The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - NFL Week 1 Sunday recap -- Justin Jefferson and Patrick Mahomes are ridiculous, Colts and 49ers disappointment, and more

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Well that was a fun way to start the season, wasn't it? The early window included a handful of multi-score comebacks, two overtime games, and a tie. The late window gave us heroics from Justin Jefferson and Patrick Mahomes. How do we piece it all together? What was a potential trend, and what was just a one-week mirage? Robert Mays and Nate Tice make sense of it all on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysFollow Nate on Twitter: @Nate_TiceSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me tonight is my good buddy Nate Tice. Nate, how you doing, bud? I'm doing well. I was in shape for this week one. Like that, like mentally, I was.

I was. I was pretty proud of myself compared to like when we first did the show two years ago. And I remember just I was so frazzled. I couldn't get the TVs right now. I got my setup, my domain, even though it's a mess in here. You guys can't see it. But it's, yes, I was ready for this week, and so I'm excited to talk about it because I actually have energy and I'm focused. We're good. I had multiple problems this week.

My Sunday ticket did not work for whatever reason. The streaming version of Sunday ticket did not work. I had to VPN into European game pass to watch two games on two laptops plus the three TVs that I have. So I spent most of the first half doing that. Listen, it's week one for everybody. I'm going to give direct TV a pass here, even though they probably don't deserve one. But even after that got situated, the wall of stimuli coming at me in week one. I'm never ready for it.

I'm always out of game watching shape. There's nothing that can prepare me from all of the moving parts that you have to sort through when week one kicks off. We're going to start digging into the craziness of week one here in a moment. Before we do that, though, we have to start with the DAC Prescott injury news. Jerry Jones, after the Cowboys lost, just said that DAC is going to be out several weeks because he needs surgery on his broken hand thumb, whatever is wrong with him.

He hit it on a helmet or he was hit while he was throwing. This is going to be probably at least a month that Doc Prescott is out. The Cowboys looked like garbage while Doc Prescott was their quarterback last night. Can't imagine it's going to get much better with Cooper Rush over the next four games or so here. The Eagles seem to be like a pretty good football team. This is devastating news for a Cowboys team and a Mike McCarthy-led team that was looking at a pretty important season. Yeah, this was a team that we were already starting to feel more and more pessimistic about so much that you were saying, one of my favorite bets is that the Cowboys don't make the playoffs.

That was with Dak Healthy. That was with, you know, that, Tyler Smith actually looked okay at left tackle, but as soon as they had the left guard go down, it was for the high ankle sprained. It's, yeah. And the receiver situation was horrendous tonight. Horrendous. Everything felt like everything was contested, even the CD. Everything to CD was contested. You know, he's going to work from the slot.

bucks have good coaches. Todd Bowles is a good coach. They have good players. They were very aware of it. Every time I felt like C.D. was getting a ball over the middle. There was a linebacker, a safety driving on it, and then the corner trailing them. It's like, this is all you got.

Dalton Schultz, how many 70-yard sit routes can we hit the Dalton Schultz? And that's about all you had from the Cowboys passing game. So that was with Dak. So I hope he gets healthy. I know everyone that listens as a show knows how much I like Dak, but it's not, it's looking grim in Dallas. I mean, you listen for a month. Your season could be over. They're sitting there at maybe one and four by the time that whole thing is over.

The Eagles get out to a hot start unless another couple teams in the NFC really struggle in the wildcar picture. This could be a season altering injury and probably will be for Dallas. It's huge, which I'm sure we'll get into a ton as the week goes on. Also, Donovan Smith hurt his elbow in this game. It looks like he's going to miss an extended amount of time. When we were talking about the Bucks offensive line coming into this season, already concerns about what was happening on the interior, but part of why I wasn't freaking out, it's like, well, the tackles are still healthy. and the tackles are pretty good.

You lose your starting and left tackle halfway into your first game. The picture changes a little bit. Yeah. It was really funny hearing Tom Brady today because he has a new center and how much he was over communicating. He was like, you could just hear him on the field mics just going like, Mike 502, like screaming it because he's just making sure we're all on the same page. Right, guys? He was not, he's trying to take all the sand. They had an extended conversation after the sack where Donovan Smith got hurt.

an extended conversation on the way to the sideline. So I'm sure there was a lot of back and forth today. And there'd be a lot of back and forth here over the next week. I'm going to guess Tom Brady knew what he was talking about there over Hainsley. So yeah, that's a little interesting to keep an eye on with the Bucks. They seem to have a pretty good game overall on that offense. I mean, they were running ball at will, it seemed like. They were really catching the Cowboys a lot.

And then that's on top of just all the stuff to Mike Evans. God wouldn't look good. He got banged up as well. But it's the Bucks. The Bucks looked like the Bucks, even if it was kind of an uglyish game. We'll talk about that game and again the Cowboys a little bit later on. I want to talk about the early slate and the end of the early slate particularly. I tweeted this in the moment, but every year when we get to week one, along with just being

completely unprepared to deal with all of the stuff coming at me, the other thing I'm completely unprepared for is how wild it feels when we have a ton of close finishes in that week one window, that early first game window. Here's what was happening pretty much at the same time today over the course of about a half-hour 45-minute stretch. The Saints rallied from a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Falcons on a last-minute field goal that was missed. The Panthers rallied from a 14-4th-quarter deficit to take a lead over the Browns with a

minute left. Then Cade York made a 58-yard field goal that probably could have been good for 68 yards. That thing had pace as it hit the middle of the net. The Panthers thought it was wide and it curled it back in. But it's not just that he curled it back in. He curled it back in and hit it halfway up the net. And that net moved when he hit it. They talked about that freaking kicker so much during training camp.

All they wanted to do was have some little moment or like piece of brightness at Brown's training camp. And Cade York was everything justified. That was an incredible fourth round. Fourth round pick for a reason. Oh, that thing was a, oh my God. It had the nice little draw on it. It was so, it was so pretty. I know it was like a stinging two iron.

I am very rarely. I'm not going to spend much time talking about kickers on this show. but he warrants that sort of attention after that just happened. The Bengals scored a touchdown, down six with four seconds left. Then the Steelers blocked the extra point and won an overtime. Washington had a game-winning touchdown with 152 left to beat the Jags, and that doesn't even include five other things that were going on during that time. It just is such a reminder of why the NFL is such a compelling television product in that moment.

And you're sitting there watching it, you're like, there is nothing else like this. I cannot believe this has happened. in week one where every single one of these games is a two-point game, a three-point game. By that point, the Dolphins game and the Niners Bears game had ended, those are the only two games that hadn't been close. Even the Eagles Lions game got down to a field goal in the final few minutes. And it's just impossible to process all of that in real time. It was the witchiest of witching hours.

It really was. It was very wicked. When none of us were ready for it, when none of us were in game shape. My Xbox was good. My Xbox had the game pass ready, but Red Zone Channel was nuts. It felt like March Madness opening weekend, you know, when those first games are played. That's what it felt like. But it's the NFL week one.

We get to do this every week. This is great. It's not just one weekend that we're skipping work on. You know, this is actually on a Sunday just start. This is starting us off. This is week one. But that's exactly right. I love the point you made.

There's nothing else like this. There's so many one score games. And not only that, it's back and forth. It's big plays. It's exciting. We're talking about a kicker. And I mean, everything. There's every type of play that happens.

So it was just an awesome way to start the season. I wanted to dig into two of those final results a little bit deeper because I thought they were particularly compelling and particularly eye opening. The Steelers Bengals game, the Bengals had made so many mistakes in that game and still almost won because the Steelers did not have a functional offense. What was your biggest takeaway from watching that game today and just kind of the weird way that it ended? Two things is the Bengals ran 94 plays today, which is the highest one game total since, 2002, which is just absurd that I couldn't believe that. And they only score 20 points off that. So I wonder what that ratio is. But also, it was, it was ugly. I agree with you with the Steelers stuff. The offense is, and this is what Matt Canada's kind of drawback has always been with

his offense. His dropback game sucks. It's really, it's high schoolish. But all the other stuff, it's all smoking mirrors as far as everything else. And they can't run the ball either. Naji average like 2.3 yards per carry. It's just an absolute slog whenever they try to do anything on the combined with the fact that they can't drop back. When you can't run it, you can't drop back. I think it's going to be a little hard to move the ball in the NFL. You think? Yeah, and especially you could see in the second half when they had to drop back.

And it was scary. And then that four-minute drill where they're trying to burn the clock, Naji gets hurt. So if they burn a timeout, injury timeout, then they throw the ball incomplete. They only burned 18 at 17 or 18 seconds in their four-minute drill. Did you like that on second and 12 to throw the ball? I was thinking about it in the moment. We always get on coaches for being too conservative in that moment. But it's also it's second and 12.

And Mitchell Chubiskyy is your quarterback. back. Maybe you just sit on it. I was back and forth. I was debating with myself as that was happening. You're coming out of a timeout too. That's a little kind of like as a defensive coach is probably alarm bells are going off a little bit.

I used to always love like McVeigh when he first got with the Rams. They would do it a bunch. In those four minute drills, they run a bootleg. And bootlegs are good because you know, you get the guy in the move and it's kind of a safer throw. I can eat the sack. Yada yada. Keep the clock going.

But that's that's usually the only passing play I like. Even like RPO's a quick game. I get a little dicey on because defenders are tight. You know, usually you're facing kind of a version of cover zero, even if it's goal line or something, if you're going heavy personnel. So I don't know. I'm fine with it. Maybe just not the Steelers offense with Mitch Trubisky and all the weapons that they have.

