The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 12 Monday Hangover — Jordan Love, Eagles run game, Cardinals future, Chargers playoff path, and more

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Robert Mays and Mike Sando pile up one last helping of leftovers to tie up Thanksgiving weekend on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. The guys discuss the possibility of Jordan Love taking over in Green Bay, the Eagles run game and their Week 13 matchup with the Titans, the future in Arizona, the Chargers' path to the playoffs, and ho-hum wins for the 49ers and Chiefs.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysFollow Mike on Twitter: @SandoNFLSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube2:00 Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love21:25 Looking ahead to Eagles-Titans26:20 Where do the Cardinals go from here?47:11 The Chargers strange purgatory58:03 Ho-hum wins for the 49ers and Chiefs Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today. It's the athletics on Mike Sandow. Mike, how you doing, man? I am doing well. Good to be here with you, Robert.

We got a lot to dig into today. Some pretty marquee games that we didn't hit on the Sunday night show just because, I don't know, they weren't overly interesting in the moment. We're going to talk about some somewhat underwhelming wins for the Niners and the Chiefs. Not a ton to dig into there, but we did want to hit those because that's what we do on this show. So we're going to chat about those a little bit. We were going to talk about the Cardinals and the Chargers a bit. We talked about that game kind of in passing as it relates to the AFC playoff picture,

but we really wanted to dig into where the Cardinals are after that game. It feels like we just haven't really talked about the state of that franchise very much this season. And there are some decisions to be made on their end, I think, after this season ends and about who they are moving forward. so we're going to talk about that. But let's start with one of the biggest moments of yesterday, that is Aaron Rogers going off and Jordan Love replacing Aaron Rogers in the Packers' loss to the Eagles. And not surprisingly, that little moment and getting a little glimpse of Jordan Love

has set off some conversations about what the rest of the season may look like in Green Bay, about how much more we'll see of Aaron Rogers, and about how much more we should see of Aaron Rogers. as you're sitting here, Mike, with Green Bay, all but eliminated from the playoff picture and the season all but lost, what do you think the Packers have to be thinking right now as it relates to their quarterback situation here for the last five, six weeks of the season? It's actually a perfect situation. Obviously, they would like to be on their way to a 14 and three season, but absent that, we know it's the last season. This is really perfect because

they've got, I think, five games left. They have a buy coming up soon. And they have the potential excuse or reason of Aaron Rogers injury and being out of the race to make a smart decision on what they want to do to evaluate Jordan Love, not just for themselves. Because I know we'll talk about the possibilities of, oh, if he looks good, you know, would we want to trade Aaron Rogers? We got a guy. But really, it could also be Jordan Love looks good. So we move him to help Aaron Rogers next year because we got a lot of money committed to him in the future. So I think there's, the bottom of mind is they need somehow to look at Jordan Love. They've needed that this whole time for whatever purposes are going to be, to keep them, to trade them, to do whatever.

And it's just been impossible to do that because Aaron Rogers is either playing great or they're in the middle of the race. And so now, none of those things are true. And Rogers has a thumb that's been bugging them all season. and he's got now an oblique injury. To me, they're really set up to do what they've sort of needed to do all along, but couldn't do for those reasons I just talked about. So based on what they said last night, I thought some of the quotes were interesting.

You know, Rogers said that he understands that if they're mathematically eliminated, as long as they're mathematically alive, he wants to play. But he understands that the realities of situations like this, the considerations that the team has to take into. to account based on who should play and whether they're going to be looking toward the future. So I thought that he seemed more open to the idea perhaps taking a step back than he might, given how prickly he can be and some of the ways that he's responded to stuff in the past. Bluffler came out today and I believe said that he thinks that Rogers is going to play,

based on the things that he's played through before. So I think there are two questions here. There's what we think should happen for the Packers to kind of judge what their future should look like. and there's the thing we think is going to happen. So in your mind, are those different or are those potentially the same? They could be different. Certainly, there's this one game coming up within their biweek, and I would guess that during that span of the next two weeks,

they probably will be eliminated. Is that likely? They will actually be formally eliminated? Yeah, I think so. I think so. Now, they could, whoever plays quarterback, they probably have a good chance to beat the Bears. So that is an interesting component of this.

I think if Rogers were to play in the game and light up the bears and say, I feel good, I can't wait for this break. You know, it could make it potentially be prickly, but I think this is where I don't have, I haven't had much faith on the Packers to be able to do this. You know, to be able to finesse this thing behind the scenes with Aaron Rogers in a way where you can explain to him why this is best for not only him but the team and the future of the team, hey, look, Aaron, we owe you $50 million on a bonus next year. And it's going to be fully guaranteed. We have it, I think, between March and the start of the season to exercise that thing. And we're in with you. But we got to see what we got here in Jordan Love.

Shoot, maybe we can, I don't know if they could say this. Maybe we could trade them. You know, we'd be implied. Trade them and get something to help you next year. I think they've got to be able to finesse up behind the scenes so that he's on board with whatever they do. And that's what he's always asked for. hey, I want to be in on the front office decisions. I want to be part of all that. So is there enough trust and ability to have that type of conversation in a way? And I thought Rogers did open the door to that with his comments of, look, pride, I love the game, but there's other factors that would come into play. Should we be a mathematically eliminated? Maybe he goes out and even if he plays this week against Chicago after the buy, it's the perfect time. And he gets it. And they look at Jordan Love for four weeks. And Aaron Rogers knows that he's in a pretty good spot. for next year, whether he comes back or maybe they do have conversations about a trade,

that to me is what should happen and shouldn't be that hard for them to make happen over the final four games, provided they are eliminated. There are a few different timelines that we could follow here, right? The first is Jordan Love plays well. He plays like somebody that the Packers want to keep around after the season ends. Aaron Rogers decides that he's retiring. that's a clean version of this, right? Where you just move on to Jordan Love.

The money is such that you talked about the option bonus. My understanding is that they can split it up over two years. Talk to Rogers about potentially restructuring that deal a little bit, similar to what Drew Brees did with the Saints, where it would be about a $16 million cap hit next season and about $24 million the year after that. So you can live with it, especially because you now have a quarterback on a rookie quarterback contract.

