The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - NFL Week 2 recap — Dolphins shock Ravens, Trey Lance out for the year, Colts disappoint again, and more

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

In Week 2, the Dolphins trailed the Ravens 35-14 going into the fourth quarter. They won 42-38. The Cardinals were in a 20-point hole against the Raiders at halftime. They won 29-23. And those are just two of the wild things that took place on this NFL Sunday. Robert Mays and Nate Tice are here to break it all down 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 friend Nate Tice. Nate, how you doing, buddy? Doing well. I realized before, as we're prepping for this, I'm out of coffee. So I had to go with Red Bull, sugar-free Red Bull that we had in the fridge.

I'm sure that's going to go great for both of us. So this is going to be a great show. I'm very, very excited. And I believe Geeked Up is a good term to describe my feelings right now. It's been a weird night for me. Nine Inch Nails is playing about three miles from my house to close out Riot Fest. And watching the Bears lose that game, I'm pretty sure there would have been more. There was more angst in my living room in my basement watching the Bears lose than there would have been at the Nine Inch Nails Show.

So it's been a complicated evening for me. Two different versions of hurt going on. That's exactly right. That's exactly what's going on for. We got a lot to dig into today. I wanted to mention right off the top here. We're not going to get to some of the games. we often don't get to some of the games.

There's no way we can hit all of them on every Sunday night. So we're going to do a new show starting on Mondays with me and Deontay. We're calling it the Monday Hangover. Some of the games that we did not get to on Sunday night, we're going to get to tomorrow. That includes the Bears Packers game, which we are not going to dig into on this show. But we will be talking about tomorrow afternoon, 3.30 p.m. Eastern on this YouTube channel. I highly encourage you guys to come check that out. I think it's just a way for us to hit more stuff and more Deontay on the show.

is definitely better for the show. This podcast might be longer than that Sunday night game. Like, that was, that was honestly so quick. That was such a fast game. I couldn't believe it. I looked down. It was,

it was 8.05, my time. I was like, are we going live like now? Like that, that was the problem is that I wasn't done prepping for this show by the time that game was over. So I like the Sunday night games to last a little bit longer.

I need a little, a few more passes from the teams involved. We are going to start this, with this show tonight with that crazy ending, crazy, in half, period, in Dolphins, where do you even want to start with this game? I really don't know.

I think I'm going to start with, I'm going to give Mike McDaniel a little bit of love here. I think that's where I'm going to start. There are some really fun designs here, not just, just a mix of who touches the ball. Like last week, I made a joke that six different guys got to carry outside of Tua. Like they're just trying to find ways to manufacture offense in the run game, but also just in the passing game today. Just some simple stuff. Like nothing, the play concepts weren't crazy, but the window dressing was really, really fun. And I can give a couple examples.

The one I tweeted about it, but it was Waddle's big play early in the game. It was a stick nod concept. And you guys have heard me talk about stick, which is the double outs. And I roll my eyes usually at that play. But this version, stick nod is you fake stick and then the guy on the interior goes vertical. Usually you do condensed out and up. It's very quick. You go out and then up from the inside.

Usually that plays around with the tight end. If you watch the Rams for years with Jared golf, it was a tight end doing or you see Kittle doing it with the 49ers. It's a big Shanahanan guys love that play. Yeah, the dolphins did it with Waddle. And Waddle, I don't know if people know, is a very, very, very fast football player. So he left Patrick Queen in the dust. Patrick Queen had a rough day today.

He was on a lot of highlights today in a bad way. You know, when you see a guy getting dunked on on a poster, like he got posterized. couple times today. It was, it was rough. But that was one little design. The touchdown that Waddle had early on, the little screen touchdown in the red zone, Tiger Hill's in the backfield of that play. Just forcing communication from the Ravens defense that likes to be in a lot of different coverages. So a lot of DBs on the field, so they're trying to sort stuff out. And then the other one I tweeted as well was it was a little bubble play to Tyrick Hill early in the game. But it was so cool as the window dressing on it was they were in 21 personnel with a fullback and a tight end that's

not a sickie. So it forced the Ravens to go into a three. for a base defense. So you got slower linebackers on the field. They run a bubble, but then they have Alec Ingle, the fullback, in the slot. And he's basically the lead blocking for Hill. It was more or less a one-man sweet play with a one-man lead block. And it's just that little wind dressing made it for a very easy day for Tua. And that's why, and it reflected in the stats at the end of the game.

When I watched the Dolphins offense back, two takeaways, Tula was fine. We can get into what he did and didn't do in this game. The two biggest pass plays of the game today for the Dolphins are ridiculous coverage bust by the Ravens. They had Marcus Williams and Kyle Hamilton line up in the same spot following the same guy on the Tyree Kill touchdown down the left sideline. They're trying to recover two there. I know for sure that was one of those guys has to fly back into the deep half and they

didn't. Some of the concerns when you're trying to disguise all of this stuff. And some of those highlights you talked about with Patrick Queen, he's mugged up and spritten backwards in this game multiple different times. And there was a little bit of confusion. And then on the Tyree Kill touchdown where he had to wait for it a little bit at the goal line, Kyle Hamilton's flying on something. I didn't get a good angle of it about what sort of coverage they were exactly playing.

But Marcus, it reminds me a little bit of the Watson touchdown from that Kansas City game, where it looks like the corner's getting beat, but in actual out, he's supposed to have help back there. He's got outside leverage receiver runs inside of him. So two pretty big coverage bus. That was my big first takeaway. Two have played fine. Did enough stuff? We'll get into a little bit of that.

My second takeaway is the dolphins have done. done a really good job of weaponizing the speed that they have in the past catchers that they have. And all of the different ways. And I think that you brought up a couple really good examples. There was one play where it was a play action play in the second half and they cleared out one receiver and Waddle came behind it. And just the amount of downhill speed they have. And him is the second guy through and they got a chunk play out of that. The bubble play you talked about with Tyree Kill was another really good one. So many yak opportunities for these guys that are.

is built into the offense. And not to mention, Terry Kill's making leaping catches over the middle. Right. Big plays in this game. Waddle's second touchdown was a play where he had to go up and make a play in traffic. Gassicki had an incredible leaping catch. Chuck Clark didn't even go for the ball because he thought the throw was so high that it was just going to sail out of the back of the end zone. And that's what happens when you have a tight end who's, what, 6'4 and has a 40-something inch vertical leap?

It was an insane play. Yes. And so you have these guys that are just freak shows at receiver. And that really showed up to it today on top of the fact that like you mentioned, they're being put in advantageous spots with really unique twists and tweaks from this offensive coaching staff. Yeah. And it's such good stuff because the one other touchdown where, yeah, Kyle Hamilton got caught in no man's land. They had an overrout, but that's the thing when you have so much heat coming at you.

The safety is like, well, Patrick Queen, I think it was. it might be Chuck Clark, but someone on the overrout got burned because it's Waddle. And so Callahampton's like, well, I got I got attached down. I got to come down to help him. I think it was Queen, by the way. I think he was trying to bail out and catch him. Man, rough day. It happens.

That's the NFL. There's a lot of good play. He had 13 past rush snaps in week one. The more times he's coming after the quarterback and the fewer times he's moving backwards, the better for the Ravens. It really helps. And this is where the speed comes in. And you mentioned a couple of other examples.

There's another play that they ran. The Dolphins did. And it's called All Go. runback seam. You'll see the Chiefs ran a ton of this concept over the years, where they'd have Kareemhunt going up the seam. Very popular play over the last few years. Kind of weaned off last year, but I've seen it a couple times this time. But it's so great on the play. And it's just basically all, you know, forverts, but with a little swing pass. It's the first play of the second half. If you watch the replay of it, it's all the, everyone's vertical and they have so much speed,

the gravity of the world-class speed that they have, there's no defenders on the screen. And so Tua just checks it down to the back and a little swing. It's basically like a screen. Like it just turns into a screenplay. So he just kept the runnyback catches a swing. It's an easy first down. Just little things like that. Like just putting these guys in good spots.

And it's great. And even in the two minute drive to win the game, it was that the second and short, about 45 seconds left. People are saying, oh, they're playing for the tie. No, they weren't. The dolphins had a perfect play. They ran a zone play against a pressure looking caught the ravens. It's a great call.

Great call. You have plenty of time in that situation. Two time. out second and one, 45 seconds left. That's, it's a great call. And then on top of it, I want to give my exact same way. McDaniels and some props there is, uh, the runnerback gets tackled about 26, 28 seconds, give or take. And rather than rushing up and burn the time out, like I've seen like Mike McCarthy do over the years a bunch of times and panic and run up, time out, time out, time out. He goes, no, no, I'm going to let six seconds take off. And

then they call time out 22 seconds left. So they knew that they could get four plays off or pass, pass pass and then kick a field goal. 22 seconds gives you about that because each play takes about four to five seconds down there. Just little things like that. And yeah, Mike McDaniel, really nice game plan. And they took advantage of the bus. And that's what speed kills.

And if you make mistakes, speed kills. The bus were huge reason for the big plays. I thought the Tua did a really nice job in kind of compact and congested areas against zone defense in this game. The Ravens dropped eight or nine. They dropped nine on the gis. he touched out. Yeah.

They dropped eight or nine seven times in this game. Two was seven of seven on those plays. Five of those six completions that he had came on second or third down. The next play, they got a first down. So it wasn't like they were gashing him on those plays, but he was consistently taking what was there, making it third and manageable, fourth and manageable. Two of them were the fourth and ones that the dolphins eventually went for and got. another was the second and 24

that they cut to a third and 10 and they got the third and 10. It was Jalen, excuse me, it was Waddle working like a quick out against Jalen Armour Davis. And again, Jalen Armadivis played a ton of cushion because he's just terrified of the speed. Terrified of the speed on third and 10. And you just see it in so many different ways. So that's where I thought too was really good in this game is that in moments where they were playing some soft zone in those situations, he did a great job of locating the ball into those spots. spots, but he threw two bad picks.

