The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 1 recap: Lions beat Rams in OT thriller, Dak gets paid and Cowboys roll, Bengals and Falcons fall flat, and more

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Week 1 represents 100% of the regular season football we've seen this season, so it's only natural to overreact. Not every reaction is an overreaction, though. For instance, it's not an overreaction to say that Dak Prescott had a great day...or that Josh Allen is a football superhero...or that the Bengals and Falcons were massive letdowns. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen discuss all that, and a whole lot more, on the Week 1 recap episode of The Athletic Football Show.RundownRams-Lions OT thrillerDallas Cowboys...You Have My AttentionJosh Allen and the Bills/Cardinals game...You Have My AttentionHouston Texans run game...You Have My AttentionCincinnati Bengals...WTF?!?Jordan Love's injury...WTF?!?Atlanta Falcons...WTF?!?Did You See That?...JK Dobbins runs wildDid You See That?...The Saints are committed to the bitDid You See That?...Baker Mayfield dropping dimesIt's So Over for the PanthersIt's So Over for the GiantsWhat Did We Learn Today?...The Jaguars are still super frustratingWhat Did We Learn Today?...The vibes in New England are differentWhat Did We Learn Today?...It's hard to be a rookie QBHost: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenWith: Mike SandoExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassFollow Mike on X: @SandoNFLTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Athletic Football Show. Brought to you by Thursday Night Football only on Prime Video. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me tonight. It is my co-host here at the Athletic Football Show. Derek Klaasden. Derek, how you doing, man? It is springtime for the soul.

I can hear the birds chirping, the trees. They're growing. The flowers are blooming. It's a good time to be a football fan, man. What a great day. We had three really close, really good primetime games just all weekend. A lot to be excited about. And we finished it off with one heck.

of a Sunday night opener. We weren't sure what we were going to do with this game and where it was going to fit in. And when you have an overtime game to start week one, I think that we have to start the show with it because there's a lot to chew on here. Let's start with that final drive by the Lions who just decided, you know what? We're going to win this our way. And that just feels like a perfect period to put on the end of the sentence that was today. This is what you built the team for.

Like when you hired Dan Campbell, this is the type of game that you thought you were going to win. And then every move that you've made since then, whether it's drafting Penae Sewell, whether it's, you know, going and getting a guy like David Montgomery to be a running back and just hammer guys for an entire overtime period, signing Kevin Zitler, this offseason like Frank Ragnow. This is the game you wanted to win and you went out and won it. It was perfect. What did you think about the Lions overall tonight? Because I picked them to go to and win the Super Bowl. I think there's a lot of collective excitement about what this team was supposed to be this season. What were your initial impressions about the 20-24 version of this team? I think offensively, it looked basically the way that it was supposed to, where I think they ran the ball well for certain parts of this game,

especially at the end, which you expect to be able to grind your opponent down and eventually have these big runs at the end where you're able to close it out. They were able to get some explosive plays out of Jameson Williams, which was kind of what we really needed from this offense, because we talked about on a bunch of different preview shows. They were kind of missing explosives last year, especially down the field,

and they were sure able to hit one with Jameson Williams, and then they got a couple other plays to him. So I thought in that sense, like the construction of it looked good. And then the defense, I think they looked good. They kind of got a little bit bailed out in the sense of, you know, Matthew Stafford was playing behind a very clearly hobbled offensive line. But they still, other than Matthew Stafford going nuclear a little bit in the second half, I thought they mostly played up to their level.

Like if they can play to that level consistently, the offense is going to be good enough for this team to get where they want to go. Yeah, that's kind of how it feels. And I think that they ran into a guy playing exceptional football for most of tonight. The fact that Matthew Stafford and Cooper Cup were collectively able to keep the Rams in this game after Pooka Nakua went out, after Steve Aveo went out with their two starting tackles, not even coming into the game, healthy or playing. It was kind of a minor miracle that the Rams were even willing to stay in this game, and it included and required a few miraculous plays from Matthew Stafford specifically. So the fact that the Lions were even able to withstand that sort of onslaught from the rebirth of the Cooper Cup, Matthew Stafford pairing. I think that's enough for a week one. That's all I needed to see combined with the Jamison Williams of it all for me to feel

pretty good about the overall direction of where this is at it. It's a game where it was like a close, dirty, just like rock fight type of game. And you still feel good about like where both teams wanted to be by the end of the game. You're like, okay, the Lions won the exact game. They built this team to win. And then the Rams, you know, even though they had some of the offensive line issues, like Pukunakua goes out at a certain point. Matthew Stafford still goes nuclear.

and keeps you in the game and still looks like a playoff team. So yeah, I think both teams, even though one had to lose, still probably pretty happy. I'm still concerned about what this is going to look like long term health-wise for the Rams, though. How long is Steve Avila out? What's the offensive line situation going to look like moving forward? I know Alaric Jackson will hopefully be back in the next couple of games, but Habenstein has already banged up. We talked about this in our NFC West preview. It's like, should we be worried about the health and the state of the health for this offense. And even if, you know, Puka, it's not a serious injury, it didn't look good, first of all. And this was one of the issues coming into the league. It's one of the reasons that he

was a fifth round pick is that he struggled to stay healthy while he was in college. So if you remove him from this equation, even if you can get something out of Colby Parkinson, which they did tonight, and they can get relatively healthy along the offensive line, you start to chip away your past catching options, which we thought was going to be a strength for this team coming into the season. So I'm just curious what a health check will look like for the Rams in the next 48 hours or so and how much we can project that moving forward. I would definitely be more worried about the offensive line. I mean, Pug and Kukinaku is great, but if Cooper Cup is going to play at the level that he just did, I think they will probably be okay in the past catcher department. But yeah,

it's the offensive line long term that, you know, we'll see. Anything else from this game that you thought was particularly notable? I know that the James explosion, you know, must have warmed your heart as somebody who deeply believed him in coming into the year. But any other performances or anybody else stand out to you that you feel like is worth mentioning before we move on? Maybe not necessarily players, but I thought the Lions actually did a really good job with some of their whole players, like over the middle of the field, getting back into some of the dig windows that Stafford was trying to get to backside. I mean, the interception he threw in the red zone. There was another almost interception that Stafford threw over the middle of the field or one

of the robber player kind of works back into the middle of the field. So I thought they did a really good job on that. I mean, that's, if you're going to beat Matthew Stafford and hold him down for the first half the way that they did, that's where you have to beat him. And then obviously he finds a way anyway, but I thought they did a good job in that sense. I also think that moving forward, the Rams have done such a great job over the last few years of playing well against teams that like to play a lot of man coverage, they like to send a lot of pressure. I mean, we've talked about this before, but when they see teams that are kind of regulated coverage-wise, they just have so many answers for that sort of defense. The Browns last year, a really good example. And the Cooper Cup

touchdown is one of those. We're just like, if we know how to pull the levers against you, we can consistently put ourselves in good spots. I think the Lions defense overall is going to look a lot better against teams that aren't as well equipped to slice and dice against man coverage or pressure looks in the way that the Rams are. And even like a lot of how they got beat in the second half, how many quarterbacks are replicating that anyway?

Like that's where I would feel okay about this. Like they'll probably, like you said, they'll be fine against coaches and quarterbacks that aren't in the top five duos that we would put together. I know that the Rams were not at full strength and I know that that's that offensive line is probably a group that you can take advantage of but the fact that they were willing or they were able to survive some of that play

from Matthew Stafford in the first half. I think that you'll put that in your back pocket, go home with a win and feel pretty good about that after week one. All right, you ready? Let's get you have my attention. Let's do it. Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. Now you have my attention. Each week on this show, you know, there's so much stuff coming at you in an NFL Sunday.

And God, on week one, it feels even more ridiculous. I sat down today at about noon and you got five games coming at you at once. My body, my brain is never ready. So to start off all of these shows, we like to just take a step back and think, all right, who really stood out today? Who grabbed us by the shirt collar as all of this stuff was coming at us over the course of an NFL Sunday? And let's start with the Dallas Cowboys who absolutely destroyed. the Browns on the road in week one.

Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys, you have my attention. They started, we could have done the Cowboys for you have my attention without the game having even being played. That's right. They paid their quarterback like an hour before the game. They started the day by grabbing our attention with that extension for Dak Prescott, which we could talk about.

I'm not surprising at all. When you have guys like Trevor Lawrence and Jordan Love making $55 million a year and you have somebody like Dak Prescott and his rest of, and what he's accomplished and the leverage that he's bringing into those discussions. With every other player in the league, essentially, you have the opportunity to say, well, if we don't come to an agreement, we'll just tag you, or if we want to, we can just franchise you. They can't do either of those with that Prescott.

It was always going to be a ridiculous number, whether that number was with the Cowboys, or whether that number was with some other team that he signed with in free agency. And we got that ridiculous number, $60 million a year with $230 million guarantee. And it wasn't the best day from him in the offense today. But I think that having him at the center of all of this and some of the other pieces that they have, this team was always going to have a better chance to get over the finish line with Dak than they were without him. And I think that today was just another kind of reminder of that. Yeah, I mean, I said going into the season, what was their goal?

