The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 16 Recap: Joe Burrow makes history, Cowboys secure the NFC East, Baker Mayfield can't loosen up, Chiefs & Colts surging & more

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Week 16 of NFL action is wrapping up, as Joe Burrow makes history against the Ravens, Dak Prescott and the Cowboys secure the NFC East thanks to Trevon Diggs and the defense, the Chargers drop a concerning game to the Texans, the Patriots stumble, the Chiefs and Colts look unstoppable and much more. Join Robert Nate and Nate Tice for their weekly postgame reaction discussing the highs and lows of Saturday and Sunday, including the Jaguars' confusing end-of-game sequence, the Bears' last-minute victory in Seattle and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me tonight. It's my good friend Nate Tyson. Nate, how you doing, buddy? Doing well. I told you this right before the show.

I was like, I, for sure my dad's son, because now I'm in his office right now, as people watch it on YouTube can see. And he has no, like he has the sticky notes everywhere, like 40 different ones. You got some beautiful mind shit going on right now. He's got wires everywhere. but he did clean up so thank you dad i appreciate that and also also i found out that i'm going to be an uncle and so i'm very very excited yes what a fun weekend it's a great weekend yeah very very very nice capper to the holiday season that's great i always spent the christmas with my family as well

i'm with my brothers and my mom and my fiance it was really great i got to see my grandma for a long time we were nice and safe and it was fantastic and we also got a great weekend of football to go along with a great weekend of family. We're going to dig into a lot of stuff today, including the Saturday night games, including the Christmas night games. I feel like there was so much to chew on in those games, we wanted to hit on them. But before we do any of that, let's chat about what just happened on Sunday night. We weren't necessarily going to talk about this game if it weren't exciting, but then the Cowboys started doing what the Cowboys did. And I felt like we had to touch on it because we had a conversation about Dallas's offense on Friday show. And I asked you, somebody who has watched

this offense a lot over the course of the year. More than the Jags offense, believe it or not. It's an offense that we've both been interested by. I feel like we were really excited about them early in the season. And obviously they had hit kind of a swoon over the last four or five weeks. And I asked you, are you concerned about them? Do you think that they're going to turn this around? And your takeaway was, I feel like they're about to explode against the right team.

And oh boy, did they explode tonight against Washington? I'm causing Washington to explode. You know your offense is playing well when the other team is taking swings at each other on the sideline. In the first quarter. Like that's not, it wasn't even like a fourth quarter frustration. Oh, now we're losing by three scores or something with that. It was like, you know, four minutes ago in the first quarter, they're already blowing up. And I was like, I feel comfortable being really proud of myself right now.

As I say, broken clocks right twice a day. Once a while I hit it. But yeah, watching the offense, it was, it was frustrating. Don't get me wrong. But I've been watching them a week after week. week. And I'm like, oh my God, and this, you can say this about every football game ever. But it's like, if this doesn't happen, this doesn't happen, they score 40. If this doesn't happen, but it was like easy mistakes that you can fix. CD-Wam's not going to drop the ball three

times wide open. You know, they did it tonight, by the way, is they had another botched snap or botched handoff in the red zone. I can't, I've never seen a good team do that more than this Cowboys team. They have a botch snap or a botched handoff like a dozen times this year. It always feels like it's like it's a lot. Snaps, the Cardinals will give you a run for your money. We'll get to that a little bit later. Spoilers, yeah. But it's between the 10 and 20 yard line also, they hit that. But it's like the root was there.

Like what was about to happen happened. I didn't know it would be 50-something points. A 50 burger. A couple defensive scores of block punt does that as well. But it's like they were so close. They threw for 300 yards in the first half. It's not like they were piling it on with special teams and defensive touchdowns. They were moving the ball at will when they wanted to.

Is there anything specific about their offense that you felt looked a little bit different tonight. Schematically, strategy-wise, something they were going to. You're like, okay, this is more like it. They repeated a couple calls, which I was, was one thing. It's like, hey, Callmore, they're not onto your shit. Like, it's okay to, you know, go back to the well. But they just had some nice, I think they just gelled more. The offensive line, they're honed in what they are. Not, you know, just, it takes time for guys to get together, even if they are talented guys, the receivers, now they've been healthy for three or four weeks. You know, they're finally, they find that kind of new identity. You brought up the great point about going from 12 to 11

personnel and how they have to find their identity in 11, now with Blake Jarwin that's been banged up. And it just seems to me now, like the play action, they had a, I think it actually was a touchdown of Dalton Schultz. It was the play action, the naked. That was out of the jumbo personnel, which we have seen them do and lean on and run into run game. So they had the nice little tweaks. And I think it's just more, I want to say more of the same, but it's more like it jelled. It just obviously 50 points. But it just really just seemed like they have cut out some fat. They've like gone, okay, we're good at this, this, this and this. Okay, now what I always say like having the pitches, the changeups off of it.

Now they're finding the changeups of kind of the second half Cowboys offense. That's different from the first five or six weeks. When Asaki played left tackle today, which I don't, I think this is his first full game at left tackle this season, right? And then so Seal was the swing tackle. So clearly they wanted to make a tweak there. I haven't looked at the numbers about tonight. I don't know how well they did on play action.

One of the things we did not talk about on Friday show, I was frustrated by the amount of play action they had been using. They were at about 25% of Prescott. dropbacks, which is like 20th in the league. Yeah. When you have a high volume varied run game that you lean on, having a pretty voluminous play action game to go with, you know me. I'm always going to just crank the shit out of that dial.

But it feels like it fits what they want to do. And for an offense that had been struggling to create explosives, wouldn't more play action make sense as a well that you can kind of tap into? And I felt like they were doing that tonight. And I also love some of those seam balls where they're pushing the ball vertically a little bit more. It just felt like it was so side to side recently, and I want to see them push the ball down the field and seeing that where he's really hitting that like rise scene ball a couple

different times pushing it. That was encouraging to me. So now. Five and seven step stuff. Yeah. Let's go. Like let it rip a little bit. That's such a good point about protection.

Right? I mean, it just, it felt like they needed to kind of chip away at a couple more places where they could get some explosive passes. And watching them do that tonight was encouraging. Yeah. And now, if their offense can find itself a little bit, oh my God. They become really scary.

Yes. Because the defense has a couple plays a game that are swinging plays. I joked about it tonight. But if they're going to have a tipped pass to a defense of lineman is going to tip an interception to himself every single week, you're going to be in good shape. And I know turnovers are fluky, right? We know this. It always comes back to Earth. But when you have game wrecking players on defense, you can get game.

wrecking plays. And they've got so many of them. So it feels like even if the turnover numbers are going to normalize a little bit here, they still have the guys to make two, three, we're going to take this from you plays on defense every single week. And they suddenly become really scary. It's a different guy doing it.

And that's what's so scary. I mean, the fact that there's like a part two to Randy Gregory and Heinke, like talking on the on like, eyes are laying down after Randy, like the fact that we could refer to that happening. a couple weeks ago and now it happens again. It's like that's because they get to the quarterback so much.

Now we have sequels to the like the little fun moments that this defense is doing. But that's how it feels. It's just we have talked about the last few weeks like, wow, that's really, we hoping this defense would be average and the fact that they kept them in games and really won them some games when the offense kind of stub their toe. I always say they've just been punching themselves in the nuts because that's kind of what they've been doing. And now they're punching other teams in the nuts because now that's what a really good

team does is now the defense is performed. if they have the special teams play, but then the offense was just taking it to him, snap after snap after snap. And I loved your point about having the varied run game, helping to play action. Yes, there's a whole thing. You don't have to run a ball and out stuff, but you can tie more looks. It's important to tie it together. It doesn't matter about volume, but it's important to make everything look the same.

It always cracks me up. I mean, it's Peyton Manning, but like Peyton Manning would run trap pass and all they ran was his own. Like, it would still get linebackers to come up because they just can't help themselves. Defense has got a little smarter over the years. but the fact that you can fake a weak side zone, you can fake pulling the, pulling the guard on like fake power stuff. They're nakeds, I don't know what the numbers are, but their nakeds always feel like their best passing plays because they only do it three or four times, maybe two or three times a game. And it's just like it ties in because it looks like the runs.

And they do such a good job of it. Talked about before, they motion the receiver down to make it look like duo, make it look like zone. And then they run the play action off of it. We've gushed about Tampa doing that with their normal play action stuff. And it's like, yeah, lean into that. Those are those are doubles that you can just hit off. off the wall. Just hit the easy buttons.

Just hit the easy buttons a little bit more off when you have this much talent. And I think that that's what we'd want to see from them. And I think we did tonight. And it's encouraging moving forward. All right. What we wanted to lead the show with today was the bills putting together a really impressive performance today against the Patriots. This win puts them back atop the AFC East.

