The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 12 recap: Everything gets real at Thanksgiving

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

On the 49ers-Packers broadcast in Week 12, Tom Brady said that teams aren't who they really are until Thanksgiving. We might not be at Turkey Day quite yet, but it's a late Thanksgiving this year, so we can make an exception. We saw a whole lot of true colors on the field in Week 12. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen are here to break it all down on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.RundownEagles dominate RamsPackers run game...You Have My Attention!Seahawks defense...You Have My Attention!Titans-Texans...WTF?!?Do the Texans have a Wild Card Round ceiling?Washington Commanders...WTF?!?Bryce Young nearly one-upped the ChiefsJonnu Smith is the Dolphins' top pass-catcher now?Baker Mayfield has found his place...and we're all better off for itAnthony Richardson has three types of gamesCaleb Williams' best performance of the seasonWhat Did We Learn Today?Host: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. Brought to you by Thursday Night Football only on Prime Video. I'm Robert Mays. Week 12 is in the books. One hell of a week in the NFL. Had some wonderful moments during the witching hour earlier today. Had a ridiculous Saquan Barkley performance on Sunday Night Football. Wire to Wire, this was a good one.

We got into all of that with me and Derek Classen. Chatted about a great performance from the Packers, essentially putting the Niners season away. The Seahawks defense really coming in. into form against Arizona team that had been rolling offensively. Chat a little bit about Washington's slide, what this all means, whether or not it is an indicator of what is to come for this team. Chat about the Texans Titans game, which is the reason we created the WTF segment

could not be more fitting for what that game felt like throughout. And then chat it about just some other moments that stuck out to us in week 12. So let's get to all of that with Derek. Derek, week 12 in the books here. How are you feeling? I've rejuvenated. I feel like you know, you kind of need one of these shot in the arm type of weeks when it gets into the middle of November. This was certainly that type of week in the NFL.

My dog is sick. And so she was like hanging out with me the whole day because I can't let her in other parts of the house. And so she was laying next to me during the witching hour of the first games. And I scared the shit out of her like multiple different times. I was going to say which part. Everything that happened in the Bears game, the Terry McCorren touchdown. down. That five minutes stretch, there was a lot of outbursts happening from my basement. It was a fun as hell day in the NFL. We're going to get to all of that. Talk about the Washington game, that performance, some of the other highlights, low lights from Week 12. Let's start with the Sunday night game that we just watched. Holy Saquan Barkley. The Eagles destroy the Rams 37 to 20. They walked, I mean, walked all over them. They were in control of that game at pretty much every single moment. A couple different things I think stood out in terms of why. the Eagles kind of had this thing in the palm of their hand throughout.

But the Sequin Barker performance is the center of that. 26 carries, 255 yards, two touchdowns, and 47 yards receiving, putting him over a cool 300 yards from scrimmage. You said this a few weeks ago. You thought he was the offensive player of the year because he is the engine that drives that offense in a way that even somebody like Derek Henry is not. I think today was a very good entry in that for you. I feel pretty good about that.

Getting it on an island game, too, against a, you know, a Rams. team that everyone's like, oh, this front is really good, all this stuff for him to have the type of game that he had where he gets not just the one, like, you know, he usually has that one run in somewhere late in the second, early in the third where it's like, okay, this is. The fact that there's one a week is just amazing in and of itself. Right. Well, he had the one where he gets them going in like the middle of the second or late third where it's like, okay, they're about to go on their run. They go on their run. And then at the very end of the game, when like the Rams technically have a chance, they could score two touchdowns, get two two

pointers tied up. He just calls game, says, nope, we're good here. I'm going to score like a 60-yard touchdown and call it. Like just the fact that he gave you all of those explosive plays on top of like pretty consistent down-to-down running too. Like they were really giving it to this ramps front pretty much the entire game. He had a 64% rushing success rate with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. It was not just big plays. They ran the ball on their terms for four quarters.

I can't imagine there. I would have to look this up and maybe this will be a good stat for like the preview show when we talk about them next week. I can't imagine there are that many games where a running back has carried the ball 25 plus times and had that high of a success rate this season. Like, that is bonkers. Like the Lions guys have maybe done it once or twice. But other than that, man, I mean, this was a completely dominant performance from this offense. Sometimes you want to make football games really complicated about why something happened, about why a team won or lost. I don't think this one is

overly complicated. I think it's two different factors. They beat the shit out of the Rams on both sides of the ball throughout this entire game. Their fronts on each side of the ball controlled the game. And that's becoming a theme for this Eagles team. especially with what their interior can do on defense, combined with what this offensive line is when healthy. And they've been banged up. You know, my lot of missed a couple games. And so the fact that now that group is back to 100% and able to dictate a game the way that they did tonight,

that's how you see that sort of outcome for the running game. And then what they did to Matthew Stafford. I mean, he was under pressure for a huge chunk of this game. When I looked up these numbers, it was when the game was pretty much in hand with like 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. He was one of four when pressured. He had one completion when pressured in this game. and he had been sacked four times. So their ability to control the front on both sides was huge.

And the other thing is just what they did on third down. Again, with 10ish minutes left in the fourth quarter, Philly was eight of 13 on third down. The Rams were 0 of 5. That's it. That is enough to determine the entire game when you combine it with Sequin just stomping people for four quarters. Yeah. And like being able to control the ball and stay on the field and win some of these third downs is supposed to be the Rams formula, right?

Like that's kind of how they built this offense to stay efficient, stay ahead of it early on I thought they did a decent job with the run game and getting into a lot of boot stuff and calling a few of these shot plays where they were able to get some guys open. But as the game went on, it just felt like the run game started to trickle away a little bit. A couple penalties here and there put them into some tough third and longs. And then almost any time they had a pure past scenario, like you said, Matthew Stafford's getting pressured. He's getting taken down. That's the thing. He's not just getting pressured and having to make difficult throws. They got him to the ground about half the time. And they did a really, really good job outside of, what was it like

the second play of the game where he had like a 15-yard carry. But other than that, they did a really, really good job of keeping him in the pocket and bringing him down. So I've just, you know, we've said it before for like a month now, you know, like over the past month. What we're seeing from this Eagles defense is they are truly ascending into one of the best units in the NFL, run defense, past defense, all three levels. These guys are playing at a really, really high level. And to do it against McVeigh, Matthew Stafford, all these Rams guys, it's, it's really impressive. If you're trying to pinpoint how this Eagles defense by the end of the year looks different than the one we saw in 2023 when it felt like the wheels were coming off a little bit by the end of that season. Obviously, the defense is a top flight unit,

like a top five legitimate unit where last year they were, it was unworkable. I mean, they were absolutely a mess at the end of the season. So that's, that whole side of the ball feels different. But offensively, I think it's the fact that you have a guy who can take it 60 yards any single time he touches it combined with this offensive line. They have better answers for pressure just because the offense is, that's just a more solid foundation than it had over the last couple years. And the other thing, I keep coming back to this, what Jalen Hertz is doing with his legs,

especially on third downs, that just makes this offense so much more just emotionally devastating. Right? You got to worry about Sequin on early downs. You've got to worry about Sequin on the back half of games when they've already ground you down. If you want to take a one-on-one to A.J. Brown in some of those third-down situations, they hit a couple of those today.

But the fact that Jalen Hertz is consistently seven-yard on third and six, eight yards on third and seven. That's just one more layer to this Eagles defense being a very frustrating opponent and a very frustrating task for any defense that's having to play against them. That whole aspect is kind of why I'm starting to buy this Eagles offense a little bit. Like there, when I watch Jalen Hurts, there are still just some things I don't love. Like he doesn't attack every single area of the field, the way that some of the top fight quarterbacks do. I still think some of his pocket present stuff is kind of frustrating. But like you said, I think the foundation of the offense. The first month, I didn't really believe it. You know, I didn't

think we were all the way there. But I think now what we're seeing with the offensive line, especially now that Jordan Malato's back, getting all of what they want up front. Sequan Barclay really ascending into maybe like one of the best skill players in the league at this point. Like you said, popping 60-yard runs almost at will. It seems like at this point, it feels like they've given him a good foundation. And then like you said, he's giving himself the answer of, okay, on third and eight, I don't have to hang in the pocket and maybe bounce around a little bit and then make a throw, I can just go. And even honestly to that point, though, I said coming into this game, I thought the biggest pain point for the Eagles offense would be if they can get hurts outside

of the pocket and make him throw, that would be where the Rams defense could get them. He actually made like two, three, four throws outside of the pocket in this game that kept a few drives alive and made some big plays. So I think the fact that if he can maybe build on that specifically, that's one more building block for this thing where it's like, okay, at a certain point, I can't knock anything, right? Like there's just too many things about this that are good. for me to have any doubts about it. Eagles are nine and two now. They're in control of the NFC East. If you were tiering the NFC right now, do you think the Eagles are on the same tier in your mind as the lions are? Oh, man. I mean, I think so, actually. I think so. I actually think so. I actually

think so. Why wouldn't they be? That's the thing, because if you think about too, like, I don't know, like I there's a there's kind of a little bit more of a just the way that the lion's run game is structured that I appreciate more but I don't think that necessarily makes it better right like Barkley is just the offensive player of the year and they're they're absolutely rolling on that side of the ball um like a j brown is as explosive as as anybody by himself on what Detroit is doing on offense and then defensively I mean they're both playing like top six seven units at least um and there's almost a part of it where like I feel like you know I do think the lion's defense is also a ending, but there's just a part of it that it feels like there's a little bit more pop to what the

Eagles are doing. And maybe that's just because I trust some of their players up front, specifically like Jalen Carter. Brandon Graham, like turning back the clock in this game was incredible. So yeah, I would, I would probably put them on the same tier at this point. Yeah. I think they're, even if we're not, even if we're trying to do it where the lions are like 1A and the Eagles are maybe one B or slides one B or slides up down, I think that there's a gap between them and everybody else, right? Like I think the hackers are exciting with some elements of what they're doing. But I think these two teams, if you're trying to play out the NFC, they're probably in their own part of the conversation. On the Ram side of this, they're five and six now, a game

behind the Seahawks and the Cardinals in the NFC West. Washington's a seven seed in the NFC at seven and five right now, even if Washington's treading in the wrong direction, I still think those teams in the NFC West, their best path to the playoffs is probably to win that division. And right now, it just seems like the Rams defense is still a work in progress. It always was, even when their front was able to control games. We were joking about this before we started recording. It's cool to be like linebackers don't matter until you have to play against Sequin Barclay in this Eagles running game and this Eagles offensive line.