The Bengals offense ran into plenty of issues. I think a lot of the concerns that we had about the Bengals offense toward the end of last season were the same concerns that we saw on Sunday. They had real trouble protecting Joe Burrow, and it wasn't just the new guys. Jonah Highsmith had some issues, or excuse me, Jonah Williams had some issues with Alex Highsmith multiple times in this game. You know, T.J. Watt had a couple big plays against Lyle Collins. Kim Hayward had just a disgusting bull rush against the rookie left guards.

Welcome to the league, my friend. And that happened pretty often. I think you got sacked seven times in this game. And some of the siloing issues that we had talked about near the end of last season, two under center play action passes from the Bengals today. They had 16 under center runs. So on 18 under center plays in this game, they ran the ball 16 times. It was as soon as like the first or second drive, it was like a second and five.

And they actually had a decent run play. But they went straight up under center, hip formation, run the ball, run a zone play. And it was like, again, guys, that you guys are going to do this again. Like you say, it's a siloed offense. And it was kind of crazy. It was a lot of those pressures on Burrow. It was like the sack conversion was pretty crazy. He was really big game hunting in a game that I don't think he should have been.

It was more of like, hey, this is an ugly game. This is kind of not going away. Hey, what's just, let's just dig a dog our way down the field. I think, of course, they were trying to. But he got pressure only a quarter of his dropbacks, which was a six-fewest amount through Sunday night football. I, of course, don't have the stats yet. But his sack rate was 11%. So it was not only that they're, when they got home, it was they got home because he was really trying to extend plays.

I felt like he was double clutching a lot. Even the first interception to make a, make a red it the whole way. But it was a classic. What do you think he saw there? So he threw that. I was like, I'm not sure what he was looking at that he was willing to throw that ball. It was a smash concept and smash is an under route, which, you know, five yards and in and then a corner out, you know, or a flattened corner deep out.

And that's a class, and it was against cover two. That is as classic as football gets, a high low versus cover two corner. And he kind of, I think he saw the corner sinking. So he was trying to body to throw a little bit. And Burrow has a lot. He's a very accurate quarterback, but he doesn't have that kind of juice on his arm to really pin it on guys. So I think that's what happened. He tried to kind of body the throw and then Mika just was like, okay, make it read it the whole way.

Yeah, he was right back. But he was right there. He was, he, it's really cool watching the end zone view of it that they showed. And you can see Mika go, oh, I know what you're doing. He starts kind of creeping down and like just makes a great play on the ball. So I think I think that's what it was. He got spooked a little bit by the corner kind of sinking and he just, you know, that little half second. That's a lot.

The second, or he had another interception on a scene ball. He hitched one too many times. And this is why timing matters so much as a question. quarterback. He hitched one too many times and then the corner was able to undercut it on the seam ball. So it was a nice play. Really nice play. But that's the thing. That's why timing, especially when you don't have that juice in your arm, those, you know, like the rare arms that some of these guys have, less room for error for Burrow. And that's, that's just the type of game it was. It was just always kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Worth mentioning that their long sapper got

hurt in this game, screwed up the process on one of those field goals got blocked. One of the reasons that they didn't, I mean, the extra point, but it shouldn't even have been in that situation. I mean, the fact that you're playing against an offense that can't move the ball and you've turned the ball over, I think four times, five times in this game, and that's what's happening. I mean, it's, the longstop are getting hurt sucks, but they also played pretty poorly and pretty much every other facet.

Javar Chase had an incredible couple plays in this game, though. It is absolutely wild. What he does near the pylon in some of those condensed areas of the field, the ball control, like the body control stuff is absolutely insane. and then the catch that Deante Johnson had on the left side line is going to be one of the catches of the year and it came in an incredibly big moment. I mean, when he made that play, I was like, I cannot believe he just caught that ball. And it was on the biggest drive of the game.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Chase tried to make, though, the catch of the freaking lifetime with that one hander and he almost got his feet in. That was, geez. He's incredible. I swear, I'm going to, I'm going to start counting it is like his percentage of how many catches he gets and whether the first defender tackles him.

because they never do. I'm always like, oh, well, that's a catch and tackle for four yards. And all of a sudden he spins out of it and he keeps his feet and another defender bounces off of his legs. He's got to be one of the strongest pound for pound guys in the league at any position because these DBs just bounce off of them. Steelers are physical team and they're just bouncing off of them. It's insane what this guy's doing. The one, two, one of those two play action passes, one of them was like a 25-yard chunk game because they got him the ball in space over the middle of the field to let him go to work. They should do that more.

I truly believe that they should try to do that more. Do you feel any differently about the Steelers defense today than you, right now than you felt this morning? No, I was pretty high on their defense, but, you know, T.J. Bwap being out kind of. So that's the big thing is that now he's pretty much out for the season. That's a huge blow because watching them today, I had some questions about some of the secondary pieces. Not guys in the secondary, but some of the background players on the defense. I was very excited about the stars.

The stars played like it today. But as a unit, I thought they played extremely well. losing Watt is a massive deal. So we'll see what sort of impact that has over the course of the season. But I mean, he is such a game changing type force and he was again today. Oh, I was ready to talk about the defensive player to your race. Him Miles Garrett got out. He had like, Miles Garrett, I think had four T.FLs and two sacks today.

Parsons had two sacks. I was like, oh, man, defensive player of the year. Let's go, baby. But yeah, I hope T.J. Watt, yeah, it looks bad. So I'm hoping, you know, it kind of stinks. Talk about Falcon Saints for a little bit here. The Saints have a ridiculous comeback win. Falcons with kind of a questionable decision to punt the ball away, I think, on that fourth down when they could have put it away.

I understand the thinking there. It's like if we don't get this, then they're going to be able to kick a field goal and win the game. But also if you get that, it's a yard to half to. That was a long one yard, almost close to two yards. So I understand why they might have made that decision, but I think you absolutely can debate it. The biggest thing that jumped out for me in this game is what a difference having the past catchers made. James Smith said had 24 passing yards in the first half, by the way. You had 24 in the first half. But in the second half, that's the second half, that's a difference. I mean, he finished with 269. So you could do the math there. The plays that those guys made, it just clear as day how big of a difference it makes to have actual NFL receivers. And when they could actually make some contested catches in big moments, how much of a difference that actually makes. Oh, my God. Michael Thomas put the mandible claw on A.J. Terrell in the Reds out. And it was not like he was against a bad corner.

It was against one of the corners we think is top tier, one of the best in the league. Terrell had great coverage. I mean, it was perfect ball placement, a great catch. And also they have Chris Olavay running the stool routes, which is like the fake fade. I knew you were going to talk about that. I knew you were going to love it. As soon as that two point conversion happened, the first thing I thought is Nate is going to mention this because of how refined Chris Alave is in the red zone. He did it in college.

I've never seen a lot of college guys do it. So of course he was able to do it in the NFL. Oh, it looks. Oh, he had a comeback route. That was so pretty too. And this is Jarvis Landry led them in yards. Yeah. It was, that was the third one.

I mean, they're passing text really fun. The O line at first was. getting exposed a little bit. As far as Brady Jared got both guards at one point. Oh my God. He got each of them at a single point in this game. And they were really getting them with the, it's Dean Peace defense. So there's blitzing and then simulated.

They blitzed about the same right throughout the entire game. James was pressured on 40% of his dropbacks in the first half. And then second half, only 18%. Even though the Falcons blitzed at the same percentage. Yeah. So their pass protection got so much better as far as like how they're passing it off. Kamara had it was really, it's really cool, especially in the second half. half of their pass protection in, like in action.

Kamara had a great pickup on one of them coming from the slot. So I think that's what it was. They really went to the cards or the Microsoft Surface tablet sponsored. But they went to that. I think they really honed in on what, what peace was bringing. And they kind of had some good rules in the second half. So I think that really helped them, of course.

I think the Saints are going to be a pretty good team. One of my other takeaways, even though they lost this game, they lost it in pretty horrifying fashion. The Falcon's offense is going to be weird and fun to watch. I love it. Marcus Mario to use play. on 18 of his 37 dropbacks in this game. 50%.

And I think that's not going to go down as the season goes along. They had a couple plays where they're running high lows, like similar kind of stuff that we see from the Rams and just a ton of offenses around the league now where you're pinning somebody down and you have the guy coming behind it on that little inbreaker. And it's Pitts and Drake London running it from the same side. They're going to be able to do so much cool shit with those guys. I want to find the clip for on All 22.

It was on London's first catch. and they run like a dagger, which is a seam and then a dig behind it. And Pitts running that seam was so freaking fast. He was eating up like five yards of stride. And I want to watch it like again. But they, all the play action combinations they have are so much fun. They had one where I want to say it might have been another one to catch. But they had like a curl like you were saying.

But then they had the corner coming from the same side as opposed to kind of going. Yeah, it was London. It was London. It was on the overroute and then came back. It was that classic kind of change up that we love. like to talk about where you think he's going to run that big crossing route all the way across the field and he bent it back toward the corner. I know exactly the play that you're talking about. And I joked about him last year being the island of misfit toys and the toys are a little prettier

this year, a little, little cleaner. We'll have a little more, you know, do hickies to him. But they, like, they were doing some cool stuff with Pitts in the sense that they would go 12 personnel, you know, two tight ends. Pits is more or less, he can do both. He's incredible. He's basically the best ex-receiver We're about to be in the NFL. But they had them as the wide tight end, like in line. And what they were doing was they're dictating the personnel. They're holding the pen less, as you like to say. And so they go, okay, we're 12 personnel and you're matching us with nickel.