Now they got the Falcons and the Jets over their next two. I know. They have a really good chance to win this division. And not only does the win really put them in a great spot playoff. wise, but the way they won today was just really a good sign to me. And that starts and ends, in my opinion, with the way that Josh Allen played. Oh, my God. He, the Bucks game was, I mean, he's already a star, but like that felt like a star making performance. And this was just like, I've made the joke that I call him Professor Chaos because he still has those plays,

but it's the little shit he was doing today. Today it worked in his favor. Today, the chaos thing worked in his favor. It was those holy shit plays, we're like, no, no, no, yes, multiple different times all the way back to the opposite hash. Twice. Twice. He's like, it's one of those things. I would never teach a quarterback to do it. But it's like, yeah, he can, I guess do it against one of the most, the one of the coaches

that usually punishes that shit. I mean, that's a rookie quarterback thing. But it's like he can do it because his arm is so talented. All the red zone plays today speaks to Josh out. Why he's so good in that area is because he's an incredible arm. The game slowed down for him mentally. And he could scramble and create lanes too. But the stuff he was doing on time today, too, was incredible.

like the Patriots were going soft a little bit early on passing. I'm sorry, run downs on first and second down. They did the play action. And rather than him hanging the pocket, hanging in the pocket, old Josh Allen was scrambled out outside and broke a Tane and I love you're talking about this. Okay.

And then he does a play action and hits a checkdown right away, right on time. One hitch checks it down. Boom. Singletary, I think it was. Multiple times. Multiple times.

He started a drive off to it by hitting Gilliam. And then on the next play, he hits Singletary doing the exact. exact same thing. Yes, that is good quarterback play because if you finding your checkdown early, it's some guys find it late. They're like, oh, shit, that's right. I have a checkdown on this play.

We're going to talk about another guy later to do this as well. Oh, shit, I got a checkdown. There he is. And then the guy, the lineback or intermediate guys push back. And then they rally. And it's a three yard gain. It's so frustrating. But if you get it on the second hitch when you're supposed to, you go one hitch

down, it's, it's creating a new high low. It's just a different way to make a high low on a defense. You get it on time. They have space to work with. And if those two, three, four-yard gains become 14, 15-yard gains and first downs, that's what a touchdown to checkdown offense is. It's supposed to be in that way. But it's really cool to see him doing that stuff from the pocket. And on top of it, he can do stuff like that freaking missile he had to Stefan Diggs on the touchdown.

That's like, Stefan Diggs had to catch it because the ball just stuck to his hands because it was just so, it was that thing was, I wish I had the MPH on it because he just ripped that throw in there. we talk about teams running other teams out of soft zones. If they're going to give you that amount of space, can you run them out of it? You can also pass them out of it. If you do this and you're taking those chunks underneath, which he was consistently today on time, that was a version of their offense that I think was lacking over the first two-thirds of the season at times. And watching them do that today where it's like, we're just going to bite off these

little chunks if you're going to give them to us. I love seeing that. And I love seeing how quickly he was making those decisions. So that willingness to take what was there underneath consistently combined with the playmaking traits, that's when this guy becomes a superhero, right? Yeah. And there were those two plays. There was the one early to Cumero where I think it was like a half boot and he kept on drifting and he throws it all the way across his body to Cumao. And then there was one on third and ten.

I think it was early in the fourth quarter to Emmanuel Sanders where he has no business making that throw and he somehow does it. Right. So, did you see the Patriots defenders? They're just like, that's it. That's it. He is a heartbreaker. It is so frustrating to play against that and to play against somebody with that talent. So I looked at the numbers right after the little flip to Gilliam.

And I wanted to see what his numbers were, like EPA was, whatever, on throws from zero to five air yards this season. Okay. He was at zero for the year, which was like middle of the pack. They were not very effective on those throws. Point two, two EPA per dropback on those throws. today, which is a really good number. Yes. So it just, it clicks.

It's like, all right. It feels like they're getting more out of that today. And they absolutely were. You know what it does too is he had a throw in the second half, I think, or yeah, to McKenzie. He hits an over to McKenzie. It was either first or second down. He drifts in the pocket.

It has nice pocket movement. He doesn't try and break contain. But on that play, it was another high low. It was an over and it had something underneath. The Patriots linebacker flies up on underneath stuff because he's tired of getting yelled out by Bill Belich. It's the same as when you're ripping off short. games in the run game. It's the exact same. You're, you're creating the exact same

response mentally from the defense. It's a knee jerk reaction that they're making. Running to set up the pass. It's passing to set up the pass. That's what he's doing. But that, oh, it's the little shit. That's, that's so good to see from this guy. It's not just like, we talk about the cardinals all the time. Oh, Kyle, we're going to do something funny and all that. When you're doing the little shit like this and you get these hidden yards almost, it just, it just makes the whole thing sing sounds so much better. I say McKenzie was amazing today. I mean, just made like three or four diving catches, one that he almost had that eventually was dropped.

The one that Alan hit floating back to the right when he was drifting to the left that eventually fell incomplete. I was like, oh, my God, if you're making those, but there were several great plays. There was one I really liked on third down. This was just a combination of design and execution. They motion McKenzie into a little stack with Diggs, and then Diggs ran off. and Miles Bryant, I think, is 41 for the Patriots. Tons of separation, obviously, because of the stack. They hit McKenzie on the crosser because he has the space to work.

That's like, all right, this is all working now. The one play, to me, is just the ultimate kind of illustration of their talent plus his playmaking ability plus mindset today. The fourth and two from the 34-yard line late in the game right before that touchdown, you talked about to Diggs. Diggs is working against, J.C. Jackson on the left side. And he pushes him vertically so hard.

Like literally makes contact with him vertically. Shakes him inside on a little slant. Jamie Collins is in the passing lane. He's in the window. Alan waits, drops his arm slot, hits the second window throw to Diggs on the fourth and two slant inside the 10. Next play, Diggs is in the slot, fakes the outside release, stacks J.C. Jackson, and then Allen delivers that missile for a touchdown.

Those are back-to-back plays in the same drive. And it's like, okay, you're going forward on a fourth and two because you know you need to. You have the player to make J.C. Jackson look silly in space. And you have a quarterback who has the armed talent and the thought process now to say, I'm not going to try to pump it in this first window. I'm going to wait for it's come open. And I know exactly how I need to fit this ball with. And they were making those plays today consistently the entire afternoon.

It's like you say, it's when execution meets design. And it's like, oh, yeah. Then we have A plus players doing A plus things. It's like, oh, okay, that's what it looks like. I mean, that's because that is what you're taught. I mean, there's actually another player we'll talk about later, but it's, you're taught. That's the 101 stuff is I would catch that and throw that.

Man, okay, boom, semi back foot, let go. But then that's the 201, 301 level stuff that these guys you hope to get to. And this is why I love Dak Prescott is because he does this stuff all the time where he could just see him going like, I know what my answer is, but I got to find it. Like it's not the immediate answer. It's, you know, sometimes it's the hard path that you have to get to. But it also helps when you have a guy that could change his arm slot and throw a freaking missile with his wrists and a guy that could be, like you said, one of the best quarters in the game.

So it's like, yes, that's what's great, but they know they can do that. And that's scary. I mean, it really is. What do you think this game says about Mack Jones and how far he can bring the Patriots this year? This year, without the speed to kind of like create those. explosive plays, this is kind of what, this is the fear of this offense as far as if you're a Patriots fan or Patriots coach. The ceiling of the ceiling that they're receiving talent creates. It was hard to see in earlier games this year when they were just doing a really good job of

manufacturing offense. Their lack of outside receiving talent, especially no Aguilar today. So it was way more to kill Harry than I have any interest in. It showed up today. Oh, man. He's got the tint advisor too. And it's like, yeah, I don't think you need that, but there was a two play stretch where he drops a comeback on first down. And then. They throw the pick on second down. It's like, I would love to see what the numbers are on. Yeah. To his targets this year.

Because something's going wrong every single time they try to throw him the ball. They threw one screen to him this year. It was, it was fine. They threw one screen to him today and it worked out okay. He was like the only passing play. He's great pinning those D-ends on those pin pull plays. He's great. It's like a pseudo tight end.

Yeah, that's not what you want a first round pick to be doing. And I also thought that they, especially early in the game, I thought that the, the bill's approach on that first drive was really Italian where they was bringing heat. They brought, I think it was high on the first play of the game, and then they brought Edmins on the first third down. It's like, we are going to take it to you. We're not going to let him sit back there.

And it just doesn't feel like they have the firepower to go into a game where they can, where you have to keep up with another team's offense, which in the playoffs, it feels like you're going to have to. It feels like you're going to have to win one of those games. That's a 31, 27 game like today was. And I don't know if they have the firepower. And that's okay. It is. It's fine. That's okay. He's been playing so well this year. He is, it is all positive for the most part. The Mac Jones experience as a rookie. It's okay that your rookie quarterback can't go fireball for fireball with Josh Allen when we get down into the meat of the season. And that you're a legit playoff team. We're not down that they're like a playoff team and he is a playoff starting quarterback. It's just, okay, you see like you said, the limitations of his rookie year right now. And that's just that's just what it is. They need a little more juice on the outside.

They, he just has to keep the game has to keep slowing down for him. As smart as he is, it just has to. That first sack was exactly. They brought heat. I'm glad you brought that up because it was like some timely, like they were like, every time they felt like they brought a blitz, it was like, oh, that was a good one. They got them right at the right time. Yeah.