I think that really starts to become apparent how much they can matter. And the other side of this, it's not, it's a little bit more complicated than this, but in some ways it's not. If you look at the Rams from the time Matthew Stafford got there until right now, and if you want to figure out, did the Rams have a good season, you just look at the past protection. Did they have good pass protection in that season? If the answer is yes, the Rams were probably one of the best offenses in the league. If the answer is no, then they're going to be frustrating, even if Matthew Stafford is playing moderately well and we like some of the skill position talent.

And it feels like that's where we've arrived. Hopefully, when you get Haventstein back, you can get Warren McClendant out of the lineup, you feel a little bit better about that. But I still think that group up front is what's holding this Rams team back consistently. And I don't know if that it's fixed in time for them to make a real run at the division and potentially getting into the playoffs. That's what I was going to say. I do think there's a world where if they can somehow get these guys healthy and get to the playoffs, it's like, all right, because you have Matthew Stafford, there is a level that you can reach where you can fight against these teams and fight fire with fire in the playoffs. It's just I kind of agree with you. I think there's going to be a

situation where maybe they fix it by week 17 and stuff like that. But by then it's just too late and they're a little bit too behind in the playoff hunt. And that's what I'm worried about. I still believe when they're at their full strength, they are a really, really good unit. And when they can keep Stafford upright, they can do it. But I just, I'm increasingly getting worried about their ability to do that. All right. Let's get to what really jumped out to us today because there's plenty for us to get to. Here we go.

Gentlemen, you have my curiosity. Now you have my attention. Each week, we like to pick out a couple performances, games, outings from teams that really grabbed us over the course of the day. Let's start with the Green Bay Packer, running game running all over the San Francisco 49ers today. 42 carries 169 yards, 50% rushing success rate on design runs for the Packers in this game. One 18 yard run for Josh Jacobs, one 19 yard run for Emmanuel Wilson. Other than that, we're talking 6, 7, 8, 6, 5, 7, 8. That's how it felt

the entire day. The Niners missed 24 tackles in this game, according to next gen stats. It was a tough day. This is one of those games where you just feel yourself bleeding out defensively from the moment that things kick off. The first run of the game for the Packers was my favorite one. But this was one where they really controlled everything, controlled how the game played out because of how consistently they were able to run the ball. You could tell from that first play that you mentioned where they go into split back gun and they do this weird little spinner thing where they're fake handing off to one guy giving it to Jacobs. And then they like kept going back to some of that split gun stuff early. early in the game. It was always different guys. Sometimes it was two backs. Sometimes it was Jaden Reed. It's funny because they needed to start pulling out this bullshit when Malik Willis

was the quarterback. And they've just continued the bullshit, even though Jordan Love is back. And I really do love it. And I just, I felt like that they were so willing to lean on that early. And then I think I said coming into the week, Matt Lafleur is a guy who he will just run at you 40 times and he will eventually think that he's going to get the thing that he's going to get. He might take a couple negatives here and there. And San Francisco got one or two because that's just how they play up front. They got a couple of negatives. He's fine with a third and out every now and then. But he knows that at the end of the day, he's going to be able to grind you down. And that's exactly what this game was. I mean, just, I think at this point, I've gotten to the stage with Josh Jacobs where he's obviously

not up there with Sequin Barkley and Derek Kennedy. Those guys are kind of in their own tier in terms of running back right now. But just in terms of I'm going to break your will on every single five and six yard run, that dude is doing it in a different. way right now. And it's huge for this team. I think it's really important to acknowledge because when this team moved on from Aaron Jones, it was a little bit surprising on a couple different levels. One, Aaron Jones is beloved in Green Bay and everywhere. I did a story about Aaron Jones, I don't know, probably six, seven years ago now. And the interaction I had with that person as I sat and talked to him for like 45 minutes and then every interaction I had with him since, he is like, he like clothes when

he walks into a room. Like he has this magnetic element to him that everyone, loves. And you watch what he did against the Niners in the playoffs last year. And it's like, this guy was a weapon for that. How can you walk away from somebody like that? And even though Josh Jacobs is probably a less dynamic player than Aaron Jones, what he's able to give you in a game like this is something that I think they were seeking out. And I think it's something they're glad they can rely on. We can give him the ball 25 times. He can break 18 tackles over the course of a game. And maybe the gashes aren't there, but he can be an engine for the offense that we don't really have to worry about overworking. We don't really have to worry about being banged up.

So I love Aaron Jones. Aaron Jones is a great player. But I think this sort of game and the element that you're talking about, that is why the Packers wanted to go out and find somebody like Josh Jacobs for this offense. And it is perfect, like you mentioned, right, the way they want to structure this thing, because the passing game only wants to get explosives. They don't want to do, they don't want to run stick and run like flat routes and all that nonsense. Your quarterback is Jordan Love. Even if they did, I think that Jordan Love would mutiny. Yeah, he absolutely would. he would riot and he would just run around and do whatever he wants. And so if your passing game is going to be built almost exclusively on trying to get these

downfield shots for as great as Aaron Jones is, and he can still survive in that kind of offense, obviously, it does make sense to go get a guy who's a little bit more of a battering ram and is going to get you five yards almost automatically the way that Josh Jacobs did in this game. So I think for him to be playing the way that he has. And honestly, Emmanuel Wilson has played pretty honorably as like their backup guy. Like they're just, they're running really, really hard right now. offensive line played really well in this game.

And obviously their tight ends are, you know, Tucker Kraft and the rest of those guys are really, really good up front as well. The play we were talking about, the play that they opened the game with, there's a split-black look where Jaden Reed is next to Jordan Love with Josh Jacobs in the backfield. They have Jaden Reed kind of fly out to the right flat and Jordan Love kind of fakes a handoff to him. And then there's a little like a reverse pivot handoff to Josh Jacobs coming back up the middle. And you watch that play. Fred Warner and I think it was Campbell, both fly out to Jaden Reed. and then there's a gash in the middle.

Josh Jacobs taken for 18 yards. And on that play, Tucker Kraft's coming all the way back across the formation to kick out the defensive end. And it's just beautiful. And there's a lot of that on tape for the Packers in this game where they're running everything. They're running trap. They're running counter.

They're running these weird plays that I don't really know how to describe them like the one on the first play of the game. And that's what this running game looks like right now. And you mentioned the tight ends. To me, one of the things that jumped out in this game is just, and we've talked about this before, the buy-in from the receiver. as blockers is crazy from this team. You got Jaden Reed blocking Diomador-Lanora like five yards off the ball on like a

perimeter run by Emmanuel Wilson. And then Dante, Donavian Wix is trying to dig out the safety like 15 yards down the field. You combine that with what craft is giving you. There's just a lot of buy-in overall for what this offense is supposed to be. You have to worry about all 11 guys, no matter what the play call is when you're playing against the Packers. And that might seem silly to point out that is different.

than it is when you're playing most NFL offenses. Perimeter blocking, it's an abomination across the league for the most part. And the fact that these guys are bringing what they're bringing to the table is not an accident. That is how this team feels pretty much every single game. And it takes everything, right? Like, it almost makes Jordan love the perfect quarterback for this because it's like the receivers can, it makes it worth it to go block a guy and dig out the safety and run the nickel five yards off the line of scrimmage.

If I know my quarterback is going to throw it to me 20. yards on the next play. They're like, yeah, it feels pretty good. I'll go do that. I'll go, I'll go do what I need to do. The last guy, the guy that really stuck out to me on the offense today for Green Bay as a pass catcher was Romeo Dobbs. I mean, he had multiple, I really like watching him. I think the work that he does on some of those like vertical stems, like deep outbreakers or just like he had a couple slants today where they were like creating leverage for him, but the route running is just so solid and crisp. I'm more impressed with him this season than I've ever been before. And that's another thing. Like, I think

we were going to forget by the end of the year that he had a moment early in the season where they suspended him for conduct detrimental to the team and then to bring him all the way back from the brink and get this sort of performance from him or be able to have this sort of performance from him in your back pocket in any given game that is a very nice thing for this team to have just because it is one of those things where every game it can be a different receiver and today it happened to be him mostly because Christian Watson let a ball bounce off his face. I don't even want to talk about. I'm going to stick to the good stuff with the factors, because I don't even want to deal with that.

That was such a frustrating moment. But it's great you bring up Dobbs. There was one drive specifically in the middle of the second quarter. He converted three third downs for them by himself. Like when you have a guy who can just get you some of those, we got to have it. I mean, how many times have we talked about this with San Francisco and Juan Jennings, right? And these are not one-to-one players, but just like the guy that you know it's like. It's a similar sort of vibe, though.

I think that they impact the offense in the same way. That's the best way to put it. I think Dobbs is a little bit more juice, but for the most part, he's going to be like your bigger body kind of your bigger bodied option in those situations. And that third and 11 in the second quarter with like 12 minutes left, he pushes up field, like rips off that end breaker. And George Love is not going to be afraid to let those things go. And so it's a nice little marriage. On the other side of the ball, I mean, I think you can contrast the success that the Packers had on the ground with the lack of success that the Niners had on the ground. I know you're playing with a backup quarterback, but we have a 29% rushing success rate for the Niners in this game.

And some of that is what the Packers were doing, load in the box. But even in neutral boxes and even in light boxes today, the Niners could not run the ball consistently. And if you're going to have a backup quarterback, if you're going to turn the ball over a couple times, you're going to need for that to carry you. And it absolutely did not today. It didn't even come close. I can only really remember like one big run. And when I say big, I mean like 10 plus yards for the for the Niners. and it wasn't even CMC.

It was Jordan Mason. Like, popped, like, I think they had a little power play that he was able to bounce out to the left side and make the corner miss. But other than that, like you said, they were just not able to get anything going on the ground. And that's kind of been a consistent issue with this offense for kind of a while now. Like, I know the run game kind of started hot to the season, but they really have not been that effective the past handful of weeks and especially have not been able what they

wanted to be with Christian McCaffrey. And I've talked about this before. They are not doing as much of the gap scheme stuff as they were less. year. Like, they just cannot move people in the same way. And maybe some of that is they just don't feel comfortable with the running back personnel. Obviously, they're trying to work CMC back. Other than Jordan Mason, they had a handful of like new guys into the lineup. So maybe they just wanted to simplify it. But now that it's all simplified, and a lot of it is just this outside zone stuff, well, you're just not good enough at it right now for that to be the case. And so I think

they're kind of stuck in what they are really able to do on offense. And it's kind of frustrating to watch. They're five and six now. I mean, according to the broadcast, if you want to believe those numbers that they were throwing out, a loss gave them a 15% chance to make the playoffs. There's only one game back in the NFC West, so I'm not willing to totally write this off. But there's a real chance that the Niners season, after what they did last year on offense and a handful of plays away from winning the Super Bowl, is over. There's like a legitimate chance that it's over. And now you walk into next year and Trent Williams is going to be 37. You know, you're probably going to move on from Debo if I had to guess, considering the lack of production and his price tag.

