The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The Week 1 Hangover: Giants-Commanders, Cardinals-Saints, and your sad voicemails

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Our return to five episodes per week means that the Weekly Hangover is back! Because look, Sundays are busy. We can't possibly talk about every game in the way that we'd like to on our Sunday night recaps. But we do still want to talk about every game. That's what the Hangover is for. In the Week 1 Hangover, Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen get to two games we didn't discuss on Sunday night—the Commanders' 21-6 win over the Giants and the Cardinals' 20-13 win over the Saints. Plus, we listen to some of the best voicemails we got on the TAFS voicemail line on Sunday.Rundown (timestamps are approximate)6:00 Commanders-Giants recap31:50 Cardinals-Saints recap56:02 Your sad voicemailsConnect with The Athletic Football ShowX: https://x.com/TA_FootballShowIG: https://www.instagram.com/tafootballshowYT: https://www.youtube.com/@TAFootballShowTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tafootballshowDiscord: https://discord.gg/sPp5md3BCall us: 847-448-0701Host: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassFollow Dave on X: @davehelman_Theme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. It is the first edition of our weekly hangover show. Recording this on Mondays, going into your guys' feed on Tuesdays. We've done a version of this show in the Athletic Football Show feed over the, in the past. And I really wanted to bring it back. I think it's just a great way to do a deep dive on a few games that we could not hit on the Sunday recap. And over the course of the year, I think it just allows you to be watching more of these teams.

Today we only talked about two games just because I think we're still sorting through some of the scheduling stuff and the timing that this season is going to look like, especially being in the studio. So we dove deep on Washington and the Giants and the Cardinals and Saints today. Really enjoyed both of those conversations

with Derek Classen, who's going to be joining me for these shows throughout the season. The other thing we're including on this show is mentioned it on social media last night in our Discord channel, which if you guys have not joined that, highly encourage you to do it.

I've been posting links to it on social media, believe that should still be active. But we're going to be taking your voicemails every single Sunday night in the throes of whatever you guys happen to be going through, post your team's game that week. And the hope is we want to just help you work through it. Whatever you're dealing with in a given week,

we're going to talk through this. I'm an NFL fan. I know what it's like to be in that spot. We're recording this at 325 on Monday. I'm about to be at the Bears game in less than four hours And so there's a chance I just leave us a voicemail on the way home from that game. And I'm the one that we play next Sunday or next Monday. But I know what it's like to be in that spot.

And so I want to do everything I can to just help you guys out a little bit. So that's what we're going to be doing every single week on this hangover show in addition to the couple games that we're going to recap. So really looking forward to it. Really enjoyed this one. Hope you guys do as well. Let's get to it with Derek Klesson right now. A couple years ago, we were doing a show. that I really enjoyed doing.

And it was something we called the Monday Hangover on the Athletic Football Show. And it was essentially just a second reaction show that we did Mondays into Tuesdays, hit a few games that we could not get to on Sunday because we were very open about this. I'm not going to talk about all the games on Sunday night. And as we've moved back to a five-day-a-week schedule,

I wanted to do this again. Because I feel like it's a great way to talk about more games. And by the end of last season, I just kind of came to a realization where I was like, I didn't re-watch enough games. based on how the schedule was going. And so I am very excited, Derek, to relaunch what we're just calling the weekly hangover because I'm terrible at naming stuff and don't want to come up for a new name for this.

I'm excited for it because the way that this is going to work is, again, it's going to be a lot of the games we didn't talk about as much on Sunday. But that's kind of perfect because usually those like handful of two or three games left over still have some weird thing that I want to go back and watch. In this case, we get a lot of Spencer Rattler, which I was extremely excited to be able to dig into like 12 hours immediately after Sunday wrapped up, so I'm pretty excited for all this. We're going to hit two games today, plus we're going to get to your voicemails. That's the other thing that we're incorporating into this show,

just doing a little bit of a therapy session every Monday into Tuesday for some people who might have had a tough Sunday night. The voicemails did not disappoint. Sincerely appreciate everyone who took the time to call in and be sad in the process. We've got some really good ones. Hopefully we can help some of you just work through your feelings after maybe a complicated week one. One other note about this show

compared to all the other ones that we're going to be doing over the course of the season Tuesday. We're going to recap two games today, not three. New schedule for everybody. Trying to get the rhythms of it down. We're all up to about 1 a.m. last night.

And so we're just trying to figure out how this is all going to go with the new studio and the timing of being in here. So two games today, we're going to talk about the commanders and the Giants. We're going to talk about the Cardinals and the Saints, which we did not hit last night.

But moving forward, the plan is for us to do three games on this show with a couple of your voice. So just something to keep in mind as we move through this one, it's not going to be quite the same as the other ones as we get a little bit deeper into the season. So let's start with commanders giants. With each of these games, I just want to begin with some high level thoughts. Like what happened as you think about this game? What's the first thing that comes to mind?

So as you went back and watched Giants commanders this morning, a 21 to 6 commanders win, your first reaction when rewatching this game was what? I think the pessimist in me immediately was like, it does not matter who is. going to play quarterback for this Giants team. And I know that we're going to talk about some of the limitations that Russ puts on the offense, which we've done for, I mean, at this point, for like five years now since he's kind of less Seattle. And I think all of that is valid. But when I went back and watched this game, I just felt like whoever would have been

the quarterback there would have had no shot. And I know we're already doing the, oh, Brian Dable is not really fully committing to Russell Wilson continuing to start. I think we all know that he wants to start Jackson Dard at some point. But I just watched that game. And I just don't see how he would have had a shot. None of the backs really had a shot in this game. Like that was kind of the other, if I want to flip it to more of an optimistic take.

The Washington front played really, really well, particularly the D-line like J.Gat Martin was good. Jvon Kinlaw looked like he was worth the money. Theron Payne had a couple of moments. It was a really like that little trench matchup was 95% favorite for Washington throughout the entire day. And I want to dig into what that may mean. But starting with the Giants, so I was looking up the numbers when you were talking. Last year the Giants finished the season with like a 37.5% offensive success rate per true. that ranked 30th in the NFL.

Yesterday, they were at 34.8%, which ranked 29th out of the 30 teams that have played so far. The only team they were ahead of was the Titans. The entire offseason, I think the line that the Giants were trying to sell you based on the moves that they made, and you and I talked about this at length,

the show that we did about the stories that teams were trying to tell themselves. The Giants, based on everything they did this offseason, the story they were trying to tell themselves was this was a Daniel Jones problem. That was our issue. As long as we swap out the quarterback and really do nothing else in terms of adding pieces to the offense, we're going to be okay with this thing moving forward and with this group moving forward.

So our first game in watching this group with that construction with just a new quarterback in there, they're worse on a down-to-down basis than they were last year. And the quarterback that every single member of that fan base is kicked as he walked out the door over the last six months, that team finished number one in the NFL in offensive success rate. yesterday as Daniel Jones and the Colts absolutely beat down the dolphins. It's a long season. That is not the first thing you want to see if you were a Giants fan having spent your entire offseason trying to talk yourself into why this was going to feel different.

No, absolutely not. And like that's kind of why this is very frustrating. They all said that this was going to be a quarterback problem. And again, if you still want to make the case that Russell Wilson is better than Daniel Jones, I think that's a fine one to make like one week of him of Daniel Jones playing well for the Colts. It's not necessarily going to sway me off that. but Russ comes with all of his limitations.