Because you could see he's not a bad athlete or anything, but you can see some of that lack of creation. He doesn't want to win that way. And sometimes in those situations, if they're going to show you a funky look and start making all your offensive line, Patriots have a good offense line, but making them edgy, then all of a sudden he has to create those throws like we just talked about Josh Allen find those second lengthers right when Josh Allen had to make himself a little bit of space by himself a little bit of time today he did it consistently there were a couple different

plays where Bentley's coming free or Collins is coming free on some sort of dudes and he's just he's not even I love that it was just wasn't taken off right just extending by drifting a little bit and saying I can still make a quarterback show exactly be in the quarterback stuff that isn't on the table for a lot of people yes because he the arm and because he has this just physical package. And today overall, I just think it's a reminder that the bills are really good. You know, they've gotten some weird breaks and their record is not indicative of how good of a football team they are top to bottom.

But when he's playing like this and when their offense is kind of reining in the ambition, like relying on their, the hyper talented aspects of who they are when they need to and not trying to bite off the entire game all the time. I think that was, it was a really nice blend of which. you want to see from them offensively. And it was without Gabe Davis and Cole Beasley. Like the fact that he did it with Isaiah McCannes. I honestly, though, I kind of think Isaiah McKenzie should play more.

I mean, he's winning his man. I was like, I don't, this guy probably needs more run. Like, I don't know if this is a blip here. He looks really good. I know. I mean, they've had it before as like when they would go the four and five wide stuff. They would have him like pass protecting at times. So it's kind of like, it's cool.

Oh, they came against dolphins in week 18 or week 17 last year. It's like, oh, man, I really like him. I just think that he's a really fun player. Oh. And when he's going to do football stuff on top of that, I want to see more of him. We got a new All-Star nominee for the Athletic Show, All-Star nominee. He's making a push, man. If he keeps playing like this.

Yeah. We're going to keep going here. It's time for you have my attention. Gentlemen, you have my curiosity. But now you have my attention. Joe Burrow, you have my attention. Oh, my God. My goodness.

Fourth highest single game passing total. NFL history today, generated 31.8 passing EPA the most in a game since week 5 of 2019. Deshawn Watson against the Falcons. First player in NFL history with multiple 400-yard passing games in a season versus the same team. He has sliced and diced the Ravens this year. And I feel like this was coming. You watched the last few games.

I might have been on Friday show. We were just talking about him against the Blitz. and how teams were treating him. And I think I just kind of said offhanded, it was like I throw away. Like he's really good, man. And he's really good. Like this feels like a coronation.

And I don't think it's overstating it to say that. I feel like he has taken that next step to be right in line with any young quarterback you want to talk about. They, like the Broncos got some pressure on him last week. And then this week, he hits pressure on them. But it doesn't matter because we talk about creation and the ability to create. He can do all that stuff. And then also he is like legit. His IQ is is, is great. Like he you can, I mean, that was one of the things we all liked about him coming out

OSU and still, but you can see it because okay, he doesn't have overwhelming arm strength, but he's big, he's fast. He's tough and he's athletic and he's smart. Like it's like that is like, that's such a pocket movement is really, really special. Outstanding. And he wants and he's, like, like you see a lot of guys like, okay, no takes one to no one. This is me talking. A lot of guys that have maybe average arms, you kind of, they don't have that aggression him because they go, I can't drive that throw in there. The perfect one, how Burrow is not that. Like he is not, I keep on to say a guppy, but he's not, he's not, he's not, he's not

weak minded as far as he doesn't limit himself just because he doesn't have that overwhelming talent or overwhelming arm strength. He hits the whole shot to Jamar Chase. That pressure is a third down pressure. It was in the, near the red zone. Wake Martin Dale brings it there. It was a two trap pressure. So they bring five.

But they try to, what they're trying to do is make you throw hot like to like a quick out route and the corner's there to catch it. Greg Williams just love this shit. And then you, oh my God, it's like the rookie quarterback killer. So explain that because it's cover two on that side with the pressure. So explain just kind of the mechanics of how it looks. A traditional. Yeah. So yeah, just think five are coming.

They bring one off ball linebacker coming in there. But basically it's two void. Like so as opposed to seven guys being into coverage running cover two. It's six guys in coverage. You have to find the weak spots of that. What they're betting on is that they get. home before the quarterback finds it. And the quarterbacks, we talk about the first answers.

You know, okay, the Josh Allen, okay, you throws it right away. That would be the 101 answer. The 101 answer is, oh, I'm going to throw hot to this quick out route or to a slant route. And guess what? The defense has guys waiting for it in those hot lanes. You're just trying to bait them. That's why they call it trap because they're trying to trap them.

So the Ravens run it. There's a long winded way to say it was a cool ass throw. So they run the corners there just sitting. And they have the out route. It's an out and go concept. Jamar Chase is on the go, releases outside. And it gets covered to one of the soft spots or the spots that you can attack is corner pocket throws. Honey.

You hear guys call it the honey hole. I call it corner pocket. And Joe Burrow, rather than you see guys, we saw Justin Herbert hit this against Washington earlier this year. You see guys reset to it. They're about to throw the out. And they're like, oh, shit, I got the whole shot. And they hit the whole shot. Burrow knew this freaking pressure was coming.

So he just goes one, two, three, and throws into whole shot. And he beats the safety. ball placement too, right? It was on his back shoulder. So it was just, it was away from the safety. Away from the safety. By Chase, like very, very good body control. But safety is be lining over. Like the safety knows that too. And that's why I want to bring it up because Burrow knows what he's getting. And he knows what his arm is. He goes, one, two, three, there's zero fat in his drop and his throw. And then on top of it's the accuracy to save Chase. Chase makes a nice catch. But it's like, oh, like that kind of stuff is just like that's what he does. Like he throws it so on time and so accurately that he punishes the defense. once he finds it. And then he's athletic enough and big enough that he can create.

They had a free runner on him. And I think there was the detackle just bounced off of him. And he just kept his feet and created. I think he got a first down. It's like, what the hell? Like, I remember watching it live. And I was like, what was that? Like, it wasn't like the de lineman pulled up.

He's just so big that he's able to bounce off that stuff. It's really cool. He's really, really, really good awareness in the pocket when he's moving. On their second drive, I tweeted out a clip of it. They brought a guy off the slot. and Burrow made him miss so bad that the guy was airborne parallel to the ground because that's how fast he was moving because he thought, oh, I'm a free shot. Like I'm going to rip his head off and then just misses him.

And Burrow resets. It eventually became, it was that long throw down the right side of that was illegal contact. But just him keeping that play alive was amazing. And the one play to me, you talk about his awareness and smarts and all of that, I was smiling so much when I was rewatching this. I watched it 15 times. So it was 131 left in the second quarter. The Ravens were in a mugged up look, which they did a decent amount in this game.

We talked about blitzing, Burrow, and how few teams were. He had the lowest blitz rate in the league over the last six weeks. But they were in those looks with decent amount of this game. So they have three guys walked up with two guys, two down linemen. And you can hear Quentin Spain talking to Trey Hopkins. And he's like, we got this. This is me. This is you.

We have 41 and 31. So the line sorts it out a little bit. It was fun to hear their communication. you could hear it picked up on the mic. So the way the Ravens brought it, they dropped the two far guys to the right side. So the left tackle was wasted. Spain and Hopkins both picked up the guys they thought they were going to.

The Ravens end up bringing the slot from the other side who wasn't part of the look. So he's free because they did not account for him at all. Free runner, bro, looks at him, dips it to chase, little 10-yard gain, easy. And it's just these are the moments. You watch that play. as a normal football observer. It's a little completion. It keeps on going.

You think nothing of it. That shouldn't look that easy. Against so many other quarterbacks in the league. Against Baker and Mayfield, that's a sack. Not even like, shitting on Baker Mayfield. Against Baker Mayfield,

that's a sack. Against quarterbacks that can't handle that stuff, he makes it look simple with that free runner turning into an explosive positive play. It doesn't have to look like that. And he does that stuff, consistently, whether it's making a free run or miss or whether it's understanding, I'm hot here. And the place where he's getting sacked on some of these blitz looks, you watch it, there is no

hot. It's not built in. When he has the option, he typically knows exactly where it is. He is playing the position between the ears really, really well, like about as well as you can right now. And really, I mean, honestly, it's really cool. Like when you see these things clicking because like it's gash or be gash. That's what we say like a pressure heavy defense.

Gash or be gash, gash or gash or be gash. When the quarterback is just continuously gashing you every time you bring heat or you think you got them a simulated or some way, shape, or form. And they just find the soft spot. And then the time you do get a free runner, he makes you miss or he runs you over. It's like, I mean, it's just like the Josh Allen throw. It's like you throw your hands up and just go, what the hell? Like what do we do? Even like, like I just like saying the phrase zero fat because that's what it is.

it's it the touchdown to mixing in the red zone uh the throwing one where he checked it down another great example he's working front side on that and half a second though he he comes off of it instantly yes one hitch finds a checkdown on the opposite side of the field because he knows where it is he's not guessing on any of these plays he knows what's happening so he goes all right one's not open two two's the checkdown he doesn't go oh where's my two because red zone plays or designer play so they don't have a lot of reps at it he just goes uh checks it down boom touchdown because mixing has room to work with. And it's,

that stuff. I'm so glad you mentioned that play. It's a perfect example because that's another one of those plays. We're like, oh, that's a two yard completion. Other quarterbacks would sit on that front side thing and you'd see a clip of it later. And you'd be like,

oh, well, no one was open. That's why he took the sack. No one was open. Or break a tan and trying to make something happen. Yep. Exactly.