You know, like he was fine. But I do think that if this is the overall formula where we have really terrifying pass catchers and a pretty good offensive coaching staff, good luck, that's a pretty good formula. That that's something I think you can consistently win with in the NFL. And I have still do so many question marks about the O line. And it's not, it just whole way and they have bus. Didn't matter too.

We got the ball out. Like boom, boom. Every time he hit the back foot of his drop, that. ball was out. And that speaks to the coaches not being idiots and going, oh, we're going to do a seven-step drop here. It's like, nope, they were consistent, five-step drops, three-step drops, quick game, RPO, a little bit of play action, screens. They just, you know, just peppering. They just peppered a little bit of everything. And yeah, and I mean, that's, they stayed in, I couldn't believe they came back. It looked like the ravers were just blowing them out of the water

after that long Lamar touchdown. And then it just, I thought it was over. At that long Lamar touchdown, you think it's over. And then you have a, I mean, the coverage bus, obviously, I will say, the Dolphins running game looked a lot better than I thought it was going to. I thought they did a lot. I mean, everything was a mess last week. All of the moving parts, it just seemed like complexity for complexity's sake. It looked terrible. Moser got a majority of the carries today, which I don't know if that's going to be the plan moving forward,

but the running game did look better with him in there. Let's talk about the Ravens, though, because as much as the dolphins did a lot of really good things to win this game, I think that the Ravens definitely had their hiccups and shot themselves in the foot multiple times in the second half. What was the most frustrating part to you about the Ravens approach down the stretch? Oh man, well, just the short yardage. For a team that thrives on being bullies or tries and they run a lot of power and they run a lot of fullbacks and tight ends. Luke Jones had a great tweet where the Ravens had 10 place a day where they needed one yard for a first down or a touchdown. They went three for 10 in those situations.

You can't win that way. If you're a team that thrives. If you take out that Lamar run, six carries for negative two yards for the Ravens. It felt like that too. And actually, I was disappointed at first. first and I was like, why is Greg Roman going empty? They actually had a good plan out of empty. They were going empty and then the dolphins were going, okay, here it comes. Here comes. Our cover zero looks. And they were motioning the tight end across and having a basically, and it was nice.

Six-man protection. He was just standing in the block. I say it likely almost every single time. Yep. And I like that. It was okay. You learned a lesson. Remember I said, did you do your homework. They did do their homework. But then maybe they just forgot, you know, the math and the run game. So they did their chemistry homework, but maybe they forgot their math homework. So that kind of like limited there. also, you know, they threw hot to Rashad Bateman at one time, which I was, I've never seen the Ravens really do that much where they, hotter a side adjust is, there's a side adjust. What a side adjust is is, I'm going to stop my route because you're a blitzing and we have to change it literally what the route is.

So Rashad Bayesian, usually it's a slander or hitch. Shaw Bateman runs a hitch. Lamar sees the corner blitzing and he throws it out there and there's a nice first down. So, God, I was, it's so funny how they could score so many points, do so many good things. And it's still like, hmm, you just wanting it. a little bit more, just more consistency in this offense. It just feels, sometimes it just feels uneasy, especially in the run game, especially when it's not Lamar running the ball.

Yeah, I mean, hopefully when they're running backs get back healthy, yeah, that's a little bit of a bump that they can get. They still have offensive line injuries that if that group gets back to 100%, what does it ultimately look like? Lamar's explosiveness and just that quick strike ability totally on display today, just a reminder of what that offense can be, you know, the fact that they can just bury you in a hurry on top of what he can do with his legs. I think they'll be absolutely fine.

I also think the defense is going to be okay. This is a new group of players, a new defensive coordinator, and they're trying some wild shit. And I think that every once in a while, if you play like that, you're going to get burned. You're going to have those miscommunications, especially when they involve rookie defensive backs that are in situational roles,

the way that Kyle Hamilton is right now. They're dealing with cornerback injuries. Amaro and Humphrey came into this game, not 100 percent. Kyle Fuller towards ACL. last week. So I think, though, be absolutely fine, but I absolutely, I definitely left this game more encouraged about what the Dolphins offense is going to look like over the course of the year, just by the sheer amount of talent that they have at their past catching spots.

They're putting Kyle Hamilton on, Hamilton on the field for a reason, not just because he's a first round pick, but they're asking a lot out of them. And, and I think it's, that's what happens with a, it's a second game in the NFL. Do you think he's ran from the line scrimmage to, to the deep half at Notre Dame? No, I, I, maybe he did. but I don't remember him doing that. Everything was top down for him. So it's just a whole new world for him. And then they have a rookie center, you know,

going against all these cover zero looks. And Winterbaum did okay. They had the botch snap on the QB sneak where Lamar came up. I think that was more of a Lamar issue, just how the fumble went as well and how the ball hit his hands. But big of you as a quarterback to say that. I've had burn in my brain from my dad. He could tell, he said you could tell whose fault it was based on how the ball falls

and how the ball kind of just went dead. That's the quarterback. If it went flying in between the legs, then that's the center because that means usually it's a shotgun snap or they don't get the ball to the pressure of the quarterback. So yeah, you're right, though. That was big of me. I'm going to make sure to praise every quarterback from here on out. I was talking to a defensive coordinator this summer. We're talking about how you incorporate a younger safety into three safety packages.

Where do you want him to play? How much do you want his vision to include? He was saying, we want our guy to play a little bit closer to the line of scrimmage. just because it limits how much he has to do and the scope of what he's looking at. And the fact that in those three safety looks, or when they're in Diamond, Chuck Clark is playing linebacker. Kyle Hamilton's the back. I mean, this is a 6-4-220-pound safety who has not had to play in this exact role before. So they're asking a lot of him.

I think this group will be better as the season goes on. This is Mark's Peter's first game back. But again, really impressive win for the dolphins, really impressive comeback for the dolphins. I want to give some credit to the dolphins run defense as well in some of those. moments. I think that they have some players up front, you know, Christian Wilkins. I want to go back and watch the end zone tape to actually see who deserves credit and blame on some of those moments. But I think you have to just say they did well to slow the Ravens down in those situations. One more thing here. I want to get to at the top of the show, obviously

the Trey Lance News, broken ankle, he's out for the season. The initial just deflation of that, where you have all this excitement about what he's going to look like and what this offense could be in this next step that the Niners are taking. But then you kind of take a step back, take a breath, and this is why they kept Jimmy. Right. Because if something catastrophic happens, now your season isn't over.

It's almost, we're stepping into a known quantity version of the Niners. It's a very strange thing to watch in real time where you watch a team's backup quarterback come in and you actually have a better understanding of what they're going to be when the backup quarterback comes in. And that's what it was today.

It's like, well, the Niners are going to be good this year. If all of the other factors stay consistent with Jimmy Garoppolo stepping into this, if their defense plays the way that we think they can, Brandon Ayuk is a bigger part of this passing game than he was for most of last season. George Kittle is going to be back. Their running game looked really good today. And it's a strange sensation. It's like, well, they're probably going to be fine,

even though they just lost their starting quarterback for the entire season. It's not like the backup. It's like we're in Andy Dalton situation for like, you know, like the Bears last year where it's like, oh, like, I've seen this guy play before it's somewhere else. It's like, no, literally this was the starting quarterback last year. And now he's just back. My first note is, well, we know what Jimmy G is. So, I mean, where are the notes? I want to say that the Lance injury was a freak thing and anyone's saying like, oh, this is on Kyle Shannon.

That's like, it's such bullshit. What is that? Where does that even come from? It was a GT counter read. It was a GT counter read. The Ravens run up with Lamar. Lamar weighs 200 pounds dripping wet. Trey Lance is 230.

Josh Allen runs these all the time. Josh Allen's even bigger freak. But it's a not, it was just a freak play. If you're not going to run Trey Lance, what is the benefit of having him be your quarterback? Dude, they ran like an empty power play with him earlier.

And I was like, oh, yeah, here we go. We got like a kind of a normalish weather. We get to see this offense unfold and then unfortunately it gets hurt. But I mean, that's the thing with the 49ers with this defense is incredible. This is a championship caliber. defense. I have three takeaways. Seacchox only had like 200 yards of offense. They only had

14 first downs. Like they kicked their ass and they're going to kick a lot of offenses ass because their front's so good. And then they got they got Fred Warner. Actually, all their linebackers are great. And Greenlaw got an extension day to deservely so. They're banshees, man. Every single guy on the head side of the ball. It's a banshee. And Hufanga now, who we're going to talk about a little bit later. Yeah. That they're pulling these guys out of nowhere. I don't want to spoil it. I don't want to spoil about Hufaga because they're just conjuring Bansi. Geez, on defense. Like, that's what this team does.

It's absolutely ridiculous. But they're a little elements like Jimmy was pushing the ball a little bit more than he might of. One of the years. Yeah. Those deep throws outside the numbers are not always pretty. But the fact that he's willing to uncork some of those, they're probably going to be fine. I don't want to get too hot takey with this.

But I do, when I was thinking about this today, it was impossible to get this thought out of my mind. What if they're good? Right. And what if he's good? What do you do? For the future. But seriously.

Seriously, if you go through this entire season, okay, and they're a playoff team again, and they win 11 games, and they make another deep playoff run, can you really move on? It's, I mean. It becomes really, really hard if you get two years of him doing it in a row with Lance on the roster. I'm not even trying to, like, stir up shit. It just. I'm just trying to put myself in that situation. If I'm John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan, it's like to the locker room, all of these different factors. I was team, trade Jimmy.