Okay, here's a run play. And so that's why the run game was so juicy. It was just they mix up their personnel. They're having different tight ends, a fullback in there, different types of receivers. It was really cool. Like Arthur Smith really gets the max out of his guys and puts them in a good spot. So it's a real every week I tweeted it. They're going to be a game pass team for me.

Just every every week I'm just going to be checking out what they're doing because it's very creative. Yeah, I totally agree. All right. Now that we've sorted out through all that madness, let's get to you at my attention. Gentlemen, you have my curiosity. Now you have my attention. We did this all last season. When you're watching NFL Sundays, the amount of crap that is happening in front of you,

especially in week one. Sometimes can feel like it's hard to dig through. It's hard to pick out exactly what you want to chat about. We're going to pick two, three things every single week that really grabbed us from everything, the wall of stuff coming at you that happens out on an NFL Sunday. We're going to start with the Chief's offense. So many questions about what the Chiefs would look like without Tyree Kill. The answer is pretty good.

Yeah, not bad. 33 first downs of 66 plays. So just, you know, first down every other play. That's fun. They were monsters. They ran everything. They ran everything under the sun. It was so cool.

Undersenet run game, play action, RPO's. Just straight drop back. It was the third highest. Okay, so I like to look at first downs per attempt, just like I look, you know, just kind of like you see how, if they're getting real yards. And this was the third highest of Mahom's entire career, which is just ridiculous.

Also related was this was the highest percentage that he's ever been blitzed in a game according to next gen stats. It was insane. And looking at watching the game. and then looking at the numbers, 45% of his dropbacks he was blitzed in this game. If you look at the rates over all of last season, I think it was 15, 16%, he was the least-pits quarterback in the NFL.

He's been the least splits quarterback in the NFL over the last couple years. I'm wondering if the Cardinals were like, there's no way they expect this. There's no way they think this is coming, so they has brought heat the entire game. It's not as if they were worse against the Blitz, though. He had the almost the exact same EPA per dropback against four-pass rushers as he did against five or more.

So it didn't really matter what they were doing to him in this game. No, no. And I mean, this is where the offensive line was just getting everything. And even there would be times where they're blitzing somebody and Mahomes to get the ball out before they could, you know, before the blitzer could get home. So the times they did have a free runner. It was like, okay, Mahomes is Mahomes. Have fun with that. He had 10 different players got targeted today.

12 straight completions at one point, which was a personal record for him. Their longest pass play, though, was 35 yards. He only had three passes that traveled more than 20 air yards. They're just, we were talking on the pre-show. He just kept hitting doubles on them. It was just double off the wall, double off the wall, double off the wall. They just chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk. What was really cool, too, and why I was saying they kind of ran everything under the sun was

they're already 11 personnel about half their snaps. This is one game sample size. I know that. I had those exact same numbers. Yep. It was two thirds last year. It was about 55% this year. Do you see the heavy personnel, though?

They had two tenants on the field for 40% of their snaps. 13 or 22. Yeah. Like, it's double what they were last year. It's so they, yeah, they, they, they were starting to, like, it's just a little bit of, a little bit of everything. They were getting creative with it. They were three tight ends, one look, Kelsey's the receiver. But then they had him kind of, they had him blocking a pass protection with Noah Gray running around.

Like, they kind of did a little bit of everything. It was cool. It was, it's all stuff we've seen with Andy Reed's offenses, especially with Mahomes. But they have, I think they are finding this formula. And so far, the formula seems to be working out. It was awesome to see them run, like you said, everything. Because they had those couple big chunk plays. I think their biggest play of the day was out of 13 personnel.

That one to Kelsey on the big crossing route was out of super heavy personnel. But then they did a ton of damage breaking it out and going empty in this game. Mahomes in this game, 7 of 9 for 117 yards when the chiefs were in empty. For those of you could do some math at home, that's 13 yards per attempt. The crazier stat, though, he averaged 13.2 air yards per attempt out of empty. I think the league leader last year was around nine. And when I was looking at those numbers, I was like, oh, that, I wonder if there's one throw in there that juices that average. There is that one 34-yard pass.

But other than that, it's like 15 yards, 13 yards, 12 yards, 10 yards, 6 yards, 15 yards. They were launching the ball over the middle of the field out of those empty formations. Just tons of crossing concepts, just attacking the middle of the field. The fact that they were so incredibly dialed in with such a varied game plan that was hitting, in all of these different ways. It just tells you so much about what this pairing of the coach and the play caller actually looks like almost independent of the players around them. Travis Kelsey is so, so good.

But these two, they're like muses for each other. Like the way that they kind of push each other forward is absolutely insane. And I think you were very, very enthusiastic about what Chiefs 2.0 would look like with Hill Gone. I don't even think I could have expected they would look this good this early. That first drive, I kind of was going, oh, baby, this is, this is fought. I mean, just even the run attack was so like they're actually feeding CEH. They're going to get downhill. And yes, they're going to still run RPO's, but it was cool.

They would just run straight quick game, not an RPL, just actual quick game. And then they're the actual run place. So again, they would do the RPO's where they mix them up, but then they're also running. running the true stuff. And this is what I kind of thought they were going to lean into. And they did. And even the RPO's they did run, it was different versions now. So like they had a stretch play.

You know, it's a C.E.H. But then they ran slant flats on the outside. And it was a first down to juju. And usually they just run stick. Stick is the double outs on either side. They did that, of course. But then, okay, now they're just sprinkling a little bit, just a little bit, you know,

a little bit of pepper with their salt. And the mindset felt different, right? Like when you run stick, it's just like it's ball control offense. But if you're starting to run in breaking stuff where you're getting the ball to guys on the move. It's just you're playing a different sort of game in terms of aggressiveness and what you're trying to accomplish. And that's what it felt like today, especially the empty stuff.

It's, you know, we talk about the Rams and them being able to tack down the field out of those looks last year and how impressive that is and what it can do to teams because it often simplifies the defenses you can go against. The Rams are doing chip help stuff though and run it out of tempo so you have to keep the same formations on the field. The chiefs are just like, fuck it. We're just going to do stuff that we should not be able to do because our quarterback is sent from outer space.

And we're having our tight end act like a receiver and Juju Smith. Like the Juju Smith's signing, Smith Shooster signing now, it's like makes even more sense when you see how much they're attacking over the middle. Just it's a discussion we have with the chargers about big bodies in these zone coverages. All right. Well, if you're bringing pressure as well, it's a lot easier to trust a big body against pressure because you're like, okay, I'm just going to pin it right on them. And it just happened over and over and over.

And then all of a sudden you saw Sky Moore getting some yak stuff. McCull Hardman had a couple of days. The Skymoor completion. I liked how they were using McCle Hardman as that move guy. Like a lot of yo-yo motion and kind of keeping defenses off balance, especially down near the red zone when you're trying to make. All right, we're going to get man coverage. We're going to drop some designer stuff for him.

I love that. The Skymore play. Mahomes is so good within the structure of the offense and just playing quarterback. But that's just the play where it's a second reaction throw. Skymore is coming from right to left across the field. When you do that to a defensive coordinator, his brain just breaks. I cannot imagine how difficult and frustrating is to play against those sorts of moments, which we'll talk about a little bit later as they relate to some other quarterbacks from this weekend as well.

And then on top of it is like they get into red zone, there's Andy Reid dialing up a shovel play where C.E.H is the fullback. And then you get that. You get the creativity when it comes into these big game, like big moments. And it's it's unfair. It really is. It must be so frustrating. The one nugget, like the one little observation I loved on the Kelsey touchdown down on the red zone. They lined up in that formation where it's three by one, he's tight to the

formation. So he's the single receiver on the left side, but he's just flexed off the formation. So he's almost like an inline tight end. And they did it, I think, on second down, but they didn't throw him the ball. But the look that they got, there was no corner over there. Isaiah Simmons was alone to that side on Travis Kelsey. So I'm sure somebody called out from the booth and it's like, there's nobody over there. So on the next play, Kelsey just had like a little outside release for an easy touchdown. It's like, well, if you're going to do that, we have answers for you doing that. And I just love that.

It's like you can just clearly see the gears turning up. All right, if you're going to do that, then we're going to do this. And it leads to an easy touchdown. I always refer to like a string reading. It's, it's, okay, you do this, well, we're going to pull it this way. Oh, you're going to react to this. And we're going to, it's rock, paper, scissors, where you always lose. That's, that's what they're doing to you or they're one step ahead, whatever idiom you want

to use. But it's, that's what it felt like today. And it was week one. And it wasn't, other than that red zone play I talked about with the shovel, nothing felt funky. where I was like, oh, well, it's just because it's week one, they had a great game plan. It's more like they've shown these bones before. It's the same stuff they've shown.

But now I think they just honed in on what actually is going to match their personnel and actually match like, hey, let's use this offensive line. Let's use number 15. And we get a bunch of good receivers and Kelsey. It's a really good formula. It looked really good today. All right. Next one here, Minnesota Vikings, especially their offense. You have my attention.