So that's one timeline. And I assume one of the cleaner timelines of, available. Another is that Jordan Love plays well. The Packers are looking at the current makeup of their roster, what he's going to be making next year, and they see that as a viable chance to turn the page. They say, you know what? It's time. It's time to move on. It's time for us to kind of step into the next era of this. Unlike a team like the Bucks who are staring at this really uncertain future after Tom Brady leaves because they have this huge void of quarterback, if Jordan Love shows over the next six weeks or so that he is a real option for them in

2023, they have somebody in the building. They have somebody under contract. So theoretically, could they move Rogers, recoup some value for him and kind of step into the next phase of this, again, in a pretty smooth way? Or does Jordan Love play well, play well enough to be an attractive option for someone else and the Packers look at all of the moves that they've made in the short term, all of the guys that they've retained, all of the contracts they've handed out, and they ultimately decide, listen, we think our best chance is still to win right now or over the next two seasons and Aaron Rogers gives us that best chance. It probably is most prudent for us to recoup something for love and keep Rogers. And then the final option would be they keep them both. because they're not confident that Rogers isn't going to walk away after this season, and then they're left in a really shitty spot in 2024.

Which I don't mind because you don't have to pick up the fifth year option. You can still hold on to him and then franchise him at a later day. Just push it down the road. You don't have to really admit you made any mistakes, right? They haven't had to fully. I guess they kind of admitted that drafting Jordan Love was a mistake because they ended up paying Rogers. But I don't know that they're going to suddenly admit that they're not in their window and they've mis-evaluated all of their players.

I think that's an unlikely admission for them to make and say, oh, yeah, it's a rebuild mode here. So I think they would have to feel pretty darn good about Jordan Love's ability and their ability to win with them, which could be total delusion, deluding themselves on that. Because I think still Aaron Rogers upgrades them. I think he upgrades 28, 30 offenses in the league, even at this stage of his career.

So I think it's going to come down to whatever that sort of conversation is. You have sense that there's been a greater mutual responsibility. and inclusion of the parties being Rogers in the front office. We see it every week. Rogers talks like he's in the middle of decisions. He talks about Jordan loves footwork. He talks about all stuff that like coaches and front office people talk about. Good kid.

Maddie did a nice job with the game plan, all of those things. Now, could he then at the end of the year, if they have that conversation, hey, this is what I want? And is there a team that you could trade them to? Now, I had a conversation today with someone who's been in front offices for years and done tons of contracts, huge contracts. Because my thinking was, after watching that last night, this feels closer to like them being in position to trade him.

Like, hey, let's look at Jordan Love for us, get him going, and then we can just amicably almost do what's best for everyone, kind of what we wanted to do all along for the Packers, which would look at this young quarterback. But when I ran that past the long time for an office guy, he was like, I think it's harder than that. I think that the amount of money that's involved on Rogers' contract, his injuries, is he, what are people going to necessarily, are they all

going to think that this play is there? Because if you trade him, that $50 million, the new team has to pick that up, right? There's, there's a big commitment that the new team makes. Now, I think a team would do that. You know, you and I talked about, you recommended maybe the Jets, and I think, I think they would do that, wouldn't they, for an Aaron Rogers at this stage? I think a lot of teams would have to consider it. But the front office person was a little bit more skeptical based on the contract. So if a team exercises the option for Rogers, I'm reading this right now from Jason Fitzgerald, who does a very good job at over the cap.

Believe his cap hit next year would be about $16 million for a team that exercises the option. And then he has an injury guarantee of $49 million for 2024, but that doesn't become fully guaranteed until five days after the 2023 Super Bowl. He had a low base salary too. Yes. So it'd be palatable in the short term and then we would see what would happen if you had to tie yourself into him in the long term. So I don't know if this is more just fun and fodder, but it is enjoyable to think about who might be interested in him as their quarterback in 2023. And it's hard for me not to land on the Jets. Just because they're a team where you feel good about everything else that's around them roster-wise.

they could free up the money pretty easily to absorb a $16 million salary and even more than that based on some of the cuts that they could make. The defense is already playoff caliber. You have a ton of young players on the roster. They're in the AFC. And for better or for worse, the offensive coordinator of that team is the brother of the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. So I'm sure he has the entire picture of what it is like to work with Aaron Rogers, of where Aaron Rogers is. at this stage of his career. So you would have somebody that if they rubber-stamped it,

they would feel very good about what Aaron Rogers could provide that team in the short term. And there's some shared DNA offensively from what he's done over the last few years. So that one is the cleanest to me, where it's, all right, there's a need, there's a connection, they can afford them. Their timeline is such that maybe they would want to accelerate this thing and see what they could accomplish next year. It's a franchise that's been starved. Rogers, I could see him maybe wanting to go to New York over a place like Indianapolis. I don't know if the Jets would want to do this, but it's certainly fun to think about.

I would think they'd want to do it. And what better symmetry, they traded Brett Farv there too. So this is where. Oh, God, that's right. I didn't even think about that. You think about that back in the day. I mean, Rogers could go unfinished business, you know, and do what Farv, you know, didn't really get done there.

I think that would be really fun if they could get to a point. where if they just got to that point where, hey, let's do this. And I think the Jets would be the perfect sort of team because you're in that division. Look at their quarterback. Someone said this to me. I don't know who wrote it, but just all the number of quarterback changes they've made in X amount of time. I don't know if it was Peter King or somebody wrote it, but it was interesting. They've been through like 19 changes or 16 changes since the bills went with Josh Allen.

It was something along those lines. and what do they need, right? All these other teams, shoot, even Miami's got it going with Tuas. So you've got to do something. And I don't think you could do it much better than adding Aaron Rogers, even if it's just for a year or two. What do you got to lose? Right?

You got nobody. So, I mean, Zach Wilson, maybe he's factors in the future, but you can't count on that now and you feel like you're ready to go. Joe Douglas, Brian Gutikus, probably on the road, college scouting a lot of years, too. I don't know if they're best friends or anything, but I guarantee there's a rapport there. So right now, if the Jets make the playoffs, which seems like they certainly might, the Jets have on the 22nd pick in the NFL draft.

So let's say for a 40-year-old Aaron Rogers in that contract, what would you have to give up? The 22nd pick plus your second round pick this year, maybe a little bit more. It feels what we're doing? What did the Packers give up for love, right? It would be like they'd be getting the love money back. Well, that's the other part of this Is that because you have Hopefully a quarterback

That you feel comfortable starting And then somebody that another team wants You can recoup some draft value here Inject it back into the team And kind of see what happens But we'll see I mean, I think that the next month of Jordan Love And what he looks like will go a long way

And determining the decision That ultimately gets made here The couple other teams I think worth just throwing out Purely because wildly speculating is fun We'll see what the Raiders do at quarterback Yeah. I tend to think that Rogers would not want to give Devante Adams the satisfaction of having to go there and run back into the arms of Devante. I know they have a very good relationship, but it still feels like something that Rogers would be like, I don't know.