But to me it was, again, a lot of stuff that didn't even have to do with the quarterback, which goes to your point, like this was not just a quarterback problem. Like when I watched this New York offensive line, every time they needed to get like a cutoff block, like if they're running zone to the right and left tackle's got to go, you know, reach the three tech or something, never got there. Like whether the tight end had to do it on an end, they were never getting to their spot. And part of that is maybe poor coaching. They're not timing up stuff well, not taking the right angles.

I thought they were really, really bad with a lot of that. Like Washington was just getting a lot of penetration. from kind of the backside cutoffs part of runs, which I think was a big thing. And then there was one play in the middle of the second quarter that really irritated me from like a coaching perspective. They had Theo Johnson, the tight end. He was lined up on the right side in line.

And he motions over to the left, like towards the left tackle. And they're trying to get it to where he's like kind of shuffle motioning out. And then he's going to be able to chip the left end and be able to go get into his checkdown. But Russ snaps it like while he's still right behind the left tackle. And the left tackle just paths into him. And everything gets to. disrupted left tackle is thrown out and then left tackle loses through the inside shoulder. Russ has to check down immediately.

Like just those little things, it goes back to what you were saying of like it wasn't just a quarterback problem, even if the quarterback is still admittedly a problem. The number one deficiency, I would say, when you go back and rewatch that game. And this is another thing when we've tried to frame the giants coming into this season. The offensive line is not what it was in like 2023 when this was one of the worst groups truly like ever seen in the NFL field. Some of that was injuries. some of it was the way that they constructed the group.

They go out following off season. They bring back, they go get Greg Vett Rotin, they go get Germain-Aluminaur, they sign John Running in Free Agency. And the line looks demonstrably better, especially when Andrew Thomas is healthy, than it did when it was at its lowest point. Even though it's not a disaster anymore, though,

that doesn't mean it's a good group. And when you go back and you watch that yesterday, I know Andrew Thomas didn't play, but all across the front, Washington was consistently winning those matchups, no matter what it ended up looking like. Was it Greg Van Rotten against Jaron Kinlaw? Was it Jacob Martin against whatever tight end that you were putting him on?

Was it Doran Payne against whoever he happened to be lining up over the course of this game? Dietrich Wise, every single guy, Doran's Armstrong, every single member of that Washington front was better than the guy across from him with the Giants offensive line. That's a problem when you're playing against a team that has a deep, group solid and we'll talk about whether the kind of the proof is in the pudding with how that group played. But this is not a

star studded unit. This is a solid if anything unit and to get vastly outplayed over the course of the game by that group, what is it going to look against when you're having to play against defensive lines that have like actual ace players on it? Yeah, like this was not like Houston did this

to you. We were talking a little bit earlier before the show. They don't have any nines or tens on this defensive line. They have a lot of like sixes, a lot of sixes and a half. And like, if you got to play this guy 30 snaps a game, that's pretty good. But they have just like 10 of those guys. And again, all 10 of those guys were a lot better than their Giants' counterparts. And I think that was a big issue.

And like, to me, it didn't really end up mattering in this game. But like, I did not think Washington's linebackers played very well in the run game. I thought they were kind of like fitting a little bit late. They were not taking on blocks the way that they were supposed to. But the front was so good. It literally didn't matter. And like when you have a game like that where the linebackers, I think, are a little bit all over the place. But the front is dominating you so much that none of that matters.

That's a pretty damn bad. that's about to be as an offensive line. There was a play that I think is very illustrative of what we're talking about here, just overall, like the deficiencies and kind of the limitations of the Giants' offense with Russell Wilson. It was a third and ten on their second drive of the second half,

okay, and there was some initial pressure, but it was cleared out. Like, I think it was maybe coming from the right side and Van Rohn maybe managed to clear it out. So it was not a clean pocket, but it was still a pocket where Russ could have moved if he wanted to. There was a high low coming on the backside and it was coming open.

But instead of sliding up in the pocket and reading out the play on time as it's happening, Russ immediately dumps it to Theo Johnson 12 yards short of the sticks and the Giants are punting. Third and 10 is a hard down to pick up anyway. But to me, that's a very good example of like when Russell Wilson is your quarterback, you're probably not going to get to the third or fourth option

in the progression. And he's probably not going to have a lot of like clean, efficient pocket movement when things are a little bit dirty in there. And when you have the Giants offensive line, it's going to be a little bit dirty in there. It's not a disaster, but it's still not a great situation. And so I thought that play specifically really spoke to

some of the stuff that we're talking about where this group might run into some issues over the course of the years long as Russell Wilson is the quarterback. And that's been like the running thing with Russ now forever. It's like in 2018 he could get away with on third and 10 not having to step up and read it out because he was a good enough athlete still to be able to run around and go make a play

and still had good enough skill players to be able to go and do that. at this stage in his career, and this has been true, probably towards the last year of Seattle, but certainly once he got to Denver, he's not done a lot of that. So now his answer is like, I'm just not even going to run around as much. I'm just going to end up checking down because he's like not used to be able to step up in the pocket, make those throws. Now his answer is just checked down. And that's just not a good way to live as an offense.

And I think on the next drive is when he threw two slot fades in the course of like three plays. I remember posting about that on blue sky. I was like, oh, Russ is just doing the bit now. Like he's just fully into like, we're just going to chuck it and see if we can hit it. So again, I do think that this Washington defense, even if there's not a lot of star level talent, I do think they're well coached. I think they have a lot of really solid pieces. I was really impressed with Mikey Sane were still in this game.

Like I think there's a lot to like there, but it's still a middle of the road defense and this Giants offense really, really struggled against even that group. Let's talk about this from Washington's perspective because I don't want to diminish what the individual pieces on the defensive line did. because when they built that group this offseason, I think this was the idea where it's like, even if we don't have a guy that we're going to pay $35, $40 million a year to get us 15 sacks,

we think that we go six, seven, eight guys deep, and this group collectively can be more than the sum of its parts. I think the first example we got of that, they were right. Like, it's against the giants and all caveats necessary there, but the first glimpse we saw from this kind of retooled group with a couple of these new faces. I do think they got exactly what they wanted one week into the season out of that defensive front.

Yeah, they did. And I think Kinlau playing the way that he did kind of embodies all of that. Totally agree. Some of the other guys, I think we probably could have already expected that. Like guys on the roster, like I think Duran Payne probably did not have his best year last year, but I think it's still obviously a solid player for them.

And then a lot of the other play, like Doran Armstrong has been solid for them for a little bit now. So Kinlaw being what he was, especially with how much we talk we had of like, did you really need to sign Javon Kinla? for that much money in the off season. I'm still, you know, I don't know if one game again against the Giants really pushes me off of that,

but at least to have some degree of proof of concept for him to be able to get into the backfield. He did, I mean, it was like one of the first plays of the game where he was just like jamming the guardian to the backfield and cutting the playoff. And I was like, oh, if we're going to get that from the start of the game, then I think this Washington front might be good. So I think for a team that has probably sold themselves

that this is a Super Bowl contender team. Like I'm still not, you know, you've talked about a number of times, like, do you have a guy who can get you like six pressures in a playoff game. I'm still not 100% sure they have that guy yet, but this was like even given the team that you played about as good of a start as you could add. I love you mentioning that first play because it was the first play of the game

where Javon can't just blows up Van Roten and it's the TFL. The rest of that series on second and long, Mikey Sainer Still does a great job. He's actually if you look at the play, his guy is setting a pick for the slot fade and instead of worrying

about the pick being set, he actually plays over the top of it, which you almost never see in man coverage. It's just great awareness by him. And on third and 11, after those two plays, the Giants were running give up screen. That was their first possession. And so there's a little...

