going to need to see Wilson in practice come back, put some reps together, look good, be ready, and have him make a judgment that he would be a better option for us than Justin Fields.

It's interesting to me that they're both a little bit similar in that neither one of them explores the middle of the field, which is where Arthur Smith wants to throw the ball. But that big X factor is Justin Fields is a real problem for the defense because he might run for 25 yards on any given play. and Russell Wilson can't do that anymore. So I think if Justin Fields does not turn the ball over and make those types of critical mistakes that get any quarterback in trouble and could be changed if you don't have a big contract or some first ground pedigree or something like that,

why would you want to necessarily, you know, make a change? So we'll see if they win games and all that. Those things matter. But you can't promise anything to Wilson. He wouldn't even name Wilson the starter coming out of the preseason. He waited. Yeah, all of that sounds right to me.

And my read on the situation is, I think, coming into the year, even when Wilson missed that huge chunk of training camp because of the calf injury, this is a team that consistently defers to veterans. That is what Mike Tomlin has done since he's been there. Even guys who were drafted in the first round, there's usually a little bit of a waiting period.

The perfect example, Zach Frazier looked awesome on Sunday at Center for the Steelers. he was not the Steelers starting center until which one of the Herbigs. I can't remember if it's Nick or Nate. It doesn't matter in this case. One of the Herbigs had to get hurt for Zach Frazier to step in and beat the starting center. For the most part, that's how this team handles position battles.

There's a lot of deference to veterans. And my read on it and being at training camp was just that that was really the biggest point in Russell Wilson's favor at that stage because he hadn't really played and Justin Fields had played relatively well in camp. So if that's gone, right, if he was only getting the first crack at it because he was a veteran, and now he no longer got the first crack at it because he was hurt, and we saw what the formula could look like with Justin Fields, we're just continuing to run out of reasons for why Russell Wilson is going to potentially get this job when he's healthy. And I think it's exactly right in what you said. Like if as long as Justin Fields is keeping the ball out of harm's way, as long as they're not turning the ball over, if he can have one or two, three splash plays a game, whether that's on the ground or his willingness to push the ball down the field, that's enough. Like that is enough of a formula for this team with what it has on defense for at least Mike Tomlin to get on board with what the Justin Fields version of this looks like. I say this. They play Denver this week.

Obviously, it's a big one because Russell Wilson played in Denver. who do you think Sean Peyton if he could pick the starter for the, and let's just say Russell Wilson, we're healthy. Not for that. If Sean Peyton could pick who the starter is. He's the wrong person to ask, though. But he would totally go with, he'd want Russ out there, right? He absolutely would, but I think that he's a little bit too close to the situation because he watched Russ for all last year. So let's go further.

Let's go further. Let's go take this hypothetical a little bit further. Let's say not Sean Peyton. Let's just say the best sharp out there, the best gambler out there, can just, and he's got money on Denver straight up, and he can pick who's the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they're both healthy. Who's he going with?

Like, there may not be a good answer. I think it's probably pretty close, because I think that the gamblers among us probably have a little bit more of a sober look at this, and they understand that the risk with Russell Wilson is probably lower. But I do think that the volatility in ways both good and bad that you get with Justin Fields. I think that that's intriguing when you're looking at it from the Steelers' perspective.

If they can steal two or three more explosive plays a game, I think that's totally fine. And from a middle of the field perspective, the last thing I wanted to mention on this, I do think, and I know it's been meme to death, like what his passing chart looks like from week one, I think that was part of the plan for Pittsburgh in that game. I think they wanted to make sure that they were keeping the ball out of harm's way. Arthur Smith knows exactly what Jesse Bates can do to a football game. He watched it up close and personal last year. So I think making sure that it was a ball control situation, let's run the ball effectively,

let's use a lot of boots and rollouts in order to protect our young offensive line. So you're automatically getting him out on the perimeter and giving him some easy answers outside of the numbers. I think that was part of the plan. We'll see if that changes against other defenses and if you have games where you're not as confident that your defense can carry you and you need to make a few more plays. But for week one specifically, I don't think that was just a job. Justin Fields thing. Yeah. Okay.

I think it's back to Pittsburgh, I think it's just going to be fascinating to see how it plays out, but I don't think the upside is the upside of Wilson coming back to me. It's just not enough to make the move unless he's really looking good in practice. I'm on the exact same place as you are. I will say, though, the Broncos past rushes a little bit of a different beast than what the Falcons are trotting out there right now, even with Matthew Judon. I mean, Jonathan Cooper had a monster game. Part of that was playing against a fourth-string tackle with Seattle.

But I do think that the Broncos consistently are going to give teams trouble. with the amount of juice that they can try it out up front. So just one more thing to keep in mind with a young Pittsburgh offensive line going against a team that is not the Falcons. And you saw what Seattle did in the second half was just run the ball and do some power running and that type of thing. I think Pittsburgh's going to pick up on that rather than take a bunch of safeties early like Seattle did. You don't have to take a lot of convincing to Arthur Smith to have him run the ball 50 times.