I'm not sure if I want to be, show everyone that I need him like that. And then a couple other teams, you know, the Titans are in a place where Ryan Tannhill is something they can move on from this spring. I'm not sure if that's something they would want to do. But, you know, some of these teams that don't necessarily jump out as obvious candidates. think are worth mentioning in these conversations. And then a team that absolutely is going to need a quarterback is the Indianapolis Colts. We'll see if they want to get back on the veteran quarterback Mary go round that they've

been on here for the last few years, if Rogers even wants to go there. But those are the teams that jump out to me immediately. But I still think the Jets makes the most sense for like five different reasons. I think the Titans late owner, but Adams actually fired the front office when they didn't get Peyton Manning. Remember when they were sort of in on that? Like he wasn't going to go there. All those guys thought they were good.

They had contract extensions, but Adam just said, you're out of here. So it's obviously different ownership in Tennessee. I'm not sure that fits, you know, their MO of what they've been doing. And certainly you want to talk about weapons. Roger's weapons are an issue in Green Bay. But I think yesterday felt to me, Robert, like the Sunday night game just felt like, okay, this is on the table now. It's not just you and I talking about it. Like Rogers alluded to it.

And it opens the door for sure. I mean, it opens it. even if it's a crack, I think that it makes it beyond just podcast fodder into a conversation that's probably happening in the Green Bay building. And I wanted, one of the things I was talking to a few people about it this morning and one person said to me, you know, Rogers don't be, Rogers could be putting them in a position where they have to be the ones to tell them not to play. Like there's a psychology of that thing too where he's like, hey, I want to play this.

Look, if we could talk about it if it's mathematical, but he's not actually saying. I'm going to sit down. They'll have to do it. And he's also talking about, hey, we got this offense is really going now. Watson's looking good, you know,

and they just put up X number of points, and then they take him out and it's not really his decision and we'll see how good it looks. So there's a lot. So let's take this step. Let's take this one step further.

Okay? Let's say Jordan Love is the quarterback there next year. Christian Watson looks like he could potentially be a real player. They have pieces long their offensive line coming back, even if Elton Jenkins is a free agent.

We know that Aaron Jones will be there, AJ Dillon will be there. Jones has a $20 million cap at next year. His team is a lot of really expensive players. Yeah, they do. Because they've had a lot of really good players. But Bactiqtiari is a $29 million cap at. Kenny Clark's a $24 million.

Jare Alexander's a $20 million. Aaron Jones is a $20 million. I mean, there's a lot of those kind of guys on the roster. The biggest thing that has to change, though, is that there is one of the biggest disconnects in the entire NFL between what the Packers have spent on their defense and the returns they are getting from that defense. They were second in cash spending on that side of the ball this off season.

The Chargers were the only team that spent more cash on their defense in the spring of 2022 than the Green Bay Packers. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that they've pumped all of these first round picks into that side of the ball. Devante Wyatt, Quay Walker, all of these guys. And right now they're sitting at 21st in defensive DVOA. they gave up 300 combined rushing yards to Jalen Hertz and Miles Sanders yesterday. So as we're looking forward to the 2023 Packers, beyond all the quarterback intrigue that's worth mentioning, what happens to fix that defense and whether they make another overture, Jim Leonard, who is now available? Somebody like that, I think that becomes the next conversation as it relates to Green Bay after we figure out all this quarterback messiness.

Absolutely. And they've been able to, for years. kind of get away with being bad and inconsistent on defense, special teams for that matter, too, because Rogers and those guys would always be top five. Well, guess what? They're every other team in the league now. The offense is up and down and the defense and special teams still are up and down, not fixed, not fixed at all. I was joking earlier that I think the Bears should play Justin Field this week because there's zero chance he's going to be tackled. No, we're not doing that. They should have tackle incentives. We're going to put him in bubble wrap for the next six weeks.

If I'm doing contracts for the Packers, I'm like, you know, I, shoot, we've gotten a the point where tackles isn't even a stat anyone talks about, right? But I want tackle clauses in the contracts of the Packers because it just doesn't look great. And I feel like they're on the back end of their defense, it doesn't look at a lot of willing, eager

tacklers out there too. So I don't know what's going on on that side of the ball. We've talked about the scheme component of it. I'm looking here. Their man and zone breakdowns, it's the same as it was the last two years. I mean, you know, I don't know how much different that is or what needs to be done, but it

just feels like there's really something missing there. And I don't have a lot of faith that it's going to be fixed. So the Eagles run for about 300 yards yesterday. We should probably mention them, considering they won the football game last night and they're still the number of one seat in the NFC. My big takeaway from that game is the Packers defense is a disaster. The Eagles have the best running game potentially in the entire NFL. They again led the league in success rate on their rushes yesterday,

which shouldn't be a surprise when you look at the totals. I want to see what they look like against 10. Tennessee next week. That is my prevailing thought after watching that game against Green Bay last night. Now let's see what they do against the Titans because they've had those couple hiccups against the Colts on offense, against Washington on offense, and now they play against the Tennessee team that shares a lot of similarities in where their strengths are with those two teams. The Titans were the best run defense in the NFL coming into yesterday. The Bengals brand the ball a little bit, but Deke Watcher didn't play. The Titans are very, very good on that side.

they're very, very good at front. So what do the Eagles look like when they play against Tennessee this week? I've got that game circled because that matchup, Eagles run game, Titans run defenses, one of the better ones we're going to get the entire season. And we knew coming into the year, they had one of the easiest schedules, if not the easiest. Obviously, the NFC East is tougher than we thought it was going to be, but still a relatively easy schedule. And some of the games that were supposed to be tough, like, okay, Dallas, well, Dak Prescott

wasn't playing. Or, you know, the Colts before the year. The Colts, we thought were going to be a pretty good team. They got Jeff Saturday coaching. right? If I said before the season, hey, you're going to have Jeff Saturday coaching the Colts. And then, yeah, Green Bay is in a little bit of tatters by the time they get them. So Tennessee coming off of a tough sort of uncharacteristic loss, but is a tough brawler team that's going to be hard to knock out of there. And I think that is a nice test for them. This is sort of like a type of team you might face in a wildcrown round of the playoffs.

and just has a tenacity and a tough defense and sort of an ethos to them that I don't care what they look like, how pretty is. If you beat the Titans, I'm impressed. How I feel about the Titans defense is pretty much exactly the opposite of how I feel about the Packers defense. Yeah. Where it doesn't matter who you're rolling out there, they're going to make your day at the office supremely unenjoyable. And the Packers have nothing but a parade of first round picks. including a guy they benched seemingly in Darnell Savage.