How emblematic of like how this is going to come out. And that is, again, that's the Giants being having some of the Giants issues, but credit where it's due for like those two guys on the Washington defense specifically playing exactly the way that we want to see them play. Let's get to the Washington offense in this game because I again think that there was a lot to like, despite. them only scoring 21 points. Part of that is the intentional grounding

at the end of the half where they easily could have gotten some points they didn't. But some of the things that we really liked about Washington last year when it comes to some of the details of the offense, the pass protection plan. I mean, think about how much time and energy

people spent this off season, talking about what this giant's pass rush might look like in 2025. You did not feel them in this game. I kind of forgot Abdul Carter was like playing the game for a lot of part of this. He played like half of the snaps. He was moving around a decent amount.

He spied a couple times. And so we can talk about whether that's the right plan with Admiral Carter. But I think that this was a really good example of the Giants did a bunch of different stuff to try to handle Jaden Daniels. We're spying him a little bit. We're playing a little bit more man coverage. And I think Washington had consistent answers over the course of the game, no matter what the Giants' defense was trying to do. And that's what you want to see. The Giants played a decent amount of man.

We discussed this decent amount this offseason where it's like, hey, if you can play man and keep him in the pocket, this is where the Washington offense. struggles a little bit. And I think that they had, in my estimation, two or three good answers against those looks to be able to kind of skirt around that. And that's what I wanted to see from this Washington team. It's like after you were a half step ahead of every team you played last year for the most part on the coaching side, can you carry that over into year too? And I think we had a lot of moments yesterday where I feel pretty good about the answer so far. I felt like in some ways this was a lot of the same for me from last year where in terms of the protection stuff, I thought they again did a really good job.

Like on their critical downs, like on a lot of their third and eighths, third and 12s, whatever it was, it was still a lot of word double chip in one way or another. And like again, against the front like this,

you probably should be doing that. And then again, when you have a quarterback like Jaden Daniels where it's okay if guys are not out into the route immediately because if, you know, he wants to hold onto the ball and then end up running, he can obviously do that.

So the way that they keep constructing that, I really do enjoy. And so I think the fact that we saw more of that was honestly pretty nice. I was mostly really encouraged by the way that the run game actually went. They were the second best run game by success rate this week. And first was the Dolphins, which was like cheating because they barely ran the ball.

And by the time they were doing some of that, it was like nonsense. Like, did not matter. But Washington had a 57.7% offensive rushing success rate. And again, some of that is Daniels. But like the run game itself looked really good. Like they did a lot of interesting stuff. Obviously, they had a lot of pullers and like, Kroski-Barrant looked really good. The play to me where like I really got a little bit sold on what the run game could look like.

they had a red zone play where I think they were pulling the left tackle and the left guard and Brandon Coleman comes across and he smokes Chauncy Golston like Golston should be able to hit the guard, spill this play like give his guys a chance, none of that. Like he just drives him three yards off the ball

and it allows merit to just go be able to bounce that playing and get in for a touchdown. And it's like, okay, if you, because last year the run game, even when they were using the backs, it was all smoking mirrors. Like it was like, we're just hoping that we have numbers and can beat you.

But now if you, you have maybe a guard who can go around and pull and just take people out, that kind of changes to me what this run game can be. So I think that was really what I wanted to see from this offense on top of the main coverage stuff you mentioned. And to get some of that was extremely encouraging to me. I'm really excited for Brandon Coleman at guard over the course of this season. It was his first play, but he just, there's so much power. There's so much torque with the way that he plays. I'm excited to see how that goes. The other guy who I thought played pretty well, and it's not surprising. He was a starter for them last year. He obviously knows the offense. But Sam Cosmi not playing in this game.

I thought Aligretti was really solid. He just did everything that you want him to do. There was a play. It actually, talking about the past protection specifically, it was an incompletion, but the play where McCorren had Pulsin adibo on the go ball down the left sideline. Oh, yeah.

That to me was like a really good example of the protection quality for Washington in this game. So they sent a slot blitz, a DB blitz of some kind, and Echler sorts all the way across the formation to pick it up. And so at the same time, that's happening. We get a chip on burns with either wide receiver or tight end. I can't remember exactly what to the tonsil side. And then on the offensive lines right side, you have Dexter Lawrence at defensive tackle and then you believe have Abdul Carter as the edge on that side.

Well, they slide Dexter Lawrence's way. And Alighready does such a great job on this play where there's four hands on Lawrence, but he still kind of has a little bit of outside help to make sure that Connerley doesn't have to worry about the inside move. And when you're a rookie right tackle on your first game and you're playing against Abdul Carter. And he was struggling in this game for a lot of it. He had a couple moments where it's like, yeah. But in that play specifically, it's like he can feel that right guard next to him.

And that really gives you confidence to play that block a certain way. And so that just there's a lot of examples like that in this game where it's like you look at the plan and it's just really detailed and really smart in terms of how they're trying to take these guys away. And against the Giants front that has a lot of talent, I felt like you saw that consistently throughout the game. Yeah, you really did. Like that was honestly one of the best or better examples.

Like, I mean, Jaden Daniels had, I think it was only pressured in about 24% of his dropbacks in this game, which was like the fifth lowest in the league or something. It was definitely one of the lower rates in the league. And again, that is part of that is like you don't really want to just tee off on Jane Daniels because if you do and you miss, he's going to be gone. But it also is the plan. Which happened multiple times. Which did happen multiple times in this game.

He will do that. That was the problem is that no matter what they were doing, it was the wrong thing to do. Yeah. I think it was the first scramble that he had. Kavon Tebowdo goes high side, gets pushed by the quarterback. Jaden Daniels just very calmly steps up, scrambles first down. And so later in the game, they're trying to pull back a little bit. They're trying to spy him a little bit.

And then they're leaving way too much time. They're dropping Brian Burns into coverage. Like whatever wrinkles they were trying to use didn't end up working. And it's funny because when you look at the man coverage numbers in this game, I was curious because that's what, that's the one area. It's like, what are they going to be in the second act against man coverage? Jaden finished 5 of 12 for 77 yards and a touchdown against man coverage on Sunday.

But he had four scrambles for 34 yards and four first downs against man coverage as well. He added 5.9 EPA on those scrambles over the course of the game. So this was another example where no matter what you were trying to do against this team, you ended up being wrong in large part because of the quarterback. Yeah, like he just has this ability to even when you feel like you've got him. And they did get him a number of times in this game. I think he took like four or five sacks.

but again a lot of those were like not the late in the downs where he has some chance at it a couple of those were one they tried to motion into this okay this was my favorite set the Giants didn't do a whole lot great on defense but the one sack i thought was awesome Washington tries to motion like four by one empty to the right side get Debo samuel as the number one you can see the Giants corner i forget who it was it might have been flat he's like jumping ready he's like i know the screen is coming he fires immediately and jaden daniels like oh that's I have to abort this and he immediately takes a sack. So that was one of the few things I thought the Giants defense did well as to jump on that.

