The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 3 recap: Chaos reigns, the Vikings do it again, Matt LaFleur is a wizard, the Cowboys are in trouble, and more

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Four teams are 3-0 as we head into the final week of September. One is the Chiefs. The other three are the Vikings, Steelers and Seahawks. It's safe to say chaos remains the only constant in the NFL. Well, chaos and the Chiefs. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen wrap up a wild Week 3 on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.RundownChaos reigns supremeMore likely to win their division...Steelers or Seahawks?Minnesota Vikings...You Have My AttentionMatt LaFleur...You Have My AttentionSaquon Barkley and Dallas Goedert...You Have My AttentionTampa Bay Buccaneers...WTF?!?Raiders defense...WTF?!?Shane Waldron...WTF?!?Justin Fields attacking the middleMalik Nabers giving off Ja'Marr Chase vibesJauan Jennings has a big dayThe Cowboys defense just might be badIt's So Over for the DolphinsWhat We Learned TodayHost: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassFollow Mike on X: @SandoNFLTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome. The Athletic Football Show. Brought to you by Thursday Night Football only on Prime Video. I am Robert Mays. Week three, a chaotic week three in the NFL. Me and Derek Classen dug into all of the week three action, the most important things that happened on Sunday. We started with that idea of just being a chaotic day in the league.

We had two and no teams that looked great for the first couple weeks, like the Saints and the Bucks, they lose on Sunday. The Ravens are now one and two. The Niners are now one and two. just feels like we're searching for who the good teams are, who we can rely on, and what that is going to look like moving forward. We dug into the Vikings grabbing our attention with another fantastic performance against the Houston Texans.

The Packers, again with Malik Willis, did much of the same in a fantastic repeat performance after his first start last week. We hit on the Eagles and what guys like Saquan Barkley and Dallas Goddard did in a big win against the Saints. On the flip side of things, teams are a little bit disappointing. on Sunday. We chatted about the Bucks falling flat against the Broncos, the Raiders giving up a monster day to Andy Dalton in that new revamped Carolina Panthers offense. And we chatted about some questionable decisions from Shane Waldron and the Chicago Bears on Sunday and what has been a frustrating year for them on offense, pretty much the entire way through. So dug into that and a much, much more. So let's get to it.

Derek, how you doing, man? Exhausted, man. What a slate. I mean, the morning slate was great. Everything in the afternoon had my heart rate going. I mean, that game, even on Sunday night went down to the wire. I mean, it was a damn good week of football. Yeah. Every year, you know, you just get your feet wet over the first couple weeks. You get back to actually watching.

You actually get used to the rhythms of it again. And tonight felt like that week that was such a reminder of what the NFL is week to week. And that is that every once in a while, especially everyone in the year when we don't have a really good sense of what teams are, chaos can just rain. and that's what the league feels like right now. We're three weeks into the season. The only three and O teams in the NFL are the Steelers, Vikings, Seahawks, and chiefs. One of those, I think we probably could have predicted.

Probably would have felt pretty good about that. The other three, not sure that's the case. We'll dig into all of those teams and what we think about them. But the fact that those are the three and O teams and the bills have a chance to do that, obviously when we get to Monday night. but the league has left us in a very interesting place. So we have eight games where a team that was a touchdown or more favorite have lost outright so far over the first three weeks. And a lot of the teams that we expected to be borderline dominant sort of contenders, the Niners are now one and two, the Ravens are one and two.

Even teams that looked good early in the season where we're like, oh, how about those saints? How about those bucks? They both lose today. The bucks get blown out by the Broncos. So we're going to spend the first part of this show trying to piece together what we think we know and what has made the first three weeks of this season so confounding and so confusing as we try to wade through all of this. Whoever had the parlay on the chiefs and those other three teams being the ones to start three and oh, congratulations to you.

You're an insane person for putting that down, but congratulations to you. I mean, no, yeah, this week was just a reminder that, I mean, we always walk into the season and say it every time that, like, it's in any given Sunday league. This was the first week of the season where it really felt like, yep, anybody can beat anybody on a given week. You just need a couple of right things. Which of those 3-0 teams, as you sit there that is not the Chiefs, do you feel particularly good about right now? Oh, man, I mean, I kind of like them all for different reasons. I think it's actually the Seahawks is probably. my favorite of the bunch, and I think it probably just goes back to, I just think,

Geno Smith is far and away the best quarterback that any of these teams have. And I think even if, I think you can make a case that the Seahawks defense is probably the least good of the three right now, but I think they've taken some pretty impressive steps from where they were last year. And I like where they're headed. So this is a team I'm kind of bought in on. Yeah, we'll talk about the Vikings in a little bit. And so I guess it's between the Steelers and the Seahawks between those two teams in terms of who you think is like the more realistic shot to win their division right now. And I think I would agree with you that it is Seattle just because the Steelers right now, the only team that has a worse offensive success rate this season in the NFL than the Steelers is the

Browns. The Steelers are 31st in the NFL. And Justin Fields has done enough and he's avoided turning the ball over. He's done what they needed him to do on that side of the ball. Their defense has been excellent. I mean, they've been truly dominant in some areas, especially on third down. I want to say, I had the number in front of me earlier today. I think teams are like a ridiculous The conversion rate for the Steelers on third down this year is insane. Seven of 32. Teams are seven of 32 against the Steelers on third down this year. So some of that is their defense being excellent.

Some of that is they've gotten some breaks and we'll see what happens over the course of the season. The Seahawks have, I think, I agree with you, the best quarterback play of those three teams that are the surprise undefeated. And their defense has been excellent. They haven't played a lot of very good offenses yet, but they've been one of the best defenses in the league down in and downout. So of those teams that are a little bit surprising, I do think the Vikings have something to them, and we'll talk about them in a bit. But between the Seahawks and the Steelers, I probably think the Seahawks are the more legitimate, can they win this division? Can they actually be a team that we're scared of come playoff time more than I feel that way about Pittsburgh. Exactly. Because again, I think defenses for all three of these teams can win you games.

But when I look like, which guy do I need when it really comes down to it in the fourth quarter or something like that, it's going to be Geno, man. Even the way he played today, like he's just kind of on a heater these past. two weeks. Some of the outcomes today, I mean, the Niners losing that game is probably the most confounding outcome. And I don't want to hammer them too badly. The offense was very good down to down. They were moving the ball consistently. They gave up those two huge chunk plays in the fourth quarter. There's a fake punt that eventually leads to a touchdown. It was just one of those weird games, but that's kind of what's been happening over the first few weeks, is that we've just had these really weird games. The Steelers losing to the Raiders last week. It just feels. It just

feels like there's been so many of these because I don't know how many truly complete borderline juggernaut teams we have right now in the NFL. And I think because we don't have many of those, it's leading to this where a couple bounces of the ball, no matter which way it goes, can determine these games. And that's why it feels like there's been a lot of fluky stuff that's happened over the first three weeks. Yeah, I think in any given NFL season, you probably need more than a month to really settle things down and let the dust settle. But I think this season in particular, we're going to need that. Because again, some of the teams that we thought were great heading into the season,