Get them out of here. Like, this is Lance's show. It should be Lance's show. But if you do it again, I know, I know. I mean, you could see how much becomes really hard. You could see how hard it was from this year. Then it actually ended up working out. So imagine, like you say, imagine if they went to them.

NFC is wide open. It's a wide open conference. Somebody asked us this on Twitter today. Fantastic question. Who is the best team in the NFC? I don't know. I don't know. Bucks maybe, but I don't know.

The Bucks had a 19.7% success rate running the ball today. Their offense is not good right now. They have no offensive lineman. Something named Walton is out there playing left tackle because Josh Wells got hurt. It's ridiculous. Scottie Miller game, too. It had to be. It was Mike Evans playing against Marshawn Lattimore.

to be the Scotty Miller and Breshaad Perriman game. Yeah. Did you see the Mike Evans thing where they lip the little lip reading? And he goes, no. It's, it was after the fight happens. And he goes, well, yeah, I saw the fight obviously. So the fight happens and they slow, they show slow mo and you can see the lip reading. And he goes, it's Tom Brady.

What do you want me to do? Mike Evans said that. Swear to God. Because it was Brady that got in the fight, he had to come off the sideline. Yeah. I love that. I love that. I love that.

I did too. I did too. I did too. All right. Tom Brady. What do you want me to do? I'm sure we're going to have a lot more time, space to think about and examine the Jimmy G. Trey-Land situation and what's going to happen with the Niners. For now, we're going to talk about a couple more teams that had us leaving today saying, yeah, but really?

Yeah, but that true code. I didn't want any true code. Yeah, but this true code. I always kind of can't with the drafts. It's from a movie. I can't remember exactly what it's right. We have to make sure that we know what they are. We're just not hitting sitting here.

Oh, it's from Fargo. That's right. Thank you about it. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. I should also know better.

We just turned out our Midwest credentials right there. I know. Jesus. That's an embarrassing moment. It's 1115 where I am right now. It's been a very long day. You got to give me a pass on that. Two offenses, two teams that won today.

But it's like, yeah, but did you really? Did you really win today? Like, what really happened and what really does this say about you? And I want to start with the Broncos offense. How are you feeling about Russell Wilson and the Broncos offense after that game? Well, we did our AFC West preview. And I started really looking at it. I'm looking at the coaching staff.

I'm hearing the quotes. And some alarm bells started going off. And those are ringing louder and louder and louder. This team, not surprising, leads the league in false starts, leads the league in delay of games. They have 25 penalties through two games. they have all the signs of a bad incompetent offense. They barely get the playoff. The receivers are breaking the huddle and going the wrong way.

And you can tell they have to flip them. That's why that takes a longer time. Third down is rough. I also just that they're trying to square peg round hole at sometimes when the best part of their game today was running the ball. And then they would still just go pass, pass, pass. And it just didn't make sense. So I'm I'm worried. I'm a little worried.

I knew it would be a slow start for him. but this is even slower than I was expecting. It was 14 of 31 today against the Texans defense. This was rough. Their whole offense was go balls to Sutton. That was their offense. And pass interference penalties on those go balls to Sutton. It was the Flacco offense.

I mean, that's. They were completely out of sorts. They had 13 penalties for 100 yards again. And that was with a holding call that Levy Smith decided to wave off. Yeah. Instead of giving them a third and long, gives them a fourth and two, which is not an unachievable goal in the NFL in 2022, giving a team a fourth and two from essentially midfield,

which they absolutely got in a pretty key moment in the game. That sequence where – so the entire sequence, right, the third and one into the delay of game, starts with an option handoff to the fullback who, I believe the design of the play allows him to pitch it if he wants to, which that's adorable. And then after that happens, it's fourth and short. They send their field goal team on the field late, take a delay of game as a result of that, and then are forced to punt the football. Yep.

Yep. You can name your stupefying sequence from this team and game management, penalties, whatever you want to do. You've 10, 15 to choose from for the first two weeks of the season. Does this stuff get better? or do you think that this can be symptomatic of something bigger? I think it's symptomatic because it's just the stuff that should be easy isn't easy for them. Like the fact that receivers are going the wrong way in the huddle, not just more, not just once or twice.

Like I think the running up to the clock will get cleaner probably because that's a communication thing, getting the play call in and all that. But the fact that they didn't learn their lesson from last week that the fact that they didn't burn a bang a time out when they sent the field goal unit out there with 15 seconds left on the play clock. and then the field field team is just taking their time. Like there's just no urgency. So that means there's just no communication happening, which is, and this is a first time head coach that thinks he wants to call plays. And he probably wants to call plays because he looks around his staff.

It goes, got a lot of green horns on the staff. And like, who else? Like Clint Kubiak, maybe. Like, but that's, I mean, I think he's putting a lot of himself and they're just kind of show they're not ready for it. It's also interesting that Hackett thought, okay, he trusts his kicker to kick a 60-something yard field goal in Seattle with the game on the line. No one has made a field goal longer than 57 yards in Seattle at Lumenfield.

Okay. And then they're in Denver on a, and this would be a 58 yarder. And he's like, no, we're punting it. We're punting it. As the Texans aren't even moving the ball on you. Just a lot of, just bonkers clock and game management. So they got, they have to clean it up. I mean, they got to make it to the biweek and just hopefully they don't take in too much water.

And then hopefully they can clean it up during the buy week. This is something that's a consistent theme. And often it's not. it's not as drastic as this. But we've seen it with young play-calling head coaches that step into the role for the first time. It's mostly that at the core, their philosophy is bad.

They're not going forward on fourth down when they should. They usually opt for pretty conservative decision-making, which is offensive coaches, is always really interesting. But we've seen that happen a lot. McVeigh's had his moments with this. Kyle Shanahan's had his moments with this. And then it leads me to a drastically different situation here.

Brian Dable is consistently making the right decisions in these moments. He's not calling plays. Right. And I don't, I think Doug Peterson is calling offensive plays for the Jags. Do you know, I think he is. He is. He is. So that's, uh, what's his name?

The office coordinator has a lot of input though. Press tail. So like I, I wonder, I wonder how much, uh, like in the moment, whether press Taylor was actually relaying the place to the quarterback and what that operation looks like. I should learn more about that. But I think that we're going to talk about a little bit later. Doug, again, consistently, just being like, all right, we're going forward on fourth down. And it's not even necessarily a are you calling place thing, but what is your sequence?

What is your operation? Who's in your ear in the booth? How many guys do you have? And every single broadcast for like three years, we heard about all the guys in Philly who are helping Doug make that decision. And you hone that over time. So I just think that's something when you're a first time head coach. You've never done this before. You're calling plays for the first time.

there's a lot of stuff that can be rattling around on your head, but it absolutely needs to be cleaned up in Denver. I know we come a meme sometimes of ourselves talking about with Kyle Shanahan's offenses, but a really good sign of good offenses is how early they break the huddle because that means they get the play call in and the personnel. People don't realize how much communication even goes into like a first time play caller or just any play caller. You have to communicate your personnel. And so that means you have to have a plan. So, okay, it's second and 10. If we get eight yards here, I got this play. If we get a first down, I got that play.

If it's third and 10, we got this play, if I take a sack, yada, yada. But then you can't just think that and then call the next play. What if we have 21 in there? We have a fullback in there. We want to get 11 out there. Okay, I got to make sure you get 11. What if it's a certain kind of 11? Like, what if we have a different term for it?

Like, then you have to relay that or you have to give a guy a heads up. Like, hey, make sure John's not in this game or make sure, you know, Roberts is in a running back here because of protection stuff. All that has to be communicated on time. Then you have to tell if you're not the guy giving the heads. the call to the quarterback. That's another misconception is that only one, there's only one live line going to the quarterback. And not every,

not every play caller has that line. They might have their quarterback coach or somebody else. This is why I think a lot of times people think, oh, Eric Bienemy is calling these plays because they see him giving the play call. He's not. Andy Reid's given to play and the B. enemy is relaying to Mahomes. So that is the process there.

And if you ever watch a Shanahan offense, they never take delay games. It's actually pretty fascinating how, with all the motions and shifts and, and moving parts, because he has a lot of reps. That's what happens when he start calling plays at like 28 years old. Like that really, really helps because he's got a lot of reps at it. But that's a whole process.

And Hackett's called plays before, but he's never been a head coach before. And so, and you could just see. It's been a few years since he's called plays. I know he has a lot of experience doing it in Jacksonville and college in Buffalo, but it's been a few years and it is a whole different challenge when you have to control everything that happens, including setting up the operation for how you decide to go for it on Ford down. The amount of shit on your plate when you were a head coach, planning, organizing, figuring out how all of this stuff works.

That's why there's no way to ever know who's going to be good at it and who's not. Because those are the things you can't account for until you actually see it start to happen. And with the Broncos, the early returns have been pretty poor. Speaking of questionable coaching, the other team we wanted to talk about here who had a, Yeah, but when was the Arizona Cardinals. I loved the idea that Cliff Kingsbury had any sort of hand in them winning this game as part of the narrative afterwards is absolutely hilarious to me. Can you remember a more insane sequence of plays from one individual player that require like

25 other things happening for a team to win a game than what happened with Kyler Murray this afternoon? It was the most ridiculous domino effect. Like just play after play. It's it literally, it's the Kyler go do something offense. And it's this is, it's not year three of this. It was the purest distillation of it. If you just, you boiled it all the way down and injected it into your eyeballs.

That was this version of the Kyler do something offense. It was. I mean, the two point play where he ran around for 80 yards and held the ball for over 20 seconds is it's literally, if you just had to watch one play, what the Cardinals are, that there it is right there. They ran mesh. Of course they ran mesh. It's cliff. they ran mesh on a two-point play. Why don't know why you never see that is because it has no room to breathe.