That's the state of where the Packers defense is right now. And now the Titans have, it doesn't really matter who. And they still are going to give you a really, really hard time. Look at the contrast in the, in just sort of the DNA of those teams. We mentioned their Tennessee and Green Bay. I would love the Packer defense to have to watch their film with Mike Rabel. I would pay to see that. And just because I think he has a culture of accountability and calling you

out and this is how we're going to do it, that I just think some of the things that the way the Packers play wouldn't fly. And I think that's one of the reasons Tennessee is a tough team year after year and outperforms our expectations just about every time. All right. Let's get to our next one here. The Chargers knock off the Cardinals. The Cardinals are now four and eight. A couple other numbers associated with the Cardinals. Mike Sandow, where do you think the Cardinals rank in total team DVOA after 12 weeks of the season? I would say they rank 24th. 31st.

Really? The only team. I thought, I mean, they've been in some games. The only team that is worse in Team DVOA than the Arizona Cardinals this season is the Houston, Texas. Wow, they're even worse than I thought. They are 28th offense with a head coach that came and was hired based on nothing. but his offensive acumen is the reason that he is the coach. I mean, it just speaks to the general dysfunction that is surrounding this team at this current moment, right?

We have Kyler Murray talking about how they were fucked schematically yesterday on that fourth and one, guys screaming at each other on the sideline, just a general feeling that things are not going well over there. And so I'm curious, in these conversations that you have with people, What is the general feeling about both Cliff Kingsbury and about the midterm future of the Arizona Cardinals franchise? Because they're in a weird spot. Yes. So initially everyone laughed at Cliff Kingsbury, no skins on the wall. How can this guy get a job?

You get a little bit of envy of other coaches in the league. Like, what's this guy? Come on. Then some grudging respect for him because he. He did evolve the offense a little. They incorporated tight ends more. It wasn't just a 10 personnel team. So that was a nice adjustment.

They had a little bit of success. But then in talking to people just in the last week who've played them, hey, what's going on? It feels a little bit like they just run plays, like they don't have answers as much. And so that is a criticism that I think is valid. And then just from a, you know, from a leadership standpoint of your entire organization, you know, if you just sort of zoom back and you go, okay, you know, the G. GM had a terrible arrest for DUI. They basically retired their chief operating officer for one right after that. You've got these coaches on the staff. Offensive line coach is one of your most important coaches besides a coordinator. It might be the most important one. He can't come, can't even coach the game in Mexico because he got sent home.

I mean, kids get sent home from school. Coaches get sent home and fired as a professional at the highest level of the NFL. Well, ridiculous. Now we've got all this money invested in Kyler Murray, but we have to put a contract clause in that says you have to do your homework. I mean, that's ridiculous. And so now you sort of get what you pay for. You've invested in all of these things, all of these people, and you're a little bit stuck. And now how do we fix it?

How do we pull out of it? Where is the backbone or the character of this team going to come from? Is it going to come from a young Kyler Murray who needed that clause in his contract? No, he's saying the schemes effed us late in the game and he's got bad body language and he's somewhat limited as a player. Can do some spectacular things, but there's not a fundamental for this team to hang their hat on. Is there right? No. When you think about the nutritional value of Mike Vrable and what he brings to Tennessee, it's the exact opposite.

These guys are cocoa puffs, right? These guys are the worst kind of sweet cereal you can have. and it just doesn't sustain you over a long period of time. And I think they've got to probably make a coaching change is likely what's going to happen. But you've got this quarterback now for a while. A coaching change, and I would have to assume a change general manager, considering he's now on his third head coach.

You would think so. They just extended him and the coach before the season. Yes, they did. And a lot of time with ownership, you know, a lot of times with ownership, you know, we would think from an objective standpoint, look, these guys, all they want to do is win and all they want to do is have the best possible people, yet they routinely keep and retain and hire the people they're comfortable with. Steve Kine's been there for 20 years, has the trust of the owner, so much so that when

Steve Kime had that terrible incident where he got an extreme DUI, he had sort of suspension and a fine, but he wasn't fired for that. And it's been allowed to hire a coach and fire him after one year and draft a quarterback and Josh Rosen and move on from him. So you would think those strikes would be adding up, but there's a reason that he's still there through all this time because the owner obviously trusts them and likes him. So we will see what they do, but it feels like something has to change. And I'm just not sure, you know, I'm not sure how much they actually will change.

We'll see. All right. So let's, in this hypothetical, let's say that he stays. Let's say that they hire a new head coach. How do you start building around the pieces that you have? Because it starts with the quarterback. And if it weren't for Russell Wilson, we'd be having a lot more conversations about the contract that Kyler Murray was given this off season

and what sort of position it puts you in as a franchise. Kyler has a $16 million cap hit next year. He has a $52 million cap hit in 2020. Kyle Murray is paid like the best quarterbacks in the league. He's paid like Josh Allen. He's paid like Patrick Mahomes. He's played like an MVP level player. So you have to build whatever your team looks like through Kyler Murray.

So I don't know ultimately where that brings you, but that has to be a consideration as you're figuring out the next stage of things here if you're the next coaching staff, if you're the next head coach. Some other building blocks on this. team outside of Kyra Murray that are under contract and have been paid. Buda Baker, Jalen Thompson, who I'm sure a lot of NFL fans don't even know who Jalen Thompson is. He's their other starting safety. DJ Humphrey's their left tackle.

Hollywood Brown, who they traded a first round pick for this spring. DeAndre Hopkins. Zach Ertz and James Connor are also on fairly fresh extensions. They would be huge dead money hits next year. That is the foundation of this team. other than that, they don't have anybody in the front seven that you feel great about,

despite drafting two linebackers in the first round over the last few years. They don't have anyone on the defensive line you feel very good about. They don't have anybody on the offensive line that you feel very good about. The interior is full of picked and plucked pieces and they've traded for Rodney Hudson

and he's been hurt and hasn't played very much and they got castoffs like Billy Price and Will Hernandez and whoever else they're trotting out there. I just, it's just such a mishmash of pieces and they traded away. You look at their draft history and there's a second gone here. There's a third gone here. There's a first gone here because they traded them for veterans. And now you have this team full of aging veterans that has no identity, no foundation,

no elements like you said, where there's an identifying characteristic that you feel good about. So you have all these kind of weird mismatched pieces, a quarterback that's extremely specific in who he is and what he can do. And now you're going to have a coach tasked with building a roster through that very expensive quarterback when a lot of the other pieces that have been assembled here don't really make a ton of sense. It's a pretty tough task. Yes.

And you're so right about those pieces that they added. When you think about it, they were the team that was going for JJ Watt or adding A.J. Green. The Hopkins acquisition was obviously a good one, but Rodney Hudson, another veteran who just really hasn't played. And then I felt like this season was kind of a year when they went backwards a little bit just out of necessity. They're paying their quarterback to doing these things. This was the year they kind of lost more than they gained. Christian Kirk, Chandler Jones, Chase Edmonds, Jordan Hicks, Jordan Phillips, those guys all left.