It spent less than half a second on it. He's like, you know what? That's not there. I'm going here. And he was doing that the entire game today. And you combine that with some of the aggressiveness that they're building into the offense. I love some of these high lows that they have

with Higgins coming back on these inbreakers because you're doing two things there. You are creating an aggressive throw or an opportunity for an aggressive throw that's like a deep in 10, 12 yard throw, but you're allowing his decision making to take over because he can high, low people with structure of the play. It's like, oh, that, based on the positioning of this person, he's open. I don't even need to see him. And so you're allowing his decision making to shine while also allowing him to push the ball down the field a little bit, which is great. Higgins had an amazing day. I mean, that jump ball catch is crazy. The little whip for the touchdown for a guy that big to have that change of direction is like, ooh, that's pretty nice. And now my dad became a big T. Higgins fan today.

Because that's, why do you think I like ball winners? Like it's like, but that's, you watch him. It's just like, that's a receiver man. Well, you watch it now and you watch it all the whole thing. to come together, right? He is, if I were a Bengals fan, I'd be just like, I'd be on cloud nine right now after watching him today because you have him, you have the receivers, you have mixing, the line is still a concern. 77 was to not shower himself in glory late in the game today, which is fine. That was always going to be like the hole on the offensive line.

And he was a couple rough moments in this game. but I think overall, like the vision, it really shine through today. I loved even a little tiny thing. The Tyler Boyd touchdown, they're in Empty, and it's Sticknod for a touchdown. It's a simple little thing, but they run stick all the time out of empty, right? Like any team from that tree is going to or any team period is going to. So they have two little outroutes, and the way that the structure of the play is, it's empty. The guys on the right side are Boyd, Uzama, and Mixon.

the guys on the left side are Higgins and Jemar Chase. So the post safety is shaded over that way. He's got to give help on those guys. So there's no one in the middle of the field. Faked out route. Tyler Boyd breaks it up. Easy touchdown. And it's just like,

all right. That's an easy one. Like that's a by design touchdown. Yes. But they earned plenty of them today. It was a well-rounded offensive performance. Putting void at the number three spot instead of a tight end. Because usually that would be a tight end there.

And it's like, okay, no, it's put our really awesome route runner at the number three spot. And that's, yep, like we say, what we just talk about with the, you know, the other teams. It's just it's execution and it's design. And it's just, oh, yeah, our A plus player put it right on the money right on time and that our very good slot guy making a play. Like that gets rewarded more often than not. Should we start mentioning Joe Burroughs name when we're talking about MVP's? I don't think so.

But I mean, but now he's now you can see that being a path for him, if that makes sense. You know, I don't know if their record is good enough. And I don't, I'm not talking about the. AP most valuable player award. I'm talking about when we're talking about, when we're having a discussion about the most valuable player in the NFL this season, I feel like he deserves a cursory mention now.

You look at it. So on passes, which is, we'll get to this in a second. On attempted throws, the only person who is averaged a better EPA per attempt this season in the NFL than Joe Burrow is Aaron Rogers. Okay.

Who we said last week was, playing the best football in the league right now. So pretty good company. Overall, he is ninth in EPA per dropback because he leads the league in Sacks. Yeah. If you look at it though, it's we talk sacks, you can put a lot of sacks on quarterbacks. Yeah. His is not.

I want to say he's in the bottom third of the league and according to PFF in the amount of the percentage of his pressures that he's responsible for. He's like 21st out of 31st. And he's got he gets out of. about five sacks a game. Yes. The line is a problem. The line is a problem.

And he leads the league in interceptions, but if you look at it, he's had terrible interception luck this year. I mean, the turnover worthy plays that he's had, he's like 16 turnover worthy plays. 16, 14 of them have been picked off. I mean,

some of them were not even turn over worthy plays that turn into interceptions. Remember that chase drop. So I don't know if the numbers will be there, but he has 30 touchdowns after today. And he's probably going to throw for almost 5,000. yards and he is central to what they've done. I mean,

their offense maybe isn't good enough overall for him to win it. They're probably not going to win enough games. But the fact that he's second to Rogers and when the ball leaves his hand in efficiency this year, I think says a lot about how well he's played the position. Yeah. And it's, and it looks that way. And that's the thing. It's like, it's him creating this stuff.

That's what's cool. It's not like, oh, the offense is this. And his offensive lines, give him five seconds in the pocket. It's like, no, it's like, All those good plays, you go, man, that was a great play by Burrow. You know, all those plays, you're just like, man, that was a great throw. Man, that was a great scramble. This shit isn't cheap, man.

No. This is not cheap. He led the NFL, I think, maybe second to Justin Fields coming into this week in Air Yards on Blitzes. If you look at it, he's ever seen. Justin Fields, like 20? Oh, it's some stupid. It's something so stupid. But if you look at it, right now, he is averaging about the same air yards per attempt this season as Josh Allen.

And so these are not cheap yards. That's fun. He is pushing the ball down the field. He is playing a different style of quarterback than he did last year. And they're reaping the benefits. I mean, this is, again, I feel like their line could come back to bite them. Likely will come back to bite them in a huge moment. But this is one of those things where this is great if you're a Bengals fan.

I mean, even if it doesn't happen this year, even if you fall short in the playoffs, it looks like they're going to win the AFC North. They're probably going to host a playoff game. I mean, I think you run a game. into trouble sometimes thinking this will be the start of something, right? When you kind of crown your team in that way. But that's when you stumble into the playoffs like a great defense, shit like that. When you have an ascending quarterback and a core of skill position players, they're going to

be around for the next few years, I think that's when you can get really excited about where you're going. And I think that's exactly where the Bengals are right now. See the vision. That's all you could ask for. When your number one pick, you're like, yes, we hit it. We're good. Okay.

Hit it in, then some. I mean, he is playing. It's not just functional quarterback. It's playing quarterback as well as any non, like super veteran in the league. Like the fact that Aaron Rogers is playing better than Joe Burrow right now,

it's probably okay, considering Aaron Rogers is one of like the three greatest quarterbacks of all time. Like that's fine. Bengals fans, it's okay if Aaron Rogers is more valuable right now than Joe Burrow. You guys are going to be all right. All right. Kansas City Chiefs,

we don't have to spend a ton of time on this. You have my attention. I mean, just casually, they're going to be the number one seat in the AFC. Most likely it's going to go through Arrowhead. We just wasted a lot of time in late September, early October worrying about this. We shouldn't even focus on them until Halloween, which, you know, Michael Myers. There's so many. When you start watching, when your Halloween marathon starts on like October 29th every single year,

when you go back and you watch the original and you're like, how many of these do I really want to watch? And then you're finding yourself watching H20 at 3 in the morning. Text me because that's when we'll start talking about the chiefs next year. Oh, it's chief season. Yeah, just send the jackalanner. Like I'll just send you a shot of that. And it's like, okay, now we can talk about the chiefs.

I mean, we talk about a million times not just with the offense and Mahomes and everything, but just even with Spags. He gets better as the season goes along. The defense gets better. It's like, oh my God, I feel like, yeah, we're on repeat. I feel like this last three years with them. It's like this is just what they are. They, I mean, what they're, what they've honed in on, it's going to sound, oh my, okay,

real quick, I have another note because I, this only thing I'll mention about the Steelers, uh, offense today is, did you like how they didn't have been big Ben turn his back on the play action? They ran a flea flicker. It was the ugly flea flicker I've ever seen in my entire life. He's sailed it. I can't, I can't do it anymore with them. I can't.

If they make the playoffs, I don't know what I'm going to do. I know. I can't either. And when TJ Watts out, I'm always like, I love you making Fitzpatrick, but I can't. I can't do it with offense anymore. The no fly zone is, you are so right. I mean, they are in the no fly zone. I can't do it anymore.

I know. Okay, but back to the chiefs, some fun, the fun offense. It's cool to see, we've seen it sprinkle the last few weeks. I don't think they've like solved a coverage or anything like that. Did you see actually the Steelers defense was running some late rotation stuff? Like they were like, okay, we're going to try to do what the chargers did. and it did not matter because Mahomes is just

they're doing the on schedule stuff like they're they've kind of like honed in what RPO's they're running I want to actually look maybe the last couple of weeks on what they're always going to run RPAs like Annie Reid's kind of committed to that we should do like a deep dive in the next couple weeks because we have really studied their offense for a Friday show in a little while I think that should be on our itinerary we're doing podcast production here alive on the show we get we have our notes I'll write it down right now I got I got it ready for Thursday but that that

That's the way. They've honed in on what that is. I saw there's running more counter now in the run game. There's just the use. I can't believe Blake Bell has become one of their most important players because it's just his use as the inline tight end. So Kelsey can be split out, you know, not so much day, but previous weeks, that's helped their offense. They're like, okay, just like we just saying with the Cowboys, they found there's part two of the season offense. And they're like, okay, what hits are we going to do now? They're running curl flat again, Hank, also known as Hank. I don't say in the first half of the year, I didn't see them run it once. They used to spam the crap out of that play on second down. And now they're getting back, they're getting back to the basics. And that's like,

helped them find answers. I think it's helping them all play faster. And then Mahomes can do, okay, I'm going to get out of the pocket and throw a ball to number 40 gore on a broken play. Well, you know what you reminded me of watching their offense today? It reminded me of watching the bills today.