I've not started off. Obviously, Niners, Ravens. The Cowboys have not, like, they weren't in that tier, but they have not looked as good as they probably should. And then even, like you mentioned, a team like the Saints, they start out hot. And then, so I don't know, I think we're just kind of in a weird spot with the league. But I think it makes it more exciting. I think when you go into any Sunday and you don't really know what's going to happen when

you open the mystery box outside of two or three teams. And even the Chiefs, man, they're three and zero. All these games, like, they're, they're, letting it go down to the wire. So even them still being as good as they are, they're at least still making it a game. And so I don't know how many of them they'll end up dropping, but it's, every game is close, man. Niners fall into one and two today. Are you worried about the Niners at all? Or do you feel like this is just again, a couple moments go differently and we're not really having this conversation? I'm not worried in terms of like, are they going to be on a bad track

where, you know, by December, we're worried if they're going to be in the playoffs or anything. Maybe I'm a little bit more cautious about if they are in the elite team. I know, they're dealing with some injuries. And I think we said coming into the year, their defense wasn't maybe going to be the elite unit that it could have been. At the same time, when Brian Flores throws you into the grinder one week and then this week, you just lose a game to the Rams, which, look, I know the Rams are beat up, but these two teams, these two coaches, they just rock fight each other every time that they play each other. So I don't think it's that crazy that we ended up in a spot where the Rams just beat, beat up on the 49ers. Like this division just does that to itself. So again, this is a team.

maybe they're like a half tier below where I wanted them to be coming into the season, but they'll probably be okay. The other teams that aren't undefeated, is there anyone else among that group that you feel particularly good about? We talked a lot about that Lions Cardinals game in our week three preview. The Lions win that game. Scored 20 points, but move the ball pretty efficiently over the course of the game. There's a weird Jared golf interception. They didn't get a fourth down at one point in the second half. So I think their offense has consistently moved the ball over the first three weeks. If I had to pick out a team that isn't undefeated right now that I still feel pretty good about over the long haul, it would probably be that Lions team. Yeah, I think of the bunch, it's probably the Lions.

Maybe I'm just coping like crazy, but I still think the Ravens are going to end up figuring themselves out. Again, the defense probably not as elite as we thought it could be coming into the season. The offense, I still think passing wise, especially in pure passing downs, has some stuff to figure out. But like, the staff usually just goes in wins games anyway, so they'll probably figure it out. but there's not a lot of teams that, you know, in this two and one, one and two range, where I feel as good as I did coming into the season outside of, again, maybe Detroit. I still feel pretty good about Houston. We'll talk about that game in a second.

I feel like they had a ton of bad breaks today beyond being put into the Flores Grindr. Like the amount of third and fours that turned into third and 19s for the Texans today, they had two third down conversions where they were wiped off because of an illegal formation penalty. Like, they just had a bad day today all around. I think over the course of the year, that team is still going to be very good. I thought the Vikings did a good job of really exposing some of the weak points, especially on the Texans defense that I think may creep up over the course of the season. But that's another team where even after losing today, I still feel pretty good about what

the Texans are going to look like over a 17 game stretch. This was really not there, Degg. And you could tell because so on the second, on the second play of the game, C.J. Strout throws that interception that gets tipped up. And it's like, okay, sometimes shit just happens. That's crazy. But then later in the game, the Texans like kind of strip sacks Sam Darnold when he's trying to throw a swing. And then Brandon Powell picks it up and still runs for like eight yards. Like so the fact that the Vikings could get that break and the Texans get their break on the pick is just like, sometimes it's not your day, man.

All right. We're going to dig into a lot more of these as we get into the category. So let's just get to it. Let's start with you at my attention. Gentlemen, you have my curiosity. Now you have my curiosity. Now you have my. attention. For those of guys you don't know the show, every single Sunday, we try to pick out a few performances, a few games that really reached out and grabbed us over the course of the day. Obviously, I mean, though today was a little better, right? There were seven early games. There were five late games, so it was a little easier to keep track of everything. But there's so much stuff coming at you in NFL Sunday that we like to pick out a couple moments, a couple performances that really

grabbed us within the wall of stuff coming at you. So let's start with those Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings go to 3 and 0 with a 34 to 7 win over the Texans. They absolutely dismantle a very good 2 and 0 Texans team coming into this game. Minnesota Vikings, you officially have my attention after this week. You can maybe explain away the Niners game last week. After this one, you officially have my attention. It's the degree to which they won. Like if they just gutted this one out and maybe it was a closer one, I'd be like,

okay, this Vikings team is cool, but sometimes those games just happen. And the fact that you absolutely blow out a Texan team that, again, I think we all thought maybe could be, maybe could still be in the AFC championship, but a team that is of that caliber for them to come in and do what they did on both sides of the ball. I was just so impressed with everything that they did. I mean, defensively, they were all over everything the Texans wanted to do. I mean, run game. Obviously, you get that early interception on Stroud, which is kind of lucky. But otherwise, they really forced him to make a lot of really, really difficult throws. And I mean, he's CJ Stroud. He made a couple. But he just wasn't able to make enough because the Vikings were consistently putting them in really. really, really difficult positions. The Houston offensive line, I don't think played very well today. Like guys like Jonathan Grenard, man, it didn't matter who he was lining up against. Shaq Mason, any of the tackles, didn't matter, bro. He was getting back to CJ Stroud. So he had an incredible game. So just the way that they were playing across the board. They made a what should be a really, really good offense. Two weeks in a row now, they really made them kind of, you know, just useless. I thought they did a really good job of just picking apart the Texans protections

schemes the entire game. I mean, it was Blitz is obviously. We've seen that in the past from Brian Flores, and we know what this defense wants to be, but three of the four sacks were not on blitzes. And they actually had a higher pressure rate in this game when they didn't blitz than when they did. And you look at the first Jonathan and Grinard sack is a perfect example. They only bring four, but the Texans are full sliding the other direction. So he's one on one against the tight end. And that happened multiple times in this game where they clearly saw something. They're like, if we bring a linebacker to that side and we drop off the end man in line of scrimmage across from Gernard,

they're going to slide the other way. He's going to be one-on-one with a tight end. That happened multiple times in this game. So they saw something over the first couple weeks where they understood, even if we're not bringing extra bodies, we're going to be able to have them waste guys consistently. And that was a problem throughout this game for the Texas. Yeah. And I think specifically that, like you brought up, where yeah, Grenard just absolutely roasts. I think it was Cade Stover, where you get one-on-one on the time. Yeah, he should. He should. That's a situation you should put Cade Stover in. Exactly. I don't even feel bad for him. At the same time, that's kind of the price of doing business when you're one of these under center, run the ball all the time, do this style of play action. Like, that's kind of the price of doing business is that sometimes you're going to end up sliding to kind of make it look a little bit more like the run play. And you end up with a really good pass rush against a rookie tight end. So stuff like that is just going to happen. But like you said, the Vikings did such a good job getting themselves into those positions where they were going to get the one-on-ones they got. And I mean, Brian Flores just seems like every week he finds a new way. He's one of those guys that you just. just on Monday or Tuesday, you just want to open up the film and see what he has.