It's just a strange place to be, which is not something I expected to be talking about or expected to be considering five days before Thanksgiving is the fact that now we're going to have to have a very real conversation heading into the off season about what this window looks like for the Niners and if it is realistically shut. And that seems crazy to be doing on November 24th. but I don't think it's that out of line to be talking about them that way. I don't at this point because, like, yeah, sure, purdy is going to come back at some point, but I don't think a pretty coming off of an injury with some of the issues the offense still has and how hard their schedule is going to be going to be. I just don't think that that's probably going to be enough to fix any of this. You know, I know we talked coming into the season, like, if the Niners take a step back on offense,

they'll still be fine and they'll still be like a really, really good unit. Well, at this point, with some of the injuries and CMC not being what they want, And now Purdy's out of line up and not playing. Iyuk is out for the season. They've taken like two, two and a half, three steps back. Like they are just not the unit that is even close to be what was supposed to carry this offense in this team. So I just, yeah, I didn't expect to be having this conversation before Thanksgiving,

but it's a pretty fair conversation to be having at this point. We talked about this a little bit about the Niners and just how it all feels different this year. But I was looking up some of the numbers today because I was curious. I was looking them up because the Titans special teams are complete disaster. Oh my gosh. I was looking up, EPA lost and gained on special teams this year. The Niners are at negative 33.

That is 12 more than any other team in the NFL. And one of the reasons that matters more is that the margins are smaller. When your offense isn't just this absolute death star machine, you feel that stuff more than you would otherwise. And I think that's kind of the story of this Niners team. The defense is pretty good. The offense is pretty good. but it's exposing a lot of flaws and issues that wouldn't have mattered with the previous iteration of this Niners offense, but that unit is gone and it is not coming back this year.

And I think that's why overall, at every single level, it feels like this Niners team is more flawed and just has way less venom than it's had over the last couple seasons. That's the thing. If both units used to be, you could rely on them to at least be a level unit, sometimes A plus, like with the offense with the way that they were humming. Some of the special team stuff, some of the weird game management didn't matter. Okay, well, now if both are a B-minus at best and your special teams is by far the worst in the league, how are you supposed to be consistently winning games, especially in a division that is just as muddy as this one?

Let's get to the next one here, sticking in the NFC West. The Seattle Seahawks shut down the Cardinals in a 16-6 win today, a Cardinals offense that had been rolling coming into this game. The Seahawks defense and Mike McDonald, you guys firmly have my attention. I'm so glad we're here with Mike McDonald. man. Like I was so, I was just getting sad that we had that little stretch in the middle of the season where it was just maybe there, there was like a small thing creeping in the back of my head. Like, are we doing the Brandon Staley thing again? I think pretty firmly that is not the case now. I think Mike McDonald was absolutely certified of what he does. All he needed was, it's just like Baltimore. All he needed was a pretty good linebacker to come in and fix everything.

Like Ernest Jones men. Well, they swapped out both linebackers, right? One was already on the roster in Tyrese Knight, but they had to go trade for Ernest Jones. And it is a similar sort of trajectory to what we saw from the Ravens in the second half of the 2022 season. It's kind of like that. It really has been. And I do think like the interesting difference to me is obviously with Rokwon Smith, it was all coverage base. Like just what Rokwon Smith was able to take away in the middle of the field, take away two, three routes at a time, really shut down like screens and stuff like that. That's what allowed Baltimore to do what they're doing. With Ernest Jones, he is a good coverage player. I don't want to take that away from him. But to me, and especially in this game, it's that they can fire him between the guards on run downs and stuff,

and he's just going to take a man out. And it's just going to let everybody else do their job so much easier. That's where you really start to see the cascade effect of this defense. Him taking on blocks essentially at the line of scrimmage with his frame and the physicality that he's playing with. It made such a huge difference in this game, especially on the ground. James Conner had seven carries for eight yards in this game. And you watch the linebacker play, and that's a big part of it.

But the other side of it is that this front in general, It's happened for a few games now. The first game where I really notice it, when you watch them play the Rams, they're winning a lot of those one-on-ones in the run game. Their front is more talented and has a bigger impact than the offensive lines they're playing against. Now we're going back two or three weeks. And that was the case again today. I mean, they won this game up front with pretty much every single guy having a moment,

Leonard Williams having the most of them. He had nine pressures on 21 past rush naps, three quick pressures in the game and finished with two and a half sacks. He was pretty much unblockable in this game. And that's not necessarily surprising. The Cardinals' interior of their offensive line is the group that will need to come the furthest between where they are now to where they'll need to be if this team is actually going to be a contender.

But it was very, very clear today when playing against the Seahawks, the defensive line, and especially Leonard Williams. This is when they traded for him and signed him and paid him all that extra money, this is the player that I think they thought they were going to get a little bit more consistently. And he's actually been. pretty good for a lot of this season, but this was the game where it's like, okay, that's what you thought that you were paying for. And he was just, he was incredible, man. And like, there were honestly so many different moments, obviously, like you said, run and pass. And I think

why all of this matters so much between what he was able to do in the run game, what really a lot of the rest of the front was able to do in the run game and like what Ernest Jones is bringing them, it allows McDonald to get into the second and long and third and long bullshit that he wants to throw at defenses where he does a really, really good job of putting a roof on stuff and getting some of these unblocked pressures. Whereas like early in the season, or not early, they were okay the first month. But, you know, in that week four to eight, nine stretch, whatever it was when they were really struggling, it's because teams could just run all over them.

And they weren't able to get to Mike McDonald's fastball. Well, now they can get to Mike McDonald's fastball and a lot of their players are just playing better. Tereke Wollin is playing good on the outside. Devin Witherspoon, unbelievable in this game. Josh Job, they made the switch to him at corner. He's not the best guy, but I think he's actually really good at just getting hands on and really like making a lot of these, you know, forcing tight window throws. And at the end of the day,

like, it's just hard to make tight window throws consistently. So I just think that they've made so many good changes on the back end, um, in that sense. And then just the getting guys healthy and then bringing in Ernest Jones on the front end. It's all just coming together in a way that I wasn't sure we were going to get in year one truthfully with how bad it looked there for a second. But I'm very, very happy we're here. That did a good job of like manipulating protections too with some of those like mugged up looks. The first boy in Maffa sack. It's an unblocked pressure off the left side. And then there was another one where Derek Hall almost gets a sack when the Cardinals were really backed up. They left the running back on him. I think that Seahawks just

had a good sense of when we have two guys walked up to the line of scrimmage, we know how to manipulate some of these protections. And they got a couple of free runners as a result of it, but they weren't relying on that. They didn't need smoke and mirrors because they were winning their one-on-ones consistently for a huge chunk of this game. You mentioned Witherspoon. He had the play of the game, I think for Seattle's defense. I mean, the pick six, he creates Kobe Bryant's pick six. It's a play where he steps inside to defend the run, realizes that Kyler's coming back outside, spins back around, chases Kyler into the flat, forces a bad pass that Kobe Bryant takes all the way back. And that, we talked two or three other plays. He had a TFL at one point in this game where

he was like just playing on the perimeter the way that he does. He is an absolute banshee in that defense. And I think him having a couple highlight moments in what is the best performance of the year so far for Seattle's defense feels very fitting. That fourth and one where he does the spin around to go catch Kyler, you can tell Kyler has not been in that scenario very many times where he realizes, oh, I'm not faster than that guy. Like for most of his life, when he gets that kind of run on a boot, he's like, oh, I'm faster in this guy and I can do what I want. And for Witherspoon to wheel around and go get in front of him. And for Kyler to kind of panic and then end up overthrowing that ball by like five yards, you got to be, I think I said it on the preview show. Witherspoon is truly one of the

most explosive movers in the NFL. Pretty easy to see it on a play like that. Kyler this year had been the best quarterback in the league and Arizona had been the best offense in the league when Kyler was pressured. He has a 42% success rate coming into this season when pressured according to next gen stats. That's like Justin Herbert's success rate just period. for the season. Like, that's how good Kyle has been when pressured. In this game, four of 13 for 81 yards, five sacks, a 15.8% success rate. So this is the one guy that has managed to wriggle out of it when you've made life hard on him this season. Not the case today. The Seahawks put the clamps on him in every single way. They really did, man. It was a truly impressive performance.

And you kind of mentioned it earlier, and it's the last thing I'll say, but you said they didn't have to rely on some of the smoking mirrors with the past rush. They didn't, but they had that. and the guys are winning one-on-ones. When you get two of those, when you get both pretty damn good defense, pretty hard to stuff. That's what's really scary is that they can do some of that manipulation with the way that they're just structuring things in the front seven. And we talked about that coming into the day. I mean, I thought what they did over the last couple weeks, they had 10 on block pressures over their last two games. They're consistently giving people a hard time with some of the simulated, some of that mug duff stuff.

They did it a little bit today, but that wasn't the story of the game. It was just them being better than the Cardinals up front. And I think part of that is the Cardinals personnel. But I also think that that's going to be the case for a lot of teams that the Seahawks team plays. I mean, look at it. You have Leonard Williams, boy Amafi can win those matchups. Draymond Jones, when he's lined up inside, he can get stuff done. Derek Hall is a decent player.

And Juchendon Noosu isn't even playing for this team. And Byron Murphy is the guy they drafted in the first round. This is the group that if I was going to be excited about Seattle's defense coming into the year, this is the position group that was going to make that happen. I still think that's the case. And now you have Ernest Jones who kind of ties the whole room together. And I think that's why this defense feels a little bit different. And I really do think that with this group playing this way, they legitimately can win this division.

Because I think the offense is going to have enough pop, even if they're frustrating because the quarterback can make five, six plays a game that make you say, holy shit, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. And you combine that with where the defense is. And I do think they're technically in first right now. it would not surprise me if they were able to hold everybody off and actually do this in the NFC West. All right, before we get to some of the low lights from today, let's take a quick break. What the fuck? The Titans Texans game is one of the most bizarre football games I have seen in recent memory. This game had a little bit of everything.

This is the stat I'm going to throw out to try to distill what was crazy about this game and how weird this game felt. Will Levis in this game had 123-pastor rating. Okay. He had a negative 0.09 EPA per dropback. That happens when you take eight sacks, but essentially are efficient whenever you drop back to throw the ball. The amount of times this has happened where a quarterback has had a 120 passer rating and a negative EPA for dropback. It has happened three times since 2000. Three times.

