The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 14 Monday Hangover — Questioning our previously held notions

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

NFL seasons never unfold linearly. Things we were sure were true in October often fall apart by December. Robert Mays and Mike Sando examine a bunch of those things on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. Among their considerations: The Buccaneers will get it together (they won't), the Titans are rock solid (they aren't), the Dolphins have it all figured out on offense (they don't), and more.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysFollow Mike on Twitter: @SandoNFLSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube3:45 Deshaun Watson and the Browns' offense13:20 The Bucs aren't getting it together20:50 The Panthers aren't done yet30:18 The Seahawks don't appear so dangerous anymore36:30 The Giants could fall out of the playoffs42:18 We can't take the Ravens for granted46:53 Same goes for the Titans55:09 So maybe the Dolphins don't have this figured out61:45 The Lions can get defensive stops!66:35 But the Vikings can't! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. To the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert May is joining me today. It's the Athletic Zone, Mike Sandow. Mike, how you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me, Robert. Very glad to have you here.

Post-week 14 edition of the Monday Hangover today, I wanted to kind of take a step back after yesterday's games and talk about them a little bit, but also take this a little bit wider. Because when I was watching some of these games, I was struck by how different some of these realities were from things we might have thought four weeks ago, six weeks ago. And the first one to come to mind was the Browns with Deshaun Watson, for example. This is a team that had been rolling with Jacoby percent. And I think the conventional wisdom halfway through the year, whatever timeline you want to put on it,

is that when they got a better quarterback into that situation, that their offense would just keep on roll. And that hasn't happened. And there's a lot of examples like that from yesterday's games and that have crept up over the last couple weeks. We thought the Bucks would figure it out. They didn't. The Panthers were an absolute joke that fired their coach five weeks into the season. Now they're in contention to win that division again.

A lot of those. So I wanted to spend today kind of recalibrating our thoughts about some of these teams and interrogating some of these ideas that we took for granted a little bit early. earlier in the year. All right. So let's start with that Deshawn Watson idea. So the Browns obviously lose to the Bengals yesterday, 23 to 10. Watson has another pretty rough game.

In the end, the counting stats were fine, but the Browns struggle to move the ball again on offense. Were you also of the opinion that when he got back and just over the long term? I mean, I think we talked about this, that their situation and their infrastructure offensively was good enough that we had pretty high expectations about what they would. would look like, even if he was a little bit rusty. How are you kind of coming to terms or processing what they've looked like on offense over

the last couple weeks with him back? I thought it would definitely be hit and miss, but it would be better than it's been. I think some of it, too, is, I mean, last week was just a terrible game out of the gates with Houston. You would have expected better. But Houston's played a little bit better lately, too. I think you just can't forget how hard it is to have the timing of the NFL when you haven't played for that long.

And I go back, see, Kevin Safancy will relate to this. If you look at the 2010 Vikings, Brett Farr of Unretired, remember they send Steve Hutchinson and Jared Allen and Ryan Longwell to pick him up. There's local TV helicopters following them. It's late into August, deep into August. He shows up and has the worst season of his career. 11 touchdowns, 19 interceptions, 69 pass-a-rating. He wasn't there.

I think he showed up at the end of the preseason. Look at even Peyton Manning. When Peyton Manning missed a year, someone as diligent as Manning, who probably was taking care of himself in rehabbing and doing everything absolutely right. His second game back with the Broncos, he threw three interceptions. I think that's a clear reality. And this Watson thing is unprecedented. We've never had, I can't think of somebody who's been away that long.

And then, oh, by the way, they come back. into a totally different system, not just in the late in the preseason, late in the season. So this might just be a harder thing when you think of how precise playing that position is at the highest level. Looking at the numbers over the last two weeks, he's 31st among 34 quarterbacks and EPA per dropback over the last two games. It means right down near the bottom of the league. And going back and watching that game in some of the All-22 this morning, they're a guys open.

I mean, there's the throw in the first half where he just got a big over and a clear out from the other outside receiver that he just turns down. And ultimately has to kind of scramble and pitch the ball backward to David Njoku for what I think was his no gain or a loss of yardage on the play. There was a zero blitz on a third down where they actually picked it up pretty well, even though the Bengals brought, I think, eight guys on it. And he has Amari Cooper just running across the field wide open and just doesn't throw him the ball. So there are those moments where it's not about structure. It's not about whether defenses are keying in on certain things that they're doing with him. There are guys open that he's just not hitting right now in some of these moments. And I think that that is attributable to feel, rust, all that stuff you're talking about.

But I also think that there are some structural changes in the ways that they're playing on offense that are kind of eye-opening. And I'm wondering exactly what the motivations for these are and exactly what the long-term outlook on some of this stuff is. So we know this team loves to use a bunch of heavy personnel. They're a bunch of heavy personnel and they're going to run the ball. That is who they are. Okay. So before their buy, which I believe was in week and nine,

they were using 54.8% 11 personnel, which was 24th in the NFL. That's how we've come to know the Kevin Stefansky Browns. Since the buy, they're using 11 personnel on 75% of their snaps, which is fifth in the league. That's a pretty monumental shift in the middle of the season. And we can try to figure out what the reasoning behind that is, whether it's something they thought they needed to do after the buy to jumpstart their offense, which would be surprising

because they're playing very well offensively. Or is this a shift that they're trying to incorporate for Watson in the way that he wants to play and how that's going to impact them long term and are they struggling to adjust to it and acclimate to it in the middle of a year? I'm going with the latter, but I think it's something to chew on. I'm going with the latter, too, and I think it's strange. It wasn't really something that I had thought of that much. I thought, hey, Kevin's Dfansky kind of has a system.

You know, it's fairly related to what Gary Kubiak had done in Minnesota, and that they would stay kind of generally in that realm. It may look a little different, but we could be seeing a transition to something totally new. they're obviously all in with Watson on the contract. Are they going to be all in with him offensive? We've seen certainly go empty a lot more, which I'm sure is going to continue. But that's just kind of an interesting identity shift for a team,

like you said, that really was rolling that was top five offensively in EPA per game, probably per play. It has been pretty good. And now in the first two games of Deshawn Watson, Robert, it's the worst back-to-back offensive EPA output of the Stefansky era. That is a little concerning. It is a little concerning. You think about some of those kind of dips they had with Baker Mayfield,

a quarterback over the last few years. Getting back to that level is probably not something you would have expected, even if you anticipated a little bit of rust. And beyond the structural stuff, and the empty makes a lot of sense. Deshawn Watson was really effective out of empty. the last time we saw him play, I think that they consciously wanted to incorporate a lot more empty

into their approach this season. And I'm assuming they think the long-term gains are going to be there, even if they're going to take some steps back in the short term. The rushing efficiency has also just taken a nose dive over the last few weeks. They were obviously really good at running the ball before the buy. They've been really good at running the ball since Stefansky got there. Before they're by this season, they were second in the league in EPA per rush.