Grenard showed up big time in this game, which probably should have taken into account the Jonathan Grenard revenge element of all of this. He came up big. Pat Jones continues to make big plays for this team. He had another splash TFL in this game. It's everybody up front for them. It's every single person involved in the Vikings front is showing up for them in huge moments. I mean, whether it's Van Ginkle, Pat Jones, Jonathan Grenard,

Harrison Phillips had the tipped ball, the led to the intercept. today. Everybody is getting in on the mix. And I think that's why they're just so hard to deal with. I mean, there's so much disguise on the back end, but they have so much heat coming at you on any given third and seven. And you really don't know what it's ultimately going to look like. And I think it's really causing a lot of consternation with these offenses. You just feel these teams consistently on their heels throughout the game. The Texans had the worst offensive success rate in the NFL today. This is not a fluky thing. Like they were on the run the entire game. And that's what Flores has continued to do to people. And because it's one of those things when if you bring so much pressure and you bring so many different similates and you do it from all these different spots, even when you're not bringing the pressure, they're just not going to feel comfortable that they can just sit there and, oh, they're going to rush for and we can get into whatever concept we want.

They're going to feel like they need to be hot and they're prepared to be hot and they're going to want to make more of those stories really quickly. So again, it's like, it's almost a mental warfare game where you just do it so often, you do it so well that you just get in their head and you kind of end up on the front foot all the time. The offense still just as impressive in this game to a certain extent. They're doing so many good things when throwing the football. You can throw out any number of examples. Like how well designed this thing is right now on that side and the ball is excellent.

The first big Justin Jefferson chunk off play action comes to mind where he's lined up as the number two receiver to the left side. they motion Josh Oliver across. So now he's in a cut split as the number one receiver. He's got leverage on Lasseter over to that side. They run a play action. Oliver helps seal the backside. And you have Jefferson coming on this big end breaker across. And it's like, it's just good stuff.

And they're doing that stuff consistently. Like so many of the completions that J. And Naylor were beautifully designed in this game. I love the way that they're running the ball. There's nothing else you can really say about the job that Kevin O'Connell is doing with Sam Darnold right now. Yeah. On one of the big overs to Jefferson, they run him on like a big over and they have one of their

tight ends from the same side, go and run like right into both of the hook linebackers and hold them down so that obviously you can make the layered throw on the over route. The touchdown to Aaron Jones where he's lined up as a wide to the right. Yeah. You just get one-on-one man coverage with Henry Toa-toe. He gets picked when he's running across the formation. Jefferson's in the backfield on that play. Yes. Yeah, they had the, yeah, you take your two best offensive players, switch them and it does the same thing. It accomplishes the same thing. So I thought that was just really, well done. And then honestly, even outside of the design, some of the throws Sammy made in this game. I mean, one of the touchdowns over the middle on the backline was incredible. He had two throws,

out route throws to Justin Jefferson, where he's just, those are like the just standard NFL throws you have to make where it's on timing 10 yard out. You got to pin it into this window on the sideline. And he did it against Derek Stigley, a really good corner. The fact that he was able to make those. One of them was like third and 11. And he sneaks that thing in along the right side. I mean, that's just a really good NFL throw. And he's made a bunch of those. I think that was the first big one they had. And it was like, when he hit that, I was like, okay, the Texans defense might be in for a game if he can make those throws. So, yeah, I'm just really impressed with the execution of this offense, the way that it is designed.

And honestly, I think Sam Darnold was one of the most pressured quarterbacks this week. And it just didn't matter. Like the fact that Sam Darnold, of all people, is able to throw the ball away, not put the ball in harm's way that much. He tried once or twice. But, I mean, he could have done it a lot more, given who he has been before this. I thought that he did a really good job when under pressure. Like his mobility has shown up in a big way for this team over the first couple of weeks. I think that we know that he's a talented thrower of the football.

There's a reason he was a top five pick in the draft. But he's an underrated athlete. And I do think the benefits of how he plays the game has actually shown up consistently for this team and showed up for them again today. He's done a much better job of managing the pocket. And this was, again, when we talked about Gino Smith, you know, a couple years ago, when he, it felt like he was able to actually. solidify himself as a real quarterback after being a backup for eight years or whatever. It was like, oh, he can just manage the pocket now. And Sam Darnold is not up to that level because Gino Smith has become one of the best. But he's a lot more comfortable back there than

he ever was in New York or even Carolina. And I also think that we talked about last week, just the preview show, about how many of the guys they signed in free agency on defense have been showing up for them. Grinard, Van Ginkle, Blake Hashman. But I think you can kind of take a step back and extend it to pretty much the entire roster. We talked. We talked about. We talked coming in, like, where was this team going to find contributors that were in-house guys? Because they just didn't have that many draft picks who were consistently contributing for them. And now you look at what Pat Jones has done. You look at what Jay O'Neillor has done, what Blake Brendell has done.

I mean, consistently now, they're finding guys that they've developed in-house to be contributors for them on both sides of the ball. And that was one of the biggest questions I had about this team coming into the year. It's like, what is the underlying supporting cast and just overworked? overall roster construction going to look like for this team by the end of the year. How are we going to feel about the connective tissue of this thing around the stars? Because we knew that those guys are in place, right? We know Justin Jefferson's there.

We know the tackles are there. We know that T.J. Hawkinson's going to be back eventually. Like, they have four or five pieces on each side of the ball. To me, it was everything else? And how was that going to be enough to tie the rest of it together? And that's been one of the most encouraging things about this team over the first three weeks is that the answer has been definitively yes so far. I didn't have a lot of faith in it either. And maybe I just underrated this coaching staff. Like I thought they were good to pretty good.

It turns out they are just one of the best in the league on both sides of the ball. Like Brian, again, you know, we could sing Brian Flores as praises every single week and it would probably be fine. Same thing with Kevin O'Connell. Like these two have just, they've gotten everything out of their stars and also gotten these just random roster players to come up and play decent ball for them. So they're just doing an incredible job on that. both sides. I think we knew that about Brian Flores, right? We knew that what he was doing last year, if he got better players into the building, they could be really scary on that side of the ball, just because it's such a unique beast in having to deal with it. We didn't, I don't think we really

had a great sense of what this offense looked like when they weren't trying to fight uphill, right? Because last year, they were cycling between quarterbacks. They're just trying to figure it out post-Kirk cousins. And I actually think that right now, the offense looks as dynamic as it probably ever has, with cousins in the building because they've been running the ball so much more effectively. So I think this is one of the first times that we've really had a very good sense of what a complete Kevin O'Connell offense looks like for the Vikings. And the answer is it looks really fucking good. Like he looks like one of those guys who is going to be a rising tide that lifts every

single player on that side of the ball, including the quarterback. And that is what it has felt like over the first three games of the season. That's a great point about it being a complete Kevin O'Connell offense now. because again, beforehand, they were one of the worst rushing teams for most of the past few years. It's just that Kirk had developed into one of the better and more consistent and flexible dropback passers. So he was kind of able to just lift them anyway. Now this is like what the offense is designed to look like. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, let's stick in the NFC North here with another team that is doing a great job designing their offense and putting their quarterback in the right positions. The Packers are 2 and 0 without Jordan Love. We weren't sure what they were going to look like over the stretch. We weren't sure how much time Jordan Love was going to miss. Sounds like he's going to be back next week. And the Packers are going to be two and one heading into his return because of what they have done over the last couple weeks with Malik Willis. So Matt LaFleur and everybody tasked with designing and game planning that offense for the Packers, you definitively have my attention after what you've done over the last two games.