They weren't in an adding mode so much this year, other than the Hollywood Brown move. So they even brought back A.J. Green, when you look at it, just. just a lot of pieces there that aren't, they were sort of add-ons. They're like the, they're like bolting the aftermarket performance pieces onto their car. You know, it's like, hey, you know, like when you were like 19 years old or something and you had a car with a big muffler and you're like, you know what? If I could just get a larger throttle body, the 77 millimeter throttle body, I can get 15 extra horses in this baby, you know? And so let's get that. You know, can we get that?

Yep. And then you go alone and yet. Except the engine is falling out of the car. The engine's falling out of the car. But we can fix that too because I got this new oil pan. I got this big new oil pan. I'm not, I mean, I, yeah, I owned an 89.5.0. Okay, so I'm going back on when I was doing that at that stage.

And that's all I could think about. And now my son a few years ago was doing that. So that's what they did. They were the Bolton team. And now you sort of have some of those pieces are going out or you almost feel like you need a new engine. And then I just can't get over the string of events. when you look at not only who they signed, but DeAndre Hopkins is their number one guy,

the ace on offense. He serves a suspension to start the year, six games. So that's somebody you're banking on. Look at the people you're banking on. Kime, his history. Kingsbury, his history. Kyler, his history. Even Hopkins now has been suspended.

And then, okay, our offensive line coach and running back coach are out of there. I think they lost their left tackle, by the way, yesterday, too. Maybe four of their short. Yeah, four of their starting offensive linemen, I think, are on IR. So there's really nothing, there's none of the meat and potato fundamental things that keep the building from tipping over are there and rely to reliable on. So they may need to, you know, they may need to stop the bolt-ons and go to some more just fundamental moves. And I cannot wait to see what the next staff thinks is the right way to. to build the car around Kyra Murray.

How do you do this? What does the offense look like? If you're bringing, if you hit your coach, right? If you bring in a staff like the one that Nick Siriani has built, where they come in, they have very background offensively, they can go in a bunch of different directions. They, I mean, and obviously this hypothetical is, it's hard to imagine just because they walked into a team with arguably the best offensive wine in the league and the offensive line coach. they're in a much better position.

The Eagles job was a better job than the team, whoever's going to be taking the Cardinals job. But let's just say the staff knows the right offense to build around Kyla Murray despite the roster limitations and his limitations. What is that? Like, what is the right offense built around Kyler Murray, DeAndre Hopkins, Hollywood, Brown, James Connor, and Zacherts with an offensive line that's completely intact? I don't know.

I have absolutely no idea. If I knew I'd get the job, but I cannot wait. to see what the answer is. Are you striving for 2020 Seahawk offense? Is that what you're going for? I do not know. The problem is, though, that in 2024, when you're in year two of having that job, your quarterback's making 52 million bucks.

So you better be able to maximize him or we're in a situation where this thing is DOA before it even gets started. Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know how good Kyra Murray can. be. And that's a huge question. In the right situation with a coaching staff that really does maximize him and we see the best version of Kyle Murray, I truly do not know what that looks like or how far that can take you. But that is going to be what the next staff is tasked with doing

because very rarely, Mike, when's the last time we saw this where a staff comes in with a quarterback that's being paid at the top of the market? Because typically, when you're getting paid at the top of the market as a quarterback, your offense is really fucking good. You're good. And your team is really fucking good. So very rarely do we see this? And now with this and Denver potentially, we've got two of these jobs combing open with quarterbacks that are being paid at the top five at the position and that have contracts that are truly an anvil around your ankle if you're not getting a lot out of them. Yeah. Who takes over the expensive middle and quarterback contract. Is that like back in the day, like the Cutler type of situation? Would he have

been making, you know, near the top of the market at a certain time when the bears were changing? It's not a bad comparison, actually. I was just trying to think of somebody who's, you know, not a bad quarterback, but not a great quarterback, but is getting paid great quarterback money just because of the way the system is. Certainly, you know, Kirk Cousins coming in, they switched it over. But I think, you know, Kirk Cousins has a skill set that is pretty, not as hard to build around, you know. I mean, not the same amount of ups. So that's an interesting question of like, who has done the takeovers?

And we may see another one in Denver, you know, where you take over a quarterback who is not that great and is costing a ton of money and holding you down without really an ability to move on even after maybe, even after one year, you can't get out of it. Trying to think who that would be. So I'm curious. So I'm looking at it right now. So.

You know who had the second, you know, the second highest quarterback or second highest cap hit for quarterbacks in the league in 2012? Sam Bradford. The old rookie quarterback scale, the old rookie salary scale was wild, man. Wild. Hey, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. So Eli Manning could be one. I think he's the one that I would probably go with. Yeah, the Giants went to Tom Coughlin.

And remember, they got that one year in there where the defense got really good under Steve Spagnolo. And then otherwise, it was just really a really. tough go of the roster falling apart around Eli. Eli was diminished. They remember no offensive line. The weaponry really suffered. And then was it the Ben McAdoo era? Was that kind of he wasn't. Yeah. So McAdoe took over in 2016. And in 2016, Eli Manning had the highest cap hit in the NFL for quarterbacks. Yeah. It was in 2016. And so that's definitely around the same, around the time where, you know, you see Eli start to diminish a little bit. Go to 2016. Eli had a lot. a 45.7 QBR over the course of the entire season.

The average 6.7 yards per attempt. But this is, it's a 34-year-old quarterback. Like, that's typically when it starts to happen for these guys. That's more comparable to the Russell Wilson situation in Denver and who's going to be taking over that job, even if he recently just changed teams. With Kyler Murray, you have a guy in his mid-20s, and I think that's probably why you can talk yourself into the upside and to this getting solved. a way it does it when you have a quarterback that's clearly on the downside of his career.

But if you don't get that arrow pointer back in the right direction, again, this is an albatross of a contract that you're having to deal with and build around and kind of maneuver around as the next head coach of this team potentially. Yeah, I think whatever you do, it's a return to some sort of fundamentals. I think you get, you know, you build some kind of a running game and it's the same thing for most teams. He's going to need the weapons. I think it's been established when he's had D.

Andre Hopkins. It hasn't worked as well this year. But for the most part, he's been pretty productive when he was on the field. He's only had four games with DeAndre this season. And then on top of that, their offensive line's been in tatters. And obviously, there's a lot going on. I think the relationship between Kyler Murray and Cliff Kingsbury, we've seen doesn't look very good. And this thing just may have run its course right when they were doubling down on it, right? They doubled down when they really didn't have to. And I think that's the lesson of this is, don't pay when you don't have to. You know, when you, when you have a doubt, when you have questions, when you're going to put a clause in that says you have to study, don't do the deal.