He's a line. If that's the path of least resistance for this Steelers team, I assume they're going to take it. Stick with some quarterback news here. Malik Willis is set to start for the Packers. Matt Fleur came out and said that they haven't really contacted people outside of the building. They were always going to go with this. Kind of an old story that we're familiar with with these teams, Mike. Even if your starter gets hurt, most teams are probably going to go with the guy that's in the building,

even if it's not an exciting answer because he knows the offense. They've watched him. They're familiar with him. I would have been really surprised to see them go out and even do something like a Ryan Tannahill just because that's not usually the way these teams operate, and especially a team like the Packers that's pretty risk-averse in these sorts of moments.

But see, I think you'd much rather have a Tannahill for your chance to win the games, but the problem is... I don't disagree with you at all. Yeah, I think Ryan Tannihill is those being selective himself. That's one of the things I've heard. He's one of the... He still sees himself as a starter.

And so I don't think he's just coming in for any sort of a deal or two weeks of starting and then you're on the bench, necessarily. But you can't convince me that... I mean, I think they're just... completely limited going to Malik Willis, and it's going to be really hard for them to win games based on just what I've seen.

I don't see what the upside is there with that. He also just got there. I mean, he's only been there for a couple weeks, so this isn't somebody who's probably super fluid and fluent in what they want to be doing offensively. Their next three games, at home for the Colts on Sunday, in Tennessee against the Titans, and then at home for the Vikings. So here's my plan for them.

If they lose bad and are bad at the quarterback position to the Colts, do you think you get Tan Hill to come in to play at the Titans the next week? Maybe a little bit easier to convince him. I actually do like that. That's a good spin on this. That's my, hey, Ryan, you know, okay, we'll throw in a couple extra million here. But you get to play the Titans this week. I mean, it'd be hard to come in on no practice and play.

zero notice and play. I'm a little bit worried about what it will look like with Malik Willis. And the other part of this that we haven't really mentioned is part of the calculus for the Packers and giving Jordan Love that extension is that they were looking at the next two years specifically in saying, all right, the cap hits are relatively low over the next two years. Even though it's $55 million a year, we've got a lot of flexibility in 2024 and 2025. That was the way that they were conceiving of it. Well, if you're going to burn 30 percent of it.

of the 2024 season because he's hurt now, that's a huge chunk of that window where you still had that level of financial flexibility. So there are a couple of things on a few different levels that are hard to stomach here with this George Love injury for the Packers. Here's what's going to happen. Love's going to have the same season now that he had last year,

where he's not really doing anything early, whether he's injured or not playing, you know, just a young guy last year. And then he's going to have a little bit of ups and downs, and then they're going to go there by week and week 10, and then he's probably going to have some good games down the stretch and it's going to be a repeat of last year. But you know what?

They may not advance in the playoffs or whatever. It would be interesting. If they can maybe steal one of these, you know, a wonky game against Tennessee and then you get some volatility from the Colts offense with Richardson. Like if they can come out of here, two and two, that would be an absolute miracle. But I think that there's a pretty uphill battle for that to happen.

Agreed. Agreed. more injury news here the Rams are dealing with a laundry list of stuff coming out of that game on Sunday night Sean McVeigh came out on Monday and said the Pooka Nakua is going to head to IR so he's going to be out for at least the next four games which is a nightmare for both the Rams and for me as somebody who was invested in Pooka Naku and fantasy in ways I didn't want to be Steve Avila also expected to miss four to six weeks and be placed on IR he was their starting left guard coming into the year after they moved Jonah Jackson to center they're already dealing with Lerick Jackson being suspended and Joe no Boom, who was stepping in for Eric Jackson. He's weak to week with an ankle injury now. And then at right guard, Kevin Dotson, who also hurt his ankle in that game, is day to day. So we have most of the offensive line for the Rams and a guy who had 1,500 yards receiving for

them last year, missing at least this week and potentially more as this team tries to get back to the playoffs at 0 and 1. Not a great situation, not a great way to start the season for the Los Angeles Rams. It's not, but that week six by is looking good. They really need that. So here's the way I see it. They play Arizona, San Francisco, Chicago, Green Bay, right? So can they pull it together and win three of the four?

Let's say they're going to lose to the 49ers and that's too tough. Three of the four? Well, can they beat, well, that's your bear. I guess the Malik Willis of all of this I didn't really consider it. Can they beat Arizona, Chicago, maybe finding their way offensively in Green Bay? Could they win those games? That would be awesome to get the three and two at the break, take it to week off, get some of these guys back?

Is that a possibility? Are you looking at more of, you know, because they were right there with Detroit. I mean, that was tough on the road. Stafford was getting banged around a little too much, but that's a good Hudson and those guys are good rushers. Can they stabilize it a little bit? Or are they just going to take more, you know, that week three game against San Francisco? Are they going to take more casualties? And it's just going to be untenable.