But like you said, like Daniels just has an incredible ability to make plays like that. I will say, though, as a pass it, the accuracy was not there in this game, which I thought was kind of weird. I thought he was over the middle of the field specifically, just not leading receivers the way that we saw him last year. Like he threw behind guys like five or six times in this game. I don't think it was egregious. I think that it led to more contested plays than you want. And I think why that's notable. especially against those man coverage looks

is that Washington does not have a lot of high-end outside receiver talent. We know this. And so against man, their answers in this game, other than Jaden scrambling is, they were trying to get runaways with the number two or number three receiver from the slot,

whether it be Debo, whether it be... Ertz did a long time in verse. So that's what they're trying to do is, okay, we don't have guys that are going to play well against press against man coverage. So with the slot backed off a little bit, can we get some runaways all the way across the field

where that lack of separation initially is less important. And I think in those moments, you really need to lay the ball out there in order to make the most of those opportunities. And I think he was just to tick off on some of those throws in this game. Yeah, he was.

And again, like, he was better than that last year. So this is not like a big concern. He'll probably be fine. But that was the one area of this game where I was like, that seemed bizarrely uncharacteristic of him to not be able to be that accurate. The other thing I'll mention about the Giants defense,

a couple different things. Losing Micaheufatten was like a real thing in this game. Like, Michael McFadden going out and getting replaced by Darius Mousso, I hope I'm saying that correctly. You noticed that over the course of this game. And I think some of that was against the run, but a lot of it was him just not getting enough depth and width in the hook in some of those own coverages. Every dig route was open. Every digger out was open and even like some deep curls. Like there was a lot of air because of that.

And I think that brings me to a point. And obviously that's because of injury. But when we thought about this Giants defense coming into the year, everyone was so transatlant. fixed with this notion of Brian Burns, Kavan Tibido, Dexter Lawrence, Abdul Carter, and I get all that. But the defense is an 11 guys in an NFL team.

And so over the course of this game, you notice the backup linebacker, you notice Cordell Flott a little bit. When I'm talking about the fact that the first round pick, the Giants took a corner, which is no longer a starter for them from a couple years ago. And then when they dug it a little bit deeper into this depth in some other areas here, like,

I really thought that the snaps where Dane Belton played, he struggled against both the run and the past when he was in some of those dime looks when they dig into some of the defensive line depth like there's still going to be snaps for Rakeem Nunez Roches for DJ Davidson for Elijah Garcia and you just don't feel the depth in this group

when they have to start digging into that a little bit and I do think that we're going to notice that over the course of the year even if the headline players on this defense are guys that you can get excited about yeah and like for as much as I think you know I have also harped on like how good is that formula really for like the Los Angeles Rams at least the coaching in LA I feel like pretty good about like the way that things are taught the way that guys are spacing it's like okay a guy just

might not be a good enough athlete to make a tackle here in space but I trust that he's probably going to be in the right spot even guys who are a little bit further down on the depth chart with New York I feel like I have not I don't have that level of confidence yet and I again think once you start to see some of the injuries or depth have to start chipping away you really start to feel that I think yeah I think for both good and bad on either side here these teams were kind of what we might have expected them to be based on last season. And if you're a commander's fan, I think that's something to be excited about. If you're a Giants fan, I think that's something to be worried about.

Brian Dable came out after the game, even today, said Russell Wilson is going to start next week. The fact that it took one game for him to need to have that vote of confidence and need to tell people that Russ's remaining the starter, there was a lot, I heard a bunch of times this offseason that like, it's going to be so decent that Jackson Dart isn't even going to have to play for the whole year. it one week we got of yeah russell's still the starter we're going to keep rolling with russ so i just i've said this many times this entire situation just gives me like chicago bears flashbacks from the past two decades and the last 48 or the last 24 hours of everything about the giants is doing nothing to push me off of that point that is week one as you can get all right we're going to take a quick break and then we're

going to come back with some saints cardinals talk all right let's dig into saints cardinals ends up being a 20 to 13 Cardinals win. Your first thought after going back to rewatch Saints Cardinals today was what? You might be the wrong person. I swear to God, I'm not doing a bit right now because I would have wanted to do a bit coming into the game. Spencer Rattler was like kind of fine.

I'm not saying he's good. I'm not saying he's going to ever make a Pro Bowl. I'm not even saying that I'm going to make the case that he's going to like by the end of the season. I'm predicting he'll be the starter for next year. None of that. But he was legitimately fine. And I can make the objective case.

15th in success rate this week, 19th in EPA per dropback, which is not great, but that's like a perfectly fine, mediocre quarterback. This is supposed to be the worst offense in the NFL based on every single preseason prediction. Yes, exactly. And again, he threw 45 times also,

which that is also my other complaint is that for whatever you think of Spencer Rattler, he should not be throwing 45 times a game. That's really the bigger issue here. But he was like a perfectly okay quarterback for what they were asking him to do. And like Jaden Daniels, who we just talked about, was 18th in success rate and EPA per dropback.

for example. So it's like he was, again, it's one week, but like, Rattler played fine. And I really do think that like his operation of quick game I thought was good. He was actually getting the ball out, which like that was the biggest complaint with Spencer Rattler's like he's going to take sacks and he's not going to get going to get the ball out. He got sacked one time on 45 dropbacks and had like a 2.6 time to throw. He was doing a good job. On throws a two and a half seconds or less, because I look this up because I thought the exact

same stuff already watching the game. He was 18 of 24 for 142 yards on those plays according to next trend. And I think part of that is because the horizontal. stretch they were trying to create in like the short to intermediate area of the field. The Cardinals, for all the fun stuff they do on defense and for all the defensive talent they now have, the second level of the defense having to cover sideline to sideline is not a strength of this team. So trying to attack those areas over and over again based on what the Cardinals are, I actually think that made a lot of sense from the Saints perspective and they did it pretty efficiently.

They did. And like, again, Rattler, I think on a lot of those like horizontal stretch stuff, he did a really good job getting the ball. And like accuracy-wise was not perfect, but like pretty good. Like I thought he was putting the ball on guys where he needed to. There were a couple tight window throws that like guys couldn't catch, especially at the end, which we'll talk about. But I thought accuracy-wise, he was good. And then to me, against a team like the Cardinals, they're going to throw a lot of weird stuff at you. And obviously they did. And to me, there was like where I felt the most confidence about what Rattler was able to do. There was a third and seven in the middle of the third quarter.

Arizona's got seven guys on the line of scrimmage One of the safeties I think it was Buda Baker Was over the right side B gap for the offense He builds he starts to bail out early And I think Rattler sees that And he goes okay, might be a void here Soon as the play snaps

The linebacker who was lined up on the right side A gap he also pops out And he like goes over a little bit more towards the hash So Rattler immediately sees all of that And goes oh there's going to be a void Like right inside the numbers Pins it right on Joanne Johnson And time and it's just like

For a guy that we thought that was just this like willy-nilly kind of a backyard player did a lot of that nonsense like the Mahomes stuff in college. For him to like look relatively put together with stuff like that, I was like, okay, I would like to see a few more weeks of this, but it was a good start for him to be able to do some stuff like that. It's super early

and I understand that when you don't have a guy, you should take multiple dice rolls to try to find that guy. But one of my just like clear takeaways from this game is like, why couldn't we have just done this all year with Spencer Rattler? Where you are as a franchise, if you're the Saints, he is more than competent enough

to get you through the entire season without embarrassing yourself every single week. And that's really all you needed to do for 2025 before trying to find a actual quarterback prospect in 2026 versus taking one with the 40th overall pick this year. You didn't have to do it. You didn't have to do it to try to hand, or like try to gesture the idea of being competent this year.