and 10th in success rate. Since the buy, they are 26th in EPA per rush and 13th in rushing success rate. So the success rate's taking a small ding, but the big plays just aren't there anymore. And I was wondering if that was a product of them being in a little bit more 11 personnel, if the heavier personnel packages allowed them to run the ball a little bit better. Their efficiency in light personnel running the ball was actually very good before the buy. So I don't think that shift is the sole driver of what. why they've struggled. I'd have to watch it a little bit more and watch it a little bit more

closely to actually kind of come with a diagnosis of why this is happening. But if this team can't run the ball the way that they were over the first half of the season, the way that they have at times and for most of Kevin Stefansky's tenure, then it doesn't really matter who's playing quarterback. They're going to struggle. I just think they feel out of sorts. I mean, the whole thing about bringing in Bresset for the fourth and one and going deep and airmailing them by 10 yards or five yards or whatever it was, that was just a little bit representative to me of where they're at. They're just out of step. And now the sort of irony of this thing is they've been decent enough on the defensive side of the ball now. And on special teams, they haven't had meltdowns

for three games in a row. Is that amazing? That's a sign of progress. No meltdowns for three games in a row. No meltdowns, but that was always what was killing them. And so you're telling me, that's the biggest most surprising part to me. Even against, you know, even against the Bengals, you would think the Bengals could put it up on anybody, right? Shoot. Bengals were fine, but they weren't amazing. This game was there. If the Browns could play average offense, this is a really close game. So they got four more games, and they're not against the easiest defenses either.

So this feels like it could be an interesting finish to the season. I think it would take a pretty drastic, like, cratering on offense for Kevin Stefansky to be in any sort of danger of losing. his job or for them to think about making any substantial changes there. But I do think, again, the whole point of this exercise is to kind of take a step back and recalibrate the way that we're thinking about this kind of stuff. I just assumed that they would be still very good offensively, even if there was some early missteps. And that just hasn't happened.

So that calls into question what it might look like in the future, because we just assume that this team was set up to be good on offense for the second half of this season and going into next season, and they very well might be, but I don't think it's something that we can just write in and pen the way that I may be anticipated. No, I think you just want to see some progress. Like I said, they've got Baltimore, New Orleans, Washington, Pittsburgh, those are some teams that either know them well or can play good defense. But you'd like to see, you know, a good game or two, see what it might look like. I think it bears watching. I think we need to monitor them, but this is probably at this point, just his preseason for next year.

Yeah, I think that's a very good point. That's a good way to characterize it. All right, next one here. I just assumed that even if they were disappointing in the middle of the season, that by the time the Bucks inevitably won the NFC South. Which they still might. Yes. They're still on track to do. But by the time they got there, by the time we got to Week 18 and they were 10 and 7 or 9 and 8

and had never really looked like their old selves during this season, they would still be a formidable team in the NFC playoffs. They would still be a team that would be a tough out for whoever they were going to play, whoever they hosted in the first round. And you watched that game yesterday against San Francisco and really just the way they've played recently. And I just don't feel that way at all anymore. I mean, they're headed in the wrong direction.

Austin Mockett, the athletic still has them with a 75% chance to win the NFC South. But I kind of feel like not that differently about them winning the NFC South than I would about Carolina or Atlanta if those two teams happen to stumble into it. I just feel like they're going to make the playoffs probably be an underdog to whoever they play in the wild card round, have an early exit. And that's going to be it because there's nothing we've seen from them recently that gives me any indication that anyone should be afraid of playing them in the playoffs despite the names on the roster. Remember last year when Tampa blew out Philly in the wild card round? Yes. They feel like the team that's going to be on the other end of that this year.

That's exactly. I think that's exactly right. Yes. Yeah. And so, you know, Robert, when I looked at this, I've, you know, from afar, you look at Buck. And I don't feel like Brady's playing terrible either. I don't think Brady's totally falling off or anything. But here's what I did in kind of preparing for this.

I always start with who's on the field. Yeah. And so what I did was I took the last three years of the Bucks team game number 10 to 13. So it's kind of this month we're talking about, right? Where we were hoping this or thinking this would happen and it hasn't. Here are the players who played a lot in the past two seasons during this window, the 10th or 13th game, who are either not playing at all or who have played a lot less. It's four offensive linemen.

It's Tristan Werf's Ali Marpet. It's Alex Kappa. It's Ryan Jensen. Those are offensive linemen that like casual football fans have heard of three of them. Antoine Winfield, Sean Murphy Bunting, Shaq Barrett, Rob Gruncowski, Jason Peer-Paul, and Domican Sue. Have you heard of any of those players? I have, yes.

Ross Cockrell, Jordan Whitehead, Pat O'Connor. I mean, they're not all superstars or guys you had to have. That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. That's thirteen guys, including four-fists of the offensive line, who were kind of in that mix in game number ten through thirteen the last two years, who were either totally out or have played a lot less. And I think that is our answer to what the bucks are and why, as I wrote in my column today, they have led for 28% of plays. And when you look at that historically, that's very consistent with a 5-11 team. They happen to be in the NFC South. They happen to have Tom Brady who might pull out an occasional game, but it's not good.

They just don't do anything well. And that's where we are right now. We obviously know they're historically bad running team for the first half of this season. They've gotten a little bit better in that area, but still rank in the bottom five, according to EPA per rush, all those metrics. They're 19th right now, any pay per dropback on offense. There's not a good team. And you look at the defense, and I think it's a great point.

It's kind of what makes up most of my notes about this team and about that game is that when you take out all the component parts, they cease to become the bucks at a certain point. And defensively, it's the edge rushers was really jumping out to me yesterday. We got Nelson and Nassib and, you know, Tri-on Shiaenka has not been very good for them this year. Obviously, Shaq Barrett's gone for the season. So you take that piece out. Vita Vita Valle played four snaps for them yesterday. A lot of those huge chunk runs came after he left the game. In the secondary, Sean Murphy Bunton didn't play yesterday.

Mike Edwards didn't play yesterday. Antoine Winfield didn't play yesterday. So you have all of these pieces that aren't in the game, aren't in the lineup. And on defense, it's like, all right, well, then they're no longer the buck's defense. When you remove all of those guys, then what are you left with? And offensively, the offensive line is absolutely where you have to start because even some of the guys that are playing aren't playing in a very high level. I tweeted out earlier today. Donovan Smith has six holding penalties this season, which leads the NFL.