It had a very similar feel to it. Same question marks. There was a play that they had to, I think it was Williams down to get them inside. like that 12 yard line. Look the exact same. Play action, dump it off to him as a checkdown,

gain 12 yards. They did it a couple different times today. So you have the combination of, we're going to chew off what's there. If you're going to give this to us, we're going to take it consistently, patiently, methodically.

And there are going to be moments where our quarterback is going to make you put your head in your hands and wonder how the hell you got to this place in the world and wondering what you did wrong in order to bring you to this moment. I play in the NFL, right? Like guys aren't supposed to get away with this. This is like that's oh the touchdown to Pringle. Yes.

I mean, just stupid. Yeah. You forget that it's so easy to take it for granted. It's so easy to take him for granted. Then he does shit like that where I mean, it's really some stupid arm angle stuff today where he's just conjuring stuff out of thin air. And that's what he can do. He could always do it. Yeah.

I know. And then like, yeah, the change of the arm angles. That's what so. He throws like Gumbie, like just like how he just creates that whip with his arm. It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't because he can stay accurate. He can get the throws up and over guys somehow, some way, even though he's thrown sidearm, which still blows my mind every time I see it. It's so cool. It's cool to see it again. They're like, okay, good, okay, good. You're going to be fun in the playoffs. Like, you're the chiefs that we know. You're not the chiefs that making us all look like idiots when we said you're a Super Bowl favorite. Like, you know, it's like, okay, this is what they are. This is not, they had their blips in September. They've had the regression now on turnovers as far as like the tip balls aren't turning into crazy intersection. now. Like,

and now they're getting into the creation stuff. They're getting outside their first 15 plays. They're actually doing stuff now. Like, it's not like they hit a wall. It's like now that they're adding their second act right now is looking really good. Um, like a lot more consistency to what they're doing.

And just have a number 15 helps. You know, just I think that quarterback creativity really shine through this week. If you have a quarterback who can just really create plays out of nothing, but also just all platform and off schedule and just kind of pull a rabbit out of a hat. We'll talk about a quarterback later who can't. who can't do that. And it feels like he can't do that.

Like it's just trying to squeeze something that's not there. And when you watch somebody like Mahomes or Josh Allen, you just feel how different it is. All right. One more here. It's time for the State Farm. Surprisingly great performance of the week presented by State Farm. The Indianapolis Colts.

I guess like it's unbelievable. I mean, this is a good team. And it's like, we thought the starters were good teams. It's like, yeah, let's just play backups and put together a complete game. Go on the road to play a playoff team from the NFC without your interior starting offensive line. You lose Eric Fisher on, I think the first drive of the game early. Or the second drive. It's very early in the game.

So you're playing without 80% of your starting offensive line. Carrey Willis goes down right before the game with COVID. Darius Leonard goes down right before the game with COVID. Julian Blackman's already on IR. So you're playing with a tattered team. And then over the course of the game, you have guys like George Odom, J. Dahlia. Speed, all of these guys making plays. And for the second week in a row, it feels like a program win to me for the Colts.

Where the guys in charge of this and the vision and just the tenor of the organization. It's like this is what we are as a team. That's what won again. and I just think that they're still, we could talk about it, just kind of the things in the back of your mind about what might hold them back. But what they have, the foundation of what it is, what's in their bones is just really easy to feel good about. They have an identity. And whether I'm not just talking about scheme and stuff like that, it's a bunch of tough, smart players. Like, I mean, that's what it just feels like.

It's a well-coached team. Like, Frank Gregg is a hell of a coach. He's just really a hell of a football coach because just how they time stuff up. I would say actually it was a defensive play, but it was the bot snap, actually, the Cardinals bot snap that turned into the Kyle or throwaway, whatever you want to call it, turn into the safety. What we talked about with the Colts defense is they don't bring a lot of pressure, but when they do, you know, they throw some heat at you. It's like they time it up just at the right time to bring that sweet chin music at you. And so there's the all out pressure look. And on that play, there's a post safety.

And this is a TV copy. So I want to look on all 22 of this. They show the pressure look. And if I'm playing the Colts and they show me a pressure look, I'm like, these assholes are dropping out. Yeah, yeah, they're just,

they're just feigning. They're trying to get me a throw hot. Yeah, okay, yeah, you're, yeah, of course you're bringing pressure here.

We're backed up. Yeah, okay. We're not, we're not doing that. Okay, Cardinals are working with some, you know,

scattered, scattered brain offense alignment. Well, that causes him to have the bad snap. They would have gotten a free runner on that play anyways, because they overloaded the side, on the pressure. And on top of it,

if you look, Christian Kirk is running a hot route. Cliff Kingsbury has old school hot rules with, with how they do it, where they adjust their routes. They side adjust. So like a guy comes on a pressure, okay,

I could be running a corner route on this, but now I'm running a slant because I'm going to replace the pressure. Some offenses have that. Some don't. Some have built in hots like you talked about with Burrow. So he's adjusting his route. Why that post safety was staying at post safety, even though it was covered zero.

It was because he was belining down to knock, out. He would have, he would have like killed Christian Kirk on it. And I was like, I want to watch on $1.22 just to make sure that's what was happening. But they knew what their hot answer was. So they had the adjustment on the cover zero rather than just winding up and cover zero and like, okay, everyone's pressed across the board or, you know, having five yards, five yards off and we're going to hide it this way. They showed one look, brought the pressure, got a free runner, cause a guy that had a bot snap. And they had an answer for their hot answer. It was like, oh, yeah. that like that that's they deserve to get that safety even if it looked like oh that was a bad play from

the cardinals it was like the process of the Colts led to that heat led to that pressure um yeah more ways than one so it's like god that's such good stuff that's their defense and their offense just seems to just be able to create plays with all these players that we love like nah he minds well that's why I wanted to talk about so I want to talk about the Hilton touchdown the the TY Hilton touchdown it feels like the offensive version of what you just said so they're down inside the five, they send Naheem Hines in jet motion from right to left. You see Byron Murphy and Buda Baker communicating. And I think that what they're saying on that play is, Byron Murphy is saying to Buda Baker, you're doing what I was supposed to do.

So you just stay out there. And I'm going to play center field. And just if we're in cover one, it's man in this play. I'm going to play this zone right here. So they're all over the place because of the way that Heinz is moving. On the play, Buda Baker stays on high. And Mn's, Murphy loses T.Y. Hilton as he's coming across. That is so perfect, not only because it's a really smart way to just create misdirection in the red zone. Nahim Hines' skill set. He's one of the only running backs in the league that would make you freak out in that moment like that. I said this when they played against the Patriots.

They did a very similar thing where in the red zone they use him as eye candy. his quickness in those short areas when he's going in orbit motion, when he's going in jet motion, all that misdirection. He looks like Tyree Kill. That's what he looks like to me. It's a short area quickness. They are the ways that they move on those sorts of designs resembles each other to me.

How many guys move like that where you can just have that acceleration in and out of those cuts and just start to make a defense short circuit because of what you're doing in those moments, And it leads to easy touchdowns. Like easy stuff. And it's one or two. He's a matchup problem. Yes. And but he,

it's that is why I like this team so much because you have these guys that are one of one. Like they are just their own singular player as they relate to the rest of the NFL population. Nahim Hines isn't like the greatest player in the world. No. The best running back in the league is out of his team. But what he does for them in those sorts of moments is like, That's fucking beautiful. Like that is, they have players who are their own unique entity and they use them well.

And they just do it with all of these guys. The other side of this that I wanted to talk about very quickly, I thought Carson Wentz made a lot of really impressive plays in this game. Tough ones. Yes. I mean, obviously the touchdown to Patman is a silly throw. Like really impressive off-schedule play. But he made like four or five plays in. in this game, either on third down or a really high degree of difficulty plays.

He drives me nuts. He terrifies me. But I think in this game, he showed why you can live with some of that every once in a while because of the playmaking DNA that he has at times. Yeah. An offense, you're talking about the red zone play too. The one that sticks out to me is he hit Pittman on a, it was a drive concept. Drive is crossword with a dig behind it.

And he hit the that we talk about built in hots. They have a built in hot. The crosser is the one. You get the 201 level answer, which you hit the dig, but that's a whole other story. But Wentz, they had a free runner on it.

His arm's getting hit on it. He's able to hit the drive. That's why big, strong athletic quarterbacks help because they can make those throws. They're not, they don't get their arm hit. Also, it's like their arm flails back.

The ball pops up in the air like Mike Glennon's last week. So it's like he hits this drive concept. He knows he's getting heated up. And that's worth talking about. knowing what the other team likes to do. All these coaches do match up scouting. They break down the games. They like to do this on third down.

They like to do this on second along, yada, yada, yada. They had the answer right there. Drive. Drive has answers to every coverage that you're going to run, maybe not too man, but it has an answer. And Wentz knows to go do it's hot. It's a free, the Cardinals had a bust on it. So that's the thing.