I don't know. You've convinced me a little bit because I think they can absolutely win a shootout with the Cardinals. You know, that Cardinals defense is still very much a work in progress. the Bill's offense had their way with them over the course of that entire game. So even if we're excited about some of the things that Arizona can do offensively, that game's probably up for grabs. I don't know what the line is, but you want to look that up and just see what the spread is heading into week two.

Oh, the Cardinals were favored. So that's one thing. I checked the Lions and I was just going through them and nothing was like making me, you know, spill my coffee or anything. And it was like the Cardinals were favored against the Rams. This was early this morning. And I was like, what is it out or something?

It's one and a half. All right. So I thought it was even higher earlier. Yeah. One and a half. That's notable to me. That was a star by me. All right.

So the Rams are underdogs on the road this week as part of that, you know, three and one stretch that they need. Well, hopefully, but for my sake, the bears get it together two weeks, three weeks from now. Yeah. And then we'll see what happens. And if Jordan Love is back, you know, for that game on October 6th. But not the way you want to start the year when you have the sort of playoff hopes that the Rams, you know, should have had coming. into this year. Some other injuries to run through here. Antoine Winfield of the Bucks suspected missed a few weeks with an ankle and foot injury. Terran Johnson will not play against the

dolphins on Thursday because of a forearm injury. I'll say this. Cam Lewis stepped in for him as the nickel corner when they were in nickel looks and then Lewis played some time linebacker with Ingram number 46. I don't know his first name coming in as the nickel in some of those looks. And I thought the Cam Lewis was fantastic. So the way that he played, I think makes the Toron Johnson injury a little bit easier to stomach. Jordan Addison is unlikely to play in week two because of an ankle injury. Tyson Campbell of the Jags is going to miss some time with a hamstring. And Joku is week to week.

So is Jake Ferguson and Roma Dunezay with their respective knee injuries. The Ferguson one feels notable just because that looked really bad. And it seemed like he could miss a ton of time for an offense that is already short on past catching options. So I think if we're trying to go through the best news of all of those, I would probably say that Ferguson being back sooner rather than later is where I would land. Yeah, week to week MCL. You ever had an MCL sprain, though?

Man. Week to week sounds like it's totally minor. I've avoided serious injury to my lower body extremities. Like you think, you know, week to week MCL sprain, yeah, go sprain your MCL and see how week to week you feel. As I get older, I assume more of those MCL sprains are coming my way. But even when I was like when I played and I was young, I had like, I had a calf issue, but it was in like the last playoff game. So I didn't have to miss any time.

I had a back issue one summer that I strained my back. But other than that, like other than some turned ankles for the most part, I managed to avoid serious disaster. That's good. Good. Yeah. MCL spring. Those, though, the sideways of the knee always look so terrible.

So good for him that he's a long time. The fact that he's probably going to be back in the next couple weeks, I think is very good news for Dallas. A couple more to hit here. before we get to our next topic. It sounds like Derek Brown is going to be out for the season for the Panthers. A huge blow to that team. I mean, they already were short on talent defensively heading into this season. And the fact that they lose, who I think is kind of inarguably their best defensive player at this point for the year.

It's already looking like a full-blown disaster for Carolina. And then Juju Brent, who is coming in his second year for the Coltsick cornerback after missing a good chunk of his rookie season, he's also headed to IR. So this is the worst part of the post-week-1 discussions is the fact that we're always going to have that wave of guys that we're losing for a huge chunk of the season, if not all of it. Karen Brown is just unbelievable for where Carolina's at. I mean, they have no high-level players on defense. I mean, for the most part, obviously they want J.C. Horn to take a step forward being healthy for most of the year. But, I mean, this is not a team that's invested very heavily in their defense. One of the only guys that they really committed to was Derek Brown and the fact that they lost him for the entire year.

I mean, there's a chance that we're just seeing teams do what the Saints did consistently against them throughout the entire season. And there's other, you know, there's some of their veteran guys in defense. They may be moving on from after this year anyway, right? And so, you know, they signed a Janavian Clowny after trading Brian Burns, but he's obviously not a piece, you know, for the future. We'll see what happens with some of the other guys there. So, wow, it's amazing how it can suddenly look like such a long season. And it is a week-to-week league, but I don't know what the road out is for Carolina right now. Let's get to the chunk of what we really want to, the meat of what we really want to talk about today.

After week one, it's always so hard to know what is real and what isn't. We have absolutely no context for what these performances are supposed to be. There's a chance that a team look fantastic, but they're playing against a team that may end up being the worst offense or defense in the league. So we're going to run through a half dozen of these or so and try to figure out what is actually something that we can take from week one and what is something that was maybe a little bit of a mirage. So let's start with this. How real is the concern or should the concern be for the Cincinnati Bengals after laying an egg against the team that was projected to have the lowest number of wins in the NFL in week one against the Patriots? I think it's mild to moderate. But, you know, I was looking at their starts bangles fans will know this.