Three of those holding penalties negated touchdowns. Three. Wow. Half. If you look at every other offensive linemen in the NFL with at least three holding penalties, there are 132 of those total. Of those 132 holds, there were three negated touchdowns. So as many as on Donovan Smith's three negated holding penalties.

or six holding penalties this year. That's insane. It's the same amount of negated touchdowns on his six that there are on the other 132 among guys that have at least three. I mean, it's just been that kind of year. And so the guys that even that they've paid that they're supposed to be relying on aren't playing very well.

And you combine that with the struggles on defense, the injuries that they've dealt with, the turnover that they've had to deal with. And this just isn't the same team, even if some of the names are the same, even if the jerseys are the same. And I think it's probably time for us to admit that and understand that. Absolutely.

And the whole thing started with the waffling of Brady. He's going to retire or not. The coaching change. This whole thing's been disjointed from the beginning. I don't blame them for trying to run it back, right? I mean, you have to. What else are you going to do? Yeah, I would rather do that than have pulled it up, you know, then be wondering,

oh, what if they had blown it up? And now you're like, look at this NFC South. Shoot, they would, they could make, look at the NFC in general. Who knows? They might have been good because we would have been thinking about what they were like when they had those guys I listed. That would have been our last thought. So they gave it a run and they may make the playoffs,

but they just feel like a team that doesn't have much juice to them, you know, and it's just going to be an interesting offseason. I don't think Brady's done. I think he may be playing somewhere else, and that'll give us something to think about in the off season. Oh, man, something to think about and something to talk about for sure. Yeah. I wonder what they're going to do with the core players that they have.

They're $40 million over the cap as it currently. stance if the cap settles at around like $228 million. So what do you do with that? How do you shed some of that salary? I mean, we've seen teams do it before. But even if you want to keep kicking the can down the road financially, at a certain point, you're going to have to make some concessions. So I wonder what that ultimately looks like.

You know, if they, they can't really save a bunch of money by trading a guy like Mike Evans, but there are moves that they can make where they're going to have to save some money. I just don't know what that's going to end up being. So what the 2020 bucks are, I truly have no idea. It kind of starts, too, with what are they going to do at quarterback if it's not, you know, without Brady being there? I mean, that defines what track you're on. And so are they going to be someplace that some veteran's going to want to go to? I don't think they're a quarterback away, obviously, because they're not going to upgrade from Brady.

So it feels like a rebuild to me. All right. Sticking in the NFC South, a team that now has like a 15% chance to win. that division, shockingly. Five weeks into the season, eight weeks into the season, it seemed like Carolina was on track to be the number one, to have the number one pick, to be potentially the worst team in the NFL.

They fire them at rule. This entire thing is going down in flames. They trade Christian McCaffrey. And now they have real life in the NFC South. So where are you with this version of the Panthers? And then I guess this leads us to a conversation about, is Steve Wilkes doing enough for him to be considered to keep this job this spring? Because it kind of seems like we're trending toward that conversation.

I think he is doing enough, but I also think that owner may want to look for something else. Yeah. That's just pretty my sense on it. I think that, you know, for somebody like Steve Wilkes, you can look back now and say, okay, was it him? Was it Arizona, Josh Rosen, right? What was thought about of the Cardinals and Rosen at that time? He got one year.

One of the worst offenses of the last decade. Yeah, and he's a defensive coach. So it was terrible. But, you know, obviously he didn't get a long enough time to even have a chance. He has since then gone to different places. I think he's been in college too. And I bet you he's 50% better than what he was when he did that for the first time. I bet he's a much better head coach, much more comfortable, thought through it.

He seems like a thoughtful guy. I think he brings some stability and discipline, that sort of defensive mindset. And in the NFL, if you don't screw it up, you will beat a lot of the middling to poor teams in the league, the teams that are flawed. So if you look at them, they've had five games this season where they didn't commit a turnover. Okay, they're five and oh in those games, and most teams are going to win 75% in the league without a turnover. But it's three times in the last four games. And it's against Seattle, which has all kinds of problems stopping the run, huge flaw. It's against Denver, one of the worst offenses, huge flaw. It's against Atlanta, which just changed quarterbacks, huge flaw. They even beat Tampa earlier, hugely

flawed teams. So if you just aren't bad, like in their case, they're running the ball heavily, they're playing pretty good defense, which we thought they could coming in the year. That was going to their strength, and they're not turning it over and trying to be something they're not. They're playing a real conservative brand of ball. And like I said, that'll beat some of those teams some of the time. It'll keep you in a game against Baltimore, those sorts of things. So, you know, he stopped the bleeding there. He steadied the ship, Wilkes did.

And I think you've got to give him credit for that. And then you have to assess, okay, is that what we need for the future? What would he offer when we want to do better than that? So their defense has been very good over the past month. That's how they've done this. They are the best team in the league, according to EPA per drop back on early downs over the last month, by a lot. That looks a lot different than it did over the first half of the season. You know, their improvements on that side of the ball.

Some of that might be driven by personnel. You know, Jerry Mitchin is back after missing most of the year. I think he's been back for the last three games. You know, J.C. Horn missed a couple games in the middle of the season. You know, he's out back, obviously. he had a pick yesterday. So maybe some of it driven by personnel, some of it by competition, whoever it ends up, whatever reason is behind this, they've been much better defensively.

And that's why they've been able to string together some of these games. And then they're running the ball fairly well. But the passing game is still almost non-existent. I know Donald hit a couple throws against the Broncos, but even the way they approached the game yesterday, on their first drive where they end up going down and kicking a field goal, they had a third and ten handoff to Chuba Hubbard that he converts. it into a first out. They did it multiple times in this game.

And I'm totally with it. I'm like, yep, that's smart play. Smart play. Normally we'd be like, this guy, what are they doing? You know, I'm like, no, because they'll screw it up. You have a turnover, a sack, the ball's out, get the field goal. So that's how they're playing. I think that Steve Wilkes is on a commendable job and kind of keeping this thing on the tracks

and keeping them competitive and keeping guys bought in. But at a certain point, this team's struggles have been driven by the fact that they cannot move the ball on offense. they have not found any sort of ecosystem or infrastructure in their passing game over the last five years and even a little bit before that. And if they're going to go get a quarterback this offseason, if they're going to try to pick one in the top 10 or whatever they're going to, whatever avenue they're going to chase, I think they need a plan for how they're going to get the most out of that guy rather than continuing to cycle between offensive coordinators, between offensive plans. And that's why even if I think he's done a good job, I think it might be in the best interest of the organization. to kind of hit reset and say, we need to start over and see if we can go about this a different way.