Mesh has to have some vertical spacing as well. Usually there's a route behind it. He panicked and he called Mesh. I can tell. I know exactly what happened. He's like, uh, shoot,

we'll just go to this play. Of course no one gets open because there's no spacing on the play. So it's not a good play. No vertical stretch. Kauer, go do something funny. He does. And then the next two-point play,

the Raiders take a time out to see what formation they're in. And they get a delay a game. There's Cardinals get a delay a game coming out of a time. time out. It's like just those two plays. It's like we can't get this guy any credit. I'm tired of it. I, I, it's I'm done talking about the Cardinals. I mean, it's just, just this play. It's just, it's ridiculous. They run the same four plays and they get a delay game. I, I just can't get over that we're still here. And they got an extension this offseason on top of it. They had 192 total net yards. They had a, excuse me, they had 192. They had 106 in the third quarter. Okay. They had 12 first downs in the first three quarters. They had seven in the

third quarter. Kyler in the first half was six of nine for 53 yards. And they ended up winning this game. Sure. I want to go back and investigate this like a crime scene later on, like how the Cardinals actually came back to win this game. I didn't have a chance to go back and rewatch it, but I did watch the final, I'd watch most of the fourth quarter, the final few sequences with Kyler doing

all that stuff and just absolutely ridiculous. So we'll have plenty more time to think about whether the Cardinals are slowly devoling. into that team with the bottom falling out because that's kind of what it felt like for three quarters today. And then Kyler may have saved their season with like a string of five or six ridiculous plays. Insane place. I mean, even the touchdown to Hollywood Brown or the long play, like he needleed. It was an incredible throw.

He couldn't in a shoebox to a guy that's five, eight. He went through two guys on the throw. It's like, well, I guess it's a straight line from Kyler to Hollywood Brown. That's a, you know, it's a straight line how short they are. But it got, it got through. And then he just runs around and creates those other plays. I mean, every short yardage play, they haven't run little bootlegs. It's so predictable at this point in time.

They run the same freaking bootleg plays all the time. And then, okay, the defense is still sitting there waiting, knowing it's going to happen. He's making a miss, making a miss, creates and gets another first down. It's like, yeah, good play call. Like, good scheme. Go, go, go, go, Kyle. We're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to talk about who grabbed our attention.

Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. Now you have my attention. All right. Let's start with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense. Give up 10 points today. Three interceptions from James Winston, six sacks, a game where they really, again, carried this team the same way they did in week one. Buck's defense, you have my attention. You do.

It's a reminder how fun this defense is and how fast and physical they are and flying around just fun, not only just fun pressures. I just don't want to think of just as Todd Bowles as just like, oh, All he does is just heat up the quarterback, but just... They've cranked it down a little bit over the first couple weeks, actually. They have. They have. It was just coverage stuff, but everyone's sound, everyone plays so physical. Carlton Davis at corner, like epitomizes this whole defense, and he's the quarter.

Yeah. Like, just how Antoine Winfield, the D-Bs, like, play physical. But they're athletic. They're not just a bunch of stiffs out there, hammerheads out there. But little just design stuff. Like, well, they, no one runs more interesting D-line games as far as twists and stunts and all that than the bucks. I think the Cowboys are going to start to give you a run for your money here pretty soon. Yeah.

Actually, yeah, that's right. I tend to agree with you. And that's why it's so cool watching them approach this without blitzing as much as they wouldn't have in the past. The numbers I'm looking at right now, again, we get these right after the game, 26.7% percent, or 26.9% percent percent rate over the first two games. That's down from where they would have been. Yeah, they're usually low 30s, right? Usually low to mid 30s because they're usually near the top of the league. So about a quarter of their snaps, which is not as much as we usually see from them, but it's all the pressure

looks and the fact that they're all the games you don't know which four guys are coming and the amount of different stuff they do on the back end i mean they play tons of different coverages and all of these funky different ways so when you have these guys playing fast when you make it hard on the offense consistently because you have no idea what's coming at you whether it's the guys that are coming at the quarterback what they're playing on the back end that's what you see here good players good scheme good results it's fun i the best way i can describe it is it's the Velocer after testing the cage. Like, they might not always be bringing.

They're not always bringing it. They're always bringing it. But they're making the offensive line communicate every snap. And the Saints, even with Doug Marona's offensive line coach, they still have good players that can communicate pretty well. And you can see them. It's hard to pass stuff off. Offensive line have to go, you know, pass, you know, game.

Like, they have to communicate what's going on very quickly. It's a big feel thing. So you just keep poking, keep prod, keep poking, keep prodding. And then they'll do stuff like they'll have Shaq Barrett. as the long looper. And I think like a long looper is, it's, it's kind of cool. It's like a delayed stunt. And what happens is it's fools gold for quarterbacks because they feel the edge washed down.

So they're like, oh, contain. Contain's busted. I can loop out right here and I can run and, you know, extend the play. And as soon as they start doing it and James got suckered into this a couple of times, here comes Shaq Barrett or white loop it around the edge. And it's like, oh, shit. And that's, it's fools gold. And they do a great job.

it. So even, like you said, even when they're not pressuring, they kind of create that chaotic looks where the offensive lines still has to communicate, just like if they were pressuring. Kevin, wetted a sack today, Antoinefield had a sack today. Levante David had a sack today. I would love to look up the numbers eventually, like when they are pressuring, what sort of success are they having? When they're bringing five, what does it look like? Because it feels like every single time they're bringing extra bodies, it's doing a lot of

damage. They right now lead the NFL in defensive EPA per dropback. They are number one through the first two games, which is not surprised. at all. And I want to talk about this a little bit from the Saints point of view because James Winston did not have a good game. James Winston also has four fractures in his back. We found out before the season. I don't want to try to parse how much of this performance is James Winston being hurt. I do want to talk about what a diminished James Winston for any reason means for the Saints. Because every single argument this offseason for why the Saints all in moves

and why this philosophy and why this mindset in the off season might have worked out for them, always included, James might be healthy for the whole season. Look at his numbers from last year in a small sample. If he's around for 17 games, what could this mean for them? Even if he's playing hurt and that's what's causing this, it still pulls that jenga block out from whatever tower you're trying to build for the saints. And I think that's a pretty big concern. Right.

That's exactly it. That's why I kind of started talking to myself into the Saints a little bit is just because of that. It was, oh, at least James can do some stuff. You know, he, especially on play action, he's so good off play action. And you can see right now, okay, they couldn't really get it. They couldn't really hit those chunks that they need, especially with Kamara out. Kamara is really, he's great for the easy button, especially choice routes, running the

ball. He just kind of helps out, helps out everybody. Obviously, he's a great player. But you see that. So more is on James's plate as he's banged up. It's week two, and he's already banged up again. That's scary. That's really scary because, like you said, they had those all unmoves.

And if that's what the offensive performance is, it's a little dicey. Next one here, Detroit Lions offense. You have my attention. We talked about this on the preview show. The Lions are a sneaky fun offense, and they proved us right today. Also, we can get into how incompetent Washington's defense might be at this stage of things. But I do think that the Lions offense is consistent. consistently doing a lot of really smart sound stuff that is putting their players in really good spots.

We can dig into some of it, but just the more general feeling I have watching this Alliance team is, this is fun. This is really fun. This group of players is really fun. And this game happened today and this performance happened with their offensive line banged up. And you wouldn't have even noticed if you watched this game that they were missing multiple starters along their offensive line. They had Dan Skipper from, I think, Arkansas. I wanted to point out Dan Skipper because he had a couple really nice moments.

That block he had on that long, swift run. He was burying somebody like 15 yards downfield. Exactly. He was like 50. And Skipper's like 6'9. And he's like moving. And it's huge. Yes.

Huge dude. Yeah. It's no, this offense and this is what we talked about with Deiote is just, I mean, they're a run game so fun because they run everything under the sun. and they do it really well and it's sound. It's not just running shit to run shit. They actually have good stuff that's like well coached. They do a little bit of window dressing.

Like they went six offence alignment a few times and they're putting the extra offense alignment in motion. They did a yo-yo motion. Yeah, yo-yo is a back and forth motion and they're doing that with him and then they ran a play action off of it. So it's just nothing like it sounds like, oh, okay, what's a big deal? It's not a lot of teams who do that. Not a lot of teams are going to be doing a six offensive.

alignment and putting them on a yo-yo motion. And they're running play action, not just do a simple run play. They run in jet sweeps, trap, counterpower, just everything under the sun. They got Pene Soule. They ran like a little swing screen, like a one-man swing screen with Peney Sewell out in space. Like the Saints used to spam that for years and years and years under Sean Peyton. And so with Drew Brees and too, it's just, it's a good offense. And then you got, I'm on Ross St. Brown dicing up defenses without, he has yet to be targeted past 20 yards this entire season. And he's just doing damage.

He's, he's like a six man low post. He's Zach Randolph. He's Zbo. Like that's what he is. Like playing, playing football right now. He's awesome.

Like he has the lowest A dot. So he's 21st and first downs a route. That's a stat I like to look at. He has the lowest A dot of anybody in the top 21. Like he's just, but it works. And they put him on a jet sweeps and stuff. It's awesome.

It's a fun off. Easy jet sweep. It was just, I was wondering if they did anything crazy with that. It's just simple jet sweep every once in a while. If you hand the, ball off to that guy and give credence to that guy going in motion. That's all you need to do.

And sometimes you hit it for a big one. I was so impressed by their offensive line today. Evan Brown, their backup center was in on that play we talked about with Dan Skipper. Brown did a great job controlling Duran Payne. It was just pretty much alone on the nose. One of my favorite things watching this offense, and this was watching their offensive line almost at full strength last week, how effective they are at getting guys to the second level on run plays. and the fact that they were doing it as well as they were today with a bunch of backups in there. Hank Freley, their offensive line coach, deserves a ton of credit for the way that this group played today against a Washington front that even without Chase Young has some dudes on it.