But for whatever reason, the last three years or so, even with Joe Burrow, when he starts, they've averaged under 20 points a game on offense in September. And then they picked it up. So it's terrible that it was against New England. You'd think you'd be better than that. But I think a lot of the players that we think are going to make them good on offense are there. I do have concerns about them that could, you know, prevent them from getting all the way or, you know, getting past some of the top teams in the NFC,

but I think they're going to be a lot better than that. Yeah, I think that there are some areas that I am worried about. We've talked about the run defense and just the state of really the defensive line overall in that building. And I think that's still a concern. You know, they got run on by that Patriots team for a good chunk of that game. And I do think that against more balanced offenses, more explosive offenses, we're going to continue to see that be a problem.

So until that gets fixed, I'm really not. giving them the benefit of the doubt, especially after what it looked like last year. On the other side of the ball, it's kind of a mixed bag. Trent Brown did not have a good game against pretty much everybody on that side for the Patriots, whether there's Josh Uche, whether there's Kean White, whatever. At least they have Ameris Mims potentially coming back if they feel like that's a better option for them at right tackle. Overall, offensively, I would just love for this team to have a slightly normal August

into the first couple weeks of September. It's never happened, right? Perot had the appendix two years ago, so he misses all of training camp and comes back and they're just totally disjointed. Last year he has the calf, even when he's held or when he was on the field, the offense was completely not functional. This year, Jamar Chase doesn't practice for much, pretty much the entire run up into the start of the season. He comes back like two days before. He plays most of the game, but again, had almost no training camp. And then T. Higgins misses the game. So everything that is supposed to create the Bengals' offensive.

we understand it. For each of the last three seasons, there has been one reason or another why they haven't been able to trot that group out in week one. It's just infuriating. Like, if I were a baby-res thing, it would be driving me nuts. If they've come, it's like a 180 from before, remember when they had those good teams with Marvin Lewis? It was that way in the playoffs. They get to the playoffs and never have Tyler Eiffurt or A.J. Green or Andy Dalton, we get a hurt. They could never have, they never had their team together. Everyone said, oh, Marvin Lilis couldn't win a playoff game. True, but they never had their team.

Like their good team never was together, and now they can't do it in September. I guess that's a better tradeoff, but I'm with you on that. Then you play a New England team that knows they're completely overmatched going into this game. So they come up with a game plan

to shorten the game, and they execute it really well so that Cincinnati, I believe, only had eight possessions, something like that, a very unusually low numbers. So it was just a perfectly executed plan by New England

that everything worked. And Joe Burrow, you know, was hardly pushing the ball down the field. I mean, his passes were completely short dink and dunkers, which was a trend in the league. But still, they just couldn't get anything going. That's the other side of this that is worth monitoring. If I'm trying to figure out what's real and what's actually worth worrying about, the inability to find explosive plays is something else that carried over from last year with Joe Burrow under center. So we just need to figure out how many of these issues that were problems for the Bengals last year are going to continue to be.

issues and the fact that struggling to find explosives, inability to stop people on the ground, continue to be problems after what 2023 looked like, I absolutely think those are worth monitoring as we move forward. Let's talk about some debuts from some NFC-South play callers and try to figure out whether or not this is an indication of what is to come over the season. Let's start with Clint Kubiak and the New Orleans Saints. On Sunday, the only team in the NFL, one we will talk about here, to have a higher EPA per play on offense than the Saints was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Saints' offense looked dynamic.

The Saints' offense looked interesting. The Saints' offense looked nothing like it did for most of last season. How much of this, in your opinion, is real and how much of this is a product of playing the Carolina Panthers in week one? I'm going to say that it's 70% playing the Panthers probably, you know, that if they had gone, if they had played the 49ers last night, you know, we wouldn't be talking about the amazing game that they had. I think the Saints are still a team that probably could use additional help and depth at wide receiver that still is going to have issues on their offensive line. But I do think they're good defensively. I do think, obviously, the lineage of Kubiak is great. We know what type of offense he's going to run. We know it

has success in the league. So that's something to build upon. It could be good for Derek Carr, possibly, if you get the play action under center component of it. So I think it was a great start for them that the Panthers contributed immensely to, but still, you'll take it if you're the Saints because there was a lot of kind of negativity around this team. I think there's been a lot of Derek Carr fatigue. And maybe this was just a reminder that, hey, it doesn't have to be as bad as you expected. I think that's right. Anything to be excited about with this team is worth gloving on to if you were a Saints fan or just someone who has to watch the NFL over the the course of the season and the fact that they could potentially be a little bit more dynamic.

That's exciting. Like, Rashid Shaheed is a fun player. Hidden 55-yard post-row touchdowns to Rashid is something that I can get behind. And even on that play specifically, he motions from right to left. He's in a condensed split. So he's starting that play with leverage on J.C. Horn just before it even snaps. And he's explosive. So you have an initial advantage built in and you have a guy who's very good at football.