It's to get to the end of the season and feel like, all right, Dak wants to stay here and we want to keep Dak. And we got there even before the season started. As far as how he played today, I honestly thought he and the offense played fairly, well. It just seemed like a lot of their worst plays were like sometimes a really, really good secondary is going to close windows on you. And I thought actually Denz-A-Word played a really good game and some of the other, like Emerson had a couple of really good plays. Like to me, it actually felt like the Cowboys were kind of always like they were in a lot of the right instances and like

they had some really good plays and they were cruising on certain drives. It's just there were sometimes where the other guy on the other side of the field was better. And like that's just going to happen against the defense that I think we both put number one. So like that, them, having a couple of plays where the other guys are just better. I'm not going to hurt him too hard for. I think that I also think that, you know, this offensive line is still a young group. You're playing against a potentially dominant group on the other sides. Darius Smith had his moments. Miles Garrett had his moments. There were a couple drive-ending sacks. I think that C.D. had tons of splash plays in this game. We just think about what he was doing one-on-one-one in man coverage against guys like

Martin Armerson and Denso, or he had the goal route down the right sideline. He cooked on a couple slants in this game. But the question is going to be, I don't know. Brandon Cook scored the touchdown, which was a really, really savvy play by DAC, understanding what he was going to get on that play and just saying, if I put this ball into an ocean of space, we're going to be able to score here after changing the protection. But outside of C.D. Lamb, which of those guys are going to consistently show up? And that question becomes even more important considering how long Jake Ferguson might potentially be out. It seemed like he avoided disaster with that potential knee injury. It doesn't sound like he has an ACL and is going to miss the season. But

secondary pass catchers moving forward, I think are going to continue to be a question. Giovante Turpin had that drop over the middle, which should have been a chunk play. So, again, an uneven day from the offense overall, but you're playing against arguably the most talented defense in the league. I think that the end result, when you consider that, you're more than willing to live with it. Yeah, exactly. I think the secondary pass catchers, I came out of today feeling exactly how I went in, which is fine because we still expected them to be like a top 12 offense, even with that

being the case. The Brandon Cook's touchdown, there was a sequence between that play, and I think one, it might have been the one right before. Dak, they get down near the red zone, and Dak forces a scene ball that is just not open. Like, in no world is it open. And he just does this. He loves to do this to his tight edge. That's what I was going to say.

It's the most DAC sequence of two plays you could possibly imagine, him forcing that ball unnecessarily, and then tweaking their protection and making a great play against the Blitz that so few guys would make in that situation. What a way to immediately remind them, like, yep, this is what you paid for. This is the exact guy that you gave $60 million a year to. I think the more interesting scenario, the more interesting kind of results in this game came on the other side of the ball, where the Dallas defense was just completely, they threw a no hitter for most of this game. And I think what we're going to have to untangle here, and this is the challenge of week one.

How much of that is justifiable optimism about what Mike Zimmer is going to do with this defense, and how much of that is the Brown's offense being completely unworkable with the current state of their quarterback and them having to deal with a bunch of offensive line injuries heading into this game. I think my spin on it, and maybe this is just because I put the Cowboys at 7th or whatever in the defensive show, the Browns are a bad offense. I don't think they have found a way to get what they want out of Deshaun Watson. I think, you know, I even kind of said on a different show that I don't know if I love a lot of their secondary pass catchers. Obviously, Nojoku is great and Cooper is great, but other than that, I'm not in love with a lot of the other stuff they have.

And Najoku has a high ankle spray now. So now you're one more guy that you're removing from that equation. But what do really good defenses do? They make bad offenses. They beat the shit out of bad offenses. They beat shit out of bad offenses. And that is exactly what we got today. And that's like, that's what we've always gotten from Zimmer.

He's not like as crazy as Brian Flores, but he's always been a guy who on third down, you know he's going to throw stuff at you. His guys are going to be really sound and run defense. actually thought they were today. They made some really good tackles. Like, Damarian overshone as a guy who I had zero expectations for coming into the season, he actually made a handful of really nice plays out on the perimeter. I think there were a couple of plays where they were even putting him on the line of scrimmage. So like it seemed to me like this defense, at least as a good step one, was like, okay, they kind of, it looks like have their stuff together. I want to see it against a better offense, obviously, but this is about as good a start they could hope for.

In my opinion, if you were trying to build the best case scenario for what this Cowboys defense would look like. You would want kind of the chaos that they could create up front in the Dan Quinn world married with a soundness both against the run and on the back end where you're not giving up these consistent explosives because you are one of those regulated coverage teams. And early returns, that's what they were today. I mean, up front, they were controlling that game and the way Michael Parsons was lining up all over the place. DeMarcus Lawrence had his moments in this game. I mean, you could really tell how much they were just collapsing that space consistently over and over and over again.

Their front control that side of the ball. And if they can do that against better offenses with healthier offensive lines, again, while maintaining some of that soundness in other areas, that's when you can start to get really excited about what this group can be. And I think we saw some flashes of that today. That's a great point because how many times last year, especially over the second half, did they have plays? I mean, it felt like at least once a drive where it was like,

how the hell did that even happen? Like, why is that guy there? How is that rushing lane so big? Like it just didn't make sense. You didn't really get those plays in this game. You got more of the, how the hell did the offense let that happen type of plays, you know, when Zimmer's attacking you. So I thought it was, yeah, about as good as performance as they could have put forward.

And I mean, they're bringing a lot of different pressures, bailing out a certain mugged up looks. I mean, it felt like a Mike Zimmer defense. It felt like a Mike Zimmer defense from a few years ago in 2024 with a defense, personnel and a group of players that is still extremely talented. So again, early returns, very good. at what point do we just write off the Deshawn Watson experience with Cleveland? At what point do we just say? I honestly, I mean, that's probably the right answer.

And coming into the season, I had almost zero optimism about what this could look like. Even in the best case scenario, I thought that they might be an average offense because they would hide him in the right ways. And again, I know they're not all the way back healthy yet, but we're in a situation now where, I mean, this is again, an outing where he looked basically unplayable. Okay. Negative. 0.37 EPA per dropback, which is the fifth worst mark of the entire league. And if you consider some of the rookie performances that among all NFL quarterbacks who've actually played some NFL football for more than a year, he was one of the worst quarterbacks

in the NFL again. He was sacks six times. They had a success rate of like 25% in this game. They were 2 of 15 on third down. I just don't know what the answer is because it feels like there's no way out of this. They can't move on from him after the year. and how are you going to bench a guy making what he's making? At this point, I just don't understand how they would be worse with a guy like

James Winston, but I don't know how realistic it is for you to make that decision this early in the process. I totally agree with that. That's the thing is at least with Winston, we know what the offense looks like when it's good for Winston. It's like run the ball a lot, play action. He can make some of these really nice intermediate throws. You're going to throw some interceptions, but you just kind of have to live with them.

with Sean Watson, like, what is the thing that he does well that you're like, I want to build the offense around this? Like, I think his best trait right now is that he actually, there are instances where he just miraculously still escapes from sacks. He doesn't do anything once he gets outside the pocket anymore. He brings that pressure on himself before he escapes the sacks. That's the other problem. So the good things that are happening are only brought about because a bad thing is happening before that. Yeah, that's a great point. And like he's not really accurate at this point.

And even like I just said, even so one, he brings a lot of pressure on himself. so even though he makes some plays after that, that's cool. But like once he gets outside the pocket, he doesn't actually make those magic throws that he did when he was back in Houston. Like he just, there were a lot of balls in the dirt or he just ends up throwing it away or scrambling for like, I mean, he had a few scrambles like at the end of this game when they were down 20 points. So who cares? But I just, I don't understand.

Like we're going to get to a point where this ends up getting put on Kevin Stefanski at a certain point. And like Ken Dorsey, but it's like, what can they do? The quarterback doesn't have a trait to lean on. right now if they cut him after this season even if they made it a post-June first cut it would be $118 million in dead money in 2025 and then 54 in 226 so it's impossible to do like there's just there's no way around it but in order to field the roster the way they want to next year there's probably a pretty good chance they're going to have to zero out his contract again so if they do that then you turn the dead money hit in 2026 from like 72

million to 84 million. So no matter when the medicine has to come here, it is going to be a huge problem. And I just think that we're there. I think now it's just a matter of figuring out what is the realistic moment that they can move on from him. And what does that conversation look like with ownership? Like if you're Andrew Barry and Kevin Stefansky, are you going to get to a place which's like, listen, just let us play out this year. Maybe we'll play somebody else. But I think that they're going to have to start some really difficult conversations around this because I don't know how you can justifiably trot out the talent that they have on defense and some of the players that they have on offense and look those guys in the face and say, this is our best chance to win.

Especially when you have a coach who has proven he can win with other guys. Like this was a good offense with Jacoby Resett. Like he got decent play out of Baker Mayfield for a certain stretch. Like we know that this is a good offensive play caller. And the fact that the offense looks so bad when we have a known quantity good, good play caller, where else is the blame supposed to go? Let's get to our next one here. Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills win a pretty fun, 34 to 28 game against the Cardinals.