That first drive opened some eyes, I have to assume. and just the game that Justin Jefferson had. All of us were very excited about what Justin Jefferson could look like in this offense. And I think after what happened today, a lot of that excitement was justified. Oh, my goodness. It was so cool. I'm going to be talking about the, uh, my first video will be about the second touchdown. Great plug.

Look at you. Uh-huh. Look out for wind the clock on our YouTube page that you're on right now. Is that coming out tomorrow? It should be coming out tomorrow. Yes. So just. I'm recording after.

this, so better be coming out tomorrow. So let's actually not joke about it. Please, we're going to do this this year. Some of the plays that we're going to talk about on this show, Nate is going to put out, Nate is going to have a video series that comes out every Monday that ties some of the concepts that we talk about on the show to videos that we're going to do for you guys. You can actually see some of this stuff in practice. I know that visualizing it can be a little bit difficult, so we're trying to make it easier

for you by doing some of it actually on YouTube where he's going to draw some of these concepts out for you. So let's walk through that play. Like what is the play that the Vikings ran that you really liked from this game? And it's a classic, it's a classic, classic play action concept, a deep one, a three-man one. Usually deep play actions are two men working across, like we say over and post, double corners and everything. This is a three-man, three-mount-in route concept. I've been around teams that call this cross-country.

But what it is is you have a deep, they had a deep post with KJ Osborne. Then they had Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson running basically overs at each other. And what it did was the Packers running so much, they weren't covered three on this play. Usually running so much too high in the quarters is you're really put in the safeties. You're making them communicate. We talk about offense aligns going against D-line games and all that.

They have to communicate and pass it off. Same thing except for D-Bs. And what they did was, so the Post took Stokes out of the play. And here comes Justin Jefferson on the, I'm sorry, Osborne took Stokes out of the play. So here comes Justin Jefferson coming on the other overall. route. And there's Jaya Alexander going, oh, I'm passing this off. I'm in cover three, but I am passing this off because I have another overrout. I'm feeling coming at me.

But Stokes is running out of the play. If you're wondering why that was so wide open, it's because they game the shit out of them. And that's what they did. If you're wondering how Justin Jefferson is open by 20 yards on that play, if you go back and watch the play, it's the touchdown that he scores where he has all the yak afterwards. There isn't anyone within 20 yards of him. You can't see another human being on the screen when he catches the ball. And if you're wondering how that is, it's because the corner to that side is literally chasing a guy to the goal post. And the safety on that side followed Thielen just enough on the over before Jair Alexander had to catch it. So now there's just no one in that space. And they did a couple of

those. He hit a couple big time overrouts off play action in this game. We're really speculating about what the Vikings' offense would look like with O'Connell. A lot of play action. A lot of play action shots on those big crossing routes, similar to what we've seen. The difference is a lot of those play action concepts that were huge plays for the McVe-Shanahan kind of tree early on were two-man deep concepts.

You have a clear-out, and then you have the big overcoming behind it. But if you're playing those two high shells, you can catch that. But if they're three-man and you're clearing two guys out with those routes that you're talking about, now you're starting to attack two high shells with crossing routes in a way that you couldn't with a more basic version of those concepts if you if that's fair. Yeah, you're just messing with the defense's math like you are.

You're overloading. That's what you're doing. You're making them, you're breaking their rules. And on top of it, we speculated, like you said, we speculated about this was they, God, he set it up beautifully. Like he was calling, he was calling a gem of a game in the first half because he was just all the run place, they had so many jet motions, which we figured they would, all the ramp stuff. But they were going 11 personnel.

They ran 11 personnel two thirds at a time compared to about 40% last year for the Vikings. So they're doing like split zone with KJ Osborne as the de facto tight end going across. But then they ran jet motion with power. The Rams never run power. So it's okay. So O'Connell's not just going no cut and paste. He's actually going, okay, we're going to tweak this for what we want to do, which I loved. And then on top of it, like the fourth and one on Jefferson's first touchdown, they've shown jet motion.

They've shown jet motion. They've shown jet motion. Okay. now Justin Jefferson's on the jet motion and they catch Stokes just locked in because he's, oh, it's fourth and one. I'm man on my guy. But that's his guy. First to the flat was Jefferson coming his way.

It was just great design in a big situation. And that's having confidence. That's designing a play and actually calling it on a fourth and one. That's not going, no, let's just run the ball, which is just run zone. Because I won't get yelled at if I do that. Because if Jefferson's not open there, there's not really another route that's going to be popping anywhere. But that's just they knew what the design was. They knew what to attack.

And they really got after Stokes this game. And they did a great job. Like all this stuff works. And it helps when you have a guy named Justin Jefferson that can run every route and catch every ball and make guys miss. Check his watch on his way to score the second touchdown. He juked backwards because he thought and he was like, oh, there's no one near me. And then he's like, okay, I'm going to waltz into the end zone. It's, there's an awesome performance from their offense.

And what you said about him doing everything, he was running option routes in this game. There were a couple different plays where he's the second guy in a stack and he's running the option routes out of it the same way we see from Cooper Cup. He's going to do a lot of that stuff. Not as much in the slot. You pointed out on Twitter earlier today. I think you only had one snap it from the slot about three quarters of the way through this game.

But he's still in stacks. He's still going in motion. You're still making the game easy on him and hard on the defense. And I actually thought Olson did a really good job during the broadcast of pointing out some of the ways that they were doing that. But I think that's going to be a consistent theme from this offense over the course of the season. Vikings, I mean, the point totals aren't going to wow you.

They were four of 13 on third down in this game. They struggle to sustain some drive strings and stuff together. But I think Kirk Cousins had the fifth highest EPA per dropback of any quarterback of the weekend. Their offense was very efficient. And I think they're going to continue to be very efficient if they're this intentional about putting arguably the best receiver in the league. There's a couple other guys we're going to talk about today. He's in the conversation. He's pretty fucking good.

And they're doing it really, really intentionally about making the game easier out of them. And you just got to remember the Packers have a good defense. Like I know they lost this game. They have a good defense. That was a good performance from the Vikings against a very good defense that does a lot of things well and has a lot of juice now. So it was a it was really, really well done. I love that you point out the stack stuff. Usually when you get a guy off the ball in a stack, it's because, okay, we don't want him press.

Maybe he's not great against press, but Justin Jefferson can beat press. And so now you're just hitting the easy button for him. Exactly. So on top of the hard stuff, which is game up some easy stuff for him. This is what the Packers have done with Devante Adams for years, which is what the, It's designed some stuff so you can just get some easy buckets. And then on top of that, just also catch some crazy balls in the end zone. It's, yeah, I'm excited to watch Justin Jefferson this year.

You were talking about KJ Osborne. It made me look up how much 11 personnel the Vikings used today. There's only two thirds of their place. So they actually used a decent amount of 22 personnel with C.J. Ham and about 10% 21 personnel. And we were wondering, again, just a question coming into week one, the Rams literally did not run a play that wasn't an 11 personnel in week one. They were like 95% 11 personnel last year. What would the Vikings look like even if they had three receivers that they could rely on?

The answer is more varied than the Rams did when Kevin O'Connell was there. So just little tiny things you can check off over the course of the first few weeks as you start to get some answers to these questions. Right. And that's I like, that's why I'm kind of optimistic with O'Connell is I like the fact, you know when Zach Taylor first went to the Bengals, I know we already just had a rough bangles segment. But when he first went there, he just pile on. There's nothing we can do at this point. I know, I know.

But he just had, all he did was 11%. He just tried to copy the Rams attack and like cut and paste it. And so it was cool to see like just that power example I gave, the power play or the pole in the guard. They did that two or three times. It was cool to see, okay, yes, we can, we're going to build the base out of this. But the rest of the pyramid, I'm going to make my own stuff and I understand what my personnel is.

So it's cool that they got CJ Ham, him going a little bit. They had a screenplay for him. They did. Like, yeah, I know. CJ, hey, I'm, you know, just a hero, Minnesota hero. But, yeah, I think O'Connell's going to really use those types of guys. So I'm curious how he gets Irv Smith going with guys like that, too. Last thing I wanted to mention about the Vikings, I really like some of the stuff that it was Zadaria Smith in this game.

He was lined up over the guard on one of the sacks that he had. He was lined up as an off ball linebacker on first down on one of the big plays that he had. I was like, all right. I mean, if that's what you want to do, that sounds good. So I didn't watch, I didn't rewatch the Vikings defense in this game as strictly as closely as I watched the Vikings offense. I do want to go back and watch though and just kind of see what the source was for some of the Packer's struggles and what the Vikings were doing. But I think the first little bit that we've gotten pretty darn good for Minnesota. Last one here. Don't need to spend a ton of time on this. rewatching it. It was actually more a few plays near the end that really jumped out. But Cleo Mac, Joey Bosa, Chargers Pass Rush, you have some of my attention after the way. that that game ended and some of the stuff that they did up front. And we're pretty optimistic about,

I know we're talking about Mack and Bosa here. We're optimistic about the Chargers offense. You know what's really great for pass rushers to play with the lead? Yes. And pin those ears back and go. You only can, this is what having two pass rushers and we talked about with Deonté is when you have those guys just heating up the quarterback over and over is you don't,

those quarterbacks, that were, I'm sorry, those offenses are trying to come back. They're trying to get as many guys out on round. so they can't chip help as much. So you have to pick your poison. It's we have to get the ball out quick or we chip help. And, you know, now we don't got five guys, you know, out on routes right away. And you can see that as the game went along, you can see that with Carr.