And it's not that. You just got absolutely blown off the field in the wild card round in the playoffs and you decide this is the time to extend the head coach and the general manager. Yeah, it's very odd. It's very odd decisions. And now they are left to pick up the pieces here a little bit. All right, let's chat about the team that the Cardinals lost to yesterday. Yeah. The Los Angeles Chargers are now six and five, based on where you look, have a, let's say, a 40% chance to make the postseason right now. Where are you at on the Chargers at this point? After watching that game yesterday and watching them steal one late against a Cardinals team that we just established as 31st and overall team BBOA?

Yeah, I was disappointed watching it. I mean, I feel like they should be better than this, but I think. We cannot underestimate what the weaponry means for the quarterback. And so I did this, Robert. I went and looked at Justin Herbert every season with Keenan Allen and Mike Williams on the field. Okay? That's pretty simple. Can we have those guys?

2020, it's 310 pass attempts, okay? 6.8 yards per attempt. 2012, it's 460 pass attempts. 7.4 yards per attempt, 24 touchdowns, 9 interceptions, really good. This year is 27 attempts. So whatever the reasoning is for this, the injuries that they have, the types of players, that's a roster construction issue, that's a luck issue. That's things that no one can figure out. We kind of think there's an issue there. We're not sure what it is. But I think that's a real thing. And so it's what, because of that fall off from that, it focuses more attention on certain other things that we have issues with. We think the offense should be schemed a different way or we were not that excited about what they're doing. those things could be legitimate concerns, but I think there are a much bigger issue

when you're not playing with your players. And so 27 pass attempts with those guys this year compared to 770 over the previous two years. That's just Keenan out and Mike Williams. To me, that's a huge difference for their team on offense. Defensively, I'm concerned. I mean, I feel like they should have gotten better on that side of the ball.

I thought they probably would be better when he's been there. but when you hire a young coach, no matter how talented he is, how promising he is, you don't get what you would have gotten from a scheme standpoint or the experience standpoint had he had more time doing it.

And I think that that could be the case in this situation where they went with an unusually young coach who I think could be very good, but maybe isn't as good as he will be. because of just how the experienced level there. And maybe that's why we haven't seen the defensive side come along despite some of the investments. I know they've had injuries on that set of the ball too. But that's been, I think, the overriding big picture disappointment that really is the reason why they haven't been able to ride through with some of those injuries they've had on offense.

There are a couple of things I want to sort through here. We're doing our call to plan for this show. our producer said something that I didn't interrogate in the moment, but I think is worth interrogating. So, you know, if we're picking the seven best teams in the AFC and we're figuring out the potential playoff pictures, aren't the Chargers one of those seven best teams? And you think about the star power that they have

and we like the quarterback and all that stuff, you think, yeah, they might be one of the seven best teams. The Chargers are 24th in total team DVOA right now at this very moment. 24th, okay? Here's some teams ahead of them just in the AFC. the Raiders, the Jaguars, the Steelers, and the Browns. All ahead of the Chargers. The Steelers being in there.

And some of these teams are ahead of them because they're really good on defense. Like the Patriots are second and defensive DVOA, so they're like right near the top 12. The Steelers are better on offense according to DVOA than the Chargers are. The Chargers right now have a negative 30 point differential on the season. So the current version of the Chargers just hasn't been very good. You watch them play yesterday and the quarterback completes 18 passes in a row and when it looks good, it looks great, but the offensive line isn't playing great. They lost the center midway through the game yesterday. I know the left tackle has been hurt.

The right tackle has been dinged up. But this is now what's going to happen over the next. two or three months with the chargers. They are most likely, mathematically, not going to make the postseason. They are going to fall just short. They're going to be a 9-and-8 team that doesn't quite make it. And then after the season ends, we're going to do this song and dance that we always do. People are like, well, you know, they lost Joey Bosa for most of the season.

J.C. Jackson missed a huge chunk of the season. Look at the money that they gave him. The interior, their defensive line, Austin Johnson's hurt. Christian Cuffington is hurt. They lost Nasirat. And Nasir Adderly didn't play in the game yesterday. You go to the offensive side. Somebody will throw out that stat you just did where, you know,

they only had 20, you know, 40 pass attempts with Mike Williams and Keenan on the field the whole time. Rishon Slater didn't play for almost the entire year. And that's what we're going to do again. It's what we're going to do that same thing. But it's tiring. Yeah. Yes. We're going to do all of that again.

And part of me just, you sit here and look at this. And I just don't know. if you can roll into next season with the same, it's not even excuses, but just rationalizations for why this team fell short again and just say, you know what, just keep everything pretty status quo, like the quarterback is good enough,

we'll eventually get there. It just feels like something has to be tweaked here as we think about what the next stage of the Chargers looks like, whether that's a new plan offensively, or some sort of injection of speed or explosiveness in the personnel. Like, it just feels like we're trending toward another really frustrating set of Chargers' rationalizations and conversations from January 1st through September 1st, that it's the definition of insanity and I'm just not sure I want to do it again. If any ownership group can tolerate 9 and 8 and 8 and 9 and come back and reload again, the Chargers got to be in that group. Okay, they're not going to just suddenly be outraged and go spend $12 million a year for Sean Payton.

And I don't think that needs to happen, by the way. Yeah, yeah. In fact, there's five teams in a league that have not beaten an opponent. This gets to what we're talking about. They have not beaten an opponent that currently has a winning record. Arizona and the charges are two of those five teams, okay? Yes. And that's just what it feels like.

It just feels like there's nothing about them that is doing better than we explain. Is that what you're talking about? Is there anything about them where there's nothing about them where you go, like with some of these other teams, you can just find a thing like even Cleveland's head of down year. But you know what? Dang, that offense has been pretty damn good. I mean, Jacoby's been better than I thought. Mari Cooper trade looks like a home run.

They have one of the best running game in the league. You can easily see. Denver's got crap going on. But shoot, they lost Vic Fangio. The defense looks pretty good. They traded Von Miller and chub. The defense is pretty good. Hey, you know, Seattle was going to be a rebrand of.

building year. Gino Smith in that offense, though? I mean, geez, Pete Carroll's, what's the, hey, you know, the Falcons not that good, but you know, hey, Arthur Smith has gotten more out of Marioada in that offense. They've won a couple of a team that's a tired out. Chargers in DBA way, by the way. They've been a tough out. You know, hey, any team with a disappointing season, almost any team, maybe Arizona's another one, but there's something about them where you go, yeah, but you know, this other thing. Well, I think you'd have to look pretty hard to find what that is for the chargers. And that's the malaise that we're kind of feeling. Yes, I think malaise is a great way to put it. And that's just kind of where I am with them right now.