That is how weird of a game we're talking about with Lil Levis here. It happened with Jeff Garcia once in 2008, and it happened with Russell Wilson in 2014. All those teams won their games, but it is very, very rare to see something like this, where a quarterback can finish 18 of 24 for 278, and it is a negative thing for his team every time he dropped back to throw the ball. Once a decade, a quarterback gets away with winning the stupidest game you've ever seen. And congratulations to what Levis. You have taken the crowd this decade. No, this game, the funny thing, too, is Will Levis took like every kind of sack that you can take, right?

Which I think is the most, it's the funniest part of this. Like, there are somewhere, sometimes DeNeil Hunter just beats your rookie left tackle. Okay, that's not his fault. There are at least two sacks where he's standing in the pocket and he doesn't even try to hitch up and like buy a little bit of time in the pocket. He just runs straight into like Will Anderson Jr. He did that at least two times in this game. There are other times where he's deep in the pocket and he's just holding the ball for seven seconds not moving like a stationary flat cannon and then he finally gets hit. And then there was one where the motion man, the snap hits him in the ass and Will Elvis has to jump on it.

And it's like literally every conceivable sack Will Levis took, which kind of feels like a distillation of his career to this point. The joke I made when I was talking with Greg Rosenthal about it today, watching him be like 11 for 12 at halftime, but it's been. sacked five times. It's like they forgot to add water to the Will Levis concentrate. Like that's what this game felt like. And we say all this and joke about all the sex took, the Titans won the game. They won the game against this Texans team. And I think the frustration is mostly, the Will Levis stuff is funny. They have real frustration. The real like what the f*** aspect of this is what is going on with this Texans team. They scored 27 points. in part because they had a pick six, they had a huge kickoff return to start the game,

and they had a muffed punt that they recovered. Their offense, again, in this game, was borderline unwatchable. They had a 31% success rate. On design runs in this game, the Texans had a 14% success rate on running back runs. They allowed seven unblocked pressures by the Titans defense. That is the fifth most in a game this season, according to Next Gen stats. You combine that with one interception from CJ Stroud that's a miscommunication and one that is no idea what the hell he's doing or thinking. And that's how you get a game where you can sack a quarterback as many times as they did and still somehow lose.

There was a series late in this game. You mentioned horrible success rate on the ground, which at a certain point, they've mostly stopped trying, which Jeffrey Simmons, Devonja Sweat. I get it. Probably a good call. They were incredible in this game. So probably a good way to do it. But there was a sequence in this game just outside of the two minute in the fourth quarter. It's second and nine.

They have the ball on Tennessee's 10. They try to run the ball. Jeffrey Simmons and Tavander Sweat just absolutely nuke it. No gain. They get nothing on it. The very next play, Tennessee tries, or Houston tries to get into empty. They try to throw the ball to convert, unblock pressure through the left B gap. Stroud has to wheel out to his left.

He throws the ball away. And then they end up kicking a field goal. It's a pretty short field goal. it's a 28-yarder in a dome Kaimi Fairbairn misses it and that basically ends the game for the Texans at that point. So like it's just

that little sequence there to me was like that's how and why this team feels the way that it does. They got stuffed on a third and one. It happens to this team consistently where the inability to run the ball with any sort of efficiency and just how many issues they have in past protection

week after week continues to creep up. And I do think the Titans deserve some credit for the big plays they hit in this game because the two that stick out to me, the Westbrook-Kine touchdown is a beautiful design. You know, that's something where they think they're getting quarters. He kind of takes one step in and then takes it vertical. It reminded me of the touchdown that D.K. McCaff scored against, I think it was the Dolphins earlier this year where the dolphins are in quarters and he takes it. That was a ad-lib in real time from D.K. Mecalf.

This is a call play where they pump it and then he takes it vertical. He's open by 20 yards. And then the huge chunk they had to Calvin Ridley in this game was also a beautiful play design where they tie down the safety to that side and he runs a huge crosser. We'll let us average 19.7 yards per attempt against quarters today. You know you're getting a lot of it when you play against the Texans. And the Titans had their quarter quarters beaters completely ready to rip. And that's where they got their huge chunk plays in this game.

And then obviously the sugar conk with touchdown is a whole different ballgame. Right, yeah, that one was like completely different. The first one where Westbrook-Kekina like slices through both of the quarters guys, Higgins against the Chargers basically hit that same exact touchdown. He just kind of runs through the post. Best way to beat a bracket is through it. If you bracket it on outside inside, yeah, just run by him. And so it was really nice that they could hit that. And part of that too is like I do think it's worth mentioning.

Levis takes a lot of sacks. It's a little bit the part of just doing business with the way they want to run the offense. this is what they want to do. They want to throw all these shots down the field. And so they hit enough of them. That's kind of the game, right? You just hope that you hit enough of them to keep yourself in these games. And they certainly did.

And then the Chigokonkwo one, I'm pretty sure Henry Toa, Toh, who's like the weak side defender to that side, like the zone defender, he just gets caught running at the run game, man. Like they do a little play fake and he's like, I'm going to get it. I'm going to get it. And Shiga Concho, Shiga Conco kind of just releases through that pretty much just gets a free run to the end zone. So just a handful of those big plays. on top of just all the wacky shit that went wrong for Houston in this game,

on top of some of their inefficiency running the ball. That's how you end up losing to a Titans team that is not very good, but I guess can get a few explosive plays and that's all you need. Where are you at on CJ Stroud right now? I'm still not really worried about CJ Stroud. I do think there is an element to it where he, I think last year, got away with a lot because things were just working really well. The offense, the skill players for the most part, were a little bit healthier.

And I think the run game was helping a little bit more where it didn't feel quite as disjointed. And I think he was just like, oh, I can just do whatever I want and I can make all these throws. I think right now you can feel he is like taking on a little bit the pressure of the offense where it's like, oh, all these things are going wrong. I feel a burden to make a play. And this is actually something I wanted to talk about with some other quarterbacks and some other offensive environments. You know an offensive environment is good when the quarterback isn't worried that a bad play is going to happen. He's just like, you know what, it's fine. We'll get to the next one.

And that doesn't even mean the offense is good, right? Like, look at Drake May in New England. That's not a good offense. But you can see it in the way that he plays. He's like, I don't need to be worried if a bad play is going to happen. I can get to second and 10. We'll go figure something out. CJ Stroud is just not playing that way right now.

He feels like he's got to make the next play constantly. And I think that's a little bit of the issue. So long term, I don't think it's going to kill him. I think he'll be okay. I think he'll come out of it. But like for right now, for the rest of the season, I am a little bit worried that that's probably going to stick around. Yeah, it feels like he's pressing constantly right now.

And that touch, that interception by Kenneth Murray is a really good example, right? He's like, slide in the pocket, slide in the pocket, hanging on it, hanging on it. I got to make a play. I got to make a play. You throw it late. It gets picked off. He just looks really uncomfortable right now. And that makes a lot of sense considering what this offense looks like down to down.

Seven unblocked pressures again today. They, I think on the season, lead the league in yards to go on third down. It's like eight and a half yards. That's normal for them. If you have that in a game, you've put yourself in a bad situation. That's what they've been dealing with the entire year. And he has made his share of mistakes this season compared to last. But I do think the constant discomfort and the constant burden on him within this offense for the reasons that you said, because they can't run the ball, because the past protection is consistently breaking down, I haven't been, I haven't seen him be able to settle into a game this entire year.

and I think that you've really started to see him wearing that in a way he just never did as a rookie. I think that's exactly. I think it's just the consistency because he still had a number of great throws in this game. He really did. Like there were a couple that he was able to make outside of the pocket, middle of the field, down the field. The one he hits to Dell on like a huge deep over to the left side is unbelievable. It's just that whereas last year as a rookie, he made maybe one or two mistakes a game where it was like, all right, you can't do that, man.

Now it's like five plays a game. And it's kind of like what we're saying. just pressing a little bit too much and he's feeling the burden of the offense. And I get it. Young player, things aren't going right. I get why you feel that way. But there's got to be, I don't know if it's the coaches, I don't know if it's him, but something needs to settle down a little bit. Are we just at a place where this team is going to win the AFC South and get bounced in the first round of the playoffs? Like, is it any more complicated than that? I don't think so. I think that's exactly where I'm at with this team. It's hard to see because like I said, the offensive line,

which is kind of what cascades the rest of all these other problems that we've talked about with this team can't run the ball. You end up in third and long. CJ Stroud is pressing. It's all the offensive line. I don't think that's going to get fixed. And if that's not going to get fixed, I think CJ Stroud is going to continue to have a couple of these plays that keep you out of games. And like the defense is good. It's not an elite take over every single game type of team, especially I think against the best quarterbacks. I know they did it against Josh Allen, but that was week four. I don't really care. We're in November. That doesn't really matter.

I just do think I'm at a point with them where probably going to get to the wild card. It obviously depends on matchup, but I don't really feel great about their prospects of being a serious team when it comes down to it. Speaking of that, let's get to our next one here. The Washington football team loses to the Cowboys in the game where they were favored by 10 and a half points. A lot of the discourse around Washington this week was, yeah, you know, it's been a rough couple weeks, but they played against the Eagles. They played against the Steelers, two of the best defenses in the league. Dallas feels like the right opportunity for a bounce back game. If they struggle against the Cowboys on offense, then maybe we can have a conversation.

Well, seems like it's time for a conversation. Washington football team. What the fuck? This is where I really want to start with this game. It's third downs for this offense. It was atrocious. So first of all, I want to start with what Dallas was doing structurally. Very simple.

They went back to the Dan Quinn formula. We're going to play a ton of man, and you're just not going to know how many we're going to send. Sometimes it's four. Sometimes it's five. Sometimes it's six. It doesn't matter. We are playing man behind it.

And I think Jaden, Daniels and the receivers, to be fair, like the receivers were really not getting open in a lot of these scenarios. But Jane Daniels... Because the receivers aren't good. Because outside of one guy, they're not very good. And so that was... And the one guy, they just stick out there on the left side as, like, as their number one receiver and they choose not to throw him the ball. Right. That is also the problem is that it's a little bit static. This is kind of what we were coming back to with Cliff. It's like, you know, we need to add a little bit. He had two snaps in the slot. One was an 80-yard touchdown that nearly tied the game. Oh my God. See, if they

just do that a little bit more. Like, it doesn't have to. to be anything crazy. Even the, um, remember against the bangles, they put them on the right side. Just, just move them around a little bit more. I mean, that could fix some things. So I think all of that was a problem. On third down pass attempts, Jaden Daniels was 0 for seven. He also took a sack. Six of those were against man. Yeah. He was oh of six against man on third down in this game. Yeah, it was, it was bad. And you could just tell he just wasn't very comfortable seeing a lot of stuff. And I know he had a couple of conversions where he scrambled, but it used to be that he would have the couple of those conversions where he scrambled and then still go, you know, 30% or whatever,

40% on his past attempts when he was throwing on third down. Just not the case in this game. They did a really, really good job of crowling him. He didn't feel comfortable with making those outside of the pocket. I also thought, too, I think this was a game where you really saw his kind of unwillingness to hitch up in the pocket be a problem. Almost all of these times, especially on third downs where they were playing man and they would get a little bit of pressure.