I think he's probably good enough to get you there for this season specifically. And what happened yesterday has done nothing to, push me off of that idea. That's literally like all I'm trying to say with my Spencer Rattler take is like if we've had seasons where like Gardner Minchu is walking in as a week one starter. Davis Mills. And Davis Mills.

It was to start it for multiple years. Yes. Like Jacoby Brissette has like started like 14 games for teams. It's like if those guys can do it like Rattler is at least of that quality. There's no reason the Saints shouldn't have at least tried it. And again, I get when you look back at last year's numbers, he was like disgustingly bad. But he was like the offensive line was his convobulated. It was a fifth round rookie.

It's a terrible situation. Like all the two best receivers on the. team were not playing for a lot of that. Like it was just, we should have given him more grace than like, again, I'm not saying he's going to be good, but he's a perfectly capable quarterback. I mean,

that, when they get the ball back with 413 left and they're down 20 to 10, that ripped shot he has to Juwan Johnson. And then the only reason that they're forced to kick a field goal in that situation is because the backup right tackle gets beat by Dante Stills for like a ridiculous TFL. That was probably the biggest issue I had with the entire game for the Saints offense is what was going on at right tackle because Flaga was close. It's clearly hurt.

Yeah. Just clearly hurt. I mean, he's getting beat around the edge multiple different times. Baron Browning roasted him at one point. There's a reason he came out of this game. But the fact that the right tackle was kind of a black hole all game because your starter was hurt and then you eventually had to take him out. I think that was the biggest problem I saw with the Saints offense probably throughout the entire game. And that was like, that was frustrating for a number of reasons.

Like, I thought the rest of the line actually looked like pretty good. Like I thought the interior looked solid. Like they abandoned the run game, I think, a little bit earlier than they should have. but there were moments where the run game I thought looked pretty solid for them. Like they, the offensive line at least gave me some hope that they can be competent. Like, again, this is not going to be a good offense. But the whole point was that people were maybe scared

that they were going to be offense 31 this year. I think we saw enough that this week that I was like, they can be offense like 24 and do some decent stuff and have some decent games. And we also saw this Cardinals' offense against the Saints defense for the first time. The Saints defense led by Brandon Staley, weren't exactly sure what we were going to get out of this. And this is a Cardinals offense that has bumped up

against the top 10 in every efficiency metric over the last couple years, and they struggled relatively today. They had a worse success rate offensively Arizona did than the Panthers yesterday. Yes. Panthers finished at 38.5%. The Cardinals finished at 38.2%. The design rush success rate for the Cardinals yesterday per next gen was 30.4%.

This is a team that was one of the most efficient rushing teams in the NFL over the last several years. And so I think the early returns on the Saints defense is, again, even if this is a group where the biggest names are aging players, they looked more than competent yesterday. I was actually pretty encouraged by what I saw from them over the course of that game.

I really was too. And like, again, that actually, now that you mentioned like the run game success rate, the Cardinals really did not have many good plays in the run game, except for the one, Trey Benson run.

Yeah, the one Trey Benson run where like Isaac Yodham fits a little bit too far inside for what he needs to be doing as the outside corner there. And like otherwise, they'd played a really, really good game up front. Like I thought Nathan Shepard, especially early on,

was just mauling a lot of the Cardinals interior players, the Mario Davis. He's 36 years old, and I swear to God he's a better athlete than like every other lineback in the league. He and Cam Jordan both like turn back the clock a little bit yesterday. Obviously, the first like big Cam Jordan play is a sack

where he's unblocked on a boot. But Cam Jordan had a big pressure that almost led to, or excuse me, a tip ball that almost led to an interception. And then there was a run play at some point in the second half where he just comes crashing down in the polar, completely caves in that side. and it leads to like a one or two yard gain. And so he had a handful of plays.

DeMario Davis had a handful of plays. I thought Kulad McKinstree actually had some really nice flashes and coverage in this game. He gets beat deep to one time on that go ball to Marvin Harrison down the right sideline. But other than that, I actually thought that he played really well. And even that, he was like squeezed him to the sideline. That was just like part of the beauty of what Marvin Harrison can do is like his ball skills are phenomenal. And his tracking is crazy. And he just like slowed up at the right time at the last second and snag that.

ball like that to me was more just like really really insane tracking from Marvin Harrison Jr. But again like otherwise Culey McInstree was doing a really good job of plastering guys. He got Marvin Harrison Jr. a number of times. Michael Wilson, he was just not giving anything to on a lot of those. It's like there was one where he just blanked him on like a third down and just shoved him out of bounds. We are. Oh, he didn't shove him out of bounds, but there is a third down where Michael Wilson gets blank that we're going to talk about.

Yeah, he just like that play was awesome. So like he did a really good job. And then I think to go back a little bit to mention to Mario Davis, Cam Jordan did a good job of this. Pete Warner even had a really good play. What the Cardinals want to do in the run game still is to be able to pull guys and go and be more, when you're pulling guys, you're trying to be more physical. Every time a Saints guy was boxing a puller or meeting him in the hole, whatever it was, the Saints defenders just won. Like almost every single time they just won. And again, I know some of those Saints guys are just good at that and that's a defense. It's hard to do that against. But the concern with this Cardinals offense was like, do you have the players to be what you want to do on offense. And today it didn't really look like it. I know they won the game. It's week one. I think it's just important to keep saying that over and over and over again to remind myself, even if it's not about reminding the people listening. This version of the Cardinals is kind of my worst nightmare, what we saw yesterday. It's not because it's bad, right? They won the football game. You still see the flashes of like what they want

to be. There's a decent level of talent on both sides of the ball. But the offense being as inconsistent as they were yesterday and just hitting snag after snag because of some of the personnel deficiencies combined with the defense still being very strange with better players, but still having some of the same issues and weaknesses they did last year with lesser talent, that was kind of like my biggest fear with this Cardinals team

is that we would walk into this year when they were supposed to take this jump and the offense was kind of got to be what it still, what it was before with the same sort of issues. and the defense, even after all these investments, would go from being a middle of the pack group that did some interesting stuff to a slightly better middle of the pack group that was doing all this interesting stuff.

And one week in, that's kind of what we've gotten. And so I really do hope that it changes over time. But my first glimpse at this team is like, uh-oh. This is what I did not want to see this year. I did not want to see them looking like a nine and eight team on both sides of the ball. And that's kind of what they looked like yesterday. It was.

And like, because other than I think moving, Marvin Harrison Jr. around and giving him some chances, I thought they did a little bit better of that. The other issues I had were going to be like, can you be physical enough, which one did not check that box for me, I didn't think.

And then I think another one was like, can you be a little bit more varied personnel-wise than you were last year and get more receivers on the field and be useful? That was not the case. How would they be? Well, that's the problem. They had a 44% 11 personnel rate,

which is the same as the Ravens. I'm sorry, you cannot win football games the same way as the Ravens. They had a, in 13 personnel, 23% of their plays. And that's like kind of weird because Elijah Higgins is like a little bit of like a hybrid player. But like still.