It's fatigue. I want to be a little bit more nuanced as we list off all of the reasons why they fell short of expectations again and just assume that improved health is going to get us over this hump here over the next year. And that's why things are going to change. I don't think that they're going to have some big blow-up moment. I don't think they should have some big blow-up moment based in the way the first two years of Brandon Staley's tenure has gone there. But I do think offensively, they have to have a real conversation with themselves about what needs to change. I think that has to happen over the next couple months here.

And in the next month, they're going to get the Raiders, the dolphins, the Titans, and the Colts. So we'll see. Those are the types of teams that there's a couple of them there that should really beat them. And maybe they finally surprise us with one of these games. They played the Chiefs close a couple times. But we need that to feel better about the Chargers.

we need them to do something that, you know, it actually beats the expectations. You know, look at their wins. They're winning, shoot, they beat Houston by 10. Houston was down by 30 to the, at halftime, to the, to the dolphins. They're winning games, 30, 28, 19 to 16, 20 to 17, 25, 24 against a D.O.A. Arizona team. None of that feels like it should. Listen, if the Chargers go on some miraculous run here over the next.

six weeks and they knock off the dolphins and they knock off the Titans and they make the playoffs, then I'm happy to walk a lot of this stuff back. But that's not the direction that we're trending right now. And I think that that's kind of where my frustration comes from. A four and two finish does it for us, right? That gets them to 10 and 7. You okay with that? A four and two, four and two, do you not feel the malaise? You don't, you wouldn't feel the I still feel the malaise at four and two because it's more, it's about, who they actually are. If they go four and two

and they beat the bad teams on the rest of their schedule and they lose to the good teams, I still just look at how talented the quarterback is, how well he is able to play in stretches and know that this team should be better than this.

They were seventh in cash spending this year. Seventh. This was the year. Let's look impressive too. That's part of it, right? Yes. Let's just look impressive. Let's go out there and go, whoa.

Yeah, I haven't seen it. I mean, and it's, you look at just their draft history recently. Jerry Tilleri was a first round pick in 2019. It was released this year. Okay? They traded up for Kenneth Murray in the first round of the 2020 draft.

He has been very bad. They didn't have a second or third round pick in that draft because of making that trade. They let Chenando Wosu walk, okay, to trade a second round pick for Khalil Mack. And Chenin Wosu's actually been pretty good for the Seahawks this year. So you just look at kind of the underlying talent over the course of this roster and just how many misses there have been and just some of the issues when you look at it top to bottom that exist. And again, it's just a frustrating place to be. And I just don't want to go through the exact same process that it seems like we always go through with the Chargers. All right, very

quickly here, we talk about the Niners and the Saints and about the Chiefs and the Rams. Sort of underwhelming wins when you look at the final box score. And I wanted to go back and look at these and just kind of see what happened. I don't have a lot to say about the Chief's performance against the Rams. They always have a lot. had eight possessions in this game. It was just a very strange game. You look at the first half, Skymore muffs a punt in the first quarter, gives the Rams the ball back.

They give up a fake punt first down. That bleeds two minutes off the clock. Patrick Mahomes throws a red zone interception. They run in some red zone issues. The Chiefs average 7.5 yards per play in the first half. They finished the game averaging six yards per play. They had almost 30 first downs in this game and essentially did what they wanted. between the tens.

The Chiefs offense is very, very good. The Chiefs are very, very good. This was kind of a strange game. That's really all I have to say about it. Nate said it yesterday that it was like watching somebody play with their food. That's what this was. It was like watching a killer whale kick a seal up into the air and just see what happens next. Like that was what watching the Chiefs was like yesterday.

It was not aesthetic. But I kind of felt like this was good for like I was kind of impressed by the Rams to hang in there, you know, with what they were playing with. And I felt like, you know, this game was. just kind of comical to see Sean McVeigh get like slobber knocked upside the head by his own player. I thought, geez, they could have been in the concussion protocol in that thing. It took a huge shot. It's just the way their season's gone, but they were hanging in there. You know, they were hanging in there. Like you said, they intercepted Mahomes down in the red zone. And for it being 26 to 10, and that means the chiefs actually covered the spread, it didn't

really feel that way because it wasn't a going away type of a game. But I think these are fine. If you look at the, if you look at the last four games, for the for the chiefs they've allowed 17 17 27 and 10 points so that's look I understand the rams have nothing on offense but they held the Rams to 10 points that's okay move on to Cincinnati and let's take a look at it let's see how they do it in in that game against a good team that obviously there's some history from last year and the one thing about the Chiefs this season is they've been all about proving everybody wrong Tyree Kill you know is the offense going to be as good.

They did lose to Buffalo, but I feel like they've kind of answered the criticisms of them most of the time this season. And now they're going to get Cincinnati at Cincinnati. Great opportunity for them. I think they're going to play pretty well. It should be a good game. And maybe I'll reserve my judgment until after that one. Yeah, I am very excited about watching that game.

My feeling about the Chiefs is almost exactly the same feeling I had about the Eagles where I can't wait until next week now. You know, they played well. They looked great in the area as we expect. him to look great. I can't wait to see what they look like against a very real opponent that I think is going to tell us a lot. So yeah, just a couple more like small moments. An eligible man down field on a Noah Gray touchdown. There was a huge chunk play where Orlando Brown was dinged for holding that MVS couldn't hang out to a ball inside the 10 with like 22 seconds left

in the first half. It's just one of those games where they move the ball seemingly at will and they still had a bunch of mistakes and it really didn't seem to matter in the final score. So not a ton I think to talk about there. The Saints Niners game, a little bit of a different story just in the sense that I thought there were a couple interesting takeaways. The Niners are 23rd in Red Zone DVOA this season.

That showed up again. The fact that they went forward on Fort Down inside the 10 and did not get it, Kyle Shanahan went forward on a fourth down in the Red Zone twice in this game, which was kind of shocking based on his typical operating procedures. Him not getting that one inside the five leaves me very worried about the next time we're going to see the 49ers go forward on fourth down.

So that's one thing that I noted in this game. Related to that, I thought this was interesting because it does seem like they kick a lot of short field goals. The Niners have kicked eight field goals from inside the 10-yard line this season, which is tied for the league lead. So pretty much once a game, the Niners are kicking a less than 30-yard field goal. And that is very frustrating to watch. And being 23rd in Red Zone DVOA this season, it leaves you with a lot of those moments. And you saw that a couple times again yesterday. That's a great one.

So that makes me want to watch all of their Red Zone plays for the season and just give a look in here and see. Because you know they've got a good schemer. You know, they have some good weapons, although they haven't had the weapons all at the same time, all the time. But that could be good. And then how have they been in the Red Zone in the past? Is this way worse? They were second in the NFL last year. And so I looked at up to see the NFL.