And so just trying to find. those little tiny advantages built into the structure of the offense is just not something we saw from this previous staff. So watching all the under center play action, seeing some of the motion, even seeing some of like the bumper motion stuff with Camara that the Niners were doing with Christian McCaffrey last year when Klubeak was there, it just felt so much more alive. And I also think that the play action serves two purposes for me. One, it protects the offensive line. If you're going to be trying to move and just wad things up, it forces fewer one-on-ones and I think that it allows you to protect a young, incomplete, problematic offensive line. It helps against the Panthers

who have no pass rushers, but overall, I do think it's a solid formula. And I also think that it builds in aggressiveness for a quarterback who can occasionally not be aggressive enough. If you're creating downfield shots for him and you're moving the pocket for him, and you're not asking him to just sit back and play point guard out of the shotgun, I think that that is just an approach that is putting you in the best position to hunt out explosive plays in ways that you couldn't last year. So I do like what I saw. Because Derek Carr can be prone to not pull the trigger, you know, and you're looking at it going, let it go, let it go, let it go.

If some of those things are defined for him and set up for him where you just take the shot, I think that could really help him. Stick in with the good things that happen in the NFC South. again, the only team with a better EPA per play in week one than the New Orleans Saints was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Liam Cohen, their new offensive play caller. Same sort of deal, though. Washington is a team that does not have a lot of talent on defense. They are a rebuilding team.

Do we think that this week one performance from the buck's offense was real? Or do you think that this is a product of playing against a Washington defense very much in transition? I think it was, I'm not going to say that it wasn't real. I think that they have the makings of to be decent on offense. I mean, we've questioned the last two years, what's the play caller, right? We didn't know what Dave Canales would do. Liam Cohen, similarly, not very experienced as a play caller. So that's really been our question mark.

But when you have Baker Mayfield, who I think is a good enough starting quarterback, who knows how to get the ball to his lead targets. If you look at this game, Godwin had eight targets, Evans had six. That's who you want to be leading in targets. gets the ball to his guys, you know, they have some talent. So I think this is a really encouraging start. You take it and you know if it was a disaster and looked terrible, you'd have real concerns. But there was nothing in this game that made me, you know, think it's totally fraudulent.

I think you come out of this game thinking, okay, I think they quietly have about the third longest playoff streak in the league right now. You know, we think of them as this team that's, you know, in terms. transition or on the down or they rarely get picked to do this or that, but they've been a decent team. So maybe that's what they are. Maybe they're a decent team. I was very encouraged by it. And I think, again, same sort of conversation with the Saints, just how alive some elements of the offense felt. And I think when you have this receiving talent, having them be deployed in some of these dynamic ways, it felt similar to watching the Saints where it's like, all right, we have an

offense now that has these layers to it that is putting these guys in positions to succeed. And some of the stacks and bunches that they were using, you know, some of just the using Godwin and Evans on the same side, we have all this heat coming at you, making sure that, even if Edwin's Evans is lined up at number one, it's condensed enough where he can run some outbreaking routes, create a little bit of uncertainty, and allow Baker-Mayfield to attack the areas of the field that he's good at attacking. It just all felt like a cohesive approach for a week one new, offensive play caller with a new group of players.

And when you have guys that are worth getting excited about, it's intriguing, right? Like, I want to see more from them. And so part of me thinks that I don't know how real it is going against Washington, but I know that I want to see what the follow-up act looks like. Absolutely. What more do you want from them in the first week, right? I mean, I think they're the best offense to the league. You can't ask for anything more.

Yeah. So they did what really, you did what they had to hope they were going to do. This was probably their greatest hopes that would come out that way. I think it's a great start for them. And just like I said, a reminder that, you know, they're not a great team, but they've been a pretty good team. Yeah. I mean, I think they're absolutely, any of those teams in NFC South could have won the division, you know, based on the state of that division and based on what they were coming into the season looking like. But I think the fact that the Saints and the Bucks looked excellent on offense and the Falcons looked awful on offense is worth noting.

So let's talk about Atlanta Falcons. I do want to talk about the Falcons. Yeah. They had to play against the Steelers in week one. So they were on the opposite end of the spectrum, but while the Falcons or the Saints and the Bucks were two of the most efficient offenses in football in week one, the Falcons, I believe, finished 25th in offensive success rate on Sunday. How much of that is real and how much of that is a new play caller having to play against that Pittsburgh Steelers front in week one? I think when you have question marks about a new play caller and it goes bad in the first week, you don't have your answer because there's nothing to fall back on. I think it'd be premature to say that he's going to be bad.

I watched Kirk Cousin's passes in the game and was kind of expecting him to appear a little bit more limited because they didn't, they didn't do it. They didn't ever put him under center. They had zero percent early down play action. I mean, the next lowest percentage in the league for early down play action was the Raiders at 15 percent. The league average is 32 percent. When you picture Kirk Cousins, that's what you picture. And they never did it once. So I came, when I went to watch the game, I was thinking, is Cousins not healthy yet or something?