Josh Allen with his normal ridiculousness on a bunch of different levels in this game. Josh Allen and the new look Buffalo Bills offense, you guys have my attention. What did you think of Josh Allen in this game? He opened the season in the perfect way. Like early in the game, he had a strip sack where he kind of just goes into like, he just like went on the fritz and went dummy mode and let himself get strip sacked. And then just all of the rushing stuff, obviously some of it was designed. But then he has that, like he almost gets himself helicoptered like Ryan Fitzpatrick and

Josh McCown. Josh Allen is so funny because it's like if Josh McCown was somehow the best player on the field. Like that's the way that Josh Allen plays football, especially when he's out on the perimeter just running around. Just the fact that like this passing offense doesn't fully know what it wants to be yet. And he can still make all of these plays with his legs, whether it's throwing outside the pocket or being able to run himself.

just he's there are very few one-man offenses in the NFL and he's absolutely one of them. That's kind of how it fell today. At some level, I also thought the running game was encouraging from them overall. I mean, they, and that's what they did last year, right? I mean, this is a team that was one of the most efficient running teams in the league last season. They ran the ball very well again in this game. All caveat for every single thing we're about to say about the bills, there is a chance

the Cardinals defense is still like one of the worst three defenses in the league. That's worth bringing up and worth keeping. being in mind. This is the difficulty of week one. It's hard to judge certain performances without knowing what sort of unit you're going against on the other side of the ball. But even if we can see that the Cardinals defense is probably going to be a bottom quarter of the league sort of unit, what he was doing, like you mentioned, where it's just these breaking case of emergency sort of plays. The one that I'm thinking of, it was third and 11. I don't know if there was an unblocked pass rusher, but he had to shake a guy off in the pocket. He rolls to his right, and then he comes back to

James Cook for a conversion on third and 11. And there were just a few of those in this game where it's third and 10, third and 11, and he's making something happen out of nothing. So as you figure out what you want to be on offense, as you figure out the roles for your receivers, as you figure out snap counts, what personnel groups you want to be in because so many things are changing, it helps that you can just drop a guy in here that's going to solve so many problems by himself. And oh yeah, he went 18 of 23 for 232 yards and,

should have had two rushing touchdowns, or a did have two rush touchdowns, and another one was called back. So just everything you want to see from him as they're in this kind of figure it out mode, which it kind of seems like they are. And really to me, I think to figure it out is just going to end up coming down to like how good can the past catchers be? Because honestly, you mentioned the run game. The run game was, dude, their guard center guard trio was absolutely mauling people. Obviously, like Dionne Dawkins at left tackle had a good game too, but they were just, that Cardinals interior might still be really, really bad. Like, they were just. just getting mashed.

I can't remember which play it was on, whether it was on a screen or some other play down in the red zone where Dion Dawkins, I think, just launched Buda Baker, like five yards in the air. And that's what's going to happen. I mean, that's the sort of player that he is right now. So I'm really excited to see where they can take this. You had your Keon Coleman moment, right? Like, your two guys coming into this season, your two guys coming into this season were Keon

Coleman and James and Williams. And you had your splash moments from both of those guys today. So congratulations to you. you, sir. You got to be feeling pretty good right now. Yeah, I feel I feel pretty good about my receiver takes there. I didn't expect Coleman to lead the team in receiving week one. I mean, I know it's only like 52 yards. Like they spread the ball, they spread the ball around a lot and Alan ran a lot. But it was nice to see because he had a couple other plays with than just that one where he just absolutely bullies the corner and throws him down, catches it on the sideline.

That's what he was good at at Michigan State is what he was good on before he got hurt at Florida State. And Josh Allen needs that guy, man. Like Gabe Davis was like theoretically that guy, but he was never actually that guy. Kean Coleman, man. If it really comes together, that's what you're getting. It was the Shakir touchdown on the screen that Deanne Dawkins just put somebody into a different stratosphere. The other guy I wanted to mention just on both sides of the ball for Buffalo, Greg Rousseau

had a lot of nice splash moments in this game. He had a big TFL. He had two different sacks. And when we were discussing the ceiling for this defense and what this defense might feel like this year, some of the concerns with the youth in the spine, but also just in the secondary overall, the question. was what can we expect reasonably from the front? Can this front take a step forward as a group and kind of lift this unit overall in ways that it couldn't in previous years? And I thought that

there were some moments today that made me feel good about that overall formula for this team. He played well. Von Miller had a couple nice moments. You know, Eponessa, who played well last year, I think, in more of a full-time role. He had some moments where he stood out. So I felt pretty good about the deployment overall of the defense today against a Cardinals offense that I think we both believe is going to be a pretty solid unit over the course of this season. Yeah, and they were. And really, the biggest thing that gave the Cardinals issues was in the second half in particular, it felt like the bills were able to get home.

And really, so, like Rousseau taking a step, it felt like we a little bit baked that in. So, like, when he did it, it was more like, oh, that's nice to see. Von Miller having the game that he did, I felt like he had five or six pressures that were really high value. I had kind of written him off just, you know, age, like some of the injury stuff. I didn't really think we were going to get a whole lot from him at this stage. The fact that he had the game that he did, it's like, okay, maybe this Bill's defense actually has more reinforcements than it might have seemed at first.

I like seeing them do some wonky stuff, too. There were some simulated pressures in key moments. They were bringing pressures in some moments. I think that them sitting back and saying, we can just bring four and rely on disguise on the back end because of how young some of those pieces are, I just think that they're going to have to force the issue a little bit more than that. And seeing that be the plan with Bobby Babich in his first game as the defensive coordinator. It's like, all right, I can work with some of this. I'm excited to see where you guys

take this. And Rousseau and his potential ascension, I think, is probably the number one piece of that as I look forward to this team over the course of the year. Last one here, the Houston Texans run game. You guys have my attention, especially after last year. 52.8% rushing success rate today for the Texans. The Niners led the league last year with about 46%. 40 carries. 40 carries. for 213 yards. This was one of the least efficient running teams in the NFL last year. And when you look at how much they were running

on early downs, they lost as much value running the football last season as almost any team in the league. And today, it was on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. And we're talking about a Colts defense that the front seven is where they're supposed to make their money. That is supposed to be the group for this team.

So to see the Texans run the ball the way that they did today against Indianapolis, I definitely opened my eye. eyes a little bit. Yeah, I mean, we all came in so excited about the passing game and then they go drop 213 rushing yards. That's kind of where I want to start. They had 213 rushing yards in this game. Last year, their best was 188. So they already topped that. Joe Mixon alone had 159, which that 18 18 game I just mentioned from last year was the only time as a team they topped 159. Like, so the fact that Mixon immediately was like as good as they had ever been in the CJ Stroud era, obviously like, you know,

18 games or whatever. But it was just insane. Like he, it seemed to me, me, he looked a little bit more explosive than the last year. And he just brings, like, he's a guy who clearly has size. And you can give him 20, 25 carries the way that you want to and actually establish the run game, the way that this, you know, slow at Shanahan type of offense is supposed to work. And so the fact that they were able to get that, I thought was awesome. What do you, what do you think this came down to? Like, why do you think it looked so good? Especially against the front, again, that you mentioned was supposed to be pretty good for the Indianapolis goals. I think it's a combination of a lot of different stuff. Going back and rewatching the game, I was

trying to pin down like, all right, what concepts are we seeing? What are they trying to lean into? And it was all over the place in a good way. So if you look at the percentages, like the personnel that they were using in this game, no 21 personnel at all. When they were in kind of fullback, quote unquote, looks, it was Dalton Schultz back there. This is a team that used 21 personnel all the time with Andrew back last year. And they cut him before the season started. And I was kind of like, okay, what does that mean? And they have British Brooks who's on the roster, who's, you know, I think could have been their full back. He had a sick play on kick. off, by the way.

Yeah, but that's what he was doing. He was playing special teams. So they had zero snaps by my count on true media of 21 personnel in this game. They were in 12 on 39% of their plays. And if you look at the ways they were using the tight ends overall, those guys are going in motion. Those guys are sealing off the edge. I mean, there were some really creative wrinkles with the tight ends in the run game.

So I think that was one of the biggest things that jumped out. And then the other thing is just the offensive line looking like a more cohesive unit. Shaq Mason had some really nice moments. I thought that Kenyon Green was impressive in a ways that I didn't necessarily expect him to be. I think he was starting at left guard for them. It was hard for me to tell the numbers by the broadcast tape. But I just thought that the offensive line overall, it looked like a group that had played together throughout a decent amount of training camp. I know tonsil was hurt.

But again, we talked about the offensive line injuries, et cetera. So the creative use of the two tight-end sets and just the way that the offensive line looked overall, it just felt like a run game and an offense that understood what it wanted to be in ways that it really never landed on last year. I'm so glad to frame it that way because to me like the flip side of it, the reason that Indianapolis seemed to be struggling was was kind of twofold. First of all, their second level defenders were playing so slow. Like they were terrified to come up and hit people because they just, it didn't seem like we're 100% sure where the ball was going. Like you said, with some of the motion, some of the way that they were getting into different alignment, some of the different concepts they were using. so it just seemed like their second level was playing really slow. And then truthfully,

Houston's offensive line did a really good job just getting like a ton of pushback on the edge players. Like I didn't think Indianapolis's interior was that bad. It was just any time they ran anything like outside the guard. It was like, oh, defensive ends getting pried out. And then when you couple that on top of linebackers playing it steps low, you're just going to have six yards for free every time. So I thought it was just, it was a really impressive performance from the Texans. I will say, I thought that the Colts front while rushing the passer really affected this game. They looked very impressive. And I think against teams that maybe don't have that sort of game plan or the ability

to kind of spring that game plan on you, right? Like they had no idea what the construction of the run game would look like heading into this game because it looked was so different than kind of the component pieces were last year. So I came out of this game still excited about how the Colts front when teams are dropping back to pass is going to affect games in the future. But I thought the Texans did a really good job of jumping on them with some with that stuff in the run game. I think that's a good point.

Yeah, for sure. On the other side of the ball, I'm just curious. What did you think about the first glimpse we had of Anthony Richardson in year two? It reminded me a lot of year one. I mean, just you have the most ridiculous throw I think I've ever seen, or easily the most ridiculous throw of that day. I mean, it's a 63-yard ball that he can barely step into that is just a splash of talent that, I don't know, you can count the guys on one hand who can make that play.

And then there's so many moments where it's like that sales won, Dirt's one. The interception, Kyle and Granson falls, which is not a great moment. But at the same time, it just was a total mixed bag, even if you consider some of the ridiculous splash plays that were dropped in there. It's whatever you wanted to be type of performance from Anthony Richardson. It was everything that he has always been, which the run game looked awesome.