But the fact that they're this competitive and this competent after what they looked like for the first month and the half of the season is pretty remarkable. Get somebody, I think, who's got some NFL experience. And if it's Steve Wilkes great, but if it's somebody else, just go down that road of getting somebody who has maybe done it before or bring some of that experience to an organization with a relatively new owner. And like you said, you're going to be breaking a new question. quarterback. I think that our feelings about some of the pieces that they have on paper,

we were having this conversation with Daniel and Jeremiah a couple weeks ago. On paper, some of those pieces are pretty intriguing. You know, their offensive line has some young guys on it that are playing fairly well. Obviously, Horn, Derek Brown, Brian Burns, you know, Frankie Louvo, Chin, some of these guys on defense that are real athletes, they still have DJ Moore. You look at the actual depth chart and you're like, all right, I can. get behind this. I think that if you pair this with the right coach, the right quarterback, they could be competitive fairly quickly. And what they've done over the last few weeks, even if DJ Moore was blanked yesterday with Sam Donald throwing him the ball, I still feel like it's trending in the right

direction if they make a couple of those tweaks and they hit on a couple of those moves. And remember next year they have the 49ers second and third round picks. Yeah. And a fourth, second third and fourth, right? I think they have second third and fourth next year. So that's not a bad situation to walk into. They have the ninth overall pick as it currently stands after winning that game yesterday. So might be treading in a direction where that quarterback becomes harder to pick. It's always that push in the pull of, you know, do you want to win some games? You want to look good. You want to build some morale in the building. But at the same time, if you do that, you're drifting further and further away from your path to find that guy in the top 10 and in the top five. So that's kind of

what they're dealing with right now. But I'm sure that it's much more enjoyable. to go to work for those guys than it was in October. And just pull up the list of quarterbacks drafted 1, 2, 3. There's a ton of misses too. I did that recently. I did that recently, Robert. I looked at the quarterbacks drafted 1, 2, or 3 in the last 10 years, kind of after the luck draft, maybe starting in 13.

Like, I had Burrow number 1 and Goff was number 2 of just, you know, ranking them for their production or what I thought of them. So, you know, of course you want to be high and get one, but there's just a lot of guys who end up not being the guy. too. So maybe they can find one somehow some way. Well, that's always the argument is that if you're picking that high, you probably have shitty circumstances that you're dropping the

quarterback into. And I think that their circumstances are honestly more attractive than most teams that are picking in the top 10 or are cratering or just fired their head coach because of the pieces that they already have in place. I thought they could have been a decent team this year if

things had gone a certain way. And I think that's the version of them that we're seeing right now. They have no faith in their ability to throw the ball. But a lot of the other elements of who they are can be competitive week in and week out. And I think that we're seeing that right now. All right. Let's talk about the team they played yesterday. Four weeks ago, five weeks ago, it felt like Seattle was like a real potential threat in the NFC playoffs.

With the way that the quarterback was playing with a little hot streak they had on defense. After that game yesterday against Carolina, it feels like we're seeing some of the cracks in the foundation of the Seahawks team. And we might have gotten a little bit ahead of ourselves in terms of what they could accomplish in 2022, even if they were a lot better than a lot of us anticipated. So where are you at on Seattle after watching that game yesterday? I think their defense and running game have fallen apart in the last month. And that's left Gino Smith without the help that he needs to be as efficient as he was before. They have had this weird thing defensively all year where, remember when they brought in, Sean, to Cy from Chicago and they brought in, or they already had Clint Hurd, who was another guy who'd

worked with Fangeo, and they put in. Carl Scott, who was with Mike Zimmer last year. Yeah. And they're understandably excited about all those guys and the new sort of updated look to the defense, but they've really struggled with their personnel in making that match and being able to stop the run. And I think when you go to that defense anyway, it's generally to play the pass and maybe you sacrifice a little against the run. But that has been a weekly and monthly struggle for them and has really pained Pete Carroll. You know, I do live in the Seattle area. Sometimes I'll have that, you know, their pregame show on or something and listen or the post game show.

And he is, it's killing him. I mean, because he wants to control the games and run the ball himself. And this is just reinforcing to him how important that component of it is. And it's really that simple. They've had five games this year, Robert, where the other team rushed 40 or more times. It's not like they're losing by 100 points either. Yeah. You know, and I believe yesterday, Carolina,

it wasn't like they had a bunch of 80-yard runs. I mean, they just ran the ball for eight yards every time they handed it off. They had one play with eight offensive linemen on the field. You know, it was like, look, we are going to run. You know, you talk about telegraphing or whatever. This was just, they bought an ad on the video board and said, we're going to run. They were holding up cards that said, run.

And they just ran it down their throat. And it's the most dispiriting thing, you know, for a team. And there have been times this season when Seattle sort of, you know, maybe went back to some of the things they'd done before or they fixed it. But I think yesterday what happened was they lost Al Woods, who's one of their better defensive linemen. They already had Shelby Harris down for the game because he was sick.

They had early in the game moved Al Woods to like a five technique spot. Then he goes out with an injured heel. And they just never were able to get their footing. And so I think Out Woods could be out again. going to play San Francisco of all teams to play to try to stop the run this week. I don't know that I trust, you know, them to get their act together defensively, at least on a consistent enough basis to make noise like we maybe thought a month ago, it looked like they might be able to do.

So their longest run that the Panthers had yesterday was 26 yards. That was by Sam Darnold. So non-quarterbacks in this game, the longest run that the Panthers had was 16 yards, and they ran the ball for 223 yards. on the day. Yeah, it's hard to do. And then on the flip side of that, the Seahawks had 10 running back carries yesterday for 28 yards.

They had a 9.1 rushing success rate in the game without Kenneth Walker in there. So those two elements, inability to stop the run, inability to run, you're putting an unbelievable onus on the quarterback in the passing game. And yesterday, they just got blitzed into oblivion. So Gino got blitzed on 20 of his dropbacks. yesterday, which is the Panthers M.O. It's what you should expect coming into the game. Finish 7 of 17 for 61 yards in an interception. So when they got heated up yesterday, they just didn't really have an answer. And when your quarterback is carrying as much of the load and the passing

game is carrying as much of the load as it is in Seattle right now, any sort of missteps, any sort circling, that's what's going to happen. And that's what we saw yesterday. Absolutely. So Geno Smith, for the first time under 60% completions, he's still at 70 something for the for the season. There were times where, I mean, there was one interception he threw where clearly he thought that he had the guys off sides, but he just happened to make a really quick. There's someone in his face right away trying to make quick. Just a lot of decisions having to be made under duress without, like you said, without the help

of the run game, they may get Kenneth Walker back this week, but he's been hit and miss anyway. I think, you know, over the course of the season, Robert, you know, you kind of find out the truth really about what you are, right? and it's somewhere in between what we thought at the beginning of the season, which was this team's got no chance. We don't know who these young players are. And Gino Smith's starter, are you kidding me? To, oh, my gosh, Gino Smith's high tier two now.