Because they're not moving them around. But I thought cousins looked fine for moving around. He scored a touchdown on a rollout. He seemed nimble enough to me. I don't know why they were putting them in a pistol, 26 snaps and just having him throw. Now, he was getting smashed too. I think there was multiple plays, including on the interception over the middle, where he just felt it bearing down. And there was another one where he got double bodyweighted.

How many times does he change? two guys with 90 numbers, bodyweight a guy. Like two of them. He was really under duress. They were worried about T.J. Watts. So I need to see a three-game sample here, Robert, to make some judgments. I was totally flummoxed by the pistol thing. And, you know, none of the understanding of play action.

None of the things Kirkston before. Odd. We talked about this a little bit on Sunday. And I think, obviously, the Rams have leaned into the pistol. heavily. That's something that they started doing last year. They did it even more against the Lions. And obviously, Zach Robinson being there in L.A. last year, he probably understands the benefits the Sean McFaase season that. I'm not surprised to see them lean into it. But seeing them lean into it where they were almost exclusively running the ball out of it and they were doing absolutely nothing under

center was at least a little bit curious. And so I'm wondering, like you are, is that a symbol that they are not comfortable having cousins go under center? Or is that a simple that we just don't think the play action needs to be a part of our offense. And in LA with Matthew Stafford, it had become less of a part of their offense. Their ability to attack people in the dropback game and even over the middle of the field wasn't really hampered because they weren't using play action.

I think that they did that with play design. And I think that Matthew Stafford is fantastic at manipulating middle of the field defenders with his eyes and dictating where he wants to go with the ball. Kirk Cousins doesn't play at that sort of level. He's a veteran quarterback. He's played at a high level over the last couple years, but he just doesn't do those things to the same clip that Matthew Stafford does.

When the Vikings have tried to attack the middle of the field over the last couple years, they have done it by using under-center play action at one of the highest rates in the entire league. So not getting the benefits of having a passing offense that attacks that middle of the field because you're not going to remove defenders with play action, that's worrisome to me. I just don't know how that formula overall works if you're going to try to have Kirk Cousins play like Matthew Stafford when in actuality there's probably only one or two quarterbacks in the league who can play like Matthew Stafford.

Yeah, the whole thing's muddled to me, Robert. Of course, we already know that they drafted a guy in the top 10 at quarterback who's sitting there. And so as this game's going on, I'm thinking, oh, my guys, you know, you start overthinking it, like, what are they going to do if it looks like this for five weeks? There's just a lot of question marks around that. So I want to see more, but I think Kirk Cousins without play action is not as good as Kirk Cousins was play action, and that's true for almost all the quarterbacks. The other side of this is that the Falcons offensive line is supposed to be a strength of this team.

And I know that they're much better when you're putting them in run first situations, and that's what they had been over the last couple years under Arthur Smith. Caleb McGarry is going to look a lot better as a pass blocker when you are only asking him to drop back without play action, let's say, 10 to 12 times a game. You know, if you look at the play action rates and just the overall run rates those Falcons teams were using, going the exact opposite direction and using no play action in order to protect your offensive line makes your offensive line look significantly worse. That's compounded by Matthew Bergeron having to deal with Cam Hayward and things like that.

But then that group supposedly being a positive for this team and then looking decided like a negative for this team, something else that's worth monitoring moving forward. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I'm more anxious to watch them this week. that I otherwise would have been. They have Monday night against the Eagles, so we are going to get a primetime look at the Atlanta Falcons team

and we'll have a conversation about them on this show next week. A couple more here that we want to hit before we get out of here. Hey, I was going to say, by the way, the Eagles have some guys up front too. I don't know if you saw Jalen Carter. Jalen Carter launched a guy at one point, like threw him in the air.

It looked like he just threw him out of the club. You're out of here. For the most part, when you're not playing against the Panthers, there are most teams in the NFL these days. is have a couple past rushers that you have to worry about, including on the interior. So it's not going to be the Steelers every week, but it's probably not going to be easy any week moving forward here either. Let's stick with those Philadelphia Eagles. Pretty fantastic performance from Sequin Barclay and a lot of interesting wrinkles for them offensively.

They had answers against pressure. They were using a ton more motion. I know that there were some questionable decisions from Jalen Hertz and the overall box score doesn't look as good as you probably want it to be. But do you think that this new formula, for the Eagles on offense and the potential benefits that they could get from it. Is this real or is this just a week one blip? Oh, no, I think it's real. I mean, we know Sequin Barclay is an excellent player.