I think it looked exactly the way that they wanted it to be constructed, both designed and then some of the plays that Richardson was able to make just outside the pocket moving around and stuff like that. And then like you mentioned, the accuracy down to down was not great. Like he had, it seemed especially on throws to AD Mitchell. He just, those two were not connected for whatever reason. And I'm not even blaming Mitchell. Like there were certainly some that Richardson just very obviously missed.

Like I think maybe the first drive, he just missed Mitchell on like a third and ten. And it was like, dude, like this is a routine throw. You have to make this. So those ones are frustrating. But then like you said, he had maybe three throws in this game that you only make when you have an S-tier caliber arm the way that he has. Like obviously the one where he threw it, it was like 65 air yards. And then he had another one that I think was like 63 air yards that he completed.

But then there was also he worked to a backside dig and like, I mean, barely skimmed it by the whole player's hand trying to get in there. And like if you can't throw 110 miles an hour, that is at the very least tipped and maybe picked off. But the fact that him and guys like Stafford and Allen have enough juice to make that throw, that's what you're chasing. it's going to be a process. There are going to be some frustrating moments as part of that process,

but there are also going to be two or three highlights a game where it's like, holy shit. I cannot believe that just happened. I watched the touchdown throw to Pearson real time, and watching that happen, I was just like, I don't even know what to make of this. The fact that he put that ball on the money in a crowded pocket and it went that far in the air, just don't see that.

There's so few guys can do that. I think the play that probably reminded me of the most is there was a throw, I think, during Herbert's rookie year or his second year against the Giants, where he had one that went over the top, I think it was the Jalen Geithen, where I was like, there's, again, two or three human beings on planet Earth that can make this play,

and Anthony Richardson happens to be one of those two or three human beings. That throw was like the first, it felt like that was the first jump out of your seat moment this Sunday, where you were like, holy shit, somebody did that. And it felt like, okay, we're fully back now. It was awesome. All right, let's get to our new segment here. We're going to tweak the way that we talk about some stuff that maybe we didn't love on Sunday.

What the fuck? This is very simple, all right? Over the last couple years, this was the spot that we had reserved for I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. But I felt like that was a little bit too limiting, right? Like sometimes there were moments where we were mad or there were things that were just a little bit confounding, even if they weren't disappointing. So we're very simply calling this segment this year. What the f that's it. So here we go.

Let's get rolling with this. The Cincinnati Bengals losing to the Patriots at home in week one and torpedoing a million survivor pools in the process. The Cincinnati Bengals, what the fuck? Dude, every year in September, this team, they cannot get it together. It's every year. I made a joke like during this offseason. They're a team that scales. It's like every month they get better as the season goes on.

and that's how you somehow end up with Joe Burrow in the Super Bowl. But it seems like every year in September, this team is just not ready to roll. Like Joe Burrow didn't look that comfortable today. The defense looked out of sorts. It just, this team needs another month. We'll revisit what's going on with them. What do you think, if you're looking at some of the issues and some of the shortcomings today, what do you think is real and what worries you?

And what do you think is potentially just a week one blip? I'll start with the potential blip. I mean, Joe Burrow just didn't look very good today. And he didn't look like he wanted to play the quarterback position the right way. Like he just had a game where he was consistently checking down or making a couple of go ball throws. Like it looked like the most, it almost looked like he looked early last season where he just did not look comfortable, did not look healthy. Like what stands out to me is I think when there was three minutes left in the game, fourth quarter, they're like backed up inside their own 15 or something like that. He makes three straight throws that are like three to six yards off the line of scrimmage on the right hash.

Like just little checkdowns or little little hook routes or whatever misses all three. And it's like, okay, the first one, it's like, okay, it's first and ten. You're just trying to get yards. Second one, it's like, all right, man, games on the line. Let's maybe do something here. And then third down, it's like, dude, this isn't even open and you're throwing this in trying to get yards. Like, it just didn't make any sense. It just didn't seem like he was ready to go.

At the same time, like I said, Joe Burrow has never been a quarterback who seems like he's all the way there and all the way into the game by September. So like if we get to buy October and he looks like he's looked at his best, I don't think it'll be that crazy. I feel like there was some, obviously some big time turnovers and things like that that helped affect this game. Like the Gisicki doesn't hang out of that ball in the right corner of the end zone. On the next play, Tanner Hudson fumbles the ball inside the five and which should have been a scoring drive. So there was definitely some just frustrating miskews that I think made the final score look a little bit uglier than it should have. But they again, the same way they did last year, struggle to push the ball down the field.

What was encouraging to me is at least they were trying to, especially in the second half, there were more play action shots, they were trying to do some of that guard pull play action stuff out of the shotgun, that half roll stuff that we've seen a ton of in week one. If you guys are just imagining it,

out of the gun, you're pulling a guard from one side of the other to kind of give credence to a play action fake with all the gap scheme running stuff we're seeing from the gun these days. And there's a little half roll that kind of goes along with it. I think a lot of teams that live in the gun are going to try to lean into that

to try to find explosives. And we saw that. And I think that they hit Jemar Chase down the left sideline on a pretty good chunk play on one of those. But it still seems like they were struggling to find where they're going to hunt out explosive plays. And if you don't have those

and you're getting pushed around on both lines of scrimmage a little bit, I think that was kind of where we landed with this team in this game. A little bit on the other side of the other side of that. That's what I really want to talk about. the part that I think is more real with this team. That's what's worrisome. Yeah, I came into the season saying this might be the worst run defense in the league. When you get 170 yards on you and like

the Patriots didn't pop that many explosives, but it just felt like they could get six to eight almost on command. Like that, it just felt like that type of game. And again, there were a couple plays where the Bengals got in the backfield, but for the most part, the Patriots were able to do what they wanted to do. And this was like, this was the only way the Patriots could win the game, right? Was rushing for 170 yards, getting a couple turnovers. And Joe Burrow. not playing his best game. That was the way to win this game, and they did. And like I said, I think their defensive line not playing up to par, or just not playing a good game in general, that's the part that I'm very worried is going to stick for a good majority of this season.

I think the question is about with the Bengals defensive line, what's par? Like, what is a reasonable set of expectations for what this group is going to look like over the course of the year? Because I'm worried about that. I think on two different fronts, they got pushed around, especially in the first half of this game. They were better in the first half of this game. They were better in the second half and they held up against the run better over the final two quarters than the first two. But in the first half of this game, the Patriots went 18 for 96 with a 50% rushing success rate. Like we mentioned, the Niners led the league last year at 46%.

It felt like the Patriots could run the ball however they wanted to in the first half. And they looked like a more physical team up front, even with all those questions along the offensive line, than the Bengals did consistently. And the other wrinkle of this is they were forcing DBs to tackle one-on-one. throughout that first half. And Dax Hill missed a bunch of different tackles. Camp Taylor-Brit missed one. So overall, the run defense just did not look very good.

And the other side of this, I just don't feel good about what the pass rush is going to look like outside of Trey Hendrickson. Like, he's consistently getting pressure. There is no one else that's part of that group right now that I'm really worried about. So if you're going to get pushed around up front and you're also not going to get after the quarterback, that combination is just not tenable. you cannot live that way consistently in the NFL. And both of those things were a problem today.

And it's like a compound effect, right? Where because they're such a bad run defense, you end up in fewer clear pass rush. So then you're already mid-pass rush doesn't even get that many good opportunities to really pin their ears back. And so you just kind of end up in this cycle of where it's like, all right, the team is always, the other team is always in the down and distance that they want to be. And obviously when it's against the Patriots, a team that we expect to not be a very good offense. that only amounts to 16 points or whatever. Against a good team, though, it might be 40. And that's what you have to really worry about.

I was impressed by Leiden Robinson, who's the rookie right guard for the Patriots, he was a fourth round pick. That guy brings some attitude to the party. And the combination of him and Unwenu and David Andrews on that right side, all right, I'm interested now. I will watch this.

And when you pair that with Ramandre Stevenson, who had an excellent game. I mean, he just looked so much better than he did last year when he was banged up for a huge chunk of the season. So obviously we know the Patriots offense is going to be limited, especially when they're trying to throw the ball. But I was pretty impressed with their ability to assert themselves on the ground, what each of the component pieces looked like,

even if we think that the Bengals are going to have run defense that probably ranks near the bottom of the league. Exactly. Like in future weeks, I'm not so sure about the past protection. But this run unit, I think, will be consistently pretty good. What does you think of our, actually, let's say, this conversation because I want to talk about the Gerard Mayo of it all and what this Patriots defense looked like. But we can hit that a little bit later in the show. Let's get to our next

one here. We're going to talk about this from Friday, but I think that it's at least worth discussing and not necessarily the result of the game, but what this thing is going to look like moving forward for the Packers. Really, like Jordan Love is going to get hurt in the first game of the season and miss at least a month? What the fuck? I cannot deal with this. I cannot believe that in the minute of a game in a shitty field in Brazil, we lose a guy that we were all so excited to watch heading into this year for at least three weeks, up to six weeks, and we really don't know when he's going to be back and what he's going to look like when he does. Yeah, like, even when he comes back, there's probably going to be some sort of, you know, readjustment period.

And by then it's going to be what, week eight, nine, ten by the time he starts to like really settle in and feel normal. Like, that's not a great spot to be. Obviously, that worked for them last year, but like, that's not really the model you want to be going for where it takes you half a season to start looking normal again. So I thought that was just really unfortunate because like you said, there were so many young quarterbacks that we came into the season really excited about and he was very obviously one of them for him to have a weird game and then end it like that where it just has this like terrible stamp at the end. It just, it sucks, man. I stopped watching. I turned it off with like 90 seconds left. So I'm just sitting there laying in bed on Friday.

and I see everyone freaking out. And I was like, what happened? And then I see the play. And I was like, you have to be kidding me. And at that moment, I thought he might be out for the season. So I'm just laying there in bed at like midnight on Friday being like, I cannot believe Jordan Love might be out for the year. This is absolutely ridiculous. So I'm glad to see that it's not that serious.