Listen, when you miss the quarterback who you just paid a ton of money to, one win over this couple of week stretch. I would have been like, all right, they save their season. They're okay. They'll be fine when when Jordan Love gets back, Dave, when you go out and go two and no and pretty handily win both of these games, uh, and really take control and show that you can do some interesting stuff on the offense side of the ball. I was just so impressed. And like in this game, so obviously against the Colts, the Colts have a very bad run defense. So the Packers were able to kind of just get their way with them. I think they had over 200 yards in the first half in that game. It was, it was nasty. And then in this game, Lefleur even kind of talked about it going in. He was like, we are not going to be

able to run the ball that way. And they didn't really for a lot of this game. They were ineffective running the ball for most of this game. Yeah, outside of the quarterback stuff, which we'll get into a little bit, but a lot of their under center stuff was not really hitting, like even some of their just base gun run stuff without the quarterback wasn't doing a whole lot. It was really only whenever they got Malik Willis involved. And so I was concerned that if that was the world that we were going to live in, it was like, okay, can they get enough out of Malik Willis in this passing offense? It turns out they can because they actually did a really good job of putting him into some. They actually got a good mix of putting him in positions to win and make some easy plays.

They did a lot of boot stuff. They had a lot of simple shot plays. And then Willis, to his credit, he made two or three humongous throws in this game. He had a third and 14 dig route that he throws over the middle and pins it on the guy. It's like, okay, I didn't, you know, I wasn't aware that you could do this at this stage of your career. And then he had another route. He threw a deep over route to Christian Watson down the left sideline where they like, you know, have a vertical concept on the left side that kind of clears out that space. He just pins it on him

right at the sticks. And it's like, man, that was the third and 18. That was the same drive. How do you have two third and a dozen plus conversions on on the same drive and make those throws? When again, to this point in Willis's career, he wasn't making those kinds of throws. And even in Tennessee, he wasn't really even trusted to make those kinds of throws. So the fact that they could get that out of him and he could make those plays on top of some of the easier stuff that they were giving him with the run game and with some of the boots. I mean, it was just, it was a masterclass performance from the players and the coaches. The two things that, the thing that stood out to me about both of those throws, the third and 14 and the third and

18 was the protection on both of them. He had a ton of time in the pocket on both of those throws. And why I think that's notable is that if you look at just the way that the supporting cast has played overall in these two games, I don't want to take anything away from Will's because he made a bunch of plays in this game and made a bunch of plays with his legs. But just watching the contributions that everyone else on the offense is making consistently. First drive, they have a little fake toss, like half boot to Jaden Reed for a chunk play. And then he throws a slot fade to Christian Watson. And Christian Watson moses a guy on a slot fade for like a 35-yard gain. And how many years now have we been saying Christian Watson is a big guy who doesn't

play all that big? And then he goes and makes that play the first drive. It's like, oh, okay. That's exactly what I mean. It's because those guys showed up when they needed to. I think they understood. Everyone understood the assignment. Matt Flore understood the assignment. I think everyone on the offense understood the assignment. So that play the Christian Watson makes the pass protection overall for a good chunk of this game. And this shows up all the time with the Packers.

The effort from the receivers as blockers consistently all of the time, it's Don Tavian Wicks, it's Bow Melton, like diving to get a piece of a guy on a pin pole play. It's all, it is a collective effort for that team on that. side of the ball. And that's why it's been so fun to watch over the last couple weeks, because it's a little different. It's different guys each game. But I think you know going in what you're going to get from pretty much every single guy on that side of the ball. You know that they're well coached. You know that they're going to play hard and you know that they're going to be put in good positions to succeed. And that is why they are a very fun football team to watch weekend and

week out. That's exactly it. We know that they're well coached. We know the guy, you know, the head coach is going to put them in good positions to win. And if we have four or five skill players on this team that we are excited about, if two of them make one or two huge plays a game, that's all you need. And we know if all these guys are capable of that it's probably going to hit most weeks or more often than not. I also thought another interesting thing in this game, sometimes with quarterbacks, especially young quarterbacks, they can get into a mode where they want to scramble too early

and they look very jittery. Like they just, like they know that they want to move, but they're unsure where to go and how to do it and if they should actually take off. It felt like in this game, Malik Willis was very sure that like if the thing I want to throw is not here, just go. Like don't think, like do not think about it. Do not consider what I need to do. Just book it.

And he made a number of really, really big plays in that game doing that. And that to me speaks to the coaching of Matt Lafleur. Like he was probably like, yeah, man, don't just sit there in this pocket for eight seconds. Go make a play. You're one of the best athletes at the position. It's such a good point. Because sometimes when you see a guy scramble the amount of times that he did in this game. And some of it was design runs.

I mean, his legs were one of the. the best weapons that Packers had in this game. But even when he was scrambling, it never felt chaotic. It always felt like it was a definitive choice in the rhythm of the play. And I think that we can kind of tie in what the Packers and the Vikings look like with those quarterbacks right now. It's not an accident that these guys who've looked particularly chaotic in worse situations look much more calm and in control.

In Malik Willis's case, after being there for a month, and after being thrown into the starting lineup because of how well coached both of these teams are. I mean, the fact that he just looks like a different quarterback in terms of how he's feeling in the pocket, how he's operating in the pocket, and how he's making these decisions and what type of authority he's showing and making those decisions. I think that really is a testament to Matt LaFlor into the rest of the coaching staff. Yeah. And again, quarterback, that position more than any. If you can just know exactly what your answers are, even if they're not perfect, even if you can't always executed, just knowing what the answer is, is a great place to be.

Let's keep going here. Sequin Barclay and Dallas Goddard in a game where the Eagles offense was sputtering at times, struggled to put up points. Both of those guys made monster plays in the back half of this game to eventually take it home for the Eagles. A 65-yard touchdown for Saquan Barclay with the Eagles down three, nothing early in the fourth quarter. Dallas Goddard finishes this game with 10 catches for 170 yards. the way to an Eagles win.

The non-wide receiver Eagles stars on offense in Dallas Cotterton, Sequin, Barclay, you guys have my attention. And with A.J. Brown out of the, you know, not playing to where he's, you know, he's not taking any attention. Yeah, he's like, he's not, you know, I could foresee this game when everyone's healthy. It's like, oh, AJ Brown's just taking a bunch of attention. Okay, you didn't have that. And two of your best guys still went down and made a bunch of plays.