It was instantly back up two steps out of the pocket. And it's like, it's cool that you can do that. But one, you're not doing it as well as you have previously. And then two, you just got to have more pitches. And I think that really came up in this game. We talked about this early in the season. And this is something that was a discussion about him as a prospect, just that when he was pressured for the most part he ran.

And that was never an issue at LSU because he's such a good athlete. And it really wasn't an issue for the first like five or six weeks of the season. He would get pressured. He would escape out of the pocket, usually out of the back of the pocket. pocket, and on third and seven, he would run for eight yards, and it was devastating to play against this offense because of that. It's a really hard thing to maintain for an entire NFL season. At some point, you're going to need to navigate that space and make throws from crowded

pockets. And he has done that a little bit. I remember a couple, that throw against Arizona sticks out to me. Like, there's enough of them for us to know he can do it, but it is not something that he is doing consistently. And the man coverage part of this, I think, is very real. because when teams play zone against them, especially for the first half of the year, they were building all these high lows into the offense.

They were doing such a good job without dominant skill position players of creating a really efficient passing offense down to down. Against man, it's been a little bit of a different story. And especially when you take out the scrambles. So perjure media, when teams play in man against them, their 11th in success rate when you include passes, sacks, and scrambles. If you remove the scrambles, they drop to nine. 19th.

I mean, that checks out. When you challenge them and he's not scrambling, this is not an offense where a lot of guys are going to be winning one-on-one matchups. Zach Gertz has done a great job this year of finding voids and zones. Noah Brown is a fine role player. But when you're trying to throw deep comebacks to Noah Brown against man coverage, it's probably not going to go very well for you. And I think that's part of the issue with this team.

And the other side of it, the running game was better in the back half of this game. But for the first half, the running game was struggling. going again. And I think Dallas was doing a great job getting penetration. And I think we're starting to see that the offensive line personnel for this team is not necessarily great when you're playing against teams with good fronts. And even if Dallas isn't good all the way across the board, Michael Parsons still exists. And he was very much a presence in this game throughout. Yeah, the run game was really. And to Daniels's credit to give him a little bit of light after we, you know, just kind of bashed for a little bit, he was really the only part of the run game that worked. Like there were

a handful of their plays that they got to work. They score, I think their first touchdown of the game was like an arc read to the left side where they get a tight end out in front of him and he's able to go score there. So like when they used him specifically, it worked. When they didn't, it didn't really get a whole lot. Like they just weren't getting the movement. I think that they were getting in some earlier weeks. And that kind of sets up some of these third and longs where it is a little bit harder

to pass. And teams know you're going to do it. Whereas previously there might have been some situations where what might have been a third in four in week four because the offense was rolling. so well is now a third and eight. And okay, like that starts to add up when those two, three plays happen a little bit more often. And the quarterback is maybe not fully healthy. And he gets a little bit more uncomfortable because they're just playing a ton of man coverage. Like it just felt like all of the things that could go wrong or the ways that you would want

to attack this Washington defense kind of all happened in one game. And I'll be honest, I didn't expect Dallas to be able to do it. I didn't know if they had the personnel, especially in the secondary. But it worked out. And I think this was, it was a, it was a. pretty tough game for them to lose. I was impressed with just the physicality and the tackling from the Cowboys DBs in this game. Duran Bland had a couple moments. Donovan Wilson was flying around. A lot more fight in the Cowboys defense than I might have expected considering the general trajectory of their season. But the whole thing with this Cowboys or this Washington team was, can they turn it around against lesser teams? And the Cowboys are still a lesser team and the

answer was no. So if you look at this year for Washington, they beat the Giants, twice, they beat the Bengals while allowing 33 points needing that go-ball touchdown to win the game, which that was another part of this, is that the go-ball deep-shot luck is starting to run out a little bit. Like, those coin flips are not going their way anymore the way they were earlier in the season. They didn't hit any of the ones they shot today, and they had a couple of them. So Giants twice, Bengals, Cardinals, when the Cardinals were reeling, Browns, Panthers, and they beat the Bales on a Hail Mary. They've lost to the Bucs, the Ravens, the Steelers, the Eagles, and the Cowboys. Four of those teams are playoff teams, and then they lose

to Dallas today. So this is getting to a place where it's a little bit concerning about what it might mean for Washington for the back half of the season. Yeah, I think that's kind of where it is. It's like they had a favorable schedule and they, you want, because it was new regime and because there was a lot of new, it was like, okay, well, it's, it's fine that you're only beating up on bad teams right now. Like this is, you probably weren't even supposed to win a lot of these games, but now that we're kind of treating them like a serious team, okay, we got to start acting like one. And I think we're starting to see some of the cracks in that a little bit. when pressured in this game jaden daniels was one of nine for four yards and two interceptions

oh wow to be fair i do think that one of the interceptions had to be the hail mary right like at the very end yes so but the other one was the slide route where you know the ball gets tipped it's not the interceptions aren't the biggest problem with this game not the biggest problem with this performance it's just again one of nine for four yards when pressured when you're not scrambling a lot it's just not going to go well for you and dallas's front they haven't been to able to do this for most games against most opponents, but they won this matchup today, and I think that it gave Washington a ton of problems. So something worth keeping an eye on, you know, what this offense looks like down the back half and what that eventually means for this team, because they do

not seem like the offense they were over the first month of the year where they were arguably the most efficient offense in the entire week. All right, we're going to chat about a few other things that stood out to us today, but before that, let's take one more quick break. You see that? Did you see that? You see that Bryce Young almost beat Steve Spagnolo and the Chiefs today? I could not believe any part of that. So I think somebody tweeted this and I'm sorry who it is or I'm sorry that I forget. The only two other quarterbacks, I think, that have scored at least 25 on the Chiefs this year. I think it's like Josh Allen and Joe Burrow.

That is ridiculous. That is like, who would have thought that the third person in this trio would be Bryce Young after his prospects as a starting quarterback seemed dead. a month and a half ago. He was benched for Andy Dalton, and Andy Dalton was playing considerably better than Bryce Young was. And Bryce Young comes out and beats Steve Spagnolo. And it wasn't like BS either.

He made at least five or six throws in this game. Some of them against pressure, just getting the snot knocked out of him. Like, it was big boy ball. It's the best game he's ever played as a pro. It was awesome. The best game he ever played as a pro against this defense. And we can talk about what that actually means

in context here in a second. But the number that jumped out to me, against the Blitz today, Bryce Young finished 11 to 4, for 135 yards in a touchdown. I mean, he's making like nails, throws in crumbling pockets. And I think the biggest thing for me, I don't know what Bryce Young is or what Bryce Young is going to be.

My biggest question about the back half of the Panther season was, all right, the offensive line feels like a real unit. They spent a lot of money on it in the offseason, and I think that it's come together in a very promising way. You remove Deonti Johnson. You have your young receivers. You're going to give them some run, see what you have in the J-Lan, Gers and the Xavier Legatz, etc.

Your running game is pretty good with Chuba Hubbard. The infrastructure of this offense, there's reason to be excited about it moving forward. This is something that you could potentially build on in 2025 and beyond as you kind of figure out what this era of the Panthers looks like. Where does Bryce Young fit into that? How does he play in the back half of the year? Does he play well enough where you think, all right, we're going to roll with Bryce next year. We got a quarterback on a rookie contract.

Let's see if we can use some of whatever excess that leaves us. and let's see what we can build, or do you feel like this is the guy we benched early in the year? We need to seek out potential alternatives at quarterback to figure out what we look like at 2025 and if we need to potentially turn the page after that season. I think right now, based on the way that he's played recently and the way that he played today, you feel pretty good about seeing what you can do with one more season, at least a Bryce Young, a quarterback, with all of the help and all of the infrastructure that you've put around him. Yeah, if he can actually continue to play like this and play with this kind of

of confidence, I don't see why not? Because the biggest thing with me was, I thought as a rookie and even earlier parts of this year, when they were able to give him some clean pockets and scheme up some stuff open, it's like, okay, he could make the throws. Like, he wasn't messing that stuff up and making mental errors there necessarily. It was just when he had to do the hard stuff, that it just, he couldn't hang in pockets. He wasn't willing to hold onto the ball. When he moved outside of the pocket, it just didn't seem like he was very comfortable getting to some throws. There were certain throws that he made in this game, whether it was under pressure, pressure. Like, he makes a fourth and three conversion very, very late in the game against all-out

pressure. He throws an out route to Adam Dieland. That was amazing. Before that, at the end of the third, he throws an awesome sail route while he's getting smacked. Like, Kansas City brings seven. He's getting smacked by two guys. Yeah, that was truly, truly special throw. And he made one or two other throws that almost looked, you know, pretty similar to that. He pins like a slant route on David Moore in the end zone. Like, these are just throws that he didn't make. Oh, and then, actually, there's one too where he's like drifting a little bit to his left just outside of the pocket and he's a bomb to Jit, to Jatavian Sanders, like inside the two minute before the half. Dude, he didn't do that before ever. And so it's like he did at Alabama, but that was the thing.

He said, as a pro, he just never, you never got any of those throws. Okay, if he can start playing with a little bit of like, yeah, I am a guy who deserved to go first overall, then yeah, maybe this actually is a player that's worth investing in giving another chance, especially too. You know, I know neither of us have dug too big into the draft this year or anything, but it doesn't seem like it's supposed to be a great quarterback class. So if there's not like some guy you need to go break the bank for, if he can keep playing like this the next six games, then maybe you do just run it back. It's been a winding road to this point.

But our biggest question about the Panthers coming into the year is, how should we feel about the Panthers, right, in 2024 and beyond? And the positive kind of optimistic argument you could make is they invested in the offensive line. There's a chance that's a solid group, a much improved group from what they were a year ago when they were arguably the worst offensive line in the league. And you have Dave Canales coming in. He has worked wonders with the last couple of quarterbacks he's worked with. And he sort of build the confidence in this guy with improved infrastructure for us to think that the arrow was pointed in the right direction with who the Carolina Panthers are. three weeks into the year, four weeks into the year, I thought I had the answer.

And now I feel like it's probably flipped. And it's a very, very different conversation than it was on October 1st. And I think if you're a Panthers fan, that's a pretty good place to have landed. Yeah, absolutely. Like, again, I don't know what the ceiling is. I don't know what's going to look like next year. But that doesn't matter. I think, yeah, we don't have to have that conversation.