They've got an elite running back. And all these guys intercepting passes, young defense, they're just going to go. It's the truth in between there. They're up and down. They're more up than we thought they were going to be still. I still think it's a great season for them. But they went from, I think, 90% playoff chance last week to 65 this week. and that's because people thought they would beat Carolina at home.

I actually had it as one of my potential upset picks because of that running game. If you can run the ball, Seattle can be vulnerable. Welcome San Francisco to Seattle on Thursday night. I feel similarly about the Giants when you say, all right, we had these expectations for them before the season. And then they get off to this hot start. Seems like they're going to be a playoff team. And the reality is probably somewhere in between. So the Giants yesterday get blown out by the Eagles.

they're now 7, 5, and 1, okay? Austin Bach has them with about a 25% chance to make the playoffs. That's worse than Washington, which is about 50, Seattle, about 61, like you just alluded to, and Detroit, which is at about 40% now. And the Giants, I think it's a few different things as to why they've turned into a pumpkin a little bit. I was looking at their offensive numbers, and what they were doing and the bells and whistles they were using on offense, they're still doing it. So Daniel Jones is using play action at about 65% of his early down dropbacks, which is the second highest rate in the NFL.

Marcus Marioo is the only one that's higher. Okay. It's insane. Like they're building the plane out of this on early downs. Over the first half of the season, before they're by, he was seventh in the NFL on play action dropbacks. 0.24 EPA, which is that's right there with the most efficient quarterbacking in the league, if you extrapolate that over everything. Okay. Since the buy, he is 18th in the NFL and EPA for dropback in those situations. So that's kind of the little gaps that we're talking about here. They go from being one of the most efficient play action teams in the league to being a below average play action team in the league.

And that's enough. When you're building this entire thing out of your ability to get the quarterback on the move to run the ball and not that efficient of a clip and you have that sort of drop off, you're going to struggle a little bit offensively. And there's some other things on defense as well, but I think that the magic just kind of ran out. And when you're doing this with pixie dust and smoking mirrors and teams get an entire half a season to start planning for it, and you have no other answers because you don't have Wondell Robinson and you don't have any receivers, eventually this stuff is probably going to happen. It's a long ass season to be faking it, isn't it? Yes. There's really nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to hide. And then also, you know, a team like that already knew their depth was.

terrible, you know, so attrition was going to be, you know, a factor for them, and I think it has been. And so, you know, here they are, but I still think for them, like, obviously they're going to play Washington this week. It's a must win. But it wouldn't be the strangest thing in the world if they rallied up and beat Washington. I don't see them winning at Minnesota, but they're going to play indie at home. And then, who knows, Philly could be resting other starters in the last game of the season, right? So there's still, to me, there's still a flicker of hope, even though none of us is, you know, mistaking them for what they really are or are not.

And so we know they're extremely limited. I think it's been a successful season, but it could be, it could still be a winning season for them. It absolutely can be. But I do think that they, again, they just turn into a pumpkin on both sides. On offense, you talk about the play action stuff. On defense, show that before they're by, they were. first in the NFL in EPA per dropback on third down on defense? They were number one in the league in those situations. They were second in net yards per attempt. Since thereby, they're 17th

an EPA per drop back on third down. That drop from one to 17, that's all you need. I mean, that that's enough to turn you into a completely different team defensively. And they're not doing things that much differently, they have used a ton more man coverage down the stretch here over the last three, four, five games. It's been like 70% man coverage on third down since the buy, which is actually kind of insane. But I assume that's because they've had some defensive back injuries. You know, Dori Jackson has been hurt a little bit. They've been working through that. It might just be easier to say, we're going to play a man because we don't have to worry about communicating. It's just easier to kind of throw guys in and do that. Like Nick McLeod started

again for them yesterday. But that's what's going to happen. When you're starting guys that you signed off waivers on September 1st against the Eagles and those receivers that they have, you're going to struggle a little bit defensively, no matter how you're trying to piece this thing together. And I just think that's kind of the point we've arrived at with the Giants. Also, in the last four weeks, they've played Detroit, Dallas, and Philly. Yes. You know, those are, that's a little different than when they were playing Houston, Jacksonville, and Green Bay earlier, you know, or they played Chicago before Chicago switched to the Justin Fields offense. Disgusting game.

It's just an absolutely disgusting game. I watched that to 20 to 12 or something, whatever it was. 20 to 12, yeah. They played Carolina early in the year. So I think no doubt they played Dallas without DAC too. So I think that the schedule has caught up with them as well and probably just exposed what was true the whole time. And I think they've known it the whole time.

But what are you going to do when you get on a little bit of a role? you're not going to go to the podium, Brian Dayball, and be like, hey, guys, this is awesome. But let me just tell you, we are total frauds. We are a re-in-year-one of this thing. You can't do that. You know, you want to write it and you want guys to buy into it. And they have done some things well. They have played this thing pretty well.

But they've hit some teams that have been hot or hotter lately or play in three of the cases can play good defense, you know, in Dallas, Washington, Philly. and it's just really been too much for them. And they've got a couple more here with Washington and Minnesota again. So hopefully for them, Philly's resting starters in Week 18, they maybe steal one here from Washington and or Minnesota and get this thing to whatever it's going to be 9, 7 and 1, something like that. All right. Next one here. Ravens knock off the Steelers yesterday, 1614 and an ugly one. Obviously Anthony Brown's playing third string quarterbacks, all of that.

what I thought maybe after the Bucks game, you know, as part of our reaction, I remember Nate and I did a live show after that Thursday night game. It kind of felt like the Ravens were ready to be that third best team in the AFC. You know, they, obviously the bills, obviously the chiefs, but Baltimore felt like things were clicking a little bit for them. Their defense had been better. And it felt like they kind of had a chance to claim that spot.

And it doesn't feel that way anymore. And it doesn't feel that way from the eye test and how you're, kind of processing them when you watch them, but also the numbers. Right now, Austin Mock, even with the Ravens at 9 and 4, has them with like a 48% chance to win the AFC North. The Bengals with like a 52% chance to win the AFC North. And a couple weeks ago, that seemed crazy because the Bengals had this brutal schedule and the Ravens had this cakewalk schedule.