Like, I swear every time I looked up at the screen and it was like third in something. thing where they needed a big play. Oh, there's Dallas Goddard, just doing the craziest thing. And he's breaking a tackle. And obviously, he had the one, you know, late third down conversion where they just put him in a tight split, Saints are in man coverage, guy gets picked, Goddard runs for a million yards. And it is a three years. Guy gets picked. That's underselling it. It was like a comical collision between two Saints defenders on that play. It was. But I mean, sometimes it's all you need. Sometimes you just got to, you know, put him in the wrong spot and then let your guy be in a good spot. And so Dallas,

did a great job there. There were a couple other plays where he just caught some other underneath ones and broke a tackle or two. And I mean, that's just, there's just not that many tight ends in the league where you feel super confident about them as pass catchers when it's like when they're contested, when they're on the sideline, need to go up and get the ball. And when they have the ball in their hands that they can just go break a tackle and somehow get 20 yards out of five. And Goddard checks both boxes. He's such an incredible player. And the fact that you can lean on him again, when your best receiver is out and he can go make these plays, it was incredible. And then, dude, the Saquan Barkley, 65-yarder.

Obviously, they scored a couple of points after that touchdown. I don't think they would have, like, the juice and momentum and vibes to score any of the other points if Barclay doesn't just rip off that second and 565-yarder. I mean, when he hit that, it was like, okay, the floodgaves are open. They can actually move the ball now because they just had no answers for anything up until that. I mean, they were getting shut out. Yeah, and this team has been frustrating.

I mean, they had a couple turnovers in this game, obviously. Hertz has the strip sack. He throws another red zone interception. He had thrown two red zone interceptions in the past three seasons combined. He's thrown two red zone interceptions this year. And so there have been frustrating parts of the Seagull's offense that haven't been frustrating in previous iterations. Even as other stuff has gone to shit and the entire unit imploded last year, Hertz wasn't turning the ball over at the rate that he is this year.

So that has been sort of an issue over the first couple games. And there definitely are elements of this that they're still figuring out. They're doing with some offensive line injuries today. But that's the encouraging part about this Eagles team in the way that they're built. Even if it's going to be a little bit uneven on that side of the ball, they have so much talent that if they keep in these games and they keep things close, you just hope that by the end, one, two, three plays by the stars that they have, the skill position talent that they have, can lift them. And that's exactly what happened today. If they're going to keep, and they probably should have beat the Falcons. So they probably should be three and oh, while they haven't necessarily found their group.

roof offensively. And so I think that you could probably spin that as a good thing for Philadelphia. The fact that it hasn't all clicked for them and they're still managing to win games as they figured themselves out. Yeah. I mean, it's nice to have, you know, five or six blue chip players on the offense. And again, they even did this in this game with like Lane Johnson missed a majority of this game. He was out. And Beckson was her too.

So they had Steen in and then they had a backup right tackle in for like a huge chunk of this game. Yeah. So the fact that they were able to eventually get themselves over the line was impressive because, again, And eventually your best players, your really, really talented players are going to make plays, even if the rest is clunky. Like, especially early on in this game, their blitz answers were not good. They got smoked on the first drive by Alante Taylor. Alante Taylor is just suddenly the best blitzing DB in the NFL. It happened very fast.

I almost tweeted today. I was like, I don't know what the defensive back record for Sacks is, but he's coming for it. Doesn't he have three right now? Or is it four? It might be four because he had at least two against the Panthers. Yeah. And then obviously he had this one. So, I mean, he's just racking him up, man.

He might get double digits by the end of the season. Because, you know, Dennis Allen is going to keep sending him. There's no doubt about it. Obviously, the Eagles offense makes enough plays to win this game. But I think one of the bigger stories, arguably, what the Eagles were doing on defense against a Saints offense that had been rolling people over the first couple weeks. What did you notice from Philly on defense today that kind of allowed them to provide some resistance to a Saints team that hadn't seen a lot of it over the first couple games? it felt like taking a time machine back to 2018, 2019. Like, you know, because these zone offenses were all they want to do is run zone.

And this team gets, I guess, a little bit more fullback action than some of those like Rams teams and stuff. But the Eagles just said, all right, if all you want to do is run zone and stretch the field, we're going to put six people on the line of scrimmage and we're going to make you earn it. And the Saints were just never able to earn it. Like they came into this game with just over a 50% rushing success rate on first and second down in their first two weeks. they were at like 25% on first and second down this week on 23 attempts. Like they just could not get it going. And when your whole offense is built on, okay, we're going to run the ball, we're going

to get into good down in distances, and then we're going to play action. Well, if you can't run the ball, then what? Like, you just don't have it. I think that's exactly right. And if you look at it, one of the things that the Eagles had struggled with over the first couple weeks is when teams were running the ball out of sub-personnel and they had nickel defense on the field, they were struggling to defend the run. They're like 20th in rushing success rate out of nickel so far this year.

Well, the Saints, we know what they've been over the first couple weeks. They want to get in heavy personnel to run the ball and use play action. Out of heavy personnel today, Alvin Camara had 18 carries for 51 yards. He had five successful runs on those 18 carries. When the Eagles had all those bodies along the line of scrimmage, the Saints struggled to run the ball. And we mentioned the offensive line injuries for the Eagles. Those also showed up for the Saints. Eric McCoy gets hurt early in this game.

starting center. They have to move Lucas Patrick to center. They put Oliudo in as their backup left guard. And they were just completely out of sorts along the interior of the offensive line for a huge chunk of this game. I mean, Jalen Carter had multiple TFLs. He had multiple pressures. Jordan Davis had a big sack. So I think that them having to run into some pretty disadvantageous looks and the Saints having to deal with some injuries along the offensive line, I think that's a huge reason that we did not see the same sort of Saints offense we had over the first couple weeks. Yeah, and this one was, it was almost like, it was kind of funny to watch because we said this, this is exactly what we said was going to happen.

That if a team could dedicate themselves to stopping the run and not letting them get into these insane favorable down in distances that they want and get out to these leads where they could just keep running the ball, okay, then yeah, they're going to have to be a dropback offense on second and eights and thirds and tens and all this other stuff. And the offensive line is just not built to handle that, especially when your really good starting center goes out and you have to shuffle the line around. So I think that's basically just what happened in this game, is the Saints just kind of got out of their rhythm.

And we, to this point, had not seen what the offense looks like when they're out of their rhythm. And it doesn't seem like they have many great answers at this point. We mentioned that we probably should have talked about the Jonathan Gernard revenge game before the Vikings played the Texans. I guess we should have talked about the Zach Bond revenge game with him going back and playing the Saints. Zach Bond made multiple huge plays in this game. He was really good on the perimeter. So you mentioned this. They walked him down onto the edge.

He's obviously very long for an offball linebacker. He played a lot of edge. He used to play edge. Yeah, he used to play a lot of edge when he was on the Saints. So he made a lot of nice plays on the perimeter in this game, just kind of stretching things out and really was a fulcrum for that run defense. But the play he made on fourth and one to get the stop, the hit he puts on Foster Moreau, when Foster Moreau is coming across the formation. Oh, my God. I mean, you go, you go watch it.