And listen, I've seen quarterbacks get a third year who never had a game like that. Like Daniel Jones, he had a couple of nice games. He didn't have a game like that, to me at least. And so for Bryce Young to have a game like that against Spags, okay, man, if we can build on that, then maybe we have something here. All right. What is the Spags defense right now? Are we a little bit concerned about the state of the Kansas City Chiefs defense? Like a smidgen.

I still think they're a nice unit, but I think we're seeing now, you know, you actually mentioned this maybe two weeks ago. Their pass rush is really not that good. That's my issue. Yeah, teams can kind of just, okay, we're going to throw bodies at Chris Jones, and then what? Like, George Koloftus is a really good, like, hustle, henchman bullshit type of player, but he shouldn't be your best guy off the edge. Mike Dana is kind of a nice player in that same room, but he's just not a guy who's going to purely beat you off the edge all the time.

And so I think some of that stuff is an issue. And so if you can't rush the passer, and now your secondary is a little bit banged up, like Najee Johnson has to play on. the outside for them. And I think that's been a big issue. Like, you saw Bryce Young be, even Bryce Young was like, I smell blood in the water. I'm going to throw it that guy. When that is happening, you know you have a problem in the secondary. And so I think that combination of like you have a mark in the secondary now and your pass rush isn't really getting home. And to me, I think the run defense has been a little bit worse over this past three, four week stretch. Okay, some of this stuff is starting to

build up where I don't know. It almost to me feels like the everyone on the chief's defense, their legs are just feeling a little bit heavy this late in this season. You played a long year last year. It's been a long and aggressive year this year. It just feels a little bit like they're, you know, it's wearing on them a little bit. The past rush, not being able to get home with four and not being able to affect the game with four to me is the biggest issue.

And when that's happening, you feel the cornerback issues a little bit more than you would otherwise. We'll see what a menahoe potentially does coming back. I don't know if he's going to save this. But when you watch them and they're bringing four, they're just not affecting the game. They need to bring extra bodies, and then that's putting more pressure on your back end. And so this, I wasn't sure what it would look like without Sneed and the fact that they've had

other injuries to like Watson. They've had to dig a little bit further into the depth than they probably wanted to. Speaking of with Jerry Sneed, something I wanted to mention before and I did not. Jarvis Brownlee is a player. Yeah. Jarvis Brownlee is a player for the Titans. I meant to mention that we were talking about that game. He gets beat by Nico Collins deep at one point in this game.

And then on the next play, I can't remember exactly what he did, but he was just like very pissed off. I think he had a TFL on literally the next play. He is somebody that I'm very excited to see where he goes from here. Quarterback play can be volatile. Tyrick Stevenson was great last year. He's not played well this year. But Jarvis Brownlee was, I believe a fifth round pick for the Titans this year. He is somebody worth watching.

I really enjoy watching him play. So he has stepped in for Legerrier Sneed, who has missed the majority of the season is now on IR. So both the team that traded Sneed and the team that traded for him have had to find other answers this year. And I think the Titans have done a little bit of a better job. That's a great shout out. The quick thing I'll say too is, you know, whenever I think you think a defense is really well coached, there's usually one guy that makes you think that. They're like, oh, because this guy is playing well, they must be a well-cooked unit. Brownlee kind of feels like that guy for that team. So I totally get what you're saying. I think that's absolutely right. And even like Darrell Baker has played well for them when they, I mean, because Chobie Uzi has been hurt too. So they've been playing with backup corners for a good chunk of this year. And the defense has still been pretty good. I think that's a testament to what they've done structurally with Dernard Wilson. one here. Did you see that Jono Smith is the new number one receiver for the dolphins? This was such a, like, they have just... He's 11 targets in this game.

That almost feels like that's not enough for what it felt like during the game. It felt like every time, because I had this like kind of on my second screen, it felt like every time I looked over there, number nine had the ball. I'm like, do they not know that they're just throwing at this guy every single play? And it's funny too, because he's such a different player than Mike Keseki, right? Like, Mike Koseki was like, wants to run all these overs, sales seams. he's basically a wide receiver. Johnny Smith, this is a complete opposite.

He's, like, been the reason they've changed the offense. I agree. It's like the way I thought about it kind of watching this game was, okay, obviously, Tyree Kill, Jalen Waddle, especially Waddle's actually been playing better like the last month or so. I think that's really important. He had a huge game today. Dude, he was awesome.

And he, I thought for the first six weeks, I was like, this doesn't feel like Jalen Waddle. But now I think he's playing really well. So those two, and then Devon A-Chane, those three are like the, this is what the offense is built on. John Hussmith is kind of the piece that brings the room together. You know, he kind of makes it all work because he can do some of that underneath. We just need to catch some of this stuff underneath, throws in the flat, a tight end screen every now and then catch a stick route, like to hit him on one of those today. Like just some of the BS work underneath, they didn't really, they don't have another receiver who's really good at that. And obviously you can only do so much of that with

a running back in Dem and A Chain. And then you don't want to do that with Jalen, Waddle, and Tiger Kill because you want to run 25 hours down the field at them. So the fact that he has brought tap to the offense actually is pretty important. And it's part of why I'm like, all right, I can start to buy what Miami is doing here on offense. I really like this. I really like the complexion of the offense with him in it because he almost serves as like the checkdown option. Like they, they've never had checkdowns in their passing game like two running backs, but that's almost what he's become. It's like, oh, we're going to have like, you're going to release late on like a little shallow cross and we're going to hit you when nothing downfield is open.

It's just made the offense in the passing game less boom or bust that it's been in years past. and I think that's really encouraging. And it almost feels like they had to backdoor into this thing because they were a 21 personnel team for the most part over the last couple of years. And they've shifted to being this 12 personnel team without Alec Ingle Hurt. And I think John Hsu Smith has allowed them to pretty seamlessly do that. So the offense in the passing game, just having a lot more down-to-down reliability than it seems to have had in the past is very encouraging. I think they still do a great job of displacing people and using play action. the thing against good teams that will continue to worry me a little bit with the Miami

offense is they just can't run the ball, right? Like they cannot assert themselves on the ground. It's fine. But I think a lot of the same issues that plagued them over the last couple of years in that area specifically, that to me is where the gap still exists. But I think what they're doing throwing the ball, it's different than what it's ever looked like before. And I think in ways it's a little bit more consistent than it's ever been before.

Well, and that's the thing. if the passing offense has a little bit more of a floor now and has some more options, I would obviously, I would like you to have a run game so that you can actually be a little bit more balanced. But the fact that you have at least some way to get four yards here, seven yards here, whereas previously those were maybe throwaways, or those were Tua taking sacks that he didn't need to be taking,

or just stuff like that, where you felt more compelled to throw more screens, because that was your only way to get that kind of cheap yardage. Now they just don't necessarily need to do all that stuff. And I do think that that is pretty important for the offense when, again, Engled's not been healthy and they can't really run the ball that well. They didn't run the ball well in this game. It's just that they had Johnny Smith to kind of give them something underneath. The touchdown to Jalen Waddle was disgusting, by the way. To a no looks, the touchdown of Jalen Waddle. His eyes are in the flat and he comes back to Waddle over the middle of the field.

And that's what moves the linebacker to make that play possible. He's playing with a lot of confidence right now. I mean, some of the ball handling shit that they're doing, like flipping the ball behind his back. Crazy, bro. It's fun. I mean, they clearly, I think that there is like, there's a level of confidence and a level of like, I understand what we're trying to accomplish here. And it's amazing. It's not surprising.

We've talked about this a lot. This offense needs that from the quarterback. Even if he has limitations, like his, how much conviction he has in how he's playing and what he's seeing, that's a necessary component of how to play offense in this system. and that's why it looks so much different when he's doing it. And they can go from being one of the worst offenses in the league with anyone else a quarterback, especially a guy you got off somebody else's practice squad that's never run this offense before to what it looks like when you have Tua in the lineup. And this truly is like one of the four or five most efficient offenses in the league

now that he's back. And that's crazy considering what they looked like without him. That stuff is important. There were at least two or three throws I remember in this game where I don't know if Tua should have thrown that over the middle of the field. but he knows the window's supposed to be there. He knows he can get enough lift over the linebacker, and Jalen Waddle goes up and gets it.

And it's like, okay, again, I don't know how many times you should be doing that, but he does it. Even like, I think one of the stick routes he throws to Johnny Smith, I was like, I don't know if that's open the way that you thought it was open, but you trusted that the offense would work and it worked for you. I will say I'm probably, there was still when I watched this game. I felt like Tua got away with some shaky ball placement a number of times, particularly Jalen Waddle, like Doug.

couple out of the dirt. He had one where he came back for one on like an underthrown deep ball. But it kind of cuts both ways because like for as much as I worry about that with Tua sometimes, the receivers are Jalen Waddle and Tyree Kill and they will probably make enough of those plays. So I think I've gotten to the point with Miami's offense where I have a lot of faith now that against these mediocre or bad defenses or even like slightly above average, like they played a decent game against Buffalo recently. You can have enough. I just do wonder what it looks like when you face maybe a top five defense. And so it will see. The fact that we're having that conversation, right? After a month ago, that seemed dead in the water. So it is third and a good spot.

I want to talk about the dolphins and just what their rest of the season looks like, but I want to fold one other team into that discussion. Did you see the Baker Mayfield was just like doing the most Baker Mayfield stuff possible today? It was just like the purest uncut version of Baker Mayfield that way you can possibly imagine. He did the Tommy Cutlet's celebration at one point. He was throwing blocks 50 yards down the field. He had a ridiculous fumble recovery. We were talking about this a little bit before the show. I think that Baker Mayfield has kind of found his equilibrium as an NFL player. Like, Baker Mayfield is paid the right way for what he is.

There are middle class quarterback contracts now. He's in a well-designed offense. And I think it's just allowed us to have the version of Baker Mayfield that we should have. He's like a slightly above average quarterback. He's a guy that you can win with. And we don't really have to have any controversial discussions about him because of that. It's like he's exactly what he is supposed to be right now. And I think I'm enjoying that version of him. There's no stakes tied to what Baker Mayfield is now. Whereas when he was in Cleveland,

it was a lot of, oh, it's this wrong and no, Baker's, Baker's really good and all this and that. And you have to pick a side and there was a war. Okay. Well, when- It's a constant dialogue around franchise saviors that you drafted number one overall. They have to be everything or they're nothing. Right. And now that he's cut and like he, you know, bounced around to a couple of teams and he's gotten all these new chances. Now that he's finally settled in this new place where I think we're just so far removed from all those discussions from what we had in Cleveland and nobody cares about that anymore. We can all just enjoy him as quarterback 17 who is fun when he's good. He's fun when he's bad. He does some weird shit like getting a like throwing blocks 50 yards down the field and

that fumble recovery where it pops out like they're on the goal line and it pops out behind everybody. And he after giving the fake like wheels around and just like dives on it. Like he's just he's just a funny player. And he's actually playing at a level that is decent. Like I said, he's like quarterback 16, 17, 18, whatever. And the offense around him is designed and he plays aggressively. Like, he's just, he's gotten to this point where I think everybody now can settle in and be like, you know what? That guy's fun to watch. I really enjoy these guys in their second, third, fourth act, whatever it ends up being.