You talked about Amon Ross St. Brown. I wanted to point out one play that I think really speaks to. There are a few of them, but one that really jumped out to me about little things that the lions are doing that I just find really, really smart. on that big completion he had on the overrout was third and three, the one where the camera got completely lost because they had no idea

where the guys were moving. The way that they lined up, Brown and Reynolds just had a little switch release off the line of scrimmage. And the communication that forced and didn't happen from Washington is that William Jackson followed Reynolds outside even though he was,

the stock corner was supposed to stay on him. And Brown ran wide open all the way across the field. Just a little tiny stuff. Just like, it's third and three, little bunch, little switch release, make them communicate. They didn't huge gain. There was one play. I can't remember exactly what the result of the play was, but I really liked it.

It was first and ten at the end of the first quarter. And it was golf hit and Reynolds on the deep out off play action. Yeah. And St. Brown was close to the formation. And they had Hawkinson come across to seal the backside off play action. But before St. Brown went out into his route, he snudged the end a little bit.

Yeah. He just nudged him like a tiny bit. to get the Poccas in time to get over there and seal the backside for Gough to hit that. It's a small thing. It's such a small thing, but it's just such good attention to detail. It's like, let's give the tight end one more beat to get over there because we think that'll help us protect this. And consistently you're seeing that kind of stuff out of the way that the lion's offense is built. And it's really impressive.

No, attention to detail is such, that's the exact way to put it, because the fact that they have backup offense alignment and what you're saying, get into the second level. That takes communication and practice reps and or just mental reps that they probably have had. That's that's it right there. That that is speaking to that. Just details, details, details. And they have a lot of guys. Their personnel has a lot of hardworking guys. Like they, like even the receiver room, they want to do the right thing. They ask these guys the block and these guys aren't just like taking a charge out there and or being a speed bump. No, I want to bury my, I want to bury these guys. And that's cool. It's infectious. And this. whole team, we've seen the hard knocks. You see the Dan Campbell quotes. It's a very infectious

team. You can feel them having fun with it. You can feel that they're like, oh, I like what we're doing. I think they really trust their coaches. And I would too. If this was my coaching staff and what they're designing for us, it's good stuff. It's like props to those, that coaching staff and props to the Lions players. It's funny because I remember, I talked with Mike McDaniel about this before the Super Bowl a few years ago. And we were talking about Kyle Shanahan. And Mike McDaniel said to me, He said all of our coaches, including Kyle, we didn't play in the NFL. So we have to prove ourselves to the players all the time. Every single day, I have to come to work and I have to show the guys in this building how I'm going to make their lives easier, how I am going to give them solutions to problems.

And the funny part is all the guys on this Lions coaching staff played in the NFL, except their office a coordinator. He's like one of the only coaches on this team who didn't. And obviously this is a group effort and some of those little things with, all right, what are the details and how do we do this? But I think their offensive coordinator and the guy pulling some of these levers, Ben Johnson, has consistently shown the guys on this team that he's going to make the game easier for them.

He's going to give them solutions to problems and he's going to put them in positions to succeed. This is going to be a group I tune into like every single week. And I just, I thought that might be the case. you know, watching them near the end of last season and some of the things that they were doing when Johnson took over. But they've just hammered that point home over the first two weeks of this season. You feel like the little jerk route to Josh Reynolds out of empty, you know, for the touchdown, just like little tiny things over and over over the course of this game. It's just like, all right.

Like I guess this is just how it's going to go. DeAndre Swift is just like an explosion waiting to happen every single time he touches the ball. I want to say, I saw some people shitting on Jared. Gough for that the catch that DeAndre Swift made that ultimately turned into a touchdown on that third and 15 with the blitz. Even getting that throw off is all that you ask for from the quarterback. I know it wasn't pretty, but that's not a mistake by him. The fact that he got that ball to the running back come hell or high water, you deserve credit for that. So DeAndre Swift to make an entire team miss after falling down is a whole other conversation, which brings me to,

what is Washington's defense? Like how much longer is this acceptable? The back end is just so bad. Like I love the front. And if you watched them last week, they're dominating Jonathan Allen pain that you mentioned. But the back end, they can't pass off anything.

They lack communication. There's bus every play. There was a, I saw one where the linebacker for the Washington and a blinking on his name, but he just ran completely in the wrong direction. direction and because he thought that he had a guy in man coverage and the winds ended up with two guys wide open because he ran to his own teammate. And it's like, oh, God.

Like, so it's just, they look like they're just like panicking on every single snap. It's, it's, it's, it's disappointing because it's, they feel like they have some decent pieces. And it's just, it's a very disappointing defense to watch. Last one here. Jacksonville Jaguar's offense. You have my attention. We're going to get to the Colts later, by the way. But we did want to.

We're not done with you. I didn't want to solely frame this game. and this outcome as a shit job by the Colts because I think both of us were very impressed by some of the stuff that the Jack did on offense today. It was awesome. I mean, right off the bat, first drive, 15 plays, 68 yards, took over nine minutes off the game clock, ended with a Christian Kirk touchdown that I will be talking about in my segment on YouTube, wind the clock.

So be on the lookout for that tomorrow. But should I give a sneak preview for it right now? Let's stick into it. Let's stick into the play. Why did you like it? If you've played Madden, you probably have run this play. It's running back angle or Texas. But it was running back angle with Christian Kirk in the back field.

And what they did is they started in a bunch formation. In the red zone, a lot of teams will play quarters or a version of too high where you kind of know what they're getting because they're just saying we're going to flood it with bodies. It's basically like running a two three zone in basketball. We're flooding it with bodies. That's why the quarterback has to get the ball out and creativity in the passing game. It helps out, yada, yada, yada. But on this play, a running back angle, Texas, whatever you want to call it, they automatically got a zone check of the Colts, not just cover three, but quarters because they started a bunch, then motion with a condensed split, motion Kirk back into the backfield. And on this quarter's defense, or I'm sorry, on this play on Texas, they had a crosser, Evan Ingram going across.

So the linebacker gets occupied because that's his guy. I got first crossing. He's crossing my face. The outside corner that had moved in with the motion when Christian Kirk goes into the backfield. He's catching anymore, I believe. Yep. He's catching. So he's catching because, okay, we can't let him get outside.

It's a cadence split. They're probably going to attack outside. And on top of it, they had the receiver. I want to say it was Zay Jones running a corner. So everything about this looked like a smash concept, a high, low concept. But then Christian Kirk doesn't run a flat route. He breaks it back inside. And there's just this huge voided space.

And it's a great, it's a classic red zone design. But Doug Peterson did a nice little, you know, a little sugar on it by having oh, let's have our best receiver. Christian Kirk looks like a monster from the slot, which he has been in his career. But now we have them coming from the backfield. Fun design, third down. You're guaranteeing the coverage. So it was a good game planning by them because they knew what they're going to get if they showed this formation.

Just good stuff. And I also had answers. It wasn't like they just sometimes play callers were designed to play. And it's like, this is ball going to this guy. And they don't have an oh shit answer. And you can see when that happens. There's quite a few offenses like this. but they have answers.

That corner route I described was Zay Jones. That's a hot answer because he's an outbreaker. I can just throw it up. I can progress to that if the angle route doesn't come open. The crosser is a hot answer. But it's just good sound design. It's creative, how they did it. And it was awesome.

It was a really good play. And Doug Peterson was in his bag today. He had some really fun stuff. And I think they're figuring out what their personnel are. It's pretty cool. And then they have this guy named Trevor Lawrence. That would great today too. I think I might be ready to eat some crow on the Christian Kirk stuff.

I like Christian Kirk. It's just they paid him a lot. That was it. Well, if they're going to build their entire passing game around him, then it becomes a little bit more justifiable. Right. And that's exactly what's happened. If they're drawing stuff up for him left and right, they're using him in the slot the way that we wanted him to them to. Choice rounds.

And we're a little bit concerned about that. I want to go back and look at the actual personnel. Evan Ingram is really frustrating. He wears 17 and he's built like a. receiver so I can never tell from the TV copy, whether it's him or Marvin Jones, and it drives me absolutely crazy. But it does seem like on a decent number of these plays, if they're in 12, they're totally fine with Evan Ingram being the number one receiver on the outside and just playing Christian Kirk in the slot. So they found ways to consistently put him at the positions that we

want them to. And they're drawing up all this stuff for him. He's the little slice route on slides and just so many different ways to get him the ball in really good spots. And they're They've done it for the last two games. So if they're going to build their entire passing game around him and put him in only positions where we like his skill set, then it becomes a little bit more justifiable. Evan Ingram has shaky hands, but if there's one thing he can do is he can run and he can run with the best of them. So let's just have him run a bunch of crossers. Let's just go. Just go.

Just go. He's a receiver. Just have let him play receiver. Just go. He can roll. And so that that puts a lot of heat on defenders. and their bootleg games really fun. Like they run every bootleg under the sun.

So they, you know, helps out the offensive line. Trevor's so good throwing on the move. So that makes sense. Trevor, by the way, is fourth an EPA per dropback for QVs. They're two games. He's just above a guy named Justin Herbert. So he was 25 of 30 today. And that includes a bad Marvin Jones drop.