But now Baltimore is dealing with their backup quarterback, maybe their third string quarterback, and the Bengals are absolutely rolling. So that third spot in the AIFT, and just the way that we talk about and think about the contenders in that conference, now it just seems like the Bengals have really stepped into that spot, and I don't really know exactly what to make of the Ravens. It feels like it's next year for them to me. Kind of does too, yeah.

Yeah. And it just feels like there's more uncertainty surrounding them and who they are and who they're going to be. And, you know, for the longest time, we could just book them for being top. top five, top ten on defense slash special teams. And then offensively, you knew with Lamar Jackson, they're going to be productive. You could say, sure, there's some limitations here, there that you're going to catch up in playoffs, whatever, but they're going to be productive.

What of those things for sure can you hang your hat on being as good as it's been in the past? And I would say none of them. Would you agree? Yeah. I mean, the running game has been really good when Lamar's been in there. But that's that's kind of where it ends. I think the defense has gotten better over the course of the season. I think that they have figured some stuff out.

But it is really hard to just, again, write it in pen with any of this stuff in the way that you could in years past. Yep. Yep. And I think there's just, you throw in the whole thing hanging over to, you know, what's going to happen with Lamar's contract. That's a franchise setting thing too. Maybe it's maybe there's no drama. It just feels like there's some. there's some uncertainty around them and like you said you can't take for granted the defense is going to be good and I think it's been disappointing what's happened offensively through a combination of weaponry.

A lot of people have scheme fatigue. I still think they're probably running what's best for what they've got. But it just feels a little stale there too. And there's been attrition, right? You wouldn't say that the weaponry necessarily, obviously at wide receiver is down, that sort of thing. So you're just not really sure. I'm just really not sure how and where they can get, where they're going to get better. It's interesting because on defense, I think that they purposely made a radical change because they had scheme fatigue with the way that Wink Martindale was playing. Speaking of the Giants playing man on 70% of their third down snaps and all the blitzing that they do, the Ravens went away from that this year by hiring Mike McDonald. And I think that, you know, they've been fine. You know, they haven't been great.

They haven't been bad. They've been, you know, a solid defense. on offense, I do kind of have scheme fatigue. I think that it has gotten a little bit stale. And where some of these teams, when they have the same guys in place, the same plan in place, we can start relying on it. It becomes reliable and familiar. For them, it's gone past reliable and familiar to me into a world where it feels stale

and it feels like it needs a recharge. I don't know what that looks like or who would be able to do that or what it would look like around Lamar, all that stuff. But that's the point that I've reached on offense for me with them. Yeah, I think that's understandable. I would certainly want to see, you know, some development of their passing game, right? We've got to see that. And we haven't.

And some of that's been reasons related to personnel, but they've been doing the same thing for a while. And we'll see what Harbaugh thinks because he's got a sense something's a little off too. I feel like the Titans are in kind of a similar spot. There's a team in the AFC that we take for granted at this point. they, we just thought they'd roll to the AFC South title, that they'd be a team that was going to be tough to deal with in the playoffs just by how they could play out front and, you know, what their running game could look like and a Mike Vrable coach team. And it didn't seem to matter who they were trotting out and who was on the field for them. They were going to be competitive week in and week out. And you look at what happened yesterday and you look what happened over the last couple weeks.

And even if they're going to win the AFC South, they're very much trending. the wrong direction right now. And I think they kind of penciling them in is this team that, hey, you know what, maybe they'll get somebody, you know, a hard time in a playoff game that they're hosting. I don't necessarily feel that way anymore. I know. And, you know, I had this perception a couple weeks ago or maybe a week ago after Derek Henry had a couple, you know, nondescript games. Shootie's on pace for like 1,570 yards and 15 touchdowns or something. It's unbelievable. You would think if you had told me that, he's not missing any games and he's on pace for that, I would have said sign me up for 10 wins, right?

11 wins. But you're right. I think we've felt like for them we've wondered how they've done it. We've felt some of this personnel attrition. I looked at, I called up last week the receiving yardage leaders since Rabel's been there, and they're all gone. The next leader who's there is Derek Henry, who's the running back. You know, it's obviously A.J. Brown.

It's Johnny Smith. It's, uh, uh, uh, uh, FERC, there's one of them and there's, there's one other that I, names escaping me, but for, there's four guys. Yeah, Corey Davis. Yeah, Corey Davis. So there's four guys. They're all not there. Um, you know, I think we feel as though, um, you know, obviously that's hurt Ryan Tannaniel. Um, you know, we just talked about the scheme and everything that's going on in Baltimore. Um, you know, how do you feel about that in Tennessee? I, I throw on top of it, the whole GM change thing was jarring to me, alarming.

Word about that today. They feel like they're a little bit of a precipice to me. And, you know, Vrabel's been so great as a coach and so great as a leader. And they've done really smart things to have an edge on their opponents. But have they sort of hit the peak and they're coming down the other side of the mountain now? I've been waiting for this to happen. And they've prevented it from happening. but it feels now with their first three-game losing streak since the second month of Mike Vrable was on the job,

that we might be feeling that. In the NFL, when you don't have a pass-blocking offensive line, when you don't have pass catchers, when you're really thin at corner, and you don't have any pure pass rushers, and you don't blitz a lot, eventually it's going to be hard to live. And that's where they are right now. And their offensive line is completely in tatters. They have no high-level pass catchers.

And on defense, Christian Fulton didn't play again yesterday. They have injuries at corner, uncertainty at corner. De Nico Autry's out. Hero Landry's out. They don't blitz at all. The way that they play, the style that they play with, I respect it so much. I think that they have gotten so much more out of their defense than they probably have had any right to.

But eventually, you're going to run out of gas when you have holes in those spots. And I think that that's where we are right now with Tennessee. And it's funny because you're talking about that kind of coming down the other side of the mountain. That's just what I thought this season would be. I just thought that they would take that step back inevitably because of the A.J. Brown trade and where they were as a franchise. And they managed to fight that off for long enough. But I think now they're getting closer to the team I kind of expected them to be.

And that's been accelerated by some of the injuries that they've had to deal with on both sides of the ball. Yeah. I just sense to listening to Mike Rable after the game, a little bit of fatigue, you know, and this has to be just a fatiguing situation anyway. Like I mentioned, the whole front office shakeup thing. There's stuff going on there that we don't really maybe know all what it is. But it just that, to me, put an exclamation point on the whole situation and the malaise of it and how quickly it came on because, I mean, three weeks ago, I would have said,

applause, look at these guys. Look at their record. How are they doing it? admire the Titans. And I still do. But I just feel like, okay, for the first time we've seen the evidence of how hard it is. And I just don't get the sense that there's the life or energy or talent right now to pull themselves out of it. We'll see if Barryable can do it. If anybody can, probably he can do it. So much of their ability to make up for the lack of talent and for some of the injuries in the holes was just unrelenting buy-in from seemingly every single person on the

roster. And when you fire the GM, conscious or not, I think it's hard to build that unrelenting by it. That sends a message that things aren't going very well. And inevitably, I think the human reaction to that is to be like, man, I guess things aren't going very well. And it's probably a little bit harder to be like, yeah, absolutely. Like, I'm totally bought into what's happening here, conscious or not. And I think that there has to be at least a little bit of that over the last couple weeks with John Robinson gone. It didn't feel like Rable was like exultant. Like, all right, here we go.