I was trying to tweet it out earlier, and I'm having some issues with frame rates on the videos that I'm trying to tweet. And so I couldn't do it. He crumbles Foster Moreau on that play and makes the tackle just short of the sticks on a huge fourth and one. So good for Zach Bond, man. I mean, he's had a lot of nice moments. He was really good for the Eagles in week one against the Packers. And he also had his share of plays that he made today. He had a couple of sticks in this game.

I mean, this Eagles defense, I mean, they've got a couple of weeks now where, you know, we're nominating guys for the biggest hit of the week. Obviously, last week it was Gardner Johnson. And this week, obviously, we get Zach Bond. If they can keep doing that and if Zach Bond can keep playing at this level, I mean, how long have we been yearning for actual linebacker play in Philadelphia? It's been a while. We're getting it a little bit, man. We are.

We are. We had a couple moments today. It was nice to see them actually be like, okay, we are not going to let you just run the ball down our throats this entire game. And after the way that went against the Falcons last week, I was a little bit concerned about how that was going to go. So seeing the Eagles defense show up that way today was very nice. I will say that was not the hardest hit of the game.

The hardest hit of the game was Pete Warner coming downhill on Grant Galcatera. Oh, yeah. On a play where Calcutera was, he was pulling from the left side, he was leading up and wrapping around up into the hole. Pete Warner absolutely destroyed Grant Calcutera on that play. I think it was Cockatara. It's 81. He absolutely destroyed him.

It was actually a really nice play. It was like a 10-yard gain by Seekwan. But he meets him in the hole for one of the biggest hits you will see in an NFL game this year. So, Zach Blonde was fighting for second, unfortunately. Listen, man, Calcutara, I understand he can do some stuff in space and he can catch the ball a little bit. We cannot have him out there blocking anymore. All three weeks, it's been, he's been a highlight show for the opposing defense. It can't happen anymore.

It's one of the hardest hits I've seen an NFL game in a very long time. I mean, he sent him pretty much airborne on that play. But again, it did his job, didn't make the tackle, 10-yard gain. So successful run in the box score. It's all it really matters. But I think some encouraging stuff from the Eagles defense, a comeback to earth moment for the Saints offense, and a reminder that, man, like we have some very good players on that Eagles offense, even if it's not clicking on all cylinders right now. What the fuck? For those of you guys watching on the YouTube channel, I'm not going to even try to bleep it anymore for the live stream.

The mechanics of it are too frustrating. So we'll handle that in post-production, but we're just going to let the swearing rip on the live. version of this. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers who come into this game 2 and O and really gave the Lions a run for their money in Detroit. It looks really good over the first two weeks. They fall flat on their face against an 0 and 2 Broncos team. Lose this game 26 to seven. Bucks, what the fuck? Like the moment we wanted to start getting excited about you, you go and do this against Bo Nix. Doesn't this show you how stupid the NFL is? Yes, that's exactly what it shows you. this team can go play against a Lions offense that we thought was going to be really good,

one of the best in the league, and they still can be. And they get a ton of big plays on them. They beat them up up front a little bit. They go and win that game. And then you lose to a Bo Nix Broncos offense that hasn't done anything all year. Like they've been one of the worst offenses in the league. They haven't found any answers for what they want Bo Nix to be. And then they go and play them this week.

And Bo Nix just can't be tackled. It doesn't matter if it's designed run, scrambles, like boots. They cannot get their hands on this guy. And like, Bo Nix is a good athlete. He's not Lamar Jackson, man. Like, why is this happening? It's just, it was a- Bo Nix's athleticism is more of a defined plus than I thought it was going to be in the NFL.

That's what I would say. I would say that his athleticism is actually, weapon is maybe strong. His athleticism is a plus for the offense. Like, you can run design runs. with Bo Nix and have them be good plays for your offense. Can I say, what's funny about them playing the Bucks in this game, too, Bo Nix is the athlete that Baker Mayfield thinks that he is. And so when Nix moves, it like actually works and he could really run away from people.

And then Baker doesn't, it's like, oh, he doesn't really look like he's moving that fast. And that was the problem today. I mean, if you wanted to pin down, why did the Bucks get run out of the building by the Broncos today? It's because Baker Mayfield was running for his life this entire game. I mean, the Broncos' offense, the Broncos front and the Broncos pass rush was a big problem. Baker was pressured on 45% of his dropbacks in this game. He was 7 of 11 for 40 yards and 7 sacks when he was pressured.

That's the story of the game. You don't need to do anything else as to why this happened to the Bucks today. And their offensive line, look, left tackle's good, center's good. The other three spots in this game were just getting beat up, run and pass. didn't matter. Zach Allen, who has been really good for the Broncos this season, I mean, was incredible again today. He lived in the back field. I think he had like seven pressures in this game. You could have told me a dozen and I would have believed it. Like he just, yeah, every single play, it seemed like he was beating one of their guards. And that's kind of been

the struggle for the bucks for really the past couple of years. And we thought maybe it would get a little bit better, you know, bringing in Graham Barton at center. But the guards are, the guards are still a huge problem. And obviously they're dealing with some health stuff at the right tackle position. So this was just not a good game for them. I mean, everybody up front for Denver was getting what they want. And look, there's not many quarterbacks who can deal with being pressured on almost 50% of their dropbacks. Baker Mayfield is certainly not one of those handful of guys. I thought the Broncos front would be an intriguing group coming into the year. They are. Like, if you look at those guys, they've got a lot of guys over there. And even players

that, you know, we thought were going to be like Baron Browning and people like that, it's other guys that have been showing up. Like, you talk about Zach Allen. He's been really good so far this year. John Franklin Myers had his moments in this game. DJ Jones had a couple of pressures. Nick Benito got Tristan Worf's on a play in this game. He just, they have like seven of these guys that are just like shot out of a cannon when they come off the ball or these undersized bendy edge rushers. And Benito gets Tristan Worf's. And Graham Barton got a couple times in this game.

It was a joint effort from pretty much every single guy in the Broncos front. And the style of defense the Broncos are playing overall, I'm actually enjoying. watching it. This is a team that was a kind of a zone heavy team when Vance Joseph got there because they were trying to carry over a lot of the stuff they did with the Giro Everett last season. This year, they've been playing man coverage on like 45% of opponent dropbacks. Like, they've been really aggressive and they have not been afraid to bring a little bit extra heat, bring five guys after the quarterback, after the quarterback and say, we like our

guys, we're going to create five one-on-ones. We like what we can do on the back end and we think that you're going to have trouble with it. And so far, teams have. I mean, their defense has been objectively good for the first three weeks of the season. And that's how they should play. If you have that much speed off the edge, you have your interior playing, certainly a level above what I thought we were getting,

especially with Zach Allen playing at the level that he's playing at this interior. When you can get interior push and your edge rushers are that fast, you're going to get to the quarterback. And then when you have a corner like Sertan, man, man. Like, yeah, like, go play some man coverage. And, like, you're going to get beat every now and then playing man coverage like that. And, like, Riley Moss got stunked on in the end zone on one by Chris Godwin. But he's going to do that.