This is a team Colts don't beat themselves because they have answers. They have sound concepts. And then on the flip side, you have the Cardinals who do some nice things. but sometimes they had these bus. And guess what? The Colts found them. They're like, hey, we know that that's what their answer is going to be. It's going to be a pressure on this third and four.

I want to say it was. Hey, we're going to hit our hot answer. It was third and four. It was third and four with nine-ish minutes left in the second quarter. I know the exact play that you're talking about. It's in my nose. Yes. Because it was one of those plays.

It's like he made a lot of third down plays in this game where it gets pressure looks. And so the next play was the strip sack that got nullified. It's what's the one's experience, right? That's right there's always going to be. Always going to be a mixed bag. But when you have other guys on that team playing well, and again, like you said, they don't beat themselves. And to come into this game with all those guys out and to look like the same team, I mean, it's just, God, it's really, really good, man. It's cool.

So on the other side of this, talk about a team that does beat themselves, a ton of miscues from the Cardinals in this game. It just feels like they're shredding in the wrong direction. I don't know exactly what's wrong. I don't know how to pinpoint exactly what's wrong, but I just got a bad feeling about them. I know. I mean, even though last week when you rewatched the game against the Lions and it was just like, oh, the Lions kicked their ass. Like the Lions were on. Everyone's on top of their stuff now. Now, and we talk about ability to pivot, ability to have changeups. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Your change up can't be, hey, coward, do more stuff. Like, you know, it's like, hey, we got to give them some answer, give some gimmies, you know, give them, stop making it so hard on themselves. And they had done that. But now their easy button was what? Iso up DeAndre Hopkins and throw stop balls and, you know, Contested catches to him, Aegee green a little bit as well.

Okay, D'Andre's out. They're still throwing now those stop balls to Christian Kirk, which Christian Kirk has had a great season working from the slot. That's how he got unlocked this year is working from the slot. Now he's on the outside and they're still running the same shit. So it's kind of like one of those things where it's like, hey, the X's and those are fine, but you got to understand who's your queen on the chessboard, who's your pawn, who's your rook? Like, you know, these guys actually are going to have different ratings, even if you play Madden. And like that might have been an advantage for you when you're spamming it throughout the year.

But now it's like, okay, now it's a 50-50 ball now or a 30-70 ball. And that's what it's just like they don't have these easy plays to go to other than mesh. And then we saw the Lions just took mesh away from them last week. It's like, okay, now what do you do these other? You can't just do a little gimmicky play. So like you actually have to have like your other answers. And it seems like they keep struggling to find them. Even that Antoine Wesley play, I mean, that's a high degree of a difficulty throw.

I mean, that's like a, and he's made plenty of those throws. Kyle has made a ton of those this year where he's dropping the ball in the bucket, but he makes that stuff look easy. It is not. It's hard. And a lot of it feels hard for them right now. Yes, it does. It absolutely does.

I mean, and weeks ago against the bears, like they, they had a couple concepts where it's like, okay, they would have had an answer, but then Kyle makes it, like you say, like an unbelievable throw. Like just an A tier throw, that's hard. That's really hard to do. To do consistently. Yes, to do consistently. And like that's why we go nuts when we see them because it's like, holy crap, someone actually completed that. Not that like, oh, yeah, that's another basic ass throw.

It's like that's, that's why it's hard. They don't, it feels nothing is basic to them. Nothing feels or everything's basic, I guess, in a way. This metaphor is getting away from me. But it's, it's, it's holiday season. It's late. But, no, but it's, I think that's just what it is. They don't have that easy button right now, that way that's other than cow are just, hey, be a god for a couple plays a game.

And it kind of like, that's why I feel so. tight on them sometimes. All right, guys, remember, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Get a quote today. Why don't you explain this to me like I am an eight-year-old? All right. Every Sunday, a few things happen over the course of the NFL day that we need a little bit of an explanation on.

And today, that's going to start with how the Chargers lost to the Texans. I need the Chargers to explain themselves. What the hell happened? I wish I could tell you because it's like, oh, what easy answer I can give you? is when your front seven is built on being Joey Bosa and the BOSATs and Joey Bosa is not there. It's like stinging the police and sting leaving. That's kind of kind of how it ended up for them. Oh, man.

That's this is, remember I just got so excited about them. We were talking about it after a Friday show and I was just talking to you. I was like, man, you know, defense has done some stuff. I got, I'm excited to study them. Yeah, never mind. Maybe I'm going to push that off for a couple of weeks. So let's let's talk about some numbers here. It relates to the Texans rushing offense against the Chargers today.

All right. The Texans hadn't run the ball. They'd run the ball for over 100 yards once since week two. They ran it for almost 200 today against the Chargers. They came into this game averaging 3.22 yards per carry, which was the worst mark in a league by a lot. They averaged 5.25 today. They came into the game, the Texans did,

with a 24.5% rushing success rate, which was dead last in the NFL. No one else in the league is below 30% on the season. They were 40% success today. They were so good today that they are no longer dead last in the league in EPA per rush. No way. That quality belongs to the Atlanta Falcons now. Congratulations, Texans.

You have gotten out of the basement thanks to what the Chargers put on the field today defending the run. The Rex Burkhead touchdown, if you go back and watch it, jury Tilleri gets blown off the ball like, four yards. Yep. This would be a problem against anyone. The Texans offensive line wasn't playing in this game because they all have COVID. Their center was a guy named Jimmy Morrissey and a guy named Cole Toner was playing left guard and they were just blowing him off the ball.

It's like this can't happen. And it was happening consistently today. The fact that that's been the weakness for so long of this year and it's just, you're like, it shows how hard it is to play in that kind of way, I guess, and that kind of defense when you don't have anybody that can hold their gap, much less play gap and a half. You know, it's that type of like performance is just kind of like what,

it's really hard when you have a bad run defense and the other team is like, okay, and we're willing to do it. Like, we're willing to just pound the rock against you in many different ways too. Like they're running different concepts to get them, hit them on the outside, inside,

whatever you want to talk about. Like, there was another play. God, I don't know who the nose was. I don't think it was Tilly, but there was one where he didn't even get blown off the ball. The nose at the snap backs up like he's like almost like a spy because I think I think he was, I don't know why. And it was a long, long run.

It might have been a long touchdown, but it was a long run. But he backs up and I was like, what are you doing? So it's like now, okay, you're not the most talented guy, but at least give yourself a chance. Like at least be a roadblock. There are like a speed bump for the offense. But now he's just, you're like, I don't know. It's like it took like an offense of pass at the. nose tackle position. And that's not with that. I'm not saying that the blockers buried him,

guys. I'm saying that he took a, he stood up taking a step back. He took himself out of the play. He literally took himself out of the play. And I'm still trying my mind has been blown. That's why it's hard for me to describe right now because it's just like it still shocked me what happened. And it's like, woof. And okay, Herbert had the like the interception early when he was going for the throat. And it's like, I got to watch what the offense did too. Because like, oh, no. Come on. I was just just pumping you guys up now. Like, what are you doing to me? But that's what. You see the blemishes with this Chargers team. If you can't stop the run and there's going to be teams, again, once the playoffs get hit or once really once these last two weeks and the playoffs hit, it's a week to week game.

Teams are going to go, you are bad at this. We don't care about stats anymore. We are going to pound away at that and pick at that scab over and over and over. And we saw what the Texans did. Texas is like, we want to win. They want to be competitive. They hired all these vets before the season because they're la la la lay down there. But it's like, that's the thing.

It's like they were picking at it. Now imagine what a better team would do to them. And now I understand that there are guys out, right? Like, yeah, Michael Davis misses the game. Derwin James doesn't play. It doesn't matter. When you're playing the Texans, you're playing against a bunch of fringe NFL players anyway. Her are still playing, right?

Yours against them's? Or yours against theirs? It should not be this big of a problem. The fact that Chris Conley and something more, whoever, are hitting you on deep shots with Davis Mills playing quarterback, if you're at a, AFC playoff team, even if you miss a couple guys with this weird situation going on, this still shouldn't happen. So you combine just the big plays they gave up on the ground with some of the shots that

Davis Mills hit down the right sideline in this game and the turnovers. I mean, the interception he threw the first one, it looked like he thought it was cover two and he thought that that backside safety was not going to be there. It was tied down. And it's just a poor, it's a mistake, right? Right, right? It was a poor decision. It was. And then obviously the Justin Jackson fumble is a backbreaker.

So a couple more turnovers than you could afford and a defense that just couldn't stop anyone. And this team is 31st in the league in EPA per rush over the course of the season. Again, you could feel it. And if you're going to play against some teams in the AFC that can run the ball on you in the playoffs, it's going to be a problem. And now we've gotten to a place where this could seriously do them in the playoff race. I believe they're in the eight seed now. and they're currently out of it.

Obviously, the Ravens are trending in the wrong direction. The Ravens have the Rams and the Steelers and their next two. They absolutely could drop one of those. But now the Raiders are back in play. Like the Raiders are still alive after beating the Broncos today. The Dolphins, if they beat the Saints potentially could be in play here. I mean, the Chargers had a real chance to kind of salt this thing away in the same way that the Colts did. And they didn't.