They've had some issues previously. Because if you look at it over the last five years when Shanahan has been in San Francisco, there have been some years where they were down. And my conventional wisdom thought about that is that the offense, because it was so play action heavy for especially the early years of Shanahan's tenure there, is that when the space started to constrict as you get down into the red zone, the space created through all of that play action wouldn't be as effective. But then last season they were second in Red Zone DVA in the entire NFL.

So we know that Red Zone efficiency and success is often volatile, and I think that they're an example of that here over the last couple years. Yeah, that is interesting. Usually when you can run, you know, a pretty good running team, that really helps you down in there. They obviously don't have a running quarterback. But I think that's a good one to look at. Let me look at this. Yeah. The other thing I want to think it's more of an, I think it's got to be more of an anomaly.

but I really want to watch it now. I also think it's a little bit of an anomaly. Something that may not be an anomaly that I think is worth mentioning. You just said when you're a good running team. The Niners this season are 14th in EPA per rush and 14th in rushing VOA, okay, which is just purely the value of your runs. That's the top half of the league.

They are 23rd in rushing DVOA, because of the strength of schedule that they have played on that side of the ball. They've played one of the worst slates of defenses in the entire NFL this season. And yesterday, they had a 31% rushing success rate. They averaged less than half a yard before contact per rush. And I know that the Saints have some guys up there,

but the Saints haven't been a great defense this season. So I just want to be a little bit more vigilant about the way that we talk about the Niners run game and how dominant. it has been this year because it hasn't really been that dominant this year, especially when you compare it to other seasons we've seen from them. So I'm looking at Jimmy's year-by-year red zone numbers, okay? And this is one of the funny things about the red zone is like everybody has a really

high touchdown to interception ratio. Never believe those stats on the screen. So-and-so quarterback has 150 touchdowns and one interception in the red. That's everybody, right? It's fishing in a barrel. Everyone has that. But here's what I noticed. So Jimmy's pressure rate in the red zone has gone up big time every year, the amount of time he's been under pressure.

So if you go back to two years ago when he averaged a very high EPA per passplay, 0.43, he was only getting pressured on 16% of his passplays. That has gone up to 30% last year and 36% this year. his EPA per pass play when not pressured has actually risen each of the last three years, but it looks like there's a lot fewer of those plays. So maybe they're having some hits and sacks and pressured throwaways down in there that have caused problems for them. That's what it just looks like from a Jimmy standpoint the last few years. So I'll have that in the back of my mind when I go watch those.

Just a couple other small moments in this game, like a little sliding doors moments. The Saints did not choose to go for it on a couple somewhat questionable four downs. They had a fourth and one from the 40 or so in the first quarter after Dalton Scramble. They decided not to go for it. They had a fourth and three from the Niners, 43. They decided to punt. So I think those couple decisions ultimately plays into how this game plays out. Alvin Camaro obviously has two fumbles, one of which happens on the goal line.

Jimmy gets picked off in the third quarter by Alante Taylor. The Niners get bailed out by an illegal contact penalty that was totally unrelated to the play. So just there's some moments in this game where that could have been even tighter than it was. And one of the reasons I think that the Niners offense struggled a little bit, this is the most interesting nugget I had about this game. Niners came into this game facing man coverage on 18.4% of their dropbacks, which is 28th in the NFL. Okay.

and includes 12% man coverage on first down. Obviously, you see more man coverage on third down. That's important to look at it situationally when you think about overall percentages. On Sunday, no team in the NFL played more man coverage than the New Orleans Saints. 43% of total dropbacks, 41% of first down dropbacks. So I think that the Saints came out and did the Rocky fight and right-handed thing a little bit against the Niners offense. yesterday, and I think the Niners didn't necessarily see it coming, and it led to some of the inconsistencies and some of the lack of cohesion for them in the passing game.

Just an interesting game planned by a very good defensive coordinator and Dennis Allen, who has not necessarily had the top-to-bottom talent that he's used to working with this season. And Dennis Allen's pulled some things off. Like, you notice when he faced Josh McDaniels, he shut out the Raiders. Now, the Raiders have their issues this year, but they scored 40 yesterday. The Raiders' offensive efficiency metrics are shockingly much better. than you think they are.

Well, they've led, remember, they've led four games by 17 or more points, something like that. It's one of the top figures in the league, yes. And so Dennis Allen, though, like the way I kind of look at some of these matchups is for the off, in the off season when they get the schedule, like a guy like Dennis Allen, he's circling Josh McDaniels. He's circling Kyle Shanahan, right? That's the matchup for him. He's looking at these.

He knows who the good callers are. And so he's got to. a history. Like, if you remember Dennis Allen, I think they had one of their best games at New England a couple of years. You get last year. Remember when Josh McDaniels was there? That's right. They really put him down. And then this year they throttled the Raiders. I know Devonte Adams was sick and they didn't have a bunch of guys, but they throttled the Raiders. They shut them out. And then here he, you know, has basically a couple of fumbles in there or else this is one of those games. Maybe they're kicking the field goal to win it late in the game, holding the 49ers to 13 points.

Pretty darn good. So tip of the cap. to Dennis Allen a little bit here against some of the top colors. Yeah, and I think that the Niners defense is obviously fantastic. You know, the Niners defense is going to be able to carry them in moments and in games where the offense looks a little bit disjointed like it did yesterday, and they deserve credit for that. They're a complete team. I think that they still firmly belong in that top tier of NFC teams that we talk about

with them, Dallas, the Eagles. And yesterday doesn't dissuade me from that at all, doesn't push me off that at all. But I just think that digging into maybe some of the reasons that they didn't run away with a game against an Andy Dalton-led Saints team is worth chewing on a little bit. All right. That is all we have for today. Mike Sandoz, sincerely appreciate your time.

It's always good to do this with you. Thank you. It was fun. Appreciate you guys listening. We will be back on Wednesday. Fun show for you guys. The conversation we had against about the Cardinals, about just a team that kind of ran its course this year

was a little bit underwhelming. Same thing about the Packers. We're going to do that about a bunch of teams on Wednesday. show have a couple fun guests. They're going to come on and help us with that chat. So please be sure to come back and check that out. If you have not subscribed to our YouTube channel, please go do that. You can click on the link in the description of this podcast. We do a lot of YouTube specific content this year. Me and Nate do our Sunday night recaps on there, doing some Thursday night recaps only on the YouTube channel, which we're going to start up again, I believe, next week.

And we also have some really fun YouTube specific content. If you guys, did not see the video I put out with Mitchell Schwartz last week about past protection rules and, you know, sorting through some of that as an offensive lineman. That is exclusively on our YouTube channel so you can go check that out. Really enjoyed the insight that we got from Mitch hoping to do some more of that stuff. But in the meantime, we really appreciate you guys listening. We will be back on Wednesday. Talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.