Yeah. A bad one. Okay. There was a ball. They, I just, this is like, it didn't, work. This is exactly what you want, right? You're playing against the Colts. You know what they're going to be in for the most part, right? It's going to be cover three. We know exactly what it is. Okay. We're in shot territory on like the 41, 42 yard line. We're putting Jamal Agnew at the number

three spot and we are taking a shot to him. We're going to make the linebacker run with him because we know that we have an advantage solely because of who we're playing against as a defensive coordinator. And they're an inch away from hitting a 42-yard bomb to Jamal Agnew for a touchdown. Even though it didn't work, it's the exact right play call in the exact right situation. Yeah. Those are, that was two, two of his incompletions were that and the drop by Marvin Jones in this game. Yeah. I can only remember one, he had one shaky throw where he threw behind on the dick.

And I want to rewatch that. But that was it. Like it wasn't, and the one, he had a deep ball too that got beat up. It was a nice play by the safety. But it was, man, he was on time. All that stuff's coming out. Like it's, they couldn't even get a pass rush even near him because the ball was just coming out so fast. That's what's nice when you know what defense is every coverage or what coverage you're about to get every single snap.

It's a lot of fun for a quarterback. It's a lot of fun. We're going, oh, here's cover three again. All right. Here's, oh, guess what? We have cover three beaters. Oh, great. So I know exactly where to go with this ball.

The whole league is cover three beaters at this point. Yeah. Your entire goal at this point as a team is to see if you can get the team you're playing against into a defined cover three look. And that's what the Colts want to do. Yeah. So a little backwards. A little backwards. I loved all the stuff they did with him on the moon.

with him on the move. All the boot stuff is great. I mean, really exaggerated toss plays, having him come back to the left. All the boots to the left look beautiful. And then the one where he escaped and threw it back coming across his body down the sideline. Really nice. I love when he, because at times he can feel a little bit robotic to me in the pocket.

So when he's allowed to be a little bit loose outside of the pocket and just let all the tools shine, I love that version of him. And we saw that multiple times today. They had design runs for him. He kept down his own read. It was great. No, he's fun. He had to play last week against Washington.

That was it. It was the one that you got actually a intentional grounding on. But it was so cool because he, Washington was showing a pressure and he gets the snap. And he like, as he's faking, he's looking at the pressure as it's coming. And he like, and he flips his hips and it's like, you're six, six. You shouldn't be able to do that, man. He's so twitchy and sometimes you forget it. Like it's just that like, oh, then when he does get loose, like you said, it's like,

oh yeah, you're a really good athlete at 6-6. But no, it was a really fun performance from the Jaguars day, but just the Jaguars as opposed to the other side of the ball. It's now, it's time for I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed. Man, we're still cool. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.

The Indianapolis cults. I'm not mad. I'm kind of mad, but I'm mostly disappointed. This is, when we talked about them last week in this segment, this will happen. You build the show. you have a team that had on paper a pretty disappointing performance. You go back and you watch the game and you think,

that wasn't that bad. Yeah. You know, some squandered moments. Like they tied the Texans, but it wasn't as bad as the final score might indicate. This game today was as bad as the final score might indicate. And it honestly could have been worse with some of the breaks that they got.

They had a recovered fumble that didn't need to happen. We talked about that drop. Jamal Agnew touchdown. Like they're not a drop, but miss. Miss Q that they could have ended in six points. This could have been worse for the Colts. I have a lot to say, but I'm curious about your initial thoughts on where we are with the Colts right now.

They ran 48 plays. It was kind of for a team that I think, okay, Pittman and Alec Pierce are out. I know you went down a little bit, but Jonathan Taylor only has nine rushes. It's kind of- Pitman and Jonathan Pierce, or Pittman and Alec Pierce are, they don't play offensive line either. Right. So these issues were not solely limited to what the pass catchers were doing.

Kelly, Kelly had some botches passing off some games. I was wondering what the hell happened. It's a game I'm very curious to rewatch because they twisted them into hell in this game. They twisted them into hell. It was not blitzes. He was abysmal against four man rushes in this game. They could not block simple twists consistently in this game.

And the Jags D line, low key has got some heat up front. Like their pass rushing like front is pretty good. I'm pretty pumped about it. It's pretty good. Walker, Walker finished this game with one quarterback hit. He had some moments in this game. He had a ghost move on the left tackle,

which when you're built like him is tref, trefing. He finished this game with one quarterback hit, but he had multiple plays where I'm like, oh, shit. Yeah. Like this guy, when he starts putting it together, is going to be terrifying. Josh Allen was really good.

He had a couple nice plays against Matt Pryor, a couple of plays within some of those stunts that we're talking about. Matt Ryan was pressured on 37% of his dropbacks in this game, which is the second highest rate of the week. They were only blitzed on 25% of their snaps. I mean, and it felt like that.

He got sack five times. His QBR today was six. That's not what you want. Not what he wanted to hit the floater. And I think it was just because he was trying to get the ball out early. That's what pressure does. It's not, it's the accumulated hits.

Then as a quarterback, you hit your back foot. I'm not hitching up into that. And yeah, But that's what it is. I'm glad you brought up the offensive line because it was just, oh, this is supposed to be, I know it's not what it was maybe a couple of years ago. It's still one of those stronger points of this team.

And the fact that they're just having miscommunications between vets, that's very curious. They're two for 12 on third and fourth down. Like it looked like an offense missing targets, but also just like not getting anything going. Like they just looked stagnant. It was weird. Offensive line and the way that you just framed it is perfect. Okay. It's not as good as it was a couple years ago.

Are the Colts good? How many elite players do the Colts have? We have given the benefit of the doubt to the people that have built this team and to Frank Reich. Because I do think Frank Reich is a good coach. I do a lot of things that they've done on offense over the last few years. But I'm at a place now with this team where, like, wake me up in November if you win some games. I'm just tired of talking myself into them the way that I did last week. And I understand they'll probably.

be fine. This is yet another season where they have a new starting quarterback and they have to kind of sort through that. If you look back at what they were early on in the Phillip Rivers year, they got much better as the season went along. But how about this?

How about be ready to play when the season starts? I was just so tired of them starting like this and just being disappointed by who they are for stretches. And last year was at the end of the year, the river's year was at the beginning of the year. They've become a really, really, really, frustrating team because they have these games way too often for a team that should be better than this. And it's not like Jonathan Taylor's new. It's not like, you know, who's your best player

on your office and one of the best players in the league last year? And I want to watch this office too. I want to dive into the numbers a little bit. It feels siloed, which is not a compliment. Like that that's always going to be a diss on this show. And the fact that it feels like, okay, we're doing this play. Nothing was meshing together and not the mesh play, but just how everything is blending together and how it all looks. So it's an offense that I'm very curious to look back at. And I just want to look at this game. Also, I just want to look at the Jaguars, defensive front, bringing some heat.

But it was some alarm bells are going off too with the Colts when they hired Gus Bradley. And it's like, yes. Like, why? Why? Like, he's shown that, like, he is what he is. And they play Patrick Mahomes next week. And Patrick Mahomes, they're going to run cover three. If this is what they're going to do, it's like adapt with the times.

That's a very frustrating defense to watch at times. I know we're talking about the offense, but it just feels, yeah, it just feels like it's just like, this kind of sounds nice, but nothing's blending together as a team. And like you said, they don't have the elite players to overcome that. That's what Jimmy's and Joe's do, X's Zos and Jimmy's and Joe's. That's what they do. They erase all the bad stuff that you have schematically or they make it look really good. And if you don't have those guys, then it really does come down to your scheme. And the scheme is kind of lacking on both sides of the ball.

Even in moments where they're trying to step beyond that. There was a play today. I think it was the fourth down completion to Zay Jones that on the little shallow cross. Yeah, crosser, yep. And they dropped Quitty Pay on that play. There's no idea what he's picking up or looking for. No idea. Like, it's adorable to drop your defense in the situation.

Say he just kept running past them. Just ran right past him. He just kept running past them. So, yeah, that's cute. And like some of the blitzes that you're bringing, like, yes, it looks a little bit different than some of the other stuff. But I think there's a difference between trotting out stuff just to do it and really showing that you've changed who you want to be.

and there are reasons behind some of the things that you're doing. And I think that remains to be seen with the Colts. And the offensive line is a genuine concern for me because there are no reinforcements coming. Maybe you get to a place where Bernard Raymond is going to be a better left tackle for this season than Matt Pryor is going to be. But they're not hurt. This is the group that they wanted to play with.

This is Danny Pinter and Matt Pryor and all those guys. So I think that that's definitely something to keep in mind with this. team is that we could see this. You know, obviously the pass catchers, they're hurt this week and that's something that you give them a little bit of a pass. But other than that, this is the group they wanted to be on offense and that group did not show up today. Yeah.

It was very blah. Very, very blah for a team that I was cautiously optimistic and I'm still going to, like, I'm not selling all my shares in them, but it's. They'll probably be fine. Yeah, but it's the concerns, the fact that the concerns I had are already rearing their heads, rearing its head, like, you know, just, oh, how is this offense going to blend together? How are they going to adapt with Matt Ryan and being under center a little bit more? Or yada, yada, yada, how is it, like you say, the offensive line going to look?

How are the past catchers going to look? Do they have enough juice? And they, those are all kind of showing up. Those question marks are turning into exclamation points. Yeah, again, I think they'll be fine. I trust that they'll, they can sort through this. The division's not great, which we can touch on in a second. But these moments are just happening too often for my liking, even if they're a long-term

Outlook is probably somewhere around, eh, they're semi-exciting. They'll be relevant as they push toward the playoffs. But these are just things that keep coming up over and over again. We mentioned that Jags plus 700 to win a division bet. But that's where I'm at right now. Watching this game today and just how complete that win was for the Jaguars and some of the, you said juice on the other side of the ball, some of the juice that their defensive front has, it's not the craziest thought in the world to me that the Jags can push to

in this division if their offense is going to look like this. Yeah. I mean, it's competence led by an emerging quarterback and an aggressive play caller. Like we talk about the communication stuff. And like going forward on fourth down, there was not a shadow of doubt on that team. It's like instant.