But the fact that we had a pretty serious quarterback injury to open the season even before we got to the first Sunday, it's just not where you're want to be. That is the silver line, though. When you watched it, it was like, this could be the season, but then thankfully, it's only going to be a month or so. So at least we'll get them back. At least we'll get them back. Overall, I think it was very hard to take much from that game just because the field conditions were so poor that it was hard to even play defense. So I think that my main takeaways, and I'm sure we'll talk about this a bunch, are mostly structural and like what people were trying to do schematically. And I think a lot of the answers we got about what the Eagles are going to try to do on offense, we're very encouraging. The fact that they had so many answers against

pressure that they didn't have last year, the amount of motion that we were seeing and purposeful motion, right? Like, not motion for motion's sake, but we're displacing people from the middle of the field here. We're creating leverage by bumping AJ Brown out on a speed motion right before the play starts. That's the type of stuff where it's like, all right, I learned something from this game. But when defensive backs are falling over every single play and we're seeing explosive after explosive and it's impossible to rush the passer because no one can actually get a cleat in the ground. I don't think that there are many big picture takeaways from like the quality of these units and what they're going to look like over the entire season. I agree with that. To me,

it was it's mostly just the blitz thing. That was the big question we all had coming in was like, are they going to have answers for the blitz? And one, I thought schematically they did. And then even Jalen Hurst did. Like he just seemed a little bit more comfortable to hang in there, one, two, three, make the throw and not worry about getting hit and just trusting his guy to go make the catch. And so If he can continue to do that for the course of the season, even at just like an average level, because it was downright terrible last year. So if he just gets to average and they can get some more of the explosives with, I mean, they'll get them no matter what with Devonsa Smith and AJ Brown down the field.

But then you add on top of what you're getting from Saquan Barclay with like their spread to run game looks a little bit better when you have a guy as good as Saquan Barkley. So like I'm pretty excited now about like the construction of what the Eagles offense could look like. We talked about this in the NFC East preview. might have even been in a different time this summer, but I remember bringing this up in conversation where, okay, the Chargers offense last year, their biggest issue throughout the entire years,

they could not run the football. They were one of the ugliest running teams that I can remember watching, and that extended from the offensive line to the tight ends, everything. Well, the Eagles have Jeff Stoutland. The Eagles have a guy to build and construct your running game with an offensive line that even without Jason Kelsey

still has a lot of talent, and Mackay Beckton had some really fun moments in that game. Dude, he was good. actually. He was really good. It's surprised me. But these are the bets you can make when you have one of the best offensive line coaches in the league. Let's go get a super talented guy who's never been put in positions to succeed and it's consistently struggled to stay healthy. Let's get him on an extreme discount and see what he can do in our program. And so when you're the Eagles, you can do stuff like that and potentially reap the benefits. But you have a guy in Stalwood who can build the running game for you. So that no longer has to be the purview of Kellyn Moore in the way that it has been over the last couple years. when he struggled at times there. So if you have somebody to take care of the running game and then you have an offensive coordinator who can modernize the way you use motion,

what your drop-back game looks like, and some of the answers that you have against pressure, there's a chance that you get the best of both worlds. And the early returns at this point, I think from an approach standpoint, I know that Hertz had his moments in that game where it's like, what the hell is going on? But I think the overall offering that the Eagles gave us on offense,

that is the best case scenario. where Stalland handles everything that Moore might not be great at, and then more gives you all the answers that you didn't have over the last couple years. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, I'll leave some of the plays that Hurts made. I'll leave those aside. We'll give them a month. But the offensive construction, that was the question that we had coming in.

And it looked about as good as it can. That's a great point about Stoughtland, though, because, I mean, more as a quarterback. He's a former quarterback. He's a big passing game guy. So the fact that somebody else can take something off his play, it's perfect. That's, when you have an offensive lie coach like that, that's, you get to enjoy the benefits.

it. Last one here, the Atlanta Falcons put up 10 points against the Steelers after so many people were pumped about what that offense might look like, finally modernized this thing. Atlanta Falcons, what the fuck? They feel like the team, like, just as an entire franchise that most embodies this segment. Are they not? I think that's more than fair. What were your initial impressions of the Zach Robinson offense and what we got from Atlanta today? Um, first of all with Zach Robinson, it seems like he was talking to Sean McVeigh a lot. They still ran a ton of pistol. Uh, because like, they only ran the pistol.

Yeah. They essentially didn't line up under center in this game. So they ran the pistol on 26 plays. The only team that was above nine before Sunday night football, because I know the Rams probably used a bunch of it. The only team that had more than nine was Miami. So the Falcons ran 26. Miami ran 25.

We know the dolphins are a shotgun team in every way. But the fact that we're not going to put Kirk Cousins under center when under center play action is one of the best things that he does, I was a little, I was interested in that. I was a little bit confused about just, again, the way that this thing was built from day one for Atlanta. I am confused about how it's going to work too, because, you know, we talked about with Sean McVeigh and Matthew Stafford, the reason they seem to go to pistol is like, okay, you can do some more of your, like you trust Matthew Stafford to throw down the field no matter what concepts you're calling. but being in the pistol a little bit helps you in the quick game. It's like, okay, well, with Kirk, I think he's probably fine there. We just need to get him into his most comfortable spot to throw some of those intermediate and downfield shots that he wants to be able to throw

and that he can throw. And so the fact that they didn't want to lean into it was kind of annoying. It's also frustrating too because I thought they were actually spurts where they ran the ball really, really well out of the pistol. And it seemed like their worst moments on offense were when they just a little bit got out of rhythm and couldn't lean on that anymore. I've talked to a bunch of people about this this summer, just how pocket quarterbacks have to win in 2024. And one of the things that you have to be able to do if you're somebody who's not going to be a scrambler is you have to access the middle of the field.

And how teams do that, you can go about it a bunch of different ways. The Rams with Stafford have leaned away from the play action element of this and they're still able to do it because there's no one better in the NFL about manipulating a. single defender and moving him than Matthew Stafford does. He's phenomenal at it. It's all the no look passes, but he's brilliant. I think we underrate how smart Matthew Stafford is. I was talking to Kevin O'Connell about this this summer and just like Matthew Stafford is so good at just removing somebody from the equation and creating that space because he's toying with that player. Kirk isn't at that level when it comes to just the dropback game. So removing that guy via play action was a necessary component of how the Vikings were attacking that area.

They were the most play action heavy team in the NFL last season. Today, the Falcons ran less play action than any other team in the league. So I just don't know how they're going to consistently access that area of the field, which is vital for this version of offense, if they're not going to do it by displacing that guy with run fakes. I wonder, too, if from the pistol with Kirk, even if they want to do some of the play action stuff out of the pistol. I wonder if it's like a timing thing for him because he is very much a textbook,

you know, by the book passer. And when he, when he can follow that script, he looks incredible, but obviously he's been so used to doing a lot of that from under center. And obviously, when you're in the pistol and it's more like a gun formation, but you're still kind of doing the under center handoff, the timing is just different. And that gets him into a different flow. And so I wonder, especially in week one, if that seemed to be the biggest issue. And he's a smart guy. He's been around for a decade. Maybe that figures itself out by November, but it did not look very good week one that's for sure. Even when he's trying to get back to Drake London on that throw that gets intercepted,

he's just a little bit late on it and he's forcing that ball. And there's just more bodies in that area than you probably want when you're trying to be this sort of offense. So I'll be curious to see how it ends up looking over the course of the year. But the early returns, definitely a mixed bag. On the other side, I was very impressed with what the Steelers looked like on defense. Like this is exactly what sort of unit you need to be, where Deshaunellate makes a play for you. Dante Jackson makes a play for you. So these guys who are kind of moderate question marks and the overall

build of who you are on that side, you're getting the splash plays from them. And you can rely on the guys up front to just own the game for you. And that's what happened. I mean, it was every single one of those guys had a moment. Montrevis Adams had a moment. Highsmith looked like a monster. Cam Hayward looked incredible. Dude, the fact that Kim Hayward is 35 years old is insane. Dude, there were some of those reps where, you know, there's a guard like four yards in the backfield and I'm like who is oh of course it was cam heyvert like but like again he's what 37 years old why is he still doing this at this level it just doesn't make sense dude he looked unbelievable in this game and then what was a monster and that when i was trying to build the optimistic case for what this defense could look like i just thought okay

they are going to own the line of scrimmage against any team that they play because of how many bodies that they can throw with this you drop kiano benton into that i mean they have so many guys who affect the game. And there were looks where Nate Herbig was lined up in the B gap. They have so many guys that they can trot out when it's third and seven to make life difficult for you. And can they piece it together enough on the back end with Mika being a superstar, Joey Porter being an ascending player, and everyone else being serviceable.

And it's only been one game, but I think that formula looked pretty good, I guess, an offense that people were pretty excited about heading into this year. And two, dude, God bless Caleb McGarry. They did not give him a lot of help in this game. He was just one-on-one with Watt a lot. And even when they did give him help, it was like, hey, Kyle Pitts, do you want to go chip him? And Kyle Pitts was like, not really, but I'll make it look like I'm going to go chip him. And then it just ends up making the play worse than Watt gets home for a strip sack.

On the other side of the ball, this is the equation for the Steelers on offense. Can we get two splash plays to Pickens? And it was really only, it was kind of two. One was right before the half. So they did get a field go out of it, but it's not within. the normal rhythm of the game. And then the other one was a go ball down the left sideline that they get a chunk play on. I know one was called back.