He had a big PBU in this game, though. He did. And he's not been bad. There was a plan man coverage where he sorted through traffic. He made a big play on a pretty important third down in this game. So, again, everybody got into the mix for this Broncos defense today against the Bucks offense that I think we got a little bit of cold water thrown on that group today. Yeah, I think until this Bucks offense sourced out the offensive line, we'll see how consistent they can be week to week. Let's get to our next one here.

The Raiders defense gets absolutely stumped by Andy Dalton and the Carol. line of Panthers, even if you were not excited about what the Raiders offense would look like this year, even if you had questions about that group and we'll get into some of those questions. The defense was a very good group in the back half of last season. That team has talent. That team, I think, is well coached on that side of the ball with Patrick Graham. There was an argument to be made that that could be like a borderline top 10 defense coming into the year.

Instead, Andy Dalton finishes with the fourth best EPA per dropback of any quarterback in week three against this team. Raiders, what the fuck? You're going to let Andy Dalton and the Panthers offense do this to you? And I mean, God, there are like eight different angles. I can start with this. I'll start by laying the groundwork for why, part of why Andy Dalton was able to do this. Out of all the qualifying week three quarterbacks, which I think I did like 10 dropbacks minimum, Andy Dalton was pressured on 15.4% of his dropbacks. And we had said, and I know even on the show that you did with Stephen, like this panthers offensive line. They're, they're kind of playing okay. Like, they're not really the issue. The past protection has been objectively good this year.

And that was the biggest indictment you could possibly give of Bryce Young is the fact that when you watch them, it wasn't just the numbers. It was the eye test. They're picking up pressures. That group is actually playing very well up front. And if that's going to be the case and you have competent quarterback play with decent enough pass catchers, like we know what Deontay Johnson is, that was the entire argument for why Bryce Young could have done something this year, and we saw it actually play out with Andy Dalton today. It's been cool to see. I mean, they got what they paid for up front, right?

You know, we were like, oh, they spent a ton on these guards. And then, I mean, okay, if you're going to get pass protection like this, and you could even see it, like, visually, like Andy Dalton always had space to step up in the pocket if he needed to. And it was just, it was really impressive to watch. And that's, again, why he was able to make some of these throws that he was able to make. And that's kind of the next point is that it's not like this was just. day game where Andy Dalton was, okay, just get the ball out of his hands, make some simple

throws, guys are going to go make plays. And Deontay Johnson did have that one insane catch and run, but it was a lot of like, hey man, the red rifle is slinging it a little bit. He was making some real serious throws in the red zone, some digs that were really impressive. Like he just, he made a lot of throws that I just don't know if we ever really saw from Bryce Young and it probably weren't going to and said like the fact that Dalton was able to just step in, kind of play with house money a little bit and make some of these aggressive throws. It was, it was surprisingly fun to watch. Yeah, and I think the entire argument for why you needed to move on from Bryce Young in the short term, at the very least, and move on to Andy Dalton is you needed to be able to get a sense

of what you actually were on offense. You did so much this offseason to try to lift this group to competence. It's so many different position groups. You spent along the interior of the offensive line, you went out and got some past catchers. It's like, was this, what was this for? Like, what are we actually and what do we need to be moving forward? And in order to get an, answer on that. I think that's why you had to move on to Dalton. Then the answer is, it looks pretty good. Like Dave Canellas pushing the buttons for this group with Andy Dalton, the quarterback, I think makes you feel a lot better about what this Panthers offense is going to look like over the course of the year and the fact that they can actually give this team

a fighting chance in like a good chunk of the games that it plays. Absolutely. Because look, again, there's a chance that maybe a month from now. We've got a lot more tape. You know, defenses have more tape on what this offense wants to do with Dalton and it slows down. I mean, that's probably going to happen. But some of the throws that were just available and accessible because Andy Dalton at least has a passable arm and can play with good timing, can play with a stable base. I mean, he had a seam route where he throws it, you know, right over the middle of the linebacker in between the two safeties to Tommy Trembl early in the game. He had a dig route where they're rotating down into that side of the ball and the safety

is just flying out of the roof to come downhill. Digrout runs in right behind it. He just nails it in there. Like, he just made some throws that just were not on the table the last 18 games or whatever it is. And so the fact that they have that now, they can be a competent offense. Again, I don't know what the ceiling is, but the fact that they can get competent offense now is it's a huge boost for the offense and the defense. The fact that the defense doesn't feel like they have to hold every offense to 15 points now is probably a nice way to play. Yeah, it's not totally demoralizing every single time you're out, which is a nice place to be as a defense. The one thing I want to say about the Raiders offense, the Raiders running game is, I think the worst thing that any offense in the, the NFL is currently doing.

They had a 23% rushing success rate today against the Panthers. This season, through the first three weeks, the Raiders are averaging negative 0.56 EPA per rush. Okay? So just for context, they're losing half a point every single time they were on the ball. Okay? That seems almost impossible. Okay. Anthony Richardson today was 10 of 20 and had two interceptions.

his EPA per dropback in that game was negative 0.5. So every single time the readers run the ball on average, that play is worse than the average Anthony Richardson drop back today when he was 10 of 20 with two interceptions. And you know what's crazy? This should have been the game they could have figured it out. Yes. And if they couldn't today, then they're not going to. Yes.

And there were a couple of games this week where it's like if they can't figure X out today, they're never going to. And the Raiders not being able to run the ball on this Panthers team. been god awful at defending the run this year. Yeah, man, you're probably just not going to figure it out. You just don't have the horses. I mean, this was a team too. I said last year going into the season with the Vikings, you're not a serious football team. If you're starting running back is Alexander Madison. I didn't really think the Raiders going into this season with their running back room was that serious. And I think they obviously have offensive line issues too. But this is,

the return of Alexander Madison. Alexander Madison is involved here. He just follows. It's like it follows. But wherever he is, you have the worst running game. And he's not even the starting back anymore, but still. Let's get to our last one here. We had to talk about this, I mean, for a lot of different reasons. The Chicago Bears and the structure and just general deployment of their offense through three weeks, the moment that I'll start with is the speed option on fourth and one inside the five-yard line when you literally had like a foot and a half to go on that fourth and one. Shane Waldron, what the fuck? Like everything about what this team is trotting out on offense right now. I just can't even do it. I want you to do a lot of the heavy lifting

here so it doesn't just seem like I'm complaining. What is your sense of like what is going on with this bear's offense right now? Okay, before I get there, did you see Coleman Shelton's answer after the game about that play? They were like, can you break down the fourth and one on the on the goal line and stuff? And he was like, he kind of just tried to give as as, you know, simple an answer as he could, but he was just like, I, you know, that look, you just, you just shouldn't run it. It was like, you can't really say that, I mean, it's the truth. Like, it's just a bizarre call in that moment. Even if you're such a bad rushing offense, like, I get why you might not want to just jam it up the middle. But like, it was just a bizarre call. Overall, I think the issue with this offense is like, I think it's