I mean, the questions of him are more, hey, philosophically paying a running back at this age, you know, and, of course, Joe Shane and the Giants lost this bet in week one, but we'll see, right? Is he going to play the whole year? He had 26 touches in the game. He's averaged about 20 in the past. So his usage was pretty high. Is that going to hold up over a whole season?

but certainly now when you're playing with him, he helps them a lot. I think he's just a really, really good player. The motion part, you know, they were at the opposite end last year. You know, they hard to do it at all. Well, I think sometimes it can be a little overrated. You know, it's kind of one thing media is latched on to a little bit. I think there's something to it in terms of if you don't have any, you know, if you're not doing it at all, then you're missing out on a tool that can help you offensively. So I thought that was good that they were a little bit more like the rest of the league.

right a little bit more average and it made sense to me they didn't go overboard so um i did like i did like the first week and they certainly have a lot of weapons we're going to dig into the eagles a little bit more on our preview show that we're doing with derrick just talk about what that new look offense really is comprised of but i thought there were so many good indicators of what might be to come even the saquan barkley touchdown you know i think there either was motion or there was like an action where they were slicing across the formation back to the right and then he comes all the way across on that wheel route to the left and they throw a touchdown to him. There's like four elements of that that we did not see from the Eagles offense last year.

We didn't see motion from the Eagles offense last year and they did not throw the ball to the running backs last year. And that's a product of how Jaylen Hertz likes to play. But there were just so many new components of this that were exciting and new components that weren't just new for new sake. When the Eagles were trying to iterate last year on what their offense looked like in 2022, it felt like stuff that was just kind of packed on to the side. just for the sake of doing it.

This feels so purposeful on so many different levels. And that's what you want when you go out and you get a new play caller whose task and whose charge is to save the overall foundation of your offense. But if that was what they needed, then the first early returns on that are looking pretty darn good. Yeah. What more did you want from then other than like you said, maybe there's a couple decisions, Jalen Hertz throwing the ball that will stay in the back of our mind as the season goes on.

And then they were breaking in a new center. There was a couple bad snaps, those types of things, right, that you think they're going to work out of it. But the fundamentals of like this new piece look pretty good to me. A couple more I want to hit here. This one is very well suited to you. And I'm sure you'll talk about this with people over the course of the season. We had 35 passing touchdowns in week one. If you go back over the last five or six years, last year there were 37.

So pretty much in line with what happened in week one of last year. Before that, 2022, we had 51. 2021, we had 61. 2020, there were 52, 62, 61 in 2019, 49, and 2018. How real is this steep decline that we have seen in passing an offensive efficiency in the NFL? Or do we think this is potentially just a week one blip? No. Well, I think that there has been a little bit of a decline.

One thing that's happened, so last year, the week one starting quarterbacks in the league were younger than they've ever been since like 1957 or something, okay? And so I went back and reset that. And I said, let's take the 1950s out. But let's just go since the 1970 merger, okay, of the two leagues. So last year was the youngest week one starters. And then the second youngest is 2012, that year with Andrew Luck and RG3 and Wilson coming in. And then this year is the third youngest. So I think that's some of it.

When you hear some of those comments about Tom Brady and it sounds like the old guy, you know, but they're dumb and down these offenses, all that. I think there's some of that. I think that defenses have. caught up a little bit. We had a window a few years ago where the offenses really had the defenses really exploiting the early downs. Offenses were exploiting the old school defensive tendencies to play the run on first down, right? And they just were having their way. And so we had all these explosive plays. And then we've seen a big reaction to that. And I don't know,

other than some little wrinkles that offenses have done with the fast motion and some of that stuff, it feels to me like the defenses have just caught up a little bit. And then you throw out these younger and younger quarterbacks where you probably are simplyifying some things. You probably have fewer answers, that sort of a thing. I think this might be what you get. This requires like a longer conversation, but I think that there are a couple of things that are worth noting. I was rewatching the Broncos Seahawks game.

And the Broncos obviously like were one of the lowest teams in the league in terms of average depth of target and how they were attacking the Seahawks in that game. They were trying to throw the ball down in field every once in a while. The problem is the ways that they were trying to do it are just non-starters in today's NFL. What they were trying to do is they're lining up in heavy personnel and they're trying to run these big two-man play action concepts to hunt out shots. Well, the issue is the Seahawks are still sitting there in a quarter shell on those early downs and you're having two guys out in the route.

That's not going to work. Your options on those sorts of plays against modern defenses, you're just dead in the water. And the other element that I think is worth mentioning, and I think that the Eagles are actually kind of a example for this on the other end of the spectrum. The quarterback run game, to me, is emblematic of where this offense and defensive cat and mouse game is kind of arrived at in the NFL. There was a stretch three, four, five years ago where if the quarterback was carrying the ball, it was going to be a positive thing for the offense. Defenses were not equipped to handle the quarterback run game and just changing the math very simply.

We're talking about pretty simple zone read stuff. Obviously, this starts in like 2012, 2013, but this goes all the way up to like 2018, 2019, 2020, where offenses are outpacing defenses when the quarterback is carrying it. Those days are gone. You look at what the Eagles were doing on those simple kind of zone replays from Jalen Hertz. Those are now negative or neutral plays for the offense. If you're going to create positives running your quarterback,

you need to do some wonky shit. You need to be arcing guys. you need to be slicing guys across the formation. You need to be adding another body to how you're blocking that instead of just leaving one guy unblocked on zone read. The defenses have caught up to offenses on so many different things that I think that now we're at a place where offenses are having to kind of retweak and innovate how they're going to find those advantages.