There's a saying that as quarterback rooms I've been in that you're not hot, but you're warm. It's, you know, you know that they're only rushing four, but one Mississippi, two Mississippi. Oh, God, get the rid of the ball. And you can see that happening to Derek as the game went along. he's not only got sacked five times he got hit nine times four by four by mac two by bosa there's a third down run where mac just blows up the side like caves in the whole side of the play it was just yeah i mean that was a pretty kick-ass performance by them especially as the game went along there was some that the third sack was a coverage sack there was a sack on a wide receiver pass from adams

like there were a couple cheap ones in that game such a funny play it was a very funny play derrick car really needs to work on his past protection technique that was pretty pretty pitiful. He literally had to take a bull rush from, I think it was Joey Bosa in the moment. It was terrible. I was like, oh, man, that's a rough spot for Derek Carr. But I, what I really loved is I love some of the designs from the Chargers in some of those moments. So one of the things I love is when the Saints specifically do a lot of this, where they'll have their two eds rushers really wide with one single nose over the center and they'll walk the two linebackers up. So they'll have a 5-0 look across, but only with three defensive linemen. The Chargers

did that several times in this game, including in some really big moments. The first Khalil Mack sack, they did that, and they ran a twist with Derwin and Kyle Van Noy, which was awesome. I know. I want to look what his blitz rate was because Derwin James, we all know he's a great blitzer. He's such a great all-round player, but they were getting, I mean, it's funny watching him beat guards. Like he's, it's not like he just beats up on running backs.

He's a legit pass rusher. So now you got three guys just bringing heat running those games and a funky looks, too, because that causes edgy. too because now the old line's got to, am I signed out to him or I got to keep my eyes on it? So when you got that kind of firepower, might as well game it up a little bit. And then on that final drive, on the second down, Van Nuay was again, they lined up with him over the guard. He came.

He had a great bull rush on the right guard. Next play was that Bosa sack with Khalil Mack who had a really nice spin move. And then the one on fourth and eight to finish off the game, they had that same 5-0 look. And Mack just had a ridiculous hump move that just finished off. the play against the left against Colton Miller. It was one of my favorite past rush moves that I've seen in a while from him is just extreme amount of power. And the fact that they're playing that way and they're adding in some really cool wrinkles

to some of their pass rush looks. That's a group and just a coached unit that I am very excited about watching as the season unfolds here. And now they play the Chiefs in four days, which is going to be. Oh, my God. I don't even think I'm going to be ready for that. I'm going to need to sleep until then in order to get enough energy to be out for that one. Take a nap before that game just so you're good to go. I know that I'm excited I'm excited for the offensive line against these guys that's going to be a really really fun game all right so every week I want us to predict what the sports shouting of the week is going to be if you guys this is a very esoteric 30 rock joke the I'm not going to say the names of actual shows the debate show that they are parodying on 30 rock is called sports shouting Tracy Morgan is a frequent guest so we're going to try to program sports shouting on this show figure out what the

conversations are going to be over the course of the next week. Speaking of the Raiders, I think we're going to have a lot of chatter about what Devante Adams looked like in that game for Las Vegas and what the Packers offense looked like without Devante Adams. All of this stuff is right for overreaction in week one. There is no crazier week in terms of some of the shit that is going to be said over the next 72 hours and what's actually going to matter by the end of the season. but if we're trying to zero in on a couple different topics,

this is one, and I think there's going to be one more. But what do you think about all of the dialogue that's going to happen about Aaron Rogers here over the next two days? I can already see it because they already have the visual, too, of Rogers throwing a hissy fit in the first quarter. And so that's, you can, I can already see it. They show him having to hissie fit. Did you see what he looked like after the Watson miss?

Right. So Watson drops it. He literally looks over to the sideline and essentially was like, I told you. Like that's essentially what his look was. It was just like he kind of like shrugged. I assume Matt will fluer after that drop. And there is going to be so much of that.

Some passive aggressive, some just aggressive. He that that one that Watson dropped. I think that ball touched the ceiling in Minnesota. Like that thing was a rainbow of all rainbow throws. And yeah, that that's what it felt like. It felt like a little passive aggressiveness. There was a someone had a great tweet. I'm blanking on this.

They used CM Punk, the wrestler. went off in an interview last week at a media scrum and he just called out all these other wrestlers and the rant like matches what Aaron Rogers is probably feeling like perfectly. I'm working with a bunch of effig kids, you know, like all this. It was it was exactly what Aaron Rogers was feeling. And now on top of it, you probably watches Devante Adams getting 17 targets. Devante Adams was targeted on 40% of his routes today. 40% of his routes.

He was targeted. It's ridiculous. And he was performing like crazy. And what's funny. too is I actually thought the Packers, even though he got sacked a few times, I actually thought the old line played okay. And it was mostly coverage sacks. And why do coverage sacks happen?

Because someone's not getting open. So who do you think Aaron Rogers is going to be mad at his coaches and his receivers this week? So sure, it's going to be a ton of fun in Green Bay. I want to rewatch it. But what did you think of what you saw of Devante's usage just throughout the game and the ways they were, they seemed like they were just trying to create opportunities for him in every way imaginable, which we were wondering about that.

Are they just going to try to channel the way he was using? in Green Bay where it's like, we're just building the passing offense around you. And it did really feel like that. We're drawing him up designer stuff in the red zone. It just felt like kind of an extension of the way the Packers used him, which is pretty exciting. It is. I was just like, just like, just like I saw Josh McDaniels just because like I saw Josh McDaniels run the power pass where the guy pulls.

We've seen Grot catch these a million times and Darren Waller caught it, which is Darren so it's a good player. So it's like, okay, is this going to be the progression based stuff? And I mean, it was. You can tell Derek Carr was really trying to get through stuff. but you can tell they put him on like the prime routes like he had a backside dig that was really nice but then some they put him in a slot and just gamed him up you know it looked like a choice route or something but also yeah like you said the red zone plays it was they know who their best player is like they

they know how much they invested in him and it looked that way which i is encouraging i think because i was that was something we were worried about but yeah they used them a ton and every which which way possible which is what helps when you have a top tier receiver that's scheme proof it was a pretty wild, like, hour and a half stretch. I guess it was before the first games. But watching Aaron Rogers get asked on national television about doing ayahuasca and what it did for his mindfulness routine and then watching him bitch at people on the sideline for an entire game was an incredible several hour experience.

Oh, that's funny. Yeah, it's just, oh, yeah, it's helped me come to peace and just understanding and patience. I was just sitting there watching it happen. My fiance was sitting next to me on the couch. She goes, do that really just happen? I was like, yes, it really did. on the pregame show. Oh, my God.

This, what is going on? Like, what is, what is this team? What is this team? It's, it's absolutely bizarre. It's what's going on there. I'm sure they'll be fine, but it was just an incredible series of events. Oh, even like, so this is Aaron Rogers almost threw a pick on, uh, the flat. Like he always throws those little flats.

So number three, Y flat usually, but it was a Christian Watson and he almost throws a pick, uh, because the guy jumped it because Romeo Dobbs, didn't block and then Watson stopped running. So that's going to be a great play to watch a film room. The most simple play that you could run. Just a flat route where two guys block. I'm sure he'll be real chill about it. Yeah, two of the rookies busted and he almost threw a pick six on it.

Yeah, I'm sure Rogers, who does not care about his image at all. Probably doesn't, you know, I'm sure he's going to let him rip on that one. All right. One more, I want to talk about this. It was not in our original plan here because we had not, it was, we did this before the Sunday night game ended. We'd be a lot of conversation about Dak Prescott and about the Dallas Cowboy. was this week. Even before the thumb injury, there was going to be a lot of Dallas panic unfolding

over the next few days. That volume is going to be very, very loud in the coming hours. Oh, yeah, especially this entire team was under fire. This offense, too, had to perform. And we said, I said, that a lot of this, this cowboy's offense is all on deck's shoulders. And now he's out. And this is supposed to be when he was healthiest. Even when he let, I knew his bad juju when five days ago, had a bum ankle in practice. And it's like, oh, no, this is happening. And now it's a finger or wrist, whatever it was. And yeah, I'm sure at least the Cowboys don't have a big fan base, you know, or anything where, you know,

they're not very vocal fan base with huge, you know, ramifications for TV and everything. So I'm sure no one's going to talk about what they looked like, yes, or tonight and also what Dax injury is going to look like. Sean Payne may be spending some time on the Dallas Redfinner Zillow pages here in the next few days, I have to assume. Just just browsing. Just wondering what the market looks like. I don't know.

I think it's just moved up. It's like, I think he was originally planning for New Year's and now it's like, oh, man, maybe we can get there in Thanksgiving. Like maybe Halloween based on the pace that this is going at. All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to talk about some of the teams. Let us down a little bit on Sunday. I'm not mad.

I'm just disappointed. That's a new one. That's great. I appreciate that's a good one. That's from neighbors. I think it is. Very well done, Kent. So each week we're going to talk about a couple of teams.

I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed. And that's how I feel about the Indianapolis Colts. Man, our particular top 10 offense. So we can dig into this. You look at the final score. They tie the Texans in week one after the Titans lose to the Giants. I don't think anyone's excited about the Titans,

even people in Nashville. I talked to Derek Classen on the AFC South preview about this. I was like, the Colts have to win this division this year. If they do not win this division this year, I don't know when they're ever going to do it. And then they tie the Texans. Going back and rewatching this game, they looked a lot better than I expected them to. I'm not even trying to defend them. This is not a rationalization.