Oh, we cleared up whatever was going on there. Let's go, guys. My team, I didn't, I just didn't feel that. So we'll see it. It was Jaguars too. Jaguars hadn't beat them since week three of 2019. So good win for Jacksonville after coming off of a bad Detroit game. But that kind of hurt even more because that's a game, the Vrable Titans just don't

lose to Jacksonville. All right. next one here, it just seemed like Tua and the Dolphins were going to roll on offense for this entire season based on the way they played over the first half of the year. And you look what's happened over the last two weeks. That's just not where we are right now. I think we really have to reconsider where they're at on offense, you know, what he's able to accomplish if some of the other pieces get knocked off course for what their passing game looks like. It is a really important stretch here for Tua from Mike McDaniel for this team.

to kind of figure out who they're going to be over the last month of the season as they gear up for the playoffs. It really saves me from having to explain why no one thought Tua was Tier 1 anyway. This is helpful, actually, for those purposes. It's just purely selfish purposes, you know, when you're always, wait, wait a minute. He's leading the league in EPA per dropback, you know. Well, you know, there's different components and factors that go in it. I think what struck me watching them last night was all of them. I was looking at their early down pass plays early in the game.

And they were all like way down the field, low odds plays. Here's their early down passes in the first 28 minutes last night. This is the six longest ones. 36 yard air yards, 31, 20, 13, 10, and 8, all incomplete. Their rushes minus 3,0-1-1-3-6, they popped one for 20. weird, wasn't it? You just got the sense that the precision that they had

when everything was working is completely gone. Have they been figured out? I think their offensive lines, obviously, part of this, and their run game is part of it, and they need those things, and Mike McDaniel needs those things, and maybe those things aren't what they need to be right now.

I don't know if they've been figured out or if this is just something they're going to have to work through. Going back and watching some of the All-22, I didn't have a chance to watch all of it this morning as we were prepping for this. But some of the ideas that the Chargers were trotting out there make a lot of sense to me. You had Michael Davis essentially playing press man on whoever was the outside corner and just no matter what sort of zone coverage they were in,

he was playing man pressed against whoever he was lined up over. And I think that that physicality and that disruption of the timing and his length was a really good part of the Chargers game plan. they had really heavy inside leverage on some of those plays off motion that post wheel RPO that we see the chargers or the dolphins run all the time. The chargers had a really good plan for it. It's like you are not going to hit in breakers against us on this. I thought they did a really smart job of when they would send a guy in motion to run that play. They wouldn't bump the outside corner to the motion man.

They would have the outside corner stick with the guy running that post and they would have somebody else, whether there's a safety or a linebacker, deal with that guy running the wheel in motion. And there's a certain danger in that, but they know on that play, the dolphins want to attack the middle of the field. So they're going to make sure that they're handling that first and the stuff outside the number second. And if you're going to take away those quick hitters over the middle of the field in

rhythm, and you're going to make two, read the plays out, and also you're going to make him drive the ball to areas of the field that are hard to access. Now we're going to see what sort of answers this offense has. Because if they're running that post wheel to the opposite, if they're on the right hash and they're running that post wheel RPO to the left side, and he's having to hit that outbreaker outside of the numbers from the right hash 15 yards down the field because of how they're trying to stretch you vertically, that's not a throw that he's going to consistently want to make or consistently be able to hit.

So what answers do the dolphins have now? I have no idea. I have no idea what the plan is going to be. I have no idea what the counterpunch is, but they're going to have to figure it out here. They're not going to figure out at Buffalo this week where it's going to be 27 degrees, 15-mountain-hour wins, and you're playing a really good defense. I don't care of Von Miller's out of there. And they're probably not going to find it in week 17 at New England, where it's probably going to be about 12 degrees or 20 degrees. Same sort of thing, good defense.

And then the last game of the year, they're going to be playing against the Jets, who, have been sensational on defense and really almost haven't had a bad game on defense, maybe won the whole year. So I think this is already was going to be a test of whether they could do this the whole season because their efficiency was incredible. It's a credit to them. But like we were talking about with some of these other teams, it's hard to sustain it when it's not necessarily all built on the most sustainable fundamentals, right?

It's not like Miami has a powerful running game that can hang their hat on or, you know, they were having to do it kind of a certain way. And now you're going to do it late in a season, which is usually going to be harder, from a weather standpoint, against really good defenses. They do get Green Bay in there on Christmas, so we'll see how that goes. But I think this last month of the season will provide, as the last couple games have against San Francisco and the Chargers, a little bit of a reality check and a little bit of helpful feedback. and information for, okay, this is how far we've come, dolphins, but we have this utter distance to go and here's what we kind of need to do. All right, one more here. Both these teams played each other yesterday.

We thought halfway through the season that the Lions were just going to be hopeless on defense. They were the worst defense in the league. They weren't going to be able to stop anybody. They haven't been great recently, but they've certainly been a lot better than they were over the first half of the season. And I think this is instructive because I do this too often where coming into the year or even halfway through the season, we look at a team that's just awful on defense. And we think, this is just going to be how it is.

They're not going to improve. They don't have the personnel to do it. But the strides that the Lions have made defensively from being the worst team in the league on defense to just being a merely bad team on defense with the way they play offense, that's enough for them. to be a really competitive team in the NFC. And I think this is just another reminder for this team that defense is not that sticky. Defense is going to be a little bit more volatile. And even if you're down on a specific unit, that can change enough pretty quickly. I think a lot of this is based on who you're playing to.

Now, they have three above average games statistically, defensively, positive EPA. Jacksonville in week 13 was one of them. Okay, that's pretty good. Jaguars have been okay. Week 11, Giants was another. Well, Giants kind of flagging. The other one was Green Bay in week nine. Good for them, but that was a brutal Packer game.

Probably the Packers had their worst. So those were the three that were, you know, especially good. Buffalo in week 12 had their second best offensive EPA game of the season against Detroit. So I still think that is a factor for them. You talked about, and I saw you possibly tweeting about just how great Kirk Cousins was yesterday in the Vikings, the Vikings averaged whatever. What was their number per pass play? It was unbelievable.