Instant. Everyone goes like Trevor just already, like he just looked at the sideline, like just getting a play call. It wasn't like he started jogging going like, oh, oh, we're going for it. He looked like they know because you won't, they probably communicated it. And that's when, like you say, when you have an adult in the room, it really, really helps. Next one here.

Bengals offense. Not mad. Just disappointed. Oh, boy. More of the same. Yeah. I don't even know what else to say at this point. They couldn't run the ball.

They couldn't protect their quarterback. Like some of the numbers, 22.7% rushing success rate, which this week was 31st in the NFL. Through two weeks, they're dead last in the league in rushing success rate, the Bengals are. Every single shortcoming that we saw from them today is what we saw from them last week. and what we saw from them last year. And we talked about this before the season. The Bengals looked at their team from last season, and they said,

as long as we get better offensive linemen, that's enough. We need slightly better offensive linemen. Well, the offensive linemen, in terms of personnel and the names that you pencil into the debt chart, are slightly better. And the results have not been there.

The Bengals have been a really bad offense for the first two weeks. And even like Leo Collins had like not okay blocking Michael Parsons is no easy task. But he had mental bus. He he stepped down on a play. There's one on a third down. Joe Burrow had to get rid of the ball. And it's because he stepped down in a six man protection and it for no reason.

You left Michael Parsons unblocked. Literally right in front of you. It's not like a weird look for him for the, for the interior guys, it was a funky look because it was a double mug look. But not for Lyle Collins. You, you're blocking the down lineman. Right number 11. He's right in front of you and he steps down. The five most dangerous guys, right?

Michael Parsons is one of the most dangerous guys. He's right there. And they didn't run a game. He just ran up the field. And it was, what are you doing? And that's scary. And that's like,

okay, so what are you coaching these guys? Burrow is holding on the ball like crazy. Like the best play in the first half for them was Burrow get hit late. Like that was their best. Twice. That's their best flight. It's been sacked 13 times through two games.

Like the David Carr record is, it might be reachable. like it, which I thought was like one of the Joe DiMaggio stats. Like no one's getting up close to that record. And it's like, oh my God, that actually might happen this year. If they're going to play this way. It's the same offense too. In the first half, I could tell they tried a couple shotgun runs, a little tendency breakers.

As soon as bullets started flying, went right back to it under, under center run. Like nothing about it's, we talk about siloed offenses. This is the epitome of a silent offense. You want to hear about their under center passing stats today? Can't wait. They ran five play action dropbacks today from under center. Okay. I might count.

One was a sack. Okay. The four attempts, three completions for four yards. No way. Average one yard per attempt. It was screens. They ran like multiple play action screens and they got stuffed at the line of scrimmage. That was it.

The offensive line, and we're talking about the Jags and how bringing games only bringing four, not bringing a ton extra heat. Cowboys did not blitz a ton in this game. They didn't need to. Just stunts all game from all over the place. Guys are consistently. And that's the problem is that even if the players individually are better, when you have a defense that is hell bent on making them play as one cohesive unit the way that the Cowboys are. Credit to Dan Quinn, he does this all the time.

The Cowboys are stunting monsters on that side of the ball. They are going to make you communicate and move as a group of five. And the Bengals are not equipped to do that right now. It was an absolute mess. It doesn't help that Micah Parsons is part of that equation. Is he already the second best defensive player in the league? Oh, yeah. I think so.

Yeah. It's him in AD, Aaron Donald. I think so. After watching this game today, I feel pretty comfortable saying that. Yeah. You just expect him to get a sack on every single play. It's absolutely insane. And it's the speed to power and it's just how quickly he converts it and some of the inside moves.

I mean, he just moves differently. than other people do. The idea that every single time he's on the field, he can just wreck an opposing offense. I was down on the outlook for the Cowboys defense this year, just regression and numbers and history and everything that we've seen. He is so good that I feel like I was maybe a little bit too harsh on that. He is my defensive player to your pick for a reason.

He caves in an entire side. Like when they run a game, it's not just him getting loose. It's he's helping his teammates out. This is what this is gravity of a good pass rusher because he just caves it in. He takes two. He'll take three sometimes just because he's so fast. He's he's one of the greatest athletes I've ever seen. And I'm comfortable saying that like that.

I'm not only testing wise, but just how he plays, how fast he plays. It's he's special. I mean, he really is. It's the power and the flexibility and just every single aspect. His motor. Like he knows how to use it. His hands. He's getting better with his hands.

And yeah, it's insane. It does. Did you also see, speaking of just like this offense, did you see Joe Burrell yelling to Zach Taylor, no more empty? Yeah. He straight up just yelled. Yeah. No more empty, Zach. It's like, okay, okay.

Because honestly, every time, this is why this offense is frustrating. We say they're putting more pressure on the coaches this year. That's what they said they're going to do. We're going to help out the offensive line, quote unquote, and we're going to keep our skill positions because we have probably the best receiving court in the country. in the league. And they run the same place, though. When push comes to shove, they're slant flat. They get into empty and they run slant flat.

Like, it's, they, they panic and it's like we're talking about Cliff runs the same four plays. Bengals are in the same boat. Like when it, when bullets start flying, they just hit the same buttons. And it's, tape doesn't lie. There's these things called coaches and game plan tendencies, defensive coaches. They're going to look at them. And if you just keep doing the same things, they're going to tell their players,

this is what they do. this formation and this situation, and the more tape you put out there, they're more they're going to get better at it. They're going to watch the Cowboys. They go, well, we can't recreate that defense of rush, but we can't do this coverage stuff and bite down and clamp down. And yeah, Jamar Chase is going to make some freaky plays. T. Higgins is going to make some freaky plays, but consistency won't be there.

And that's really, really hard to win this league. A couple of the guys I wanted to mention. Dorrance Armstrong had some really nice moments in this game as a pass rusher. I think that group overall played pretty well. Dante Fowler had a couple nice little flashes. today. He had an inside spin against Alex Caput. I was like, ooh, I like that. It was similar.

We're talking about, I know situationally, this is part of the reason, but it's second and six for the Bengals. There's a minute 29 left in the game. And both of the Cowboys' defense tackles, one of which is Dante Fowler, inside, is wind up so, so wide on second and six, because they're just pinning their ears back and coming. They're just not even concerned. There's a minute 29 left in half, and maybe situationally, you're not worried about

the run, but just in some of those things where it's like, we don't even care. We don't even worried about you running the ball. We don't even think you'll think about it in this moment. That really jumped out to me. But 10, 10 plays for negative yardage in the game total for the Bengals. 10. How many plays you are in total? It's like it's the opposite of an explosive. When you have a play for a negative yardage, it might as well take an explosive off the table. So that's essentially a racing 10 explosive plays from the game if you're Cincinnati and you just can't win that way. Yep. You just got to think about it. You're gaining first downs. that and so if you're if it's second and 15 that's half a first down after earned extra that we

didn't start with and that's just a simple math game and it's and if you're not creating them like getting them back that's usually the thing with an explosive offense it's like oh we take some sacks or you know we have some turnovers like maybe with like Stafford last year and that offense it's like don't worry we'll create a 28 yard gain and get it right back but if you're not doing that and you're nickel and diming like you're saying those play action screens that's not the way to do it like you're not creating explosives you're just making it you're just becoming a laxadaisical offense. And it just, even like when Burroughs in the pocket, too, it just feels like he doesn't trust what's happening. He gets to one and then he never goes to two.

Burrough can progress. I've seen this guy do it. LSU, I saw him do it. I saw him. I've seen him do it in this offense. And now he's just going one and done. He's becoming a one and done read guy, which is not where you want to be. And it's not seeing ghosts. It's not anything like that. But he's going, I'd rather tuck the ball and create a play than trust what the concept is. And that's, that's not a path you want to go down. Slippery slope. That's exactly what I was going to say. Very slippery. All right. Brown's blowing that game against the Jets. We're going to get to that tomorrow. There's only so many things I could rewatch before we started doing this show. But that's going to be one of the games that we hit on the Monday morning

hangover. Last thing. Garrett Wilson. Talk about. Garrett Wilson looks pretty good. Doing sweet. I definitely, definitely want to talk about that game. You can only get to so many things. So please come back and check out the show we're doing with Deontay tomorrow. Really excited about what that show is going to look like every Monday. The one thing I do want to talk about, though, before we end this segment. The Seahawks interception that DJ Dallas through is one of the greatest things I have ever seen on a football field. And okay, all right?

Some people were throwing out other plays that were as embarrassing as this play. But fumble. Coates going for it on Fort Town. The butt fumble is just a fluke thing that happens. Yeah. The idea. And it was Thanksgiving, so everyone remembers. Yeah, everyone saw it.

Like, that's fine. Like that's just a bit of incompetence in the moment. But when you watch this play unfold for the Seahawks, there's so many layers to it. Like the comedy is just so deep, okay? How much shit have we given the Seahawks over the years for what they've invested in running backs? Rashad Penny in the first round,

they have all these running backs. Like that was always the joke with the Seahawks. Look at how much they've invested in running backs. They put four running backs on the field together. It was a meme. Before the play started, it was a meme. And then DJ Dallas throws an interception directly to Charbarious Ward into his face. The throw was hilarious because you could see it unfolding.

You're like, okay, running back pass. I could, you could just tell because it's hilarious because all running backs. This is why LaDaino Thomason was so sweet of him. He would wait until the last second to throw it. And he's looking to throw right away. He's statue of liberty position right away. So it's like, okay, here comes the throw. Okay, okay, you're going to have to lob that one over.

I could see the little flat defender there. just lines it right at it. And did you see the sideline replay of it? It was a duck too. So he threw like a six yard duck that almost like I'm surprised as a defender caught it because it was just so wobbly. There's one of the funniest plays I've ever seen. I'm still laughing about it. I'm going to watch it.