They looked a lot better than I expected them to. This is just nonsense mistakes in high leverage moments. Yep. Coming up empty inside the five yard line because you're running a wildcat play from on fourth and two, which is driving me insane. I need Frank Reich to go do like 20 red zone studies and just spend an entire month of the offseason figuring out how to draw up plays inside the five yard line. I'm sure they already do that. But this team consistently does not come away with points inside the 10 and it drives me insane. So that's one of them.

Two for five. Two for five. I just, it needs, you got a great run game. Can't keep doing that. That you cannot keep doing that. Can't.

Ryan throws a pick on a screen pass at the 22-yard line. Yeah. They fumble a snap exchange inside the 40 at one point. And so really, really botched opportunities that should have come away with points. And then a couple other just kind of bonehead moments. Derek Stingley had an incredible PBEU in the red zone. Awesome play.

On Alec Pierce. You pointed out. I had already watched it. I was like, man, it was an incredible play. So you go back and you watch it. Their offense was more consistent and just more explosive and just better overall than I expected them to be. But they still tied the Texans on the road. They only had two, three and outs.

I thought I was going to look at it. They're 33 first downs. Yeah. They put up, I don't know. They had 90 plays. 33 first downs over 500 yards. It's just that, yeah, when it came, they went where they go, six for 15 on third down, over one and fourth down, the play you brought up. That's what it was.

It was just the high leverage moments. Even one of their three notes, they got nine yards. It was the first drive. And it was fourth and one. You know, it wasn't like they were stalled, you know, weren't doing anything. It was just, that's what it was. It was just a frustrating performance a little bit on the, in the big moments. But they looked balanced.

The run game looked awesome. There's a windback play where, um, I'm blinking on the receiver number 16. He pulls around. Thank you, Dulin. And he pulls around on it. And I'm really excited to watch that one in all 22 because it was, it was beautifully blocked by everybody. So it was, it was just a lot of varieties. running pinpole stuff, that the run game looked good.

And it was just that, yeah, they shot themselves in a foot a few times. The defense on the other side, they, Gus Bradley is like blitzing now. He blitz about, he blitz about league average. He read like a simulated pressure at one point. There were guys coming from different spots. I was like, man, I did not expect this to happen at all. He blitzed last year with the Raiders, 4.7% of the time on first and second down. So usually the least blitz happy.

they puts that today about 11%. League average is usually about 13%. So league average Gus Bradley. Baby steps. Okay. Baby steps. That's all it is. You don't have to be Todd Bulls.

You don't have to get the Spags level. You know, just put like Gus, you know, have a little, have a little more of a little pep to you. But I did like that. The defense, they run a lot of cover three. I'm sure that's not surprising to anybody that's watching Gus Bradley defense. The Texas scored on the same play. Yeah. Oh, Texas scored.

There's the two O.J. Howard touchdowns happened on the Eagles. exact same play on opposite sides of the field. So they were lined up with in 12 personnel, both tight ends were on one side, both receivers were on the other side. Both tight ends ran vertical routes. So the number one receiver pulled the corner to that side because the free safety was shaded just a little bit to the receivers. OJ. Howard just ran down the seam on the exact same play for two touchdowns.

Because it's like, well, to cover three-beater, we know exactly what they're going to be in so we can hit it with it. They probably need to find a solution to that specific play because they got B5 two touchdowns on it today. especially with Davis Mills to O.J. Howard. It's not exactly. Who wasn't on the team a week ago? Yeah. Right. And so like Mills has got a rocket launcher attached to his arm. So yeah, maybe we want to close a little quicker on those. And that's where, you know,

not having a Shaq Leonard in there because that's what he goes by now, right? Shaq Leonard. Yep. Yeah, Shaq Leonard. Not having him, you know, probably carrying on all those kind of plays or getting north, you know, the coverage stuff. So the second one, I want to ask you about this. So they actually brought a pressure on the second one. Okay. So they, they had two linebackers on the field. Might have been three linebackers. I think they might have been in base personnel, but they had two off-ball linebackers in that play.

One of them blitzed. So this is going to be a little bit naughty, but I actually do know the answer. So if one of them blitzed, and you only have one kind of whole player that's like in that hook area as a zone defender, can he not get like a certain amount of depth because he's the only person there?

Because he stood flat-footed as Jose Howard ran by him. I wasn't sure if his responsibilities in the zone changed because there was no one else next to him on that. side. I think it's more, I'm thinking of the play you're talking about. It's that he's relating to the back. Okay. That makes sense.

Okay. Yeah. So he's more worried about the back as opposed to carrying with that. Okay. I want to say it's more on the intermediate or the, the, uh, seam defender on those for maybe not carrying or that they just had to avoid and

the safety's got to make a play. There wasn't even a seam defender because he was the only guy on that side because there was the other linebacker was split. It was spot dropped, didn't it? Yeah, now that I think about it. I think it was like spot drop or so. Yeah, I think they just doesn't matter. This is terrible podcast.

I just wanted to know the answer because I was watching it. I was like, why wouldn't, why isn't he moving? So it's just something we can go back. I think he's really too back. All right. I do feel okay about the Colts after the game. Going back and rewatching and I was like, eh, this is just a shitty outcome.

Like, they'll be fine. Their offense looks a lot better than I expected them to, putting up 20 points, turn the ball over. You come away with no points inside the 20, a couple different times against the NFL team. This is some of the stuff that can happen. They missed a field goal, a bunch of that shit. The other team, I'm a little bit disappointed in that

I think some of it might be a little bit real with some caveats. The Niners lost to the Bears today by two scores. I know. I didn't know. I wouldn't expect that. It was so in horse racing in a mutter in a mutter race when it's sloppy, you kind of throw it out a little bit.

You know, you kind of just go. So that's kind of a good thing. Yeah. I'm not going to take too much out of that. But, you know, maybe Justin Fields of mutter. You know, maybe this, maybe he's built for this. Like maybe this is he's built for Chicago. Like maybe that's what he is.

just him run around. But it's, it was just a such a, such a mucky game that it's hard to, you see guys like slipping and falling. Fields got two gloves on. It was kind of just a strange game that I'm like excited to like rewatch on film because I think it's going to be hilarious watching probably some stuff that

happened off screen because Soldier Fields view was so tight. What a disgusting game. The rain. It was hilarious this morning. We got up. We're going to let Molly outside and she was running to go outside because the door was open. and then she saw the weather and she skidded across the floor as she stopped. And then about 90 minutes later, Nick Bosa did the exact same thing as he was walking out for warm-ups.

I saw that already this morning. I have multiple calls from people in my life today. Multiple calls and texts after that game being like, what a win. This is great. I told you. I told you they were going to be okay this year. Guys, Justin Fields completed eight passes today. Eight.

When I was doing true media, I had a lower the threshold just so I could get his stats in there. One of them was a broken play where he ran out of the pocket and had to throw the ball back across the field for 50 yards. The three other chunk plays in this game, I think there were probably four chunk plays. I didn't actually sort it. But there was one play action past the Pringle that was an actual within the structure of the play completion. There was the 51-yard scramble. There was the long scramble that he had as a runner where he had to spin out of a clear sack. He made a guy miss coming off, unblocked off the edge. on a play action pass on one point,

and then he had the actual within-structure touchdown pass to St. Brown that was like a beautiful little league play. That was perfect for that situation. But this is a, it was a disgusting, ugly game. I've not taken a ton away from this as far as the quality of the Bears team goes. I thought they played really hard.

I thought that they had a couple really nice plays on defense. The Brisker TFL that forced that third down near the goal line was a fantastic play. And Justin Fields made some big plays and big moments where he really, really had to carry it. But I still have some big questions about what the Bears offense is going to look like over the course of the season within normal situations. That being said, I also think I have some questions about what the Niners offense is going to look like in some pretty traditional situations moving forward. Yeah, it was like the worst possible game for a Trey Lance. Because Trey Lance also throws a wobbly ball. So wind is not very

fun for that. And he had he had the most past attempts this week of three more seconds, which I thought was interesting. I mean, and some was scrambling or running around. Last year, he had the highest average time to throw in the league. Yeah. And so now you're getting, you know, Bears pass rush was decent, but, you know, 40-9 offensive line. It was, they had some moments where they didn't look too, look too hot. So you don't really want your quarterback holding on the ball for three and a half seconds, four seconds.

They also fields and Lance combined had 24 total carries between them, which I thought was hilarious. But yeah, I know we're talking about the 49ers offense, but real quick with the Bears' offense, or really more. the 49ers defense. You could tell the Bears coaches were just terrified on third down. They're like, we do not. Just hold it on for dear life. They were,

they ran the ball so many times on like third and sevens. They caught them once on a nice like little zone play. It was third and four. They got it. Yeah. Oh, it was awesome. But I could tell they're just like, oh, no, it's third down. Oh, God.

Look at Bosa. Oh, God. They're over. Oh, no. Here comes the game. Hand it off. Let's just run. Let's just run a zone play.

I also think that a lot of 40-9ers, like one of my favorite bets, or bets I'm going to be looking at is all the totals for Nyer's games because I think their defense is just going to be, you know, just a bunch of banshees. And then on offense, like they're, I think they're a run ball and, you know, hit some chunk plays. I think it's going to be a lot of quick games, you know, not quick game throwing, but short games. It's like a greatmatic start, like just a lot of, it's going to be really quick. 82 pitches. I think that's how a lot of 40-Nires games are going to be.