And now it feels like the AFC playoff races up for grabs again. Yeah. The Dolphins guy, you know, beat the fighting Ian books. You know, how would they, they called Drew Breeze and he sent him a picture that he was on the golf course. That's exactly what I would have done. I totally support him. He's like, you see me on NBC right now? I'm not, you kidding.

I'm not going back there. Is my offensive line healthy? Oh, no. I don't know, I don't know, guys. I don't have Michael Thomas in there either. But, man, that's exactly it. It's like the good teams, they take advantage of this. Like, the Cowboys playing Washington tonight.

Okay. you could say, okay, the Washington's fielding a JV team. Okay, they're not the top tier. But look what the score was. Look how they handled it. And I get, you know, and I get it. The Chargers had guys out, but you still have your quarterback and you still have some dudes there, their, your starters.

It's like, you should be able to play. Like, you should be able to like not, okay, maybe not cover, which I, which you did, because I had you in my pick segment with Sheel, but like, at least win. You know what I mean? Like, you know, that's what, that's what was weird. Not what they lose by. They lost by 12. It didn't feel like 12 either.

It felt like a three score, you know, loss. Like that's, it was like the Texans control that game. How easily they were moving the ball in the fourth quarter and when the game was on the line and the fact that they were still running it down their throat, that felt really bad. And it just was one of those things. We can get really excited about Justin Herbert. We can get excited again about the direction the chargers are going in. This defense and some of the aspects to it feels like it's going to be a fatal flaw when it all comes down to it. Yep.

They need dudes, man. It's like you can do whatever you want. You can, yes, we can be okay. We can be sound and everything. but it's like having players matters. And that's the thing is like the easiest thing in offense could do if they're smart is just running the ball. It's hard to throw the ball. But if you're going to just go, hey, oh, we can just do the easy thing over and over.

Oh, okay, cool. Offensive line coaches go, ga, gosh. Like they're going to be so happy about it. But it's like that's like, that's tough. Now imagine going against, like I said before. It's like you go against a good team. I understand that too. It's like those are long days.

All right. Baker Mayfield. Explain yourself throwing four picks on Christmas as my grandmother is rooting so hard for you because she bet on the Browns because she hates Aaron Rogers so much. It was incredible. Oh my God. It was about to start the game.

And my stepdad convinced her to put money on the Browns because she's like, I can't stand Aaron Rogers. His hair is just so greasy and dirty. I hated so much. She just hate, it was amazing. And then obviously she gets her heartbroken. But Baker Mayfield throws four picks. And so we can talk about the interceptions individual if we want to.

We can talk about the performance overall. here is kind of my feeling after watching that game. He is so stiff in the way that he plays the position. His arm strength is fine. His arm talent, however we want to describe that, is so lacking when you compare it to the Allen's and the Mahomes. I know those guys are out of this world good, but that's the distinction here.

Having one of those guys versus not having one of those guys, when Baker has to come off something, he has to put everything into throws. So when he comes off something, he can't respond. He can't redirect without turning his entire body, resetting his feet, getting everything into it with all his cleats on the ground.

And that just, it forces him, there's rigidity to the way that he plays the position that puts him in a really bad spot. And that's beyond whatever physical limitations he has in terms of height or mobility, his decision-making qualms, whatever you have with that, watching him play the position and just the box that he has to play it in was really evident to me when watching that game on Saturday.

Absolutely. When you reset the throw, yes, it helps when you're a freak like Herbert, who's like 6-6 and it's so quick twitch. This is why actually I love Trevor Lawrence. And I mean, obviously, again, I'm very bold that I really like the number one pick. But it's like, why he's so big and so tall, but he is. so quick twitch and is so tight with his feet that the ability to redirect. It's so great you're talking about this.

That ability to redirect. That's the hard shit. Not only we talk about mental going one to two to three on stuff or short cutting and getting through your number three read right away. Everything with Baker, you can tell he's guessing on stuff mentally. Not everything, but you can tell sometimes he's like, okay, I'm not really sure what coverage I'm about to get here. I'm going to the right side.

Then when he gets into, I'm going to call it panic mode. That's when all comes unraveled. Because yes, like if you're not going to be the best athlete, and he's a fine athlete, I'll say he's okay. And you're not the biggest guy. I mean, he's thick, but he's not tall. Okay, all your mechanics and all the other stuff has to be tight. Yes.

Like you can't have any fat. Everyone wants to bring up the outlier of outliers, Drew Burries. You want to why Drew Breese lasted as long as he did at such a high level. It's because his shit was tight. It was like he had a no fat on his foot. Or his feet foot or anything like that. I was about to say feet work. Oh my God.

But any of his foot. All of his stuff. Everything was on time. He got reset on stuff. How's central time treating you, buddy? Oh, my God. How are you doing it over here? No, I'm so Pacific time, but it's just hanging with the parents.

I guess it just, it's, I'm on. But it's, man, but that's all the, that, like, Russell has some struggles sometimes with that too. Russell actually has pretty fairly good, okay mechanics, but then as soon as, you know, he can get laid on stuff. He can bounce too many times. But guess what? Russell's a very, very good athlete.

He's an incredible playmaker. Yes. That is the thing is we are, Baker's strengths, I struggle to identify them at this point. Because if you're not going to be able to beat people with quick decision making, which he can't. Those plays, that play that Burrow made, who won to Joe Mixon for the touchdown, Baker Mayfield cannot make that play.

He has never consistently made that play because he does not come off of it quick enough. So if you're not going to come off stuff fast enough, if you're not going to identify stuff fast enough, if you're not going to have just the otherworldly physical ability to make yourself right and pull things out of thin air. And your mechanics aren't going to be very good. Things are starting to unravel here. Correct.

And I, the four picks is worse than it actually was. The first interception, probably a penalty, right? And I understand why he throws that ball that out of the people's Jones. He sees the safety come down.

So the moment that free safety steps down, he's supposed to throw that ball. Yes. And he's an alert. And he's, that's held back just physically by the corner. You could have called that a penalty. the second interception, the one he sailed to Landry, that's unacceptable.

Like that's like that is, there's no excuse for that. That is the exact play where it's the mechanics plus the decision making plus everything. So feet are spread out. And because his feet get spread out. If you just do it, if you, I've talked about short stepping sometimes this happened. If you overstride or say you move your back foot wide, your shoulder is just naturally going to lift up. And he's not talented enough to adjust his. So that sounds really mean.

There's a number of pick. He was an Eisenhower. or everything. But if you're not talented enough or consistent enough to change your arm ankle to accommodate for that, and he's not. It's not his game. That's what I'm saying. He has to play the game in a box.

And when you have these guys that don't have to, it shows up. The third interception. The one where he tried to make that play down the left sideline, he can't do that. He can't do that off platform on the move like that, like some of these other guys can't. And I think sometimes his ambition outpaces what he actually brings to the position. And you have to play it perfectly. You have to check every single box with your decision making and your mechanics and just the details of the way that you're playing the position if you don't have that otherworldly playmaking ability and he doesn't. And it's just, that's to me, that was the biggest takeaway.

And the fourth interception, we can talk about again. There's another pass interference, whatever. That doesn't matter to me. Stokes dropped an interception. So we can throw another one in there. Exactly. To me, it's not about the box score. It's not about the results.

it's about the feeling you get watching him play. I know he's hurt. I know he's been hurt all year. But this is stuff that has been in the back of your mind before, even when this season, throw the season out at times. Does the injury, whatever? This stuff has been there already. And I think now it's just more pronounced because he's played dinged up all year.

I just think that you have to put him in such perfect conditions for him to play well. And when we've seen, again, what a guy like that. Josh Allen, what a guy like Patrick Mahomes gives you outside of perfect conditions. Because when these games get hard, when it's December, when it's Christmas, when you're fighting for playoff spots and trying to win championships, the games get hard. They're going to be hard. Ask Jimmy G. on Thursday night.

They're going to be hard. And when you have these guys that you have to point in the right direction and can't create anything for you, it becomes really, really difficult to win in these moments. And the thing is, when they repeat calls, because they do a lot in their, and their dropback game, he has his number one that he likes to throw. If they run double slants, he's thrown the same slant every single time. And that's when, okay, that's fine when you play a bad team or bad players. When you start playing these real games where these guys are studying the shit and you have now 16 weeks of film out there, they're going to go, okay, every time they're an empty,

they're going to go stick double slants. Okay, if we go to the double slant side, okay, jump it, drive it, because he's not going to adjust and throw the outside slant. He's not going to go stick and hit number two out there. So he's all or nothing on the one and done read. This is the same thing I've talked about with Russ, the one and done read. Okay. But if that's not open, then now what? Okay.

And he does not have that second aspect. He doesn't have that. He doesn't have his get out. He has no get out jail free card. He's none. Everything has to be perfect how he wants to live. That's to be an NFL quarterback. Everybody has different answers that they have to get to.

His is just really tough right now because he puts himself in that world. Like I get, I've gotten asked this couple times this year. What's the best off? for Baker. And right now I don't know. And that, that's scary. I mean, that really is because I don't know it's been his rookie years a long time ago now. Like I like those throws, those seam benders that he was hitting that offense. It was like, okay, I could see some stuff there. But now it's like, and they run those and he doesn't want to throw him because he's late and he has to throw the full torque throws. So everything just comes unraveled. Like you said, it's the injuries. Yeah, do add up. But now it's more pronounced.