When it's happening, it's just like what did you think was going to happen? What possible reason would you have to throw that ball on that trajectory? And the fact that they just rolled him out, it was, it was beautiful. I loved every single bit of it. And I'm going to think about it for a really long time. I am too. It's honestly, it's on the mountaintop or Mount Rushmore. It's one of the funniest plays I've ever seen in my entire life.

It was so fun because I could feel everyone, I think everyone could feel it happening. And it over it over did it. Like it was, it exceeded all expectations. It was mad Max, ever could have dreamed of. It was really, really was. That's what it was. I was expecting a good movie. And it was like, oh my God, this is car chase wreck is even better than I was ever expecting.

It was, that was nothing but practical effects on that. play man. It was beautiful. George Miller, you did it again. We're going to take one more quick break and then talk about a couple guys that we took notice of today. It's time for we see you. We're going to talk about a little under the radar performance or a little quirk from the week that we wanted to point out. I wanted to start with Talo, Noah Hufanga, who is, if you don't know, a starting safety for the San Francisco 49ers, somebody who played in spot duty last year when they had some injuries at the position, but it was not a highly drafted guy. somebody who came into this year and when looking at that depth chart, it's like, I wonder what they're going to be with him moving into a full-time starting role.

He's been one of the most exciting players in the league through the first two weeks. And what's been so incredible is that it's not just in one way. It's not like he's playing around the line of scrimmage and he's making a bunch of TFLs and that's it. And it's limited the impact that he's having on some of these games. He's doing that, by the way. They're lining him up as the end man on line of scrimmage and he's just tearing down the line, making plays in the backfield, did it twice, I think, today. He had two more TFLs, I want to say.

He also think he had two last week. But he's also driving on balls, playing top down from safety spot. I mean, he is affecting the game in so many different ways. He's already becoming somebody that's just leaping off the screen. And I did not expect that two games into this season for them to find somebody like this to go along with all of the other players that they have on defense. always got to watch those long-haired guys on defense because it's like, oh, that makes it so much better.

It does. It does. He just stands out. He does. And honestly, for me, the question mark I had for him, because I thought he would be, you know, limited in coverage. He's not the most athletic guy in the world. I think you ran a four, six, and change at the combine.

But guess what? He's so aware and has such a high football IQ. That doesn't matter. He makes up for that room for error. He grows because he is so aware of what's about to happen. He's just around the ball. He's a box score filler. I mean, it's amazing.

I wrote an article this week that he he led all dbs in the NFL in week one and splash plays, which is TFLs, PVUs, third and fourth down stops, sacks, yada yada. And he led the NFL. And I'm sure he'll be right on top again this week. He's just that type of player. He's just that type of, he's on a defense full of stars.

I mean, truly, truly, very, very good players. He's standing out. And so if you're standing out on that defense, that's really saying something. Like, he is truly affecting the game. He's wrecking the game for offenses. He's an incredibly fun player to watch. Yeah, I mean, just a little, a couple of moments that I just a little, a couple of moments that I just to see how we played down to down. But in terms of those splash plays and those moments, he's had a couple of them for the first two weeks of the season.

So I see you. And I hope to continue seeing you for the rest of the season. Who do you got? I got our guy, Scarsguard, playing fullback. For the LA Rams. It was a fever dream. The fact that this happened and it was him. I got tagged so many times.

I was like, okay, what? They run it once. Like a kind of cute little look. They did it like a dozen times. I, middle of third quarter, I looked it up. They had 10 snaps where he was the fullback.

Ben, Ben Skrocken is his name, by the way, Scars guard. But it's, I want to watch it. Ben Scoronic. Scaronic.

He's Scarsguard. He's Scarsguard. You tried to give him credit and you tried to actually say his name and you still couldn't do it. I've never looked it up because I'm just like, it's Scars Guard. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. I have a gift for it.

I do the Pennywise, do the Pennywise gift and dancing. It's, but dude, it, I want to watch it. I want to see it. It's good.

I love when the Rams tweak their stuff. I like when Sean McVeigh goes, okay, well, this wasn't working. What are we doing with our personnel? And this was 11, 11 personnel running eye formation looks with a receiver being your

fullback and doing legit stuff. Lead blocking, split, split zone. I, I'm, it's one of the most things. I'm most excited to watch tomorrow and Tuesday is just to watch what it looked like.

All these I formation reps with a receiver for a guy's name who I always butcher. But Scars Guard. Yeah, I see you, buddy. I want to look up their numbers and just how many play action plays they actually ran today, especially out of that look, because it felt like they used more. It was only seven dropbacks in this game. So six of seven for 74 yards off play action, which, you know, 10.6. yards per attempt on those throws.

But because it did feel like, all right, if we're going to be in that look and we use a little bit more downhill play action, had that be more part of the offense than it would have been. So fascinating wrinkle. We talked, I think we complained. I think a lot of people did after that first game of you're in 11, 100% of your snaps. What are you doing to kind of change things up? Yep.

And that's the tweak. That's the exact tweet that we were looking for. Last year is the empty stuff. This year, it's like, okay, now they get, it's funny that they went empty last year. And it's like, no, it's condense it. Let's get back to the old school eye. Can I give one more shout out before, before we end this? Andrew Thomas, left tackle for the Giants.

Like, I see you, bud. I know I didn't tell the producer about this one, but I want to give a shout out to him. He is greatly improved as a player. He was a top five pick, top 10 pick five, top five pick. He looks like a very, very good left tackle. And it's, you know, it looks, it looks cool watching them on the Giants team that's kind of have done some fun things. But he's been a really good player for them so far.

So I see you, Andrew Thomas. He was one of my breakout players. not breakout players because I think he had a strong second half of last year. But when we talked about before the season, we did a show about guys who could kind of change their narrative this season, guys that really, we would look at them in a different way by the end of the year. And he was one of my guys because I really felt like that was going to be the case. And it's fun to see him playing well, especially after how his career got started. All right. Before we wrap this thing up, it's time for any last words.

Any last words? Every week, well, kind of, you know, a little parting note on which to end this. Just one little way to wrap up the show. And this week I want to talk about Trevor Lawrence and what we're seeing from the Jaguars offense. And we knew this. You knew when you looked at the Jaguar's last season and just how incompetent they were top to bottom, that they were experiencing one of the worst coaching jobs we've probably ever seen. I can't remember a more disastrous situation than what happened last year with the Jags in

Urban Meyer. And if you look at Trevor Lawrence's numbers, just purely the statistics from last year, he was one of the worst quarterbacks in the league. Every single advanced stat, every single box score stat, Trevor Lawrence was on his way to being a disappointment. And then you watch what happened today and you watch what happened over the first couple of weeks. And it's just such a stark reminder of how much situation and support system and ecosystem and infrastructure matters in the NFL. Where you land, who is around you, the past catchers, the coaching staff, everything, shapes careers. And the fact that Trevor Lawrence only had to spend one season in that just cesspool awfulness that was happening down there in Jacksonville last year, it is fun to watch him in these circumstances. The Jags aren't perfect. They have their issues and they've been, they've had to build this team with one hand tied behind their back because of the mistake. that they've made over the last few years, but how consistently they're getting the most out of him and the rest of the offensive players on that team

and what we've seen out of Christian Kirk, it's just hard to watch them and not think about how much it matters, who's around you, and how much that dictates success or failure in the NFL. Not a novel concept by any stretch of the imagination, but watching it today, it was just hard to ignore when you were watching Trevor Lawrence and watching what he might be able to become

in even marginally better circumstances. We want especially these highly touted quarterbacks to come in and just like, it's overnight, changes everything. It doesn't matter what's around them. It still matters what's around them. It always matters. Tom Brady and his last year with the Patriots wasn't putting up huge numbers. He goes to the box and he's got a great old line, awesome receivers, and it helps.

It's, yes, the best quarterbacks are the best quarterbacks, but it is still dependent on your coaches and the situation and the personnel around you. And this is like one of the biggest night and day differences you could ever see. And I'm happy because it's, it's, you want to see these guys succeed these young quarterbacks because it's, it's fun and just young players in general. So it's better if Trevor Lawrence is good. Yes. More young guns is like awesome, cool, freaky, twitchy, like awesome gun slingers is the best thing possible in the league.

You want these guys to be good. You don't want Steve DeBerg starting at, starting, you know, 16 games, 17 games. You want guys that look like Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes. You want as many of these guys as possible. And that's what makes the league fun. All right. That's all we got. A few things before we get out of here.

Please subscribe to this YouTube channel. We're doing a lot more YouTube stuff. Nate's next edition of Wine the Clock will be out tomorrow talking about that play from Christian Kirk. Speaking of the Jaguar's offense. So please check back on our YouTube channel and all of your social channels for that. Also, please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. It's where you can read Nate and all of our other writers at The Athletic all throughout the week.

If you don't have a subscription, I highly encourage you to get one. We will be back tomorrow with Deontay Lee. You mentioned it a couple times already on this show. If you're just joining us or if you've missed it and the other times that we've mentioned it, we're doing a new Monday format starting tomorrow. The Monday Hangover, we're going to talk about the games we did not get to tonight. I already tied us to a couple of them, even though I didn't consult Deonti on this. Brown's Jets is one we'll talk about tomorrow.

We'll talk about the Bears Packers game. We'll get into a couple more of those. Really excited about doing that each week with Deontay. We just wanted to give you a little bit more of what this show feels like. And I think that this really gives us a chance to let him shine and give you guys a little bit more of a meaty show on Monday. We'll still have some listener questions and things like that sprinkling some mailbags here and there.

But this is what we're going to go with on Monday. So really encourage to kick that off with Deontay tomorrow. In the meantime, really appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.