But their offense, when Eli Mitchell went down, my pick for leading rusher in the NFL, when he, when he went down and all of a sudden they had to spam by, or Bayern Pringle, Debo same old runs. It's like, foreigners don't want to do that. They want to sprinkle them in, but they don't want to lean on it. They don't want to build the whole ship out of it. Terrior Price was enacted.

They had Jeff Wilson and Eli Mitchell, I think, coming into the game as the backs. So as soon as Eli Mitchell went down, a lot of Debo runs, which is the exact same situation they were in last year. Funnyest moment of this game, by far. It was the same drive where Fields made that guy miss. The bear's getting a 15-yard penalty

because the holder had to bring out a towel to sop up the area where they were trying to kick a field goal. For everyone asking, you can clean off the area. There's obviously the famous scene and the famous shot of all of the Patriots players sweeping up the snow in the game again, in the tuck rule game. But you cannot bring a foreign object to clean the field. That was the penalty. You learn something new every day when you're dealing with the soldier field turf.

It was so funny. It was you can tell the holder was just, what? What? It was like, come on, man. The replay was hilarious because it's just this big sopping towel that he just launches. And it's just, it was, I never seen a paper towel in a pool. And it wasn't getting a lot done. Like it's a bounty commercial, like, you know, just absorbing all this stuff.

I know. That was hilarious. That really was. But it was an eventful day for kickers and holders and long snappers, apparently. I mean, even backups ones like with the bangles. We had some experiences with it. I think a lot of people became aware of the operation. that is the long snapper holder and kicker today, just for a variety of different reasons.

Justin Reed banged a kickoff for a touchback. He looked pretty damn good. I can't believe all that meme from the past month of him practicing kicks. Oh, he made a 55 yarder in practice. It came to fruition like five minutes into week one. I couldn't believe it. I thought it was a bit. I was like, are they winning by so much that they're just trotting him out there?

I didn't realize that the kicker had gotten hurt. I thought he was, I thought the kicker maybe was like, hey, hey, Justin, I got you. like I got you, bud. Like I've been to act like I hurt my ankle. But then they show the replay of his ankle. It looked like snapped and a half. I was surprised he wasn't more hurt. He came out and kicked a 50-yard field goal at one point after he did that.

Yep. Hoblin. Yeah. He was justifiably excited about it when it went through. I would have been too. Hey, he gets to have his Willis Reed moment. It came out. The crowd went nuts and he bangs the field goal.

You know, everyone's going to remember that one like the 72 Knicks. Last thing I want to say about the Bears, I will say, when you're at this stage of it, you are at nascent stages. literally step one in the process of a new regime, you'll take these games. These are culture building games. This shit does matter. Winning games does matter

and pulling out games like this does matter. Even if it doesn't necessarily predict what your performance is going to look like moving forward, when they're doing that slip and slide in the end zone and including your first round pick starting quarterback, like diving head first into the mud with his teammates after you win your first game of the season, that stuff does have actual consequence.

But I don't think it's necessarily. going to be indicative of what's going to happen here over the next month. That's the thing about the NFL, man. A win is a win. That it's, you know, we all want the stats. We want to talk about the Mahomes numbers and all that. Everybody, of course, wants those performances, but only one that matters, only stat that matters is what's in the W column.

And I'm telling you, they, they could care less how it happens. It's Chicago anyways. This is how they're supposed to win games. All they, all they needed was a special team's touchdown. And like that would have been a true Bears win. Brisker, Brisker looks sweet, though. He's a smart player, dude. He's cool.

He's cool. He's cool. Gordon had some up and down moments. There was a pretty, pretty brutal one, but there was some good ones as well. Just start to stack them up. That's all that matters. All right. We're going to take one more quick break.

When we get back, we're going to pick out a couple guys that we took notice of this weekend. Love it. I don't know what that is. Is that another wrestling job? Maybe. I probably, yes. We're going to ask Ken what these are before we do them. Anyway, each week, each week we're in a segment called We See You.

It's going to be about a. spotlight performance that we're trying to hone in on somebody that we want to shine a little bit more light on. Oftentimes, this is going to be somebody that was a little bit underrated, a little bit under the radar. In week one, there's so many guys that we actually wanted to take a look at because we didn't know what it was going to be that we're going to focus on A.J. Brown today. 10 catches on 13 targets for 155 yards. Seems like the Eagles are pretty intent about building their passing game around AJ Brown. I think a third of his routes he got a target. Like it's yeah we talk about like Devante abs and where the bread is buttered.

Yeah, I think they, they traded it for him and paid him. Yeah, I think all the players are going to be designed. It was it was really interesting. And this is where I'll eat a little bit of crow was that I was a little worried about, okay, well, Jay one hurts. He doesn't really throw it on the inside. And AJ Brown makes a lot living on digs and end breakers. It doesn't matter.

It's like he's dunking on guys and go balls and how they get the yak with AJ Brown because he's a yak monster. That is like, that's what he is. Screens and slants. Like the traditional way. That's it. You know, the missionary position of yak. But it's like, that's, but he got this.

Hey, dude, it's 10 o'clock West Coast time. It's so he got the screens. I know. But they, as opposed to these play actions with Tanna Hill, now it's RPO's with J. And it's slants and glances and it, man, he looked awesome. He looked awesome today. The first passing play they had. the game, I think, was a screen to him.

It was like an inside breaking screen where it was, they threw it behind the line of skirmish. So it looked like a slamp. It was actually a screen pass. Titans used to do that a ton in his first season to manufacture touches for him. They also ran a couple more traditional like tunnel screens to him coming underneath. Don't like that. That is not where he does well because he's not a change of direction player.

He's not a stop and start guy. He's a buildup guy. You want to get him the ball on the move moving downhill. Hill. So some of the slants and glances and all of that, he looked great on. But I think you can throw those little tiny screen passes out of there. And they both of them, I think they ran two of them. Neither of them were very successful. But every time they got him the ball in the move, huge chunk gains. And I know what you're saying about the end breaking routes. They did hit a couple of them, though. I mean, he had nine completions between the numbers today. I think he had

104 all of last season. So they're doing it more, even if it's little baby steps. I mean, a couple slants and easy ones, but they hit one, like, deeper strike route that we would see from Tennessee. There was the stuff that AJ Brown was awesome on where the tight end ties it down in front and then he runs that strike or glance or whatever you want to call it behind it. And it went for a chunk gain. I mean, if they can hit one or two of those a game combined with him hitting go balls and all the other shit you can do with him, it's going to unlock the passing game in some of the ways they probably envisioned and we had doubts about. And we're talking about the like first and second down plays. But even like there's a third down in the second half and it's an out route. And it was I think it was third and seven.

How much. So it was right after the go ball happened. Go ball happened. Exactly what you're going to say. And then the third and seven happened though. And he sells going vertical. And you can see the, it's the TV copy. But you can see the corner just fly off the screen because he's so scared of the speed.

But then he runs out route and hurts throws it right on time. Perfect. And it was like, well, now we're doing that straight dropback stuff. That's great. That's where it's nice to have a dude because sometimes you drop a play and you're like, okay, who do I put here? Who do I put here? It's nice when you have a guy like AJ Brown and you go, well, it's third down.

And, you know, somebody free Devante Smith. I know only one guy could get these targets for them. But it's this helps. This helps out a young quarterback a ton to know, hey, it's third. You know, it's a big play here. I know exactly where I'm going with the ball. That really helps a quarterback to just take other decisions out of his mind. I love that you mentioned that two-play sequence on that right side

because that's exactly what I noticed. He hits the goal ball and then he sells it so hard vertically and hits the little speed out. And it was easy because he had so much cushion. And watching A.J. Brown is just such, this is why good receivers are good. And I know that sounds stupid, but A.J. Brown runs a four or five. Okay. AJ Brown is not this down-the-field vertical burner, but he plays so violently and with so much conviction that go-ball, he just sells a little bit and he's gone.

And as soon as you hit that one, it's like being a shooter and hitting one three. As soon as you start doing that and people have to respect it, that's all you have to do is make people account for your ability to beat them over the top. And if you can do that, then you can start eating underneath. And he had one slant today. Remember that touchdown that Jamar Chase scored against the Ravens last year against Rowan Humphrey? Where he sells it vertically with so much push and almost throws him off before running a slant. A.J. Brown, running slants is not a complicated thing on its face. But when you're doing it that violently and with so much vertical push and you're getting guys on their heels and just playing so fast underneath it, that's how a slant turns into a 20-yard gain because of the separation that you're creating from it.

He reminds me when it comes to pure violence as receivers, the only guy that really is in his category in terms of size and all of that stuff is Julio Jones. was like peak Julio That out route was Julio all the way That's Julio running a blaze out You know the fake the inside and come back out It's so He's 228, 2.30

Like it's he's a big boy Doing this stuff He is built And that's why it's so violent I was shocked when I saw him at training camp I was shocked at how big he was He's such a big guy And that's the thing is

So there's a lot of speed guys The NFL everybody's fast But when you're, you just said, okay, he's a four or five guy. But when you're doing it at 228, 2.30, now guys can't get their hands on you because you're so strong. And on top of it, you can stack them and beat them on the go stuff and sell every, all every break. They have to honor. There's a lot of guys that you see that they run violent and then they rise up right before they break. This is why like out Pierce, like the receiver, a cult for the receiver, he has to learn how to do this.