They use him as a fullback. Exactly. They use him as like an H. Like move around tight end. He's like a scleronic the way that like McVeigh was trying to use him initially. Yeah. But I think when we'd say this with some tight ends where it's like, well, they're not really using him like a tight end. It's because they're a glorified slot receiver.

That is not the case of Elijah Higgins. He's just small. They're still using him the way that you would use a certain type of tight end. Yeah. That is true. Maybe so just like it's still, you know, more like. 12.75 personnel just the way that he's built, but they do effectively use him that way. And so that's why it's just, they're a frustrating offense.

And you need to make the point, like, who else would it be a receiver? I don't really know. Like, that was kind of the contention as this year, it felt like they needed to add someone to do something and they didn't do that. And so that part of it has frustrated me. And then the other frustration is like, Kyler Murray just has to play the play more. And he just, I know that he came into this game with an illness. And so maybe that's part of that. And all that was weird.

But like, literally his first big dropback is Marvin. Harrison is cutting over the middle of the field on a dig route and he just doesn't want to step up into the pocket and throw it because he doesn't think he can put it over the linebackers. And it's just like he had a couple other moments like that in this game. There was one where he actually got a free rusher off the left side. I think it was Carl Granderson. And it wasn't like a blown protection. This was just the way that they had it blocked up.

It was like it's okay. We have the free rusher here. Our answers to throw hot to the speed out. Kyler just can't get it over Carl Grandison because Kyler's 510 and Carl Carl Granderson is 6, 5 with 34 inch arms. And just like the little stuff like that that, Again, you watched the offense and it was like, man, this was the problem last year. Uh-oh, it's a problem again.

I did feel that way. There was a play with 140 left in the third quarter that to me is like the best possible expression of my frustrations with this Cardinals team. Marv is lined up as the isolated receiver to the left side. He has a one-on-one where he's running a vertical route on the left sideline. He gets gloved up. I think it was by Kulad McKinstree. Michael Wilson is working from the right side and he's running like an in-breaker from a stack on that side. and he gets gloved up by Alante Taylor.

The timing of it just does not work. And Kyler, in a pocket, similar to that Russell Wilson play that I was talking about, where it's not super clean, but it's clean enough. He gets really skittish and he ends up taking a sack. And so I'm watching this play and I'm like, this is my nightmare. This is like exactly the version of the Cardinals offense that would lead to me to be very frustrated over the course of this year.

And some of that is the quarterback. And I think worth giving him a little bit of grace for not feeling a hundred 100% yesterday for it being week one, all that kind of stuff. But as we've talked about Caleb Williams this off season, and we've talked about the potential kind of blue-skied path forward for Caleb Williams, Kyler Murray is a name that you've mentioned a couple different times. And when you do that, I kind of internally bristle. And that's not because I think that would necessarily be a bad outcome,

especially with what we saw from Caleb Williams' rookie. If he ended up having Kyler Murray's career, I think that's probably like, I mean, that's the best bear's quarterback of my lifetime. Yes, correct. And that's probably like a 66 percentile outcome, right, for like Caleb Williams's career. But I think part of the reason that I just can't bring myself to explore that potential timeline is that

watching games like this and knowing what Kyler is capable of, I think that rooting for Kyler Murray would drive me insane. Like, I think if I had to watch this every single week, the little dips and the highs and lows and what the best moments look like and then what the worst moments look like, I think it would slowly drive me crazy. And I was reminded of that when we watched in the game today. And I think that's kind of why they brought up that as like a version of Caleb Williams that we might see.

I mean, I can see why it would be. And again, they have some of the same issues like Caleb Williams for as good as I think he can be. Some of his issues is sometimes if there's a dig route over the middle, he just like doesn't want a trigger on it the way that he should. And again, Kylie, that's kind of his biggest issue. Again, Kylie will hold the ball and take some sad. but Kyler's a better athlete than Caleb Williams. But it is funny that like

when they're having these low games and you're watching it and you're just screaming at your computer like throw the dig route, those are just the like it's you, that's a quarterback that's really, really hard to live with sometimes. Let's talk about the Cardinals defense a little bit because that was a group that I was fascinated by coming into this season. They go out and spend, I don't know,

a fortune and overall just team building capital on this group. First round pick on Walter Nolan, second round pick on Will Johnson, round pick on Jordan Birch, Josh Sweat and Free Agency, Callas Campbell in Free Agency, Dalvin Tomlinson and Free Agency, like it just so many resources thrown at this, and I thought they were a solid

defense last year, what can they be this year? And I don't really know what to make of like what they were in week one. Like, there were obviously some moments that are worth getting excited about. I thought that Will Johnson he had an interception wiped off the board and even other than that, you

watch that guy play and it's just like, well, that's a different sort of player. Like that is a star level talent at corner. So that was great. There were some other areas of the defense, though, where I'm like, I don't really know what to make of this. And I'm still a little bit concerned about some of the relative deficiencies and gaps we might see with this group.

So when you watch what the Cardinals put on tape yesterday, what were your bigger picture thoughts and takeaways about the defense specifically? I mean, first of all, I'll echo the Will Johnson thing. Like, he had the pick that gets taken off the board. He had, they tried to test him on a go ball on the right side line in the end zone. and he just like was not having any of that. He also, he's just one of those guys. Like you just look at the way that he's built and moves and you're like,

that's a pretty good NFL player. Exactly right. And he absolutely lays out, du Jave on that screen. Like the way he's built and moves. I thought he was going to Lido Shepard him, like the way that Reggie Bush got hit. I thought that's what we were getting.

But that's exactly right. This thought when you watch him play, it's just like that guy looks and moves different. And like that is my first example. Even like Max Milton, who's a really good athlete, like you look at Max Melton next to Will Johnson. It's just like different things.

We were talking about a different thing right now with those two players. Yeah. So, like, that was, if we want to be encouraged, that was definitely the highlight for me is that he looked really, really good. And I thought the front looked solid. I didn't think they were great, but I thought, like, you invested for them to be a little bit better. And I thought they were not as embarrassing.

And I think along the front specifically didn't have to do as much weird stuff as, as they had previously. But they still on defense overall did a lot of weird stuff. So that's my thing. It's my, uh-oh moment for the defense was like, it felt like at some point in the middle of the, second quarter, they were like 6 dbs every play. Like we're just, we don't want to do any of this other stuff.

And it's like, I get that in certain packages that can make sense. The Saints were throwing a lot in this game and had committed to kind of being a really big no huddle, a really big like empty team. And so I get why personnel wise that could have made sense in this game, but I think overall if that's going to be something that they're going to want to do where they just play that much dime and just are not going to have enough size on the field, I think teams that can beat you up are going to really, really beat them up. And I'm pretty concerned about what.

that's going to look like. Even when you add bigger, better players on the defensive front, if you're going to be in dime as much as they are, I think you're still going to have issues in even semi-normal down-end distance situation. So yesterday, the Cardinals lined up in dime on 46.4% of their snaps, according to next jet. Just for context, the Vikings led the league last season at 28.8%.