With Baker, it's kind of act three, right? You have Cleveland. You have the years wandering through the wilderness in Carolina and then getting cut and now you have him coming to Tampa. Gino is like this where you have, you know, Gino is now kind of in the back half of his career. He is the Jets thing. He bounces around as a backup and now he's here. Jared Gough has two acts,

but one of them is actually, we said Guff has three, two. He's a superstar in L.A. Or that would be the quarterback of a very good, efficient NFL offense that goes to the Super Bowl. Then he falls out of favor. He gets traded to the Lions,

is completely written off, and then reclaims his career and is now the quarterback of arguably the best team in the NFL. That trajectory for these guys, where there no longer is that conversation about them, where they kind of get to fall into obscurity and then they can settle somewhere in the middle of the league and the stakes are a little bit removed, not from what their teams can do, but from what we expect of them, I like this. I like that this group of quarterbacks is starting to emerge a little bit.

And I think having more of them and these guys potentially coming back into our lives at age 27, 28, when they're more fully formed, I would like to see this happen more often. And I really don't mean this in a bad way, but isn't it nice to like, there's just so much quarterback discourse about especially all the like the top 10 guys and it feels so vitriolic and all this stuff. But you can just watch Baker Mayfield and not have to consider any of that. Like there are just some players where it's like consequentially, this doesn't matter. And it's really, really fun.

And I think we do need more players like that. You can just sit down on Sunday not have to think about what's going on with them. It's just going to be a good time. The dolphins and the bucks, by the way. still alive. Dolphins are five and six, one game behind the Broncos in the lost column. They play the Packers on Thanksgiving,

which is, I'm so glad that game matters now. I'm so glad that game matters. If we had to go from Tommy DeVito versus Cooper Rush to a game where the dolphins were like three and eight or three and nine, and the game was just completely inconsequential,

that would have been a rough Thanksgiving. Thankfully, this one has real stakes now. Play the Packers on Thanksgiving. Then they get the Jets, the Texas, the Niners, the Browns, and the Jets. Okay, so two games against the Jets, a Texans team that I think no one is excited about, a Browns team that won a division game on a Thursday night in a snowstorm,

but has had its issues this year, and a Niners team that is heading very much in the wrong direction. The Bucks, for their part, are five and six and one game behind the Falcons in the NFC South. Falcons swept them, so the Bucks need to actually win the division. The Bucks remaining schedule at Panthers, Raiders, at Chargers, at Cowboys, Panthers again, Saints. I think both of these teams have very real life in the playoff picture. For the Dolphins, it'll be as a wild card. For the Bucks, their best path is probably winning the NFC South.

But I am not ready to write either of those teams off right now. It's kind of funny that the Dolphin schedule is a little bit up and down. There's going to be some tough ones, but the AFC wild card is just so wide open that it's fine. Whereas the Bucks have probably like one of the easiest schedules left in the league, but they pretty much have to win their division. If you had to pick one of the two that you thought was actually going to get in, who do you think it would be? The Bucks. Yeah, I think I'm there.

Just probably because of the ease of the schedule. Like, it's just, it's probably. I mean, I think the Bucks have a very real case is the best team in that division. Obviously, the receiver injuries hurt. They lose a couple like weird close games this year. But I feel very good about that offense. Now that Mike Evans is back and just the way that it's been designed all year, I 100% believe that they could overtake the Falcons in that division and ultimately win it. And the Falcons defense is a mess.

It's bad. You watch that game against Bo Nix, and even if we're excited about the Falcons offense, I think that the slight edge for Tampa's defense against the Falcons, even though Tampa's had its own issues on that side of the ball, I feel okay about them potentially closing the gap and pulling that off. To our next one here, I'm going to sell this a little bit differently because it's a little bit complicated. I want to talk about Anthony Richardson, and I'm not going to try to do it in a clever way.

There are three types of Anthony Richardson games, the way that I see it. there is the good game, the good game in the box score, the one that he had against the Jets last week, where it all seems to work. There are the types of games where it feels completely lost, which were the two games right before he got bench. I was like, I don't know if this is good for him to keep going through these sorts of games. And there's the game like today where the box score looks like an absolute disaster, but I don't actually feel like he has that far to go for this to be a real big boy NFL offense. And I think definitively today, we got version three. I think we absolutely did. And this was the version that whether it was his rookie year or early in the, early in the season,

some people including myself, were swearing by like, I promise there are some good stuff here. I don't care that he's 11 for 28 or whatever it is. I swear there's something here. And I think this game, you certainly saw that. Like, I think the reason he ends up like under 50% completion and stuff in this game, there were a handful of drops in this game. Obviously, Ogletree ends up dropping a touchdown. which was pretty critical, obviously.

And then they had a number of plays taken away by penalties. I think they had 10 penalties as a team in this game. For 70-ish yards, I believe. And at least three of them were on huge plays by Richardson. He hits Granson deep down the left side. That gets called back. He hits Josh Downs deep down the right side. That gets called back.

And then off on a critical fourth and eight pretty late in the game gets called back for a holding. And he makes like an incredible play outside of the pocket where he's able to make and find that throw. So like some of his best plays getting taken off the board with drops and then by penalties really hurt him. And then you got to think too, but like, okay, you get a big play taken off by a penalty. And now instead of converting this huge play for a bunch of yards, now you're in second and 15. And he's not the type of quarterback who wants to get into third and nine by taking a checkdown. He wants to get into third and one and throw a digger out over the middle, which we can debate whether or not that is good and whether or not he's going to have to learn about that.

But like, that's also kind of just how the offense is designed to let him do that. So you just end up in more of these high volatility spots. But I don't know, man. I watched him play. And I thought that this was a game. And I thought that this was a guy that you could really, really build on, which I know sounds crazy. They scored six points.

But like, you just got to watch what this guy can do. Well, they scored six points in part because Goghry had a ball hit off his face at the goal line. But I think that, again, there are multiple kinds of Anthony Richardson games, even if the box score can look similar. He finished 11 of 28 in this game. I was ready after those two games right before he got benched to say, this is a huge problem. He has no feel for what's going on right now. He might do well to spend some time on the bench. I watched this game today. I did not believe that. He finishes 11 of 28 and Parkas, some of the

drops, some of the miscues that he's always going to have. He also refuses to take sacks. Like, he refuses to take sex. So that's going to include three, four, sometimes five incompletions in the game, where he's getting dragged down and somehow he still gets the ball off. And then you combine that with some of their issues with penalties. They averaged 9.8 yards to go on third down today. They had 12 third downs. Nine of them were third and longs. Because the run game is not good unless he's running the ball,

which they did really well on the first two drives with him. But I think Shane Steichen kind of wanted to use that and leverage that as like, okay, we can get points on the board and get some momentum here. And then we can open up the passing game. It's just they couldn't convert in the red zone to make good on some of those drives. Again, because Oakle Tree is dropping a touchdown. that hits him in the face and stuff like that. I'm glad you mentioned the pressure thing too.

I looked this up on True Media, and this was slightly before Sunday night ended, so maybe some of the other stuff changed or whatever. But Anthony Richardson, according to True Media, faced 46.7% pressure rate, which is one of the highest rates in the league. I think it was the second highest in this game. His time to throw was 2.86.

It was like dead on league average slightly below. And he didn't take any time. Well, Alie McNeil was a very big problem in this game. He was pretty incredible. He's been a really, really good all season. So he was definitely getting some quick pressures that certainly lead into that that don't have anything to do with who the quarterback was. But this is a guy who's not holding the ball very long and he's not taking sacks despite getting pressured on almost half of his dropbacks. I don't know, man.

And also, the only other quarterback who didn't get sacked this week, again, I don't remember whether or not that was true in the Sunday night game. But was Baker Mayfield, would you like to guess his pressure rate this week? I can't imagine it was very high. Six percent. Yeah, it's pretty good. Like when the only two guys in the league who don't get sacked are at 6 percent pressure rate and 46 percent pressure rate, I think the guy who was at 46 percent pressure, it was probably doing something right. Yeah, I think it's just the reason you're having this conversation is where is this thing going, right? Like you have a quarterback you drafted in the top five.

You benched him. What are the first couple games look like back? And again, I think that this feels different, even if the box score isn't very good to what we were talking about before he was sent to the bench. the Lions won this game and I think the Lions offense, you know, not the greatest performance from the Lions offense, but they certainly do enough. What really stood out to me today was just like the way that O'Lean McNeil played. He had six pressures. His time to pressure in this game was 2.45 seconds. That's just absurd, man. Ridiculous. That is like as soon as the last drop step hits for a quarterback, a Lee McNeil is there for pressure. Like that is what that means effectively.

That's, that is. And he's been playing that way. He has been playing that way. And the Lions, it's, every week the Lions are missing like four guys and you just have to piece together who they are because when you watch the game, today was a little bit of an exception. Like you could tell Kendall Vildor was out there for Terry and Arnold and the Colts were trying to pick on him. But, you know, Taylor Decker gets hurt at one point in this game. They're moving people around. They've just done such a good job of overcoming whatever has been thrown at them pretty

much every single game this year. And today was no exception. And it's because, you know, these guys that are homegrown pieces that we've been excited about in the past are playing in an even higher level. Brian Branch is one of those players. I think a lot of the guys on defense, you could say that about Kirby Joseph, but Alie McNeal is absolutely a part of that conversation. I mean, he's playing like one of the most disruptive, impactful interior players in the entire league. Last one here, sticking with young quarterbacks, you know, trying to do something after having some real low moments. Caleb Williams,

did you see the Caleb Williams had probably the best game of his season today against Brian Flores. Did I ever, man. What a game. I was, I would have been happy. He played so good, dude. He played. I'm so glad you're just opening up to like letting this watch over you. He played so good. It was, I think we both would have been happy. If he escaped this game, Bears score. Alive. If he escaped this game with his limbs, I would have been happy. If they scored 13 points, he made a couple of plays and he didn't look like he was completely scrambling. That's a win. For given what we had for about a month with this team, that probably would have been a win. For him to have what is pretty definitively the best game he's played as a pro, I think is super encouraging. And to me, it's not just that it

was his best game. He's had some other good games, right? Like, I think the game against Jacksonville, obviously not a great defense. He was better. He was better in this game than he was against Jacksonville. And he was better because he was playing like the guy they thought they were drafting. Like against Jacksonville, it was a lot of, okay, he's making some cool throws in structure, doing this stuff in pocket. He's doing quarterback stuff. That's all good and well. And that's going to be part of his development to being an elite quarterback down the road. But the thing you drafted Caleb Williams to do is to get outside of the pocket and make some scrambles and to go make some insane throws outside of the pocket. The one where he rolls right and makes that jumping throw to

Deontres- That's one of the plays of the year. Dog. I could not believe it because he hasn't done that the entire season, right? Like that's my point. That was he did that. The first time that has happened. One of those out of structure, holy shit plays. It is the first time that has happened. He did that two, three times a game at USC. And this was the first time it really felt like in an NFL game against a good defense for him to go and do that. It was like, oh, he realized he is the best player on the field. That's probably good for the Chicago Bears.