And you have to make it all look the same that you're going violent, that you're sinking and you don't get exposed. and you get high and you get a tell. AJ Brown's able to do that all full speed. So it's one of those where I want to say I want to give him more credit as a route runner than I have before. Like he has a little more into his bag that it was kind of cool to see it outside of the Tennessee Titans attack. He was fantastic today. And there was questions about what was it going to look like?

If you drop him in there, is it going to be that effective? How does he fit with J.1 Hurts? I think we got a lot of answers to that today. Their passing game looked very, very good. I guess the Lions defense that we have tons of questions about. But I think step one, test one, box checked for me with AGA Brown and with the Eagles. I do want to say, we're not going to talk about coaches with this often, but I want to give Brian Davel one quick shout out before we get to the end of the show here for going for two at the end of that game.

I don't think we should end this show without mentioning the fact that that took a lot of balls. And if you're the Giants at this stage of it, of it, who cares? You might as well. You might as well try to win the game there. Playing with House is money. I mean, first game is a head coach. going for two for the win like good on you that's awesome that's set the tone i i love it that was great i know hey also shout out to michael beller for calling the outright win our producer on our

thursday show uh thursday friday show so yes shout out to that not only covering but the outright wind yeah but no no that was awesome like congrats to the giant staff on their first win we'll talk about the game you know more as the week unfolds talk about maybe saquan barkley his performance i'll admit i watch very little of that game with the three other games that were going until the Red Zone came on. I'm right there with you. That's going to be an all twin game. There was a period during Red Zone today for like two hours where I did not see the Giants

offense. I did not see the Giants offense on Red Zone. It might have been a Red Zone programming choice. The other three games that were going on in the late window, I think there are reasons I was watching those three games and not Giants Titans. But I will go back and rewatch that because I'm impressed the fact the Giants won that game. All right. To finish off each one of these Sunday night shows, we're going to leave you with a couple

final words, any last words that we have for week one in the NFL, and I've got a couple. Last year, I went to the Bill's Chiefs game, and it was an incredible thing to experience in person. And I remember the day after that game, I sat at Mitchell Schwartz's kitchen, and we were talking about how important it is to have one of those guys and what it would mean in the NFL moving forward to have a quarterback that could play like that. It was like watching Pacific Rim that game, like those two guys going at it. And how much of a game changer it is to have one of those players.

And when I watched the Thursday night game this week with Josh Allen, and when I watch Patrick Mahomes today, and when I watch Justin Herbert against the Raiders, it's not just the physical ability. You know, that stuff always sticks out. It's the throw that Justin Herbert stuck on Gerald Everett. near the pile on and how accurate that ball was within the structure of a play. It's Josh Allen's precision now in underneath areas of the field combined with all the other stuff. It's Patrick Mahomes playing quarterback on such an incredibly high level that we can barely appreciate it anymore.

It's all the stuff they do within the structure of the plays, but then it's those two or three plays a game where they completely snap your will because they do stuff that they shouldn't be able to do. It's when they make already good play callers like Andy Reed or what we saw from Ken Dorsey right on plays they shouldn't be right. We talked about the Skymore play that Patrick Mahomes hit today. There were a couple plays today that Justin Herbert made on the move where he had to climb and navigate the pocket and throw a 35-yard missile without setting his feet that you just shouldn't be able to do. And if you look at the list of the guys that led the league in EPA per dropback in week one, was Patrick Bahams, Justin Herbert, and Josh Al. It's not just about saying good quarterbacks are good.

It's that good quarterbacks are such an advantage because they can break the game in moments where you need them to break the game. And all of those guys this week reminded us what it's like and how much it matters to have one of those players. Absolutely. Like you say, it's not just creating. We say to go get a buck and everything, which is also why I, you know, I was. high on Justin Fields because he could do that stuff. But like you're saying, the instructor stuff is when they are playing the coverage and we do have a good play, finding the right read every single time.

And all three of these guys' eyes are so good now. Even Alan, Alan's probably the third of three as far as eyes was. And now he looks great compared to where he wasn't even a year ago, two years ago. Now it's him understanding, okay, we'll just hit these singles and doubles. And then we swing for the fences on these other plays. And just like you're saying, just ripping the heart of defense. It's it's they can scramble for a first down. They can break contain and still attack down the field.

It's not like they break contain and then throw a little four yard route. It's a break contain and throw it 30 yards. And so defense coordinators might have the perfect play. They might create a free runner. There are so many times Mahomes today because the cardinals decided to blitz their asses off that there was a free runner, but Mahomes is operating so quick that the ball's out. It doesn't even matter. The ball is out in two and a half seconds.

And so we're getting to that level. where they're getting the ball out in two seconds and change. And then they could do the four plus second stuff and extend the place. It's, it's unbelievable. Be able to throw on the move. Be able to attack. It's honestly, it's like a basketball player when they just, you know, you have perfect defense hand in your face and they just still hit the 30 footer on you. Or they still hit a 24 footer on you.

That's what it is. It reminds me of Steph Curry. When I watch Patrick Mahomes, there is an element to it where you watch a guy where you feel the game changing. Right. And that, that's how it feels like when you watch these guys. and I will say that Mahomes was really the first one. Lamar is just such a different sort of player. He's a game-changing player,

but it's just different than I think what I'm imagining in my mind about just some of the out-of-structure throws. But when you watch these types of guys, it just feels like the new wave of players. It feels like a shift in the sport. And that's how I felt when I was watching those Warriors teams and watching the way that Steph Curry affected the game. And when you watch these guys,

it just feels like we're living in a different world because of exactly like you said. Even if you have the answer, you just don't because they'll find another one that trumps whatever you're going to throw at them and we're one week into the season and they didn't wait any longer than that to remind us. It's unbelievable and big moments too. I mean, they're all under 26 years old. They're 26 and younger.

It's unbelievable that we get to enjoy these three. And there's other guys too. They have like very talented players. But it's so cool watching these three do what they do every week. I'm glad he brought the step Curry because that's what it feels like every play. is just that they have this gravity when they play. You can see everything is manipulated by them. How they even, how Mahomes and Herbert today too and Alan, of course,

but how Mahomes is able to kind of like manipulate the pass rush in a sense, not that Aaron Rogers kind of bounced back and forth, but the up and out that he does. And Herbert has a couple up and out plays today that felt the exact same way. And that is just, that is so frustrating for a defense. It's like, oh, I finally beat the tackle. Oh, shoot, there he goes. now he's got a free lane to attack down the field.

And that's what they can do. And on top of it, they can go one, two, three in the gun and the ball's out in two seconds and attack 18 yards down the field, 20 yards down the field. It is incredibly hard to defend just for 60-something plays a game. And the fact that they, I'm so, it's so cool to see him just hit the ground running this season because honestly they are a story. They should be the main storyline, those three quarterbacks. And it's so funny that you get kind of overwhelmed by this feeling again.

And you think, well, you want all offseason to watch these guys. Why are you surprised by this? It's different when you're watching it in real time than when you're studying it because you understand the stakes in real time. When you're going back and rewatching games that have already been decided, you're studying it with this sort of scientific lens. It's like, oh, what happened and why did it happen? What does the structure of it look like?

But when you're watching the games happen in real time and you feel the devastation from the defense in these moments where the game changes. I think that's the only time and way that you can truly start to appreciate again what these guys are to the people that they're playing against. And that's the feeling that I just had consistently watching all three of them over the weekend. Especially when they play on the road and you're watching it on a TV copy and then you just hear the crowd gets like crowds nuts on a third down. And then all of a sudden they just convert another one. And you hear that crowd just go and then it happens. Oh, another third down.

Okay, they got to a third down again. And then it just gets taken. it's taking out. When I were watching film, it's just click, click, click, click. Exactly. The deep ad click, click, click, click. And all the only time I know what down in distance is is the scoreboard shot at the beginning. You don't feel that. You can maybe see the sidelines. You see some coach throwing up a card or something like that. But hearing it and you just, they take the life out of other teams of opposing teams and you can just feel it happening in real time. That's what's so cool watching it live. It's just, it's truly a special thing. And the fact that we got that again this week, it just, it was such a fun reminder that football is back. that we're back and that we're going to be here doing this all season. So we really appreciate you guys sticking around with us on our first Sunday night, a little bit rusty, just like anybody else.

It's week one for us, like it's week one for everybody. So we will be doing this every single Sunday night. Very, very excited to do that. As you can see, for those of you who did not watch Thursday show, we look better than we did before. We're doing more YouTube stuff this year.

So if you would, subscribe to the YouTube channel if you're watching this. Like Nate alluded to earlier on the show, our first episode of wind the clock, Nate's X's and O's series where we explain some of the plays that we talk about on this show is going to be out tomorrow Monday on the YouTube page. So please go check that out. I'm sure you guys will like it. We're also going to be doing our Thursday shows live on YouTube every single week with Deontay. And Monday's mailbag with Mitchell Schwartz is also going to be live on YouTube at 3.30 p.m. Eastern. We're still. soliciting some questions for that show by 1 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on Monday. Get them in Athletic Football Show at gmail.com. Also, please subscribe to Theathletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. It's where you can check out the writing of all of the fantastic writers that we have on the site.

And if you would, now that the season has started, leave us a review. Go tell us you like the show. If you like it, if you don't like it, don't worry about it. Don't do anything. We will be back on Monday afternoon with Mitch answering your mailback questions. Until then, I appreciate you guys listening. Talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.