So we're talking like two completions over 15 yards in this game for the Steelers, but you get a scramble or two, you don't turn the ball over and you run the ball enough. Can your defense carry you while that is the approach that you have to take on offense? And for one game, the answer is yes. But that felt like the platonic ideal of what the Pittsburgh Steelers wanted to be in a complimentary way on both sides of the ball. It's what the Marriota offense was when Arthur Smith's offense actually looked fine. It's like, all right, man, we're going to roll out for half of our plays.

We're going to get a couple of really good scrambles. We're going to, you know, actually that Falcons team didn't throw down the field that well. So the fact that maybe Justin Fields can give them a little bit of that or even Russell when he comes back, whatever. The fact that they could do that was perfect. Yeah, they really simplify the passive game and did a lot of rollouts and just let him take some simple vertical shots. And then the run game, it wasn't like hyper-efficient.

but it was enough. And I think they, because their defense kept them in the game, they were kind of able to stay on the script to just keep running the ball and doing what they wanted to do. So, yeah, this was like what the Steelers have looked like my entire life, except for those few years at the end when Ben Rutherfordisberger wanted to throw 700 times. Let's get to our next segment here. This is also a new one that we're trotting out this season.

Hit it, Bauer. You see that? Did you see that? Again, very simple. But we wanted this to kind of be a place where you could, see what our Slack channel looks like over the course of the day, where we're just sending a little moments back and forth to each other. It's just like, did you see what just happened on that play?

The first one I want to start with here, did you see J.K. Dobbins today? Did you see J.K. Dobbins, like, 12 months removed from an Achilles and what he looked like today within that Chargers offense? It warmed my heart, dude. This is what we wanted to see from the Chargers. This is what we wanted to see, you know, the support system around Justin Herbert. and this is what we wanted to see from J.K. Dobbins, because his flashes in Baltimore, man, they were so, so good. And the fact that it was, like, kind of robbed from him for a little bit was,

was sad. Him being able to go out and do what he did today where he had, he obviously had the one, like, big 60-yard run that kind of sealed the game, but he even had a big explosive run before that, that put them in a really good spot to go score. So, like, the fact that he was able to have some really, really big moments immediately to the start of the season and kind of embody what I think this offense wants to be, it was just like a perfect movie-esque type of thing for them. What did you think of them overall in this game? Because they really struggled to throw the ball with any sort of consistency. And they really needed those couple explosive plays from J.K. Dobbins to get this thing over the finish line.

I don't know how sustainable this looks against teams that aren't their readers moving forward. Their passing offense was basically, we're going to try to get the ball to Quentin Johnson Sands, five yards away from the line of scrimmage. And he had a couple of okay plays doing that. Didn't do a whole lot else. Like, that's the only way that I think they can get use out of him. And then Ladd McConkey, I think, did a really good job getting like seven yards at a time for them. But you can't really run the offense seven yards at a time when passing is

like 65% completion. Like that's just the math is not going to work out for you in the end. So they really struggled down the field. There were a handful of plays that should have been caught. Like Herbert had one in the end zone where it didn't seem like, I think it was Josh Palmer. Herbert was trying to throw like to his back shoulder to hide him from getting killed by a safety who was flying across the back of the end line. And Palmer didn't really slow down, wasn't able to catch it on his back shoulder. So it's like, ah, it would be nice if we had a player who could make that play. And then Herbert almost threw a pick doing the same thing, basically. They were throwing like a deep over route to Palmer. There was like, the coverage was out in front of Palmer and like under

him. So Herbert was like, all right, I'll throw it on his back shoulder. He'll slow down and catch it. He did not slow down and he did not catch it. And it was almost intercepted. So like that's just the stuff they need to figure out with this passing game. But, you know, with some of the receiver talent, I just don't know if they're going to get there. What were your early impressions of the defense? I know we're talking about a Raiders team with Gardner Minshu with a lot of questions. But what were your first impressions of that Jesse Minter group kind of trying to turn things around on that side of the ball? I was really impressed with the front, actually.

The coverage, you know, maybe I'll just want to see a little bit more in, you know, on the All-22. I thought there were a couple plays where actually Minchu had some just wide open receivers to throw to. And then obviously Devante Adams is just going to make a few plays and that's going to happen. But I thought the front, dude, to me, Mack and Bosa owned this game. They are the reason that this game was. a two-score win. Like, them holding that offense.

They had those back-to-back sacks where it was just like, oh, shit. Like, if that's what this is going to look like, then I can get behind it, even if we got some questions on the back end. That was my exact feeling. When those two went back-to-back on getting sacks, it was like, oh, if those guys are going to play both at a top 10 level and can do that, maybe this defense is actually really good. And then even just outside those two, you know, you can expect a good play from them

generally when they're healthy. I thought the linebackers actually looked kind of okay, especially in the run game. They were actually really coming down and hitting. Denzel Paraman had a couple of nice plays a day on. Henley had a couple of nice plays in the run game. So if they can just, if those two off the edge can play the way that they're going to play, the front can be a little bit more sound and aggressive in run defense and keep you in some nice spots. And then you just hope that Minter is making some nice calls in the back end. Like, is that a great defense? Probably not. But it's a pretty good recipe for

what I think they're starting with your one. Let's get to our next did you see that? I'm giving you the floor here. This is truly like an indication that you have a sickness, the next one that you wanted to talk about here. Dude, Taysom Hill. So I want to start, I want to start by saying this. I thought Taysom Hill was like a Sean Payton, Pete Carmichael bit. Like, I thought this was just a thing that they could not quit. Obviously, both of those guys are out of the building now. And they've only somehow done more things with Taysam Hill, which is what I don't understand. Like, they had a drive. It might have been their first or second drive of the game. And they run like an outside zone where you have the lead guy coming across and splitting and they get the double team on the edge. The guy splitting

across is, of course, Taysom Hill. I think of the very next play, they put him in the backfield, like spelling Alvin Camara, he's their actual halfback and he takes a carry. And then like later in the quarter, they gave him another carry as the half back. And then later in the half, they throw a goal ball to him. I'm like, what is this player? Like, obviously they've always done some cool stuff with him, but the fact that they were giving him real half back backers, like he was their backup running back to Alvin Camara for a half. I was like, all right, dude, the Saints are just, They're doing whatever they want to this Panthers team. It felt like they were just kind of feeling themselves.

They could do whatever they wanted in this game. Did you see Derek Carl was even chirping? I'm fine with that overall. Last one here, just in the, did you see that category? Did you see some of those balls that Baker Mayfield was fitting in during this game? I mean, he was, you look at the numbers by the end of this, 2430 for 289, four touchdowns, 0.64 EPA per dropback. Just for context, you would lead the league at 0.32. and he was double that over the course of the game.

Some of that is just the ridiculous efficiency they had on third down, but there were some real dots in this game from Baker, and we talked about this. What was the encore presentation going to look like after that bounce back year from Baker? Was he going to turn back into a pumpkin, or was this an indicator of what was potentially to come? And if this is the first entry into Baker 2.0 after that extension,

I think you have to feel pretty damn. I'm good about that as a Bucks fan. And it was all the same throws that he was making last year. It was like 10-yard Outbreakers. It was a deep corner. It was like a deep over that he was hitting. It was a go ball to Mike Evans where he puts it perfectly and Evans makes it just absolutely bonkers catch on it. Like it was a lot of the same throws that he was making last year. And so the fact that that Liam Cohen came in and was like, all right, these are those those that my quarterbacks is good at. Let's just cook up the offense in a way that is going to let him make those exact throws. And then Baker is just, he will make those throws. Is it as consistent as some of the best

quarterbacks? No, but he can have games like this where he's going to trust Mike Evans to go make three insane catches. And Mike Evans being a Hall of Famer is going to go make three insane catches. Let's, again, throw week one caveats into this. There is a chance that Washington is one of the worst defenses in the league. Their defensive personnel and some of the concerns on that side of the ball, there, there is a good shot that they're at least going to be in the conversation for being like a bottom five defense this year. So it's hard to know what you, how did it again? guy looked really good or did a unit look really good because of the competition early in the season. So there's a chance that this buck's offense is going to be a really efficient group again for

the second straight year. But just something to mention the fact that Washington's defense might be that bad over the course of the year. Yeah, I think having Mike Evans on Benjamin St. Juice is a that's the exact moment that I was thinking about. Yeah. All right. Let's get to our next one here. We're going to play a little, it's so over, we're so back over the course of the season. And we're going to kick it off here after week one. It's over. So over. That's what the NFL season feels like.

In any given moment, it's going to be so over. And in any given moment, we are going to be so back. And I struggle to, I hesitate to even do this after week one. But I do think that we had a couple performances today from a couple of these teams where I feel good at least asking the question. Like, is it over? Is it over for these teams? And let's start with the Carolina Panthers getting absolutely. trounced by those New Orleans Saints.

I know it's week one, but it kind of feels like it might be so over for Carolina again this year. I think it immediately felt over. This team did not have, to me, any life on either side of the field. Like, I just mentioned all the stuff that New Orleans was doing with Taysom Hill. So the fact that they felt comfortable enough to go do all that stuff with him against this team kind of speaks in volumes. And then Derek Carr, it's very rare that he plays with a ton of swagger, but he was feeling

himself today. Like he made, he opened the game with an insane post-round touchdown to, I think it was Rashid Shahid, I mean, a poster out, of course it was Rashid Shahid, but he did it like under pressure. Like the pocket was caving in on him and he was just like, ah, my guy's going to be there. I'm going to make the throw. And he did. And then he just was making a bunch of plays throughout the game. He had a sick, like, he evaded around in the pocket a little bit and then made a corner route like at the front right pylon for a touchdown. Like he just, he was having a game. And I think if you go into a season and Derek Carr has that type of game on you, your season might be over. It's not a good place to start. Here's the problem.