And then there was another, he really is just playing in a level where he realizes he's good. There's, I think late in the game, he has to like... Confidence is everything, man. It is. He just has to start scrambling around the pocket, but there ends up, he tries to move out to his right. And one of his offensive linemen and a defensive lineman are like in his way as he's He's trying to get out.

He just hops over him and ends up converting the scramble for a first down. I'm like, he would have tripped over somebody three weeks ago if that happened to him. Like, just, I don't know, man. I just, it was a really, really special performance. And again, I know they lost this game, but I don't care. That's not what matters for this team. He takes a bad sack in overtime. It was really one of the only players where I'm like, ah, it's not great.

That was a heat check. Right. And then he missed two throws on the final touchdown drive. He missed Roma Dunezay twice down the right side line. But those are like the three moments from the game where I can be critical. for the most part. And I was even watching him against the Panthers, watching him against the Rams, or even watching him a little bit against Jacksonville.

Like, all right, there's some nice moments here. But for the most part, I'm not that moved by it. This is the first game where I've been like, oh, shit, man. Like he had that third and 12 ripped to Keenan Allen up the seam. The throw he hit to DJ Moore to set up the game, the game tying field goal. It looks so much more comfortable, so much more assured in the pocket and with Thomas Brown calling plays. The way they're using DJ Moore, how much.

put together the pressure and protection plan looked like in this game. So a really, really, really encouraging performance against the best defense in the NFL. Similar than Anthony Richardson, think this was all about what is it going to look like in the back half of the year when it seemed as though we were going to have actively detrimental games for those guys in their development. And it couldn't be, it couldn't feel any more different than it does right now. On Minnesota side of this, they have multiple huge things. third down conversions late in this game that end up carrying the day for them.

And the two guys that I would want to point out because Justin Jefferson didn't do much in this game, he had a huge pass interference that set up the Vikings inside the five. But for the most part, the box score, he did not do a ton. Jordan Addison had a couple monster plays in this game. The jump ball he catches inside the five. And then T.J. Hawkinson is back. So you forget that even in games where Justin Jefferson is not carrying this offense,

they still got plenty that they can rely on. And this was one of those days. Hawkinson is still a really, really, really good pass catching tight end. And Addison is not too bad as your second banana in your wide receiver core. And they came up huge today. And they had some really big moments on really key third downs when this game was close at the end. Yeah. This offense, I got to say quickly, I feel like Sam Darnold got away with some bullshit today.

But he made at least like five throws that were really incredible. the one he hits to Hawkinson over the right side. I can't remember if it was a deep over or a sail route. Sometimes in my memory, they look the same when you're trying to piece together a thousand place. I think it was a deep over. He puts that just over the defender and like where it just falls into Hawkinson spread basket.

I mean, those are the throws that you're just hoping he makes three, four times a game. And he certainly did in this game. And then really at the end, I thought what was crazy and where you felt the difference in the quality of these teams to me, there's a play late in the game or a sequence where Darnold goes down on a second and 13, I think, and then next play, Nick Mullins has to come in. And they convert third and 13 with a checkdown to, I think, Aaron Jones. Like, get out of here. That's ridiculous, man.

And then obviously they go on and win the game. Donald has a couple of great throws on that final drive. So it was a really, it was a pretty impressive performance on that side of the ball for a lot of those past catchers. Yeah. Of course, the bear's defense would start to fall off the moment. The Caleb Williams has a good game. Can never be both. This doesn't really matter.

The wins and losses only matter in the sense that I want guys to stay bought in until the end of the season so we continue to have potential performances like this from the quarterback. Also, one last thing actually, though, I think the broadcast said when the Bears got their onside kick, that's the first successful onside of the season. The teams were 0 for 9 going into that. And so the Bears did get, I will say, incredibly fortunate for that to have fallen their way. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, the Bears, they had a fumble, the Vikings had a fumble inside the five,

but then that evens out because the bear's muffed a punt inside their own 10. So if you want to just throw those in the wash, again, the bears had no business taking this game to overtime. The fact that they lost is somewhat heartbreaking, but I don't think anybody in Chicago right now is that upset because of the way that the quarterback played today. Before we get out of here, it's time for what we learned in week 12. You know, I think I've learned something today.

Each week, we like to wrap it up with a little lesson from the day in the NFL. Why don't you kick us off? What did you learn from the week 12? 12 slate. I'm going to go back to the Sunday night game here and say that I learned that you can decline a penalty, watch the team bring their offense onto the field to actually go for a fourth and three, and then say, you know what? I would like to accept the penalty. I truly did not know that that was a thing that you can do. I'm still not sure that is a thing that you can do, but the Eagles got away with it and it kind of helped them win the game. So good for them, I guess.

I think the Steelers did something very similar. Oh, Tomlin getting away with that also makes sense. I think the Steelers did something very similar on Thursday night. So again, somebody said this. I can't remember who it was. It might have been Michael Jr. I think he said that Seriani being the one to do that is perfect. Yeah, it is.

It just fuels all the takes that we're going to have over the next 72 hours. My lesson from week 12, this is something we learn the hard way every single NFL season. It's a very long year. It's a very long year without a lot of games. and so things can feel and look so much different on November 24th than they did on September 10th. And the two units that I think really crystallized that for me today were Seattle's defense and Washington's offense. Washington, by pretty much any single metric you want to look at, before this three-game skid, was the second most efficient offense in football after what has been a historically good and historically dominant Ravens offense.

In almost any other year, Washington would have had the best offense. in the league for a huge chunk of this season. And now you're starting to see the cracks a little bit. You know, this is a team that really well designed, things are very set up, especially in the run game. And if you look at the design and just the nuts and bolts of what they were over the first two months of the season, I pick Cliff Kingsbury as my assistant coach of the year halfway through the year.

And I don't think that's crazy. But now, back half of the year, things are starting to slow down a little bit potentially for them. It's a very long year. Things can change. Same thing goes for Seattle's. defense. Seattle's defense, great first month, tons of pressure, playing against a lot of bad offenses, have a swoon in the middle of the year where we're wondering, can Mike McDonald do this?

Are we a little bit worried about Mike McDonald? And now you come roaring back with a couple trades, a couple moves, post-bye, and now suddenly Seattle's defense feels a lot different than it did when we were watching that Seahawks Lions game on Monday night in Detroit together. So just you don't have to make proclamations about what these teams are, what these units are, what these young quarterbacks are five, six, seven weeks into the year. It's okay. Like, I have to, right? Like, my job is to talk about the NFL.

I was used to joke that part of me, if it were up to me, we just wouldn't do shows for the first month of the year. Not because I didn't want to work, but just because they don't really seem that useful. Like, let's just wait until week five or six and then we can start. talking about these teams. But the problem is, that wouldn't really help us that much because between weeks six and weeks 12, things are going to change the exact same amount they did from weeks one through six. So just understand that we probably don't know what these teams, what these units are until we get to this point in the calendar, what they really are. And that makes it difficult to talk about,

but I just think it's worth acknowledging. And I feel like a couple of the performances that we saw today really reminded us of that. It is. And I think there's a kind of couple things that go into that. Obviously, some injuries and stuff can obviously go into that. And obviously, I think it was Seattle that was part of it. There's also just too, like, the practice rules have been changed in the past 15 years. And the preseason is shorter now. And some teams don't even take the preseason very seriously. So their preseason is September football. Obviously, if you watch some of the teams like the Rams and the Bengals, they've kind of started slow fairly recently. And I think that's because they kind of treat September as like

their preseason. Let's figure this type of stuff out. So I think all of that is certainly a factor. think another part of this, and this is kind of like adjacent to this, is like some teams are just built for the longer haul, right? And they are built to play November and December football. Like what everything we said about the Packers today and their run game and how they want to get after you, they were built to play in December. September, who cares? Like, it doesn't matter. They were built to win this type of game in November. And then Detroit, you end up being the best of both where you technically have built this thing to win in December, but you're also just so good that you can win in September.

But I think that type of stuff, on top of what you're saying with so much can change between, you know, especially like pre and post Halloween that you just don't know until we get really, really close down into, you know, when they're doing in the hunt, you know, on the graphic in week 17. It doesn't really matter until we get to there. And we're finally getting closer to there. And so it's a good reminder that some of the stuff we maybe thought on October 4th doesn't matter so much on, what is it, November 24th? be open to changing your mind.

I think that's one of the lessons that I have learned the hard way doing this job as long as I have. Because you're going to have units that completely flip things on their head halfway through the year. And I think we might have a couple of those on our hands right now. All right. That is all we've got for week 12. We're not going to have anything about the Thanksgiving games. We're going to still have our week 13 preview come out on Friday. It's going to be a little bit different just because we're going to have to record things

little bit different, but for the most part, our shows are going to be coming to you the same way they would otherwise. If you're looking at the feed from last week, if you have not watched or listened to, the second episode of The Money Down, our four-part mini series on the business of the NFL, had a really fun conversation with our senior media columnist at the athletic, Andrew Marchand about the future broadcasting in the NFL, chatted about the league waiting into streaming, what that's going to look like, the Netflix games, how the NFL just does an incredible job of divving up a product they've already sold and selling it to you again. They're the masters of that.

Chat a little bit about Tom Brady, his first season. Really good conversation with Andrew. So if you guys have not checked that out, that is available in your feeds. The third and fourth episodes of that series are going to be coming a little bit later in December. We're going to take next Saturday off because it's a holiday, but those will be coming your way eventually. Other than that, pretty much the same schedule as usual. Back to our regular schedule programming this week.

So be on the lookout for that. For now, that's all we got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.