So it's just an entirely different thing. And some of that is game script, but I also think some of that is the way they want to play to get their best 11 guys out there. This is a team, I think, in an ideal world. On first and 10, they want to be in those penny fronts with five down linemen,

one off ball linebacker in those three safeties. I think it, and then the hope is, okay, on those plays, can we get a second and nine? And I think on second and nine, if they get a one-yard gain with those five-man fronts, they immediately be like,

all right, it's dime time. We're going to get to 60B to right now. And I think that even, Even if those are your best 11 guys, you might run into some limitations trying to play that way. The perfect example to me is in the, I believe it was in the third quarter. The Saints had a first and 15. And the dime linebacker switched over the course of this game. Sometimes it was Buda Baker.

Sometimes it was number 42, his name I can I remember right now, D' Adrienne Taylor Demerson. And then sometimes it was Jalen Thompson. So Jalen Thompson's lineup as the dime linebacker on first and 15. Well, it's not third and 15. It's first 15. The offense still has a choice here. And the Saints made a choice on that play.

And the choice they made was to pull Talis Fulaga and have him lead up on Jalen Thompson as a linebacker on first down. It did not end well for the Cardinals. And so I do think that even if they have all this DB personnel that is good and intriguing and they can be deployed in interesting ways, I still feel like we kind of. saw where the gaps still exist with this team. And it's the fact that when they want to put two linebackers in the field,

Akeem Davis Gaither is just not somebody they want to play a lot. And I think they're going to run into some issues because of the personnel concerns at that spot specifically. Yeah, I mean, Akeem Davis Gaither was a player that was on this Bengals team who was not a consistent starter. And they shift off a bunch of there. That, to me, like, kind of says all you need to know about, like, not wanting that caliber of player on the field. And I think the point of this show is not necessarily to look ahead.

But next week, they get the Panthers. that is an offensive line and run game that will test you if you try to play this way. And so I feel like we're going to get a decent look at like, can they hold up trying to play this way? And I'm not sure. Week one is always, even the first couple weeks of the season, it's always going to be like a testing ground.

And for very few teams, is that more true than a staff like the Cardinals defense? Like they want to do a bunch of weird stuff. They're going to be experimenting early in the season. Some of it's going to go well, some of it's not. And I think that we're going to see some extremes from teams like this as they figure out what they can and cannot get away with. But I think the early returns and the early evidence that we have is that there are going to be

some issues if they want to continue playing this way specifically. The one guy who just like down to down where I was like, that's a little bit disappointing with the way that he played, I really, really hope that we don't have like a bad Calais Campbell season. I mean, it has to happen at some point. But it doesn't. It doesn't. I guess he could have just retired at some point.

And so he got moved. in the run game a couple times yesterday where I was just like I really really hope this doesn't happen I really hope he is going to be better over the course of the year but I'm at least going to for now tell myself the saints offensive line just looks good and I'm not going to make this about calais's gambling line does have some talent on it so I think overall the cardinals week one all the stuff that comes with it quarterback not feeling well but I think some of the same issues that we had seen over the last couple years creeping up again still need them to show me they can overcome some of that stuff. And on the same side of it, just a level of overall competence,

especially on the defense, where it's like this is not going to be a team that gets blown out every single week. I think they're going to be consistently competitive in the ways that you want to see, even if it's not a good team by the end of the year. All right, we're going to take one more quick break, and then we're going to come back and talk a couple of you through some of the feelings that you were feeling post week one. We don't have a funny or clever name for this, which we probably should. If you guys have any suggestions, I'm open. to them. This is truly in the last 15 years of

doing this, I'm not very good at many things, but the thing I'm worst at is naming the shit about the show. Whether it's the show itself or the segments within the show, I think I've come up with like two good names for things since I started doing this. It's working, so I mean, you know, what can you say?

I mean, this goes back to like, it's one of those things where early in your career when you're trying to develop skills, if there's somebody, this is true for an NFL team. If you were blocked by like a veteran at your position and you don't get the opportunities, then you're just never going to develop those skills. When we were at Grantland, David Jacoby was so good at naming things that he would just name everything and I would never have to think about what things are called. And so I just never figured out

how to do that as part of this job. So if you are somebody who is good at that and you're in the Discord or you're following us on social media, let us know something clever that you want this segment called. Essentially, this is just going to be a little bit of therapy talking you guys through what you're working through in relation to your teams. So that's what we're going to do every single week. I'm very excited about this. Essentially just team fan advice is the thought here.

So let's get to our first voicemail from yesterday. Bellar, fire it up. I'm amazed. It's shocker. I'm calling you seconds after the Lions just lost that really awful season opener to the Packers. And as awesome as that touchdown from the rookie was, I am now sitting here in a state of fear that

the last two and a half years were a dream and that this team is back to being terrible. The O-line looked bad. The defense couldn't get any penetration. Golf looked not like the good version of golf. Help me sort through these feelings,

oh, Robert Mays, because I am. Oh, boy, this hurts. Anyway, cheers, mate. Bye. Speaking of former co-workers of mine, Shocker and I work together for several years at the ringer. And I think that what he's feeling right now

is probably what a lot of Lions fans are feeling right now. And I saw this posted a couple times yesterday, but it was like the quote card of what Dan Campbell said after the NFC championship game lost to the Niners where it's like there's no guarantee that you will ever be back here. And it's way too early to get that worried about this. But if you're a Lions fan, I can understand watching what happened yesterday

and being like, oh man, was our best shot already has it come and gone. Yeah, I've still like Dan Campbell, he's still got banked up like eight weeks before I'm like truly panicking about this. He's got enough of that.

But this week one, I think the best part of the email is the clear pause after not the good version of Jared Gough. And then there's a pause of like a really sitting with what that means and what we've all seen what that looks like, especially when Jared Gough

is a quarterback who, for all the things that he does well, very pressure sensitive. And the thing that we worried about with this Lions team, was up the middle specifically, they might be a little bit more pressure sensitive than usual. And I think we saw that in this game.

And like, if that was your nightmare going in, to get it the exact way that you got it in week one, was like, I get why you would be a little bit worried about this. I don't have as much good of like, this will be okay. Like, I am a little bit worried as well. Yeah, I don't think we should necessarily believe that it's going to be okay. I think the only real answer to this is it's really early and there is so much built up equity with this franchise over the last few years.

It wasn't a dream. It all happened, right? It was awesome. Built themselves into this thing. That was very real. And we talked about this coming into the season, and it was a point we harped on over and over and over again. When you become one of those mainstay franchises, it becomes a question of whether you can endure the attrition and continue to be successful. But we don't know how to treat that until we see the teams do it.

And we have not seen the Lions have to do it. And so we were one week into the year. And I think the offense was not nearly as dynamic as it fell under Ben Johnson. I think part of that is because the Packers' defense is an underrated group that has a lot of – you talk about like this idea of having like a lot of like sixes and sevens collectively with the defensive front. That's what the Packers were before they added Micah Persons. And the upside of a lot of those players, I think, is higher than a team like Washington. Like some of the sevens might be eights.