The Panthers came into this offseason with the resources that they had and said, okay, we are going to do everything in our power to empower the quarterback and to see what we have in him. They went out and spent a shitload of money on guards and free agency. They drafted Xavier Legate in the first round after trading up. They went out and traded a corner for Deontay Johnson. We just need playable guys on this side of the ball at as many positions as we can. In doing that, you're sacrificing how you can build on defense. They traded away Brian Burns. They spent virtually no money on that side of the ball in free agency. They're going out and getting stopgap type guys. Devion Clowny is a little bit better than that, but he's obviously getting a little bit older.

They go out and get guys like Jordan Fuller, Dane Jackson. That's how they tried to build it on that side. Well, if your offense is still going to be putrid when you've borrowed from your defense in that way, that equation potentially leads to you again being the most unwatchable team in the league. And at first glance, it seems like we might be trending in that direction. Yeah, and with the defense, the filling in the gaps with like these veteran okay players, that's cool when you have three stars or something who can do something for you. Like, that's kind of the the Steelers model. Like they have three stars and they're like,

all right, we'll kind of fill in the holes elsewhere. Zero stars. Zero on the Carolina Panthers team. So it doesn't, the math doesn't really work out for you the same way. And looking at what happened on offense, like he was under siege for a good chunk of that game.

I mean, the fact that Alante Taylor came untouched on those two sacks and they seemed to have absolutely no response for it. The first one, there was no ambiguity about what was going to happen on that play. He was walked up. It was clear that he was coming and there was no response from anyone on the offense. The receiver in that spot didn't turn

his head. They had no hot answers whatsoever. And on the second one, same kind of deal. It was not that hard to pinpoint the fact that he was coming on that play. He comes untouched and drops Bryce Young in the backfield. And you combine that with some of the issues they have when they actually did try to throw the ball. It's hard to find really any reason for optimism with how this group looked today. That's the biggest thing is I just both from an operation standpoint and from like an execution standpoint, it was just really tough to watch. I mean, you mentioned both of those sacks were Alante Taylor. Like they were willing to throw seven or eight guys on the line of scrimmage and be like,

you're not going to pick it up or you're not going to have a good enough answer. And they were right. They were absolutely right that the Panthers were not going to have a good enough answer for that. And then Bryce Young, this game to me just felt like you could see that the talent gap between him and what is even like an above average quarterback, it's just hard to watch. Like even the first throw he tried to make, they are running like a, they go under center, they run play action and they try to run that like drift right, you know, 12 yard in breaker. The type of thing that San Francisco is basically done for a decade now with Kyle Shanahan,

it seemed like Bryce Young was like almost trying to throw it early and he got a little antsy and then I think he was trying to throw it over his lineman, ends up throwing it like five yards in front of the guy and it's picked off. Like that's just, that's really tough. And obviously guys are going to miss throws, but he misses that type of throw. consistently. And then there were just a couple of other chances in this game where it seemed like he couldn't quite get it up and over a guy or he didn't have the juice. And so when you don't have play when they hit, they had an unblock guy coming off the edge on a boot. And to try to fit it over the guy, he jumped in the air to try to throw it over him. And it's like, oh man, if that's where

we are, then I just am really, really worried about the state of this thing. And here's the thing. I'm going to do some Kyler propaganda. Kyler actually, especially in this game, actually did really good job of that, of finding ways to make that work somehow. But we've said this before, Kyler's arm is just also way better. And he's a little bit more athletic, so it just kind of allows him to get away with that.

Like you just mentioned with that play, you don't see that quite as often with Bryce Young. The stat all throwout in the first half, he was blitzed on six dropbacks. On those plays, he averaged negative 1.36 EPA per dropback. So every time he was blitzed in the first half of this game, the Panthers lost about a point and a half.

They lost, what is that, eight and a half points overall, like nine points? Like that is, that alone is going to, in a league where most games are decided by one score, those six plays alone, like could have decided an NFL game. Yeah, I, again, it's week one. Hopefully they can kind of write the ship a little bit, but there is a chance that it is so over for the Panthers before things even get started. And there's another team where I think we could say the same thing. Oh, no.

The New York Giants, there is a chance that it is so over. They get destroyed today by Sam Darnold and this Vikings defense. And again, not many reasons for optimism on either side of the ball. I mean, if you were trying to build a case for why it isn't so over for the Giants, where would you even start? There is none. The only silver lining is that I think I saw Dexter Lawrence had like a 40% pressure rate, which is just bonkers for any player, let alone a nose tackle. Like, it just doesn't make any sense.

But the issue is they weren't getting enough pressure outside of Dexter Lawrence, which is kind of what they had built this team to do. And so that's an issue, obviously not covering guys. When you let Sam Darnold, you know, have the game that he had, and I think he completed passes to like eight or nine different receivers. Like when you are letting Sam Darnold play the put-together buttoned-up football game, your defense might end up being really bad. Yeah, I mean, Donald actually looked pretty darn good in some of these moments.

He was playing on time. I mean, there was that stretch where we had those two completions to Addison on the right sideline where I was just like, okay, like this this I can absolutely get behind. So I was impressed with what Darnold showed, but there's, again, a chance. Like this Giants defense was a huge question mark coming into the year and again, might be one of the worst units in the league over the course of the season. So it's hard to put into context like what that Sam Darnold performance was. I will say on the other side of the ball, I really enjoyed watching the Vikings defense today. like we talked about it coming into the year what could this recipe look like

when you had these guys who were built for this right when you had guys like van ginkl when you had guys like dallas turner and you dropped in players whose skill sets are actually conducive to playing this way and in those moments where they had like grenard bumped inside and van ginkle and turner all on the field at the same time

I'm excited about watching what that might look like over the course of the year against the team with the actual offensive linemen that can run the ball maybe it doesn't look great, but against this Giants team today, it was pretty fucking fun. It was. That's what it's supposed to look like. I'm so glad that we got now like so many of these defensive coordinators like him and Aaron Glenn, where it's like, all right, we're going to give you, what are the two or three particular types of skill sets that you need? All right, fine, we will go and get them this offseason. And they very much did. And it looked exactly the way it was

supposed to look. Again, a lot of defensive coordinators and teams can probably do this to Daniel Jones, especially if the offensive line is going to play the way it did and the run game is going to play the way that it did. But I don't know, man. I think there is a chance, like, even though you could sell yourself on this being a mirage against the Giants, I think we both believe Brian Flores is a good coach. And if he could do some of what he did last year, and now he has more talent, yeah, man, like, they could figure something out here. I just don't know what the Giants offense is supposed to be. Like, I just, I'm struggling to figure that out, especially with Daniel Jones just looking pretty lost for a good chunk of this game. There was a play in the third quarter, it was like a second and 10 play action. And he gets to the

top of his drop and there isn't like a ton of traffic around him. And for some reason, he steps up and almost runs directly into pressure. And his just feel for that space is just, it leaves a lot to be desired. And if you're not going to be somebody who operates really cleanly back there with this offensive line, then the issues just start to compound themselves and everything starts to crumble. And it feels like that's what happened last season when he was involved here behind a worst offensive line.

But if that's going to be just how this feels again in the, 24, I don't know how you build the optimistic case for what this offense might look like with him back there. Yeah, I have long said that Daniel Jones has object permanence in the pocket. Like he just, other than the thing that he's looking at downfield, he can't perceive all of the other things around them. He believes that they're not there. And so when you have a defensive coordinator who makes those things even harder to see, these are the types of games that you're going to get. So he might have some okay games versus like more vanilla defenses, but not a great start. Only Bow, Boe Nix and Will Levis. had a worse EPA per drop back today than Daniel Jones.

Not the company you want. No, especially when you consider what those offenses looked like in the most important moments of those games. All right, let's get to our last segment here today. Let's do it. I think I've learned something today. This is how we're going to end all of our Sunday night shows this season. Just kind of take a step back and think about what we learned today.

Because I think that every week, every Sunday, there's going to be some nugget or a lesson that we can attach ourselves to. Some are going to be big picture important stuff. some are going to be little things. So let's start with the little one that I had after today. The Jacksonville Jaguars are still the world's most frustrating football team. Everything we said about how it couldn't be as bad as it was last year for Jacksonville just isn't true. They had a 92% win probability rating when Travis E.TN had the ball at the goal line.

And then Javan Hullen punches it out and somehow they lose this game. And they recovered the Parker Washington fumble. This thing could have actually gotten worse than it was. So you had the E.T.N. Fumble on the goal line. Christian Kirk fighting himself on that one drop that he had that was completely inexplicable at some point in this game. So even with some of the flashes from Lawrence, from Brian Thomas, even with some of the reasons to be potentially excited about this, it is still the Jags shooting themselves in the foot in the most infuriating ways possible in the most important moments of the game. Well, that's why it's more frustrating. If they came out and they looked exactly the way that they did last year, I'd be like, okay, this is really annoying.