Half of an EPA. It was 0.46, which is insane. Yeah. So I think what I want to see from them is when you play the defenses, when you play offenses that aren't, they're just middling, that you're just okay. Just don't be bad. That's what you're talking about. Be average against them.

Because with this offense, you're definitely going to be in every game like they have been, even in their worst. their worst defensive game of the season. They lost 48 to 45 to Seattle. So love what's going on offensively. I think if they can just be, like you said, not horrific. Or I think last night, or whenever we were talking was this morning, is this a defense now that can occasionally get a stop?

Yeah, that's where they're at. That's what you were saying. That resonated with me because I think there's been times when you felt like they weren't. And so just get a stop occasionally. And look at what they're doing. Fake punning, throw into the tackle. That's fun stuff. That's like finding ways to win in the margins.

That's Vrably type stuff. So love that what they're doing and they're kind of figuring out ways. And they're a fun team now. They needed this, Robert, because even when they were kind of making progress, when they had that losing streak, man, you can't go to the podium every week and say we're building something. They are now. Love it for them.

Two stats I thought were particularly telling. Weeks one through five before their buy, 31st and run defense success rate. after the buy, they are 19th in run defense success rate. Again, not great, but 19th is a lot better than pretty much worse in the NFL. And the other one that I think is really important, before the buy, they were playing man coverage on 41% of early downs. Highest rate in the NFL. 41% man coverage in early downs is astronomical. You just don't really see that with teams outside.

of the Belichick tree, even for those teams, that's a pretty high number, okay? They were 28th in the league in weeks 1 through 5 before their buy on early down dropback EPA when they were playing that much man. Since the buy, their man coverage rate on early downs is 22%. It was 41.

So it's dropped in half, essentially. They've gone from being the most man-heavy team in the league on early downs to being 11th in man coverage. And they've gone from being 28th in early-down drop-back EPA to 11th. That's it. That's enough to explain the gap in their performance. And if you're going to do that and just be a little bit harder to play against on two of the three downs, this is the result. Like you're going to start stringing some wins together when your offense continues to play at the pace that their offense is. Yeah, I was kind of looking at that because I

wonder if there's a correlation with their explosive pass plays allowed, although they've had a couple big games. They allowed certainly. Interesting. That is a change. There's something to that. So I still feel like it's a week to week opponent to opponent deal for them, but that's a huge change. So speaking of teams that can't stop anybody, we thought maybe halfway through the year, the Vikings were just average. You know, on offense, on defense, they were going to be a team that was lingering somewhere in the middle. They weren't very good at anything, but they were solid enough. And their defense is that bad. Their defense is where the Lions defense was over the first half of the season. Since week 10, they are 30th in EPA per dropback.

They are just getting absolutely carved up in that soft zone coverage that they want to play. And it's hard to understand exactly what changed or why other than teams just knowing how they were going to play against them. Because the way they play is similar to what was happening over the first half of the season. This is a team that plays the latest boxes in the league. they play mostly nickel, like a vast majority of their snaps on early downs. And they just get absolutely carved up on early down passes. And it's gotten worse as the season has gone on. So I've kind of had to recalibrate my expectations for what this Vikings defense is over the last month or so.

Margin for error probably a little bit small. I think they've played great kind of situational football all year. And that probably has its limits. It's just not going to go that way for all that. They've made the fourth quarter sack and the interception. It's just, it's been amazing. But when you credit somebody for doing that, you have to realize in the back of your mind that just doesn't, their staff didn't just figure out how to succeed situationally forever, you know, for the first time in the history of ball. The other thing I thought was interesting yesterday or notable was Harrison Smith has now missed both Detroit games.

But in this one, the first explosive play allowed, the 41-yarder, okay? I am not a defensive coach, but I have a hard time believing. that the plan was for the safety to be standing and kind of stutter step while a receiver runs right past him into the back where there's nobody there. I wouldn't think they did that. I know that I think it was number 24, Cameron Bynum is there. I'm guessing that maybe that doesn't happen if Harrison Smith's playing in the game. So that could be a margin for error thing, just like that. I wasn't sure what happened on the 48 yard of they allowed either,

but again, just got the receiver one-on-one, and that was it. So I wondered if there were some things going on in the secondary from a veteran experience standpoint when you think about Ed Donatel there, a veteran coordinator probably has loved at times this season having some real veterans on that defense, right? From Patrick Peterson, mentioned Harrison, other guys up front. I wondered if that was maybe something that bit them a little.

bit against a team like Detroit that has an explosive passing game. Yeah, I think that the, you say veteran, I say aging, you know, when you look at the secondary. If you lose, it's aging. I mean, there's a reason that they drafted Lewis Seen and Andrew Booth, you know, in the first two rounds of this draft. And Booth is hurt now and scene is obviously out for the season. And so that injection of youth that they probably needed considering the makeup of their

secondary, that hasn't been realized. but moving forward, I think that's going to be important. I think that they have to kind of sit back and think about how they want to build this thing next season on defense and what it has to look like because right now the bottom is falling out of it. And I'm not sure how much better it's going to get over the last month as this team rolls into the playoffs because, again, they're going to host a playoff game. So what that looks like and whether they're favored in that game, I think is in real doubt. Look at the guys that are 30-year-old are Jordan Hicks, Eric Kendrick, Sedarius Smith, Harrison Smith, Patrick Peterson. I don't think I left anyone out on the defense there unless there's somebody on injured reserve who's older, but that's quite a few guys. And they were that team. We talked

about coming into the year, you know, what do you do with this type of a team? It's too good to just blow the whole thing up and you're committed to Kirk Cousins, but you were a little bit in between, and maybe they're feeling that right now the limits of that as a team that everyone's pointed out that's 9-0 in the one-score games, and we know that's inflated their record, but they've done a pretty good job. And in the end, flaws are probably still there. They've just overcome them better than anyone thought they would. All right.

That's all we got for today. As always, guys, sincerely appreciate you listening. We'll be back on Wednesday with a mailbag with our buddy Mitchell Schwartz. If you're listening to this on Tuesday morning, go ahead and choose the question. Athletic Football Show at gmail.com. I tweeted out the voicemail number. So if you want to call us, I would really appreciate that. So go ahead.

Lay your best questions on us. We haven't done one all season. So I think there's a lot of stuff, you know, maybe built up. you've been thinking about. Please let us know. Highly encourage you guys to get involved. In the meantime, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. We'd sincerely appreciate that.

Please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show is where you can read Mike Sandos' pick six column and all of our other great NFL coverage. For now, that's all we got. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was The Athletic Football Show.