And that has carried over from last year to this year. Yeah. I'm still looking at this week one passing touchdown. So it's 35 now after last night. Is that right? After Monday night? We had 35. Does that make sense to you?

So that's amazing to me that you lose from the 50s and 60s down to the 30s in like a three-year period. That's a huge drop. It's not like they're going way up in rushing touchdowns a little bit up this year. The rushing touchdowns, there was a dozen more. So that's interesting to me. It is. It's part of a lot of these large trends. I do think that we're seeing the run game come back, though.

I do think we're getting to a place where the run game is. coming back. We already were, but I think that week one is a very strong example of it. Yeah. Jake Grossman on Twitter had something interesting on the run game, and he was looking at how it looked like run efficiency was up. We'd almost hit that tipping point where running the ball was suddenly going to be close to his efficient in some situations as passing.

But as he looked at it a little bit more closely, the scrambling was a big part of that, right? The quarterback's being able to scramble. And we certainly saw that in the first game of the year. You know, Lamar Jackson wasn't gashing him on a bunch of designed runs. There was a lot of scrambles in there where he's taking off. And so that's a huge component of the running game. And I think you have to separate that out when looking at truly running the ball. Because, you know, if you're getting a lot of – if you're getting rushing yards on passing plays,

that's, to me, different than getting rushing yards on rushing plays. If we look at the overall just running game efficiency, though, it does feel at least anecdotally, offenses are positioned to find more efficiency and more consistently better play out of that area than they have in years past. I just think that that's a product of how modern defenses are built, both from a structural standpoint and also just the size of modern defenders,

but also just the levels of creativity that we're seeing in the run game. We're outside of this world where, I mean, even if we live in a Shanahan universe on offense, the Shanahan teams aren't like outside zone running teams anymore. Like all the variations of pin pull plays, all the different gap scheme runs that we're seeing. It's just the diversity on the ground is as much as it's ever been since I've covered the league. I'm sure there were times before that that was crazy. But since I've covered the NFL, the run game is better constructed than it's ever been.

I think it's what's interesting. Well, I think it's differently constructed because when you go back in the day, the game was different because you're under center. There's two backs. it's just a different game. You can't do that now. You try to play that way now. You don't have enough vertical threats, right? To threaten the defense, they'll blitz the heck out of you.

All kinds of things will break down. But I think what, like I watched the Seattle game, Seattle's game against Denver that you mentioned. I thought that in the second half of that game, when Seattle really got their running game going, they went to a lot of power concepts. They found the right running style to do it. It's a great example.

Like I think, you know, in the past, maybe they would have stuck with their whatever mid-zone ground game. And you know what? We just didn't get the ground game going. Well, you got to do something else. And I felt like they did that in the third quarter. Like, to me, that's a classic game that like Seattle could have lost. You know, just never get it going. You don't really make the adjustment. And then, you know, you're in a battle with Bo Nix for the lowest air yards of the, you know, of the week. But they got their run game going. It made everything settle down. a different style of running, so I think that's a good example.

They're a great example. I mean, you can count a half dozen different concepts as part of that, a little onslaught they had in the second half. And I think that we're seeing that with teams around the NFL. The Texans, we talked about this on Sunday, all the ways that they were using their tight ends and those 12 personnel looks on the ground, that is becoming the norm around the NFL. I think that the best teams in the league have shown an ability to have four or five

different layers to the way they want to run the football, and I think that will continue. All right. That is all we've done. got for today. As I mentioned, we're going to be coming to you guys three days a week. We're going to have the Sunday night recap this midweek show on Wednesdays and then the weekly preview that I will be doing with Derek Klesson.

As part of that weekly preview, if you guys have been paying attention on Twitter, I've been talking about this, but might as well drop it in here as well. We want to hear from you, and we want to hear from you on a couple different fronts. If you had something in the previews or in the recap show, if we said something, and even going back to like the shows that we did, previewing all the divisions, whatever, If we have said something on the show, Derek and I, that you disagree with, that you think is crazy, that you think we need to hear about, we would like to hear from you. We are going to be airing those grievances every single week on the weekly preview show. We have a voicemail line set up for this and just for general questions.

I'm going to read you guys the number right now. 917-725-1524. One more time. 9-17-7-25-24. Any grievances, any disagreements that you have with something we said on the week one recap show or over the last couple months, you let us know. Because we are going to be folding this in to every weekly preview show over the course of the season. We think it's a fun little wrinkle and we're excited about doing it. So if you have any general questions about your team, about the league, something you want to find out about, you can use the exact same voicemail line for that purpose.

We're going to be trying to do some more interactive stuff on the show this year. So highly encourage you guys to give us a call if you feel so compelled. For now, that is all we've got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.