But I might just like turn off my optimism entirely and be like, okay, this staff, this roster, it just doesn't have it. But they look good. Don't do this to yourself, though. Just turn it off. Just turn it off until they give you an explicit reason to turn it back on or you're going to drive yourself insane. Give me three more weeks and I'll shut it off. But like, it's three more weeks you're going to be rocking in the corner with your arms, like, wrapped around. round your knees. That is probably true. I've already gotten to that point multiple times with the

Trevor discourse. So, like, maybe I'm just like, don't even care at this point if I end up there again. But it's frustrating because this team looked good. And like the offense looked like it was supposed to look for like the first half of the game. Like they were running the ball better. They were doing some really nice stuff under center. Like Tank Bigsby actually had a couple of nice carries. Trevor was throwing really, really well down the field, which I thought was really nice. All the things we wanted to see from this team. It was exactly what it was supposed to be. And then like the second half rolls around. Basically everything after that ETN fumble, they went back to a lot of what they were last year where it's like, oh, the run game just stopped working. And oh, every time they get in third

down, Trevor's getting hit immediately. And like, guys are making drops. And there was even one Christian Kirk play where Trevor is trying to throw like an outbreaker to him. I think it might have been on a third down. And Kirk like comes out of the break and just like slow rolls and stops. And then he has to try to dive for the ball. I'm like, run to the sideline. Your quarterback is throwing the ball to the sideline. What are we doing here? So just stuff like that. It's just the entire second half. And it was even more frustrating again because I think outside of like two hugely explosive plays from the Dolphins offense, one, you know, one to Hill and one to Waddle, which the dolphins are going to get those. The defense otherwise looked really, really good. So it's just so frustrating

that so much came together. And then second half offense just doesn't have it. I'm sure we'll talk plenty more about this team and it driving us insane over the course of the year. What did you learn today? kind of the small takeaway that you had after week one. Yeah, one of mine was just the vibe in New England. It's different, man. Like, it's just, I'm kind of liking what Gerard Mayo has going on. I'm really enjoying it because I think, so for so long during, obviously, the Brady and Belichick era, it was really buttoned up and it was really just like, you know, everybody, put your head down, do all this stuff. We're not going to say anything, yada, yada, yada. But because they were winning, it was like had this air of respectability to it. But then obviously Brady goes away. They start

losing games. It just starts to feel stuffy and annoying. And eventually, like, it felt like some of the coaching decisions, especially on the offensive side, just got stale. And it was like, all right, this whole act is done. You bring in Gerard Mayo, you still see on the field a lot of the energy that those teams, you know, kind of embodied, but just off the field. Mayo is just so different. He talks with like an air of energy and positivity that is just so different from this building. And like, he's just more willing to hear people out, whether it's reporters or players and all that other stuff. I mean, there was even a point where I think he got asked about some of his game management at the end. And he was like, yeah, I was a pretty good Madden player back in the day.

Belichick would have never said anything like that. He was talking about like making up words for social media and stuff like that. Belichick would have claimed that he didn't know that Madden existed. That's how he would have responded to that question. What did you think of just the defense overall from New England today? We put it a pin in it earlier in the show. I'm just curious what your initial impressions were. You know, I still kind of want to see what the secondary is going to look like against a passing offense that seems a little bit more willing to actually push the ball down the field more consistently, especially over the middle of the field, because we know for as much as I love these linebackers, you know, hitting and playing downhill. Some of their coverage stuff over the middle is

not great. So I would like to see them against an offense that attacks that. But I still saw, you know, we came into the season saying, let's get to the end and this Patriot's defense still feels like it has the energy and physicality and everybody is put together doing the right thing, one body, one mind. They felt that way today. They really did. I think you got a lot of that. So I was pretty encouraged. Even without Barmore, I liked some of the flashes we saw from the guys up front. Uche had a moment. Keon White had a couple moments. So I'll be curious to see what they look like over the course of the year. But it is fun just to see them playing with some real energy despite most people believing that they're going to be one of the worst teams in the league. So

I think that's kind of the starting point if you're going to be better than that. that. Our bigger picture one here, I would say the biggest takeaway that I had, and the biggest thing that I learned after week one of this NFL season is, it is very, very hard to be a rookie quarterback in the NFL. And that was true for the guy playing in Chicago, and that was true for pretty much every rookie quarterback that we saw today. And a lot of the young quarterbacks that we saw today. Just what are just some stat lines that we can trot out. Caleb Williams, 14 to 29 for 93 yards, 3.2 yards per attempt was 2 of 7.7. for 24 yards on dropbacks of 10 plus air yards. Jaden Daniels averaged 1.8 air yards per completion in this game. His average completion traveled less than two yards in the air.

And you know what? Not to be outdone. That could have actually even been shorter because his first pass of the game was like a swing screen and he threw it behind the guy so it was a fumble. Bo Nix, not to be outdone. His average completion traveled 2.7 air yards in. this game. He finishes 26 to 42 for 138 yards, 3.3 yards per attempt. So that's what we got from the rookies that we saw today. I mean, it was awful. And I think that it's important to remember,

even in situations where we think a guy's in a good spot, like Caleb Williams is in Chicago with the help around him. And we could talk about the supporting cast in the way that they played today. But even if you think that there's reasons for optimism with these guys, the barrier to playing well as an NFL rookie quarterback, especially in week one, is extremely high. And that was laid bare for everyone to see today when you look at what these guys did in the production they had and also what was asked of them within their offenses. And I think it's, you know, I think maybe five, six years ago, it might have been easier when we were living in like the peak. Everybody can run the Shanahan offense and defenses are playing a lot more single high and you can just

generate explosives at a thin air. That's just not the world we live in any. more. Defenses are putting a shell on things. They're running a lot more simulated pressures. They're making you earn it. They're making you be a big boy dropback passer. It's hard. Think about the three defenses that these guys were playing against. You have Mike McDonald doing what he does. You have DeNard Wilson coming from the Mike McDonald world and all the crazy simulated shit they were doing in this game. And then the third guy had to play against Todd Bowles. Those are the three defensive coordinators on the other side of these games for guys who've never played in the NFL before. Yeah, they are immediately thrown into the hottest.

fire as possible. So yeah, it's a very hard to play quarterback in this league in general. And then, yeah, you get thrust into these spots. It's tough, man, tough living. Yeah, I don't, not trying to take too many big picture long term takeaways away from the performances that we saw today. I think that Caleb Williams will hopefully be better over the course of the year. The fact that the Bears won a game where he finished 14 of 29 for 93 yards and they did not score an offensive touchdown, it was very comfortable for me. Like, how I feel, in this sweater right now is how I felt watching that interception get returned and knowing they are going to win this stupid fucking game. It felt so familiar and so warm. I actually enjoyed

it as painful as a lot of the moments were on the way to getting there. There were a couple of stretches for like particular sequences that I think like so perfectly summarized Caleb Williams. There was one where I think on first down he tries to roll to his left early in the game and almost hits DJ more on just like a how does your arm even move like that type of throw. And then he tries to hit Keenan Allen on a deep shot. It doesn't work. And eventually they get to fourth and three. And he converts it.

And it's like, okay, you saw him try to do some of the cool stuff. Then he misses a big throw. And then he converts on fourth and three. And you see some of the like, okay, this guy's put together. And then he takes a 19 yard sack to get them out of field goal position. Because the next play was like he tried to throw a contested route over the middle. That could have been caught, but it's like you've dug yourself so far in the hole. I'm not going to feel bad for you.

And then the third in 29 or whatever it was was a failed screen. So, like, you took yourself out of field goal position on first down, which seems impossible. Like, usually we get onto guys for like, oh, it's third and eight, and it was the last play of the driving, you took yourself out. You took yourself out of field goal range on the first play of a series. Like, how does that happen? Like, it's just so many funny moments from him. I will say that on a lot of those play action, that was a play action, and he turns around and there's a guy in his lap. And that was happening consistently throughout the game.

My biggest worry about this game as a Bears fan is not the way that he played. the way the interior of the offensive line played. That was my biggest concern coming into the season with the personnel on offense, and I have no reason to feel any better about it with the way that today went. Nate Davis was out of there pretty fast, and Coleman Shelton had some pretty ugly moments. And so for them to just get beat up and thrown around in that area the way that they did, like that play where Ernest Jones just plants the center when he's blitzing,

you just can't live that way. if you're going to get consistently pushed around on the interior of the offensive line, it doesn't matter what sort of skill position talent that you have. It doesn't matter how excited we are about the quarterback. So if that stuff doesn't get fixed, it is going to be a more frustrating year for this offense that I think a lot of Bears fans want to hear about right now. And it was frustrating for two reasons. There were actually a couple of decent moments. Caleb had in structure despite how bad the stat line ended up being. He had a really nice throw to DJ Moore on like an inbreaker. And then there was the touchdown that Keenan Allen ended up dropping.

So he had a couple of nice moments. It's just to your point, he ended up being under pressure and having some ugly plays. And like, with the way Caleb plays with him just being so willing to go create and go move, eventually you trust that he will be as consistent as some of the top guys. But in his first game ever, it's not going to be that way. He's going to have some plays where he ends up just making bad throws and bad plays. So hopefully they can get that short up as the year goes on. If not, it's going to be a tough year for those of us invested in that being a,

watchable offense. All right. That is all we've got for today. Sincerely appreciate all of you guys who stuck around for the entire live stream. It is so good to be back with you and doing this. Just a reminder for our in-season schedule this year, obviously we're going to be doing all of our recap shows on Sunday heading into Monday. And then we're going to have shows on Wednesday and Friday is going to be our weekly preview show. So only three podcasts a week this year. We really appreciate everyone who appeared on the feed last year. Zach Kiefer did a phenomenal job. We really loved having Mike and Randy on the feed consistently over the last couple years.

And then obviously the work that Dane does on prospects to pros. For those of you who are curious, Dane is going to be on with us consistently throughout the year. And then we are going to fire up the weekly Dane Bruegler draft podcast when we get to the offseason and we get into the thick of draft season. So I know some of you have asked about that. But really, really appreciate everybody sticking around with us. Very excited to be back with you. We will have our next show on Wednesday. Until then,

sincerely appreciate you listening. We will talk to you very soon.