Like Edron Cooper, if he takes that stuff might be really good. Like Evan Williams being healthy and playing the way that he played. It's like, these guys might be good. One of the guys, and again, I'm biased here because he went to my high school and I'm really hoping that he ends up panning out in a good way. I thought that the way that the Packers used Lucas Van Nest yesterday was actually very smart when it's like, okay, maybe he's not the most refined pass rusher with all these tools in his bag, but he is a big, really good athlete. So them using him in like a four point stance, like over tight ends in the run game, them dropping him a little bit, like just allowing him to be a big explosive athlete. I think was actually a really good deployment of him. And so it is, I don't know if it's a unique challenge,

but it's a substantial challenge going on the road and playing against a Packers defense that is layered, diverse, hard to play against and does have a certain amount of talent. So I'm not freaking out yet, but I think this is the, like, what you would be worried about as Alliance fans coming into the season. It's like even if we have a lot of talent still on this roster, the offensive and defensive line are not as talented

as they have been over the last couple of years. And we had guys that justifiably were given head coaching opportunities as some of the best coordinators in the NFL that are no longer in those jobs. And that's what the Lions felt like yesterday. And like with the, I think I am more honestly concerned about the offense. One, because the interior, like it's just a lot of young pieces. I think that could always be an issue. And for me, like we've seen John Morton call plays before.

Like he's done this. He has some level of experience. Not with this quarterback, not with this team. all that stuff, but he's at least done it before. So the fact that they looked so discombobulated was a little bit concerning to me. The defense, I'm willing to give a little bit more credence just because, one, Kelvin Shepherd has never called plays before. I think that that's really tough.

And then two, like, you can count on one hand how many play callers you'd rather have than Matlafleur, or at least I can. And for, like, Jordan Love was playing incredible, like, challenge. The Matliflor Week 1, that is a unique challenge. Yeah, that is just like brutal. You're going to be on your shit. Yeah, especially when. And especially when Jordan Love is going to just, like, throw

it over your head the way that he was in this game like that one the defense i'll give a little bit more time the offense i had a little bit more of like earnest concern about the one layer of the lion's defense where it's just like i was like i don't know about that is uh i don't think i need to see ad hutchison in coverage on like he keep passing situation it's like that's one where like i think we're galaxy bringing things a little bit yeah and i do coming into the year uh we talked about this when we were proving the lions i think that they did want to add some layers of complexity disguise, just making the defense a little bit harder to pin down pre-snap than the previous version of the Lions might have been. But I think every once in a while, you can push

yourself a little bit too far in that area. And I think we got a couple glimpses of that yesterday. All right, Bob, let's get to our next one. Well, you know, I woke up this morning. I was so excited for football to really be back. Football Sundays, my family, we love it. We take it seriously. You know, I was up yesterday I was setting up multiple TVs in my father-in-law's house. And when I woke up this morning, I was excited after a Voss season of just small little doses of hope for the Carolina Panthers. And all I wanted today, I did not ask for much. All I wanted today was for some competent football and for stuff to look forward to for the rest of the season.

On offense, on defense, just any incremental improvement and excitement, I just wanted to compete with the Jaguars. Didn't care if we won. Thought we could win, but didn't care if we did. wanted to compete. And did we compete? We did not compete. I wish I had a good response to this. Yeah, I've got nothing.

I really do. And I think really the only thing you can say is some of the stuff that we said last night where it's just a normal, hey, it's week one, everybody take a breath. Like, how many times do we see something that happens in week one that's just not indicative at all of what the rest of the season is going to look like? But I think that's really the only thing you can root your heart. hoping when it comes to this because I'm on record. I believed

in a lot of the flashes we saw from the Panthers offense in the back half of last season. But when you look like you did yesterday, it's not as if this is the first time. And so as a Panthers fan, I think there's a lot of built-up scar tissue with this version of the Bryce Young offense where you watch this start to unfold. Just like, oh shit, not again.

And when you combine that with that feeling that he's talking about of there's an off-season There's an off season of optimism. We do have some of those moments at the back off of the last season to attach ourselves to. It's week one. It's nice and it's warm out. It's a little bit crisp.

It's beautiful. It's like exactly what you want in a football atmosphere. You're getting excited about it. And then for that to be what you're met with, I'm not going to dismiss or diminish what this person is going through right now. I think it's very real. I want to acknowledge and say that I see what you're dealing with here. I just hope that they can turn it around starting next week,

but I don't really have much more solace to offer you right now. I mean, I really don't either like that. I'm going to be like pretty down in the dumpsters about it. Like I, the biggest issue to me was not that the offense struggled. I think even with like as well as some things went for them last year, there were still times where like it still looked janky. Like it still just didn't look right even when Bryce Young was playing well last year. So you could have sold me that like they just had a bad game.

the particular way in which it was a bad game where things started to feel a little bit too fast for him things in the pocket started to feel a little bit too big for Bryce Young again and again I mentioned it on the Sunday show the fourth and one where he throws it away in the red zone that is just like you can't do that as an NFL quarterback to me the coolest thing about watching him in the back half of last season was the confidence that he just believed it

he believed it and like watching it was such a stark contrast to what we had seen from him in his rookie year and over the first month of last season where it's like that to me just didn't feel like something that would be easily shaken. And so to watch him play without that yesterday and to look like the player just in terms of the operation, how it felt, even if he was carrying himself,

like that to me was the most troubling part of it. And hopefully it is a one week blip, but I can understand being a little bit more worried about it if you're a Panthers fan. Yeah. All right, we got one more that we wanted to play. There's really nothing to say about this. It's just a perfect encapsulation of what it means to be an NFL football fan, especially in week one.

So we've got two voicemails that we're going to play back to back from the same listener that I think are just a perfect expression of the It's So Over, We're So Back element of being a football fan. So I was having a good night. And then Lamar Jackson and Derek Henry just decided to be gods and absolutely clown the already-counter. kind of shaky Buffalo Bill's defense. I know it's Lamar Jackson and it's Fair Henry, but long-term, I'm thinking if we should be worried about rap and Bishop in the safety,

because they have been getting torched like burnt toast all night. Love the show. Please, God, don't play like this against the Jets. Thank you. And then? Okay, I left an earlier voicemail of this. wishing my displeasures about the bill's defense those are still true but it turns out when Josh Allen does Josh Allen things who needs a defense go bills there is and the thing is right

he already knows that it's like before the game he already knows that Josh Allen it doesn't matter in the moment it doesn't matter even if you even if in your bones you know that sometimes it just doesn't matter. You know what? Some Bill's fans didn't because I saw Josh Allen like give a clip after the game where he was like, I saw some people leaving, you know, have a little bit more faith. And I think that is a thing for like 29 quarterbacks is like

come on, man. You should not believe that anybody can win that game. But like Josh Allen like, yeah, you should probably always believe that he can win that game. We've seen him. I think Deonté Lee even posted this. The best quarterback like in late game situations like in the two minute by EPA per play is Josh Allen.

Like you don't give him the ball in those situations. It's ridiculous. Those fans at least, they got an answer to their prayers. Like everything they were worried about, they no longer had to be worried about it at the end of that game. Unfortunately, that is not going to be the case for plenty of the teams that lost in week one. So I'm looking forward to

hopefully helping you guys work through some of this stuff every single week. We enjoyed the first round of it. We'll enjoy the rest of them. Good to be back doing the weekly hangover show. Cannot wait to be doing this all season. That's all we got for today. We will be back tomorrow.

on the feed with the first in-season episode of Building the Beast with Dane Bruegler and Dave Helman. So if you guys are looking for a weekly draft show, I mean, there's nobody better to give it to you than Dane. And I think that Dave and Dane have had a relationship for a very long time. They have great chemistry. Dave is a massive college football fan. He's watching this stuff every single week. So very excited about you guys getting that show in the feed over the course of this year. For now, that is all we've got.

Appreciate you listening. We'll talk to you guys soon.