And it's like, ooh, it's a lot of, a lot of blemishes right now. If you're not going to be one of those guys, who is just that hyper talented player, that hyper talented quarterback that can make things out of nothing, then you need to play on time all the time. And he doesn't. And that's the problem is that he doesn't fall into one of those buckets that you need to fall into. And I think we're seeing what that looks like in real time.

All right. Last thing here that we can talk about this very quickly. I need someone to explain what the Jaguars did at the end of that game. I wanted to too. We'll start with running of the run play with no timeouts. and then not having another play ready to go. When they lined up to do it, I was like, are they really going to spike this ball right now?

Are they really going to spike this ball on third down? I can believe it. I lost my mind. I was yelling at the TV. I was like, what are you doing? I think it was 19 seconds when the second down, when the guy got tackled,

I think it was Marvin Jones at the one or two. Plenty of time to get a playoff. You know you have four to five seconds. That's the typical time for you know to run a play. 19 seconds is plenty of time to get to a no huddle pass play. I'm sure they have 10 of them they can get to. They panicked and went spike, spike, spike. And then the fourth down, Tavon Austin doesn't, I think it was Tavon Austin, doesn't know where to line up.

I didn't know where to line up. I started laughing so hard when the ball was snapped and the flag came out. I was like, that's it. That's it. Knew exactly what happened. I think my sister knew what happened. I'm not trying to doggar. She's seeing a lot of football game.

She goes, she goes, you can't do that? And I was like, nope, that's a legal formation, illegal ship. And that was it. He doesn't know where to line up because they probably went to some. game playing red zone call rather than just call play. Everyone knows because they're playing like, oh my God. It's just like it's so annoying because you don't have to get into this world. And Trevor Lawrence is trying to snap the ball because they're taking so long to get the play call in

because they're probably panicking on the play call. And then on top of it, then they don't know how to line up. So he's snapping a ball. And then, oh, it's all just, it's just a mess. Great schlock, as I said before. It was so ugly. Every week. So, so ugly.

So the last thing we're very quickly, you wanted to talk about this. the Seahawks four-minute approach against the Bears today. They blow another double-digit lead. They're the first team this season to lose multiple games after leading by double digits in the fourth quarter. And both of those games have come at home. I know. It used to be a fortress there. Okay.

They get the first down. I think they're about, they get to like the plus 30 to the Bears 30-yard line. Okay, they're up whatever they were up seven or eight. And okay. Oh, they're up seven because, yeah, the Bears were more for two. So they're up seven. They get a field goal there. that's basically an ice the game.

At least you can milk the clock that you're supposed to, that's what it's called a four minute drive. Four minute drive is because you're, okay, we're trying to burn four minutes off the clock. That's an idea of it. You're at the plus 30. You are golden right now.

First down, the guy was out of bounds. So at first I thought I was a running clock. But really, when it's inside five minutes, the clock stops. So if you go out of bounds, some people don't know that.

If it's outside five minutes, then the clock will keep winding. But so da-da-da-da-da-da-da. They go no huddle on first down and I'm hurry up no huddle and they stamped a ball with I was trying to I'm still trying to figure out why but did they try to catch him with 12 guys I I want to look at that one okay so that's that they get a holding on the next play the backup tight end gets a holding it was a garbage call by the way but he gets a holding it happens all right so now it's second along okay they go a jet sweep

play to de eskridge and okay they jet sweep do you know why you don't want to do a jet sweep in four minute mode go out of bounds outside play that almost goes out of us out of fell in bounds. He barely. He tried to get out of bounds, but he fell in bounds. Yes. He almost Marion Barbered it. Oh, my God.

I was like, I was not going to say that. I'm glad you did. As soon as I remember Bears, I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, my God. That we should have been in the playoffs that year.

We, I was a Bears fan of that year. But yeah. It still pains me. The jet sweep. Okay, so now it's third and forever because they lose two yards on that jet sweep. They passed the ball. At that point on third and 22, I think it was.

3rd 19. Let the clock run. Let it go. Yeah, just hand it off and we'll pin them with a punt. They call a passplay and it's incomplete. And it's just like, what are you doing? So it was just a comedy of errors.

And then the, court, it just seemed like it was going to happen. Like, as soon as that sequence happened, I was like, they're not winning this game. Like,

against Nick Foles. That's the thing is, oh my God. It's like, it shouldn't be this way. It's like, it's not that hard. Like,

it's not that hard to like just, just, I love being aggressive in those situations. Sometimes teams get to heavy personnel. and they try to dial up 22 personnel runs and you kind of just tee it off on them, defense's tee off on them. You already did the hard part. You got to the plus down.

Okay, stop being aggressive. You're good. You're good. It just milk the clock. Just take it. But yeah. So I'm a little frustrated by it because it just didn't have to happen. But yeah, go bears, I guess.

Bear down for you. Oh, my God. I just, who cares? I mean, good for them. I know. I'm glad they won. It just at this point, I'm just sim to end. It really doesn't matter.

man. It really does not matter. And we are going to have, we're not spending more time on that game because we're going to have an extended Seahawks conversation a little bit later in the week with the guests that we're bringing on. So you guys come back and check that out on Wednesday. We're going to do a deep dive on the Seahawks. And it almost is more fitting that they lost that game before we had that conversation on Wednesday. All right. Before we get out of here, we're going to figure out who got the belt.

It's the Joe show, starring Joe. doing all sorts of Joe things. Thanks, Kett. I love it now. If you guys haven't guessed, Joe Burrow gets about this week. Oh, really? I thought it was the Joe Millionaire show that's coming out this week. God, he just, I love Kent now.

It was just wrestling base before. Now we're just spinning the wheel. He's slowly getting deeper into the bag here. I mean, I don't know who else could get it today. He was phenomenal. 500 yards really deserves it. I mean, the 500-yard performance that, again, He earned.

I mean, there were so many, just beautiful plays, beautiful throws in that game. And it really does feel like we're seeing that. We're seeing him kind of take that step to that upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks. He's played extremely well this year. And he makes them must watch. They're a flawed team. I think that, again, their line, I'm concerned about it in terms of their ceiling in 2021, 2021, but going forward, it is really, really hard to not get excited about him and this team.

It's he, you always want the guy, especially, duh, but you always want your quarterback to see him make other guys better, make your players, the teammates around them better. Not only just passing the ball, and I just want to keep bringing it up too, it's like, yes, they have the line blemishes. And yeah, and that probably will be their fatal flaw once they play better teams. But it's the fact that he helps them so much that he is helping them by getting the ball off either quick or then create in the place and doing the two things that help the offensive line the most. That's what a real quarterback is doing. It's not making it hard. It's not like, oh, we got to dial up another play. We got to dial up another naked, a pull up naked to get an explosive play.

It's like everything's on schedule and on time. And when it's not, he's doing the creation stuff. That's what top tier guys do. And that's what he's playing like. And it's not just, yes, it's a banged up Ravens team. But guess what? It's like he was doing it every single snap. And he's been doing it.

He's doing the right stuff. The fact that his eyes are in the right place, his decision making is there. The fact that he's just playing on time, the missiles he's thrown on some of those. inbreakers to T. Higgins. I don't care if it was a college team. The way he's playing the position, he's checking all of the boxes right now. Watch the second half against anyone that's like, oh, okay, it's against Bad Ravens. Watch the second half against the 49ers a couple weeks ago.

And it's like, that was another performance of his. That's like, holy shit, you're doing some good stuff. That drive. Like that singular drive that he had against the Niners, just like, wow. Yep. And he has those moments right now. Very few quarterbacks have I enjoyed watching as much as I've enjoyed watching him over the last month or so.

To me, it is appointment television. And we're going to see them in the playoffs most likely. They're probably going to win the AFC North after winning that game today if they can take care of business here over the next couple weeks. And the way he's playing, it feels like they deserve it. Obviously, the season from hell for the Ravens in terms of injuries. But I don't want to see the Steelers in the playoffs. I don't want to see this Browns team playing this way in the playoffs.

I want to see Joe Burrow because that's where he's gotten to in kind of the NFL pecking order in my mind. Completely agree. We talked about like you're we were talking about playoffs teams a week or two ago. and it's like, well, I want to see, you know, Justin Herber in the playoffs. I want to see Josh Allen in the playoffs. I want to see, you know, I want to see Joe in the playoffs as well. Like Joe Burrow, like he is, like you said, appointment viewing. It's fun to watch and play quarterback, which is, that's rare to say.

It's really cool. All right, guys, that's all we got for this week. Please send in your questions for this week's mailbag. Mitch is back this week. You can give us a call at 872-22-733. You can also send us an email at athletic football show at gmail. Please get those in by 1 p.m. Eastern on Monday. We'll be back with Mitch on Tuesday's show.

Until then, please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. I really appreciate that. I think of it as a late Christmas gift to me. If you can leave us a little review if you like the show. Also, please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. I highly encourage you guys to do that. If you have not already, we will be back with a full slate of shows this week.

For now, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.