twofold. Obviously, the offensive line talent is not good, especially on the interior. And I think that that's been probably the biggest issue. The second problem is I think they're just not coached very well. Like, you could even watch in the run game in a lot of these plays, guys don't know who they're climbing to, like on double teams, like they don't know which guy is supposed to come off, who's supposed to go get the backer. There were multiple plays like that in this game. Just a lot of little stuff like that. Like guys not understanding how they're supposed to play out blocks. And I think when you have that on top of guys who are just, we didn't think this was going to be that good of a group going in. And so when you add those two factors, like, yeah, it's not surprising that they've been one

of the worst rushing teams in the NFL. And then when you're one of the worst rushing teams in the NFL, and you're putting a kind of chaotic quarterback in a bunch of clear passing downs with this offensive line that is not very good. Yeah, man, you're probably not going to move the ball very well on anybody. Yeah, and also the third down is where Shane Waldron struggles. That's always where Shane Walton has struggled. Last year in Seattle, the Seahawks had one of the worst success rates on third down against man coverage of any team in the NFL. It's not where he wants to live. It's not where he's shown to have a lot of success. And that's where this Bears team has been the worst this year is in getting out of third downs. I tweeted this out today. They are converting their second

downs into a first down, nine percent of the time. The league average is like 31 percent of the time, and no other team in the NFL was below 18 percent. At one point today, I think I tweeted out in the third quarter, they were five of 57 in converting their second downs into first downs this year. And what that leads to is they have more third down dropbacks than any team in the NFL. That's a really terrible place to put, like you said, a chaotic rookie quarter. quarterback behind an objectively bad offensive line. And so that's just a consistent issue and has been a consistent issue. They are not well coached.

Like, you watch the way that they play. And I think that's exactly right. Like, the details are so bad. The play that sticks out to me today is the strip sack, where they're in 12 personnel. They have two tight ends to the side that Latu was on, who eventually gets the sack. Instead of both of those guys sliding to him, Mercedes-Louis, who's the innermost tight end with Cole Komet. Ships Latu off of Kemet and Latu roast him around the corner and gets the strip

sack. You have two guys that should be able to handle the one guy that you're tasked with blocking, but the details are so bad that it actually leads to a sack. That's just one example. It's just stuff like that. It's all the time. It is just all the time. The details are so bad.

The amount of nakeds they're trying to run or slide play actions where they're not blocking a defensive end and you're asking Caleb Williams to make a decision with somebody unblocked coming at him. I understand that that's like there's a history of successful NFL offense built out of those plays. Don't do it with a rookie quarterback who's having trouble staying out of those chaotic moments. Like if you want to run play action and slide somebody across the formation, fine. Just have him seal off the backside. Like what benefits are you getting from leaving guys unblocked in those situations? You're getting absolutely none of them. And And then the thing I was just blown away by today, DeAndre Swift in this game,

oh my God, had 13 carries for 20 yards, okay? 13 carries for 20 yards. He had zero successful runs on his 13 carries. The Bears had six successful running back runs in this game, four by Rochon Johnson, two by Cleo Herbert. Do you know what both of those guys have in common? They were on the roster before the Bears' war. went out on day one of free agency and decided that they needed to sign D'Andre Swift.

Do you know what sticks out to me about the D'Andre Swift? I mean, obviously, the numbers are insane. When you have zero successful rushes on more than 10 plays, come on. That's about, you can't be doing that. But there was one where he, they're just running it up the middle. And he could get like three yards if he really just jammed it up the middle and ran behind his double team. It's like, okay, it's not a sexy run. It is what it is. But he like runs up to it, doesn't like that that's all he's getting, turns back to the line of scrimmed. and gets tackled at the line of scrimmage. I'm like, that's not an NFL running back play.

You cannot be doing plays like that. And so, yeah, the fact that they thought they needed to go out and sign this guy who didn't look all that good in Detroit, kind of got away with it when he was with Philly. But, I mean, they're Philly. Like, the Bears are not going to have that offensive line. And then he's back to the player that he was in Detroit when you have a much worse offensive line. Even in Philly, the Eagles, I think were like at the bottom of the NFL, not dead last. in I think it was running, I think it was average yards per rush after contact.

They were like dead last in the NFL last year. Like, what does Sequin look like behind that group and what did DeAndre Swift look like behind that group? The fact that they had those guys on the roster, they had Clil Herbert, they had Roshan Johnson, and their thought was, we need to go out on day one of free agency and commit money to the running back position for a guy like DeAndre Swift, who is now on his third team for a reason when you could have tried to do something at center, right? you could have tried to do something with the guys available in free agency and they decided not to.

It's just like, man, it's pretty bad right now. I had concerns about what the Waldron offense could potentially look like without Gino back there. It has been even worse than I could have imagined. It's been significantly worse, the talent up front and some of the coaching. Can I sprinkle in a little bit of a silver lining? You can if you want to. I'm not sure I'm going to listen. Listen, man.

Caleb made some plays in this game. I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to hear about it. When I start tweeting on Tuesday, all the cliffs, he played a game, man. He played a game. The second pick is whatever. The second pick is whatever. The first pick is bad. The second pick is whatever. There's still like some bizarre misses. That's what I just can't get over is that there we've just that there are some bizarre misses where he's clearly just a little skittish in the pocket right now, which is understandable considering how the first couple games have gone. But him just one of the things. I was most excited about with him is just the bones of how he plays the position and the footwork and the mechanics and just how he was always in like a ready to throw position in the pocket. And if you look at how much of a mess his feet are on some of these plays and some of the sales that have come with that, it's frustrating. Like that's the one thing outside of everything else around him that I'm worried about is just that some of the misses and what's leading to them are a little bit bizarre.

You know what's funny, though, is that it almost comes back to coaching. I think some of his worst misfires when he does that are when he's one, two, three, top of drop balls out. Like one of the deep balls that he threw to O'Donze, he like, one, two, three, hit his drop and like hopped into the throw. And it's like, what are you doing? Like he just didn't set his feet and throw. But I actually thought when he, you know, start to get through your read and start to

progress a little bit, I think his base is good. And I think he actually made some really accurate throws. There was a checkdown he got to where he, you know, kind of like wiggles through the pocket with a really good base and gets to the guy. So I just think that he's been playing better every week. And the situation is just so bad that we can't fully embrace how fun it feels. Yeah, I can't yet. I mean, there are some flashes where you can talk yourself into it.

But I do think that I'm a little bit preoccupied with some of the bizarre misses. And I'm a little bit preoccupied by how horrible everything looks around him. And I think that I'm probably going to need a little bit of time before I step outside of that. Listen, as a scarred bear's fed, I'll give it to you. I'm not going to push you too hard on it. Do you see that? Did you see that? Every week we like to just pick out a couple little things that we noticed while we were watching games,

just stuff that kind of lives in our Slack channel, right? So the first thing you wanted to mention was Justin Fields hitting some throws over the middle of the field that we are not necessarily used to seeing with Justin Fields. He sure did. And that was the whole, that was what made the Steelers Arthur Smith fit weird, right? It's like the Arthur Smith offense is designed purely to throw over the middle of the field. And Justin Fields in Chicago was just never. that guy. But in this game, man, he made a handful of a really, really important throws and really

good throws over the middle of the field. He had one, a big conversion to Calvin Austin early in the early in the game. He throws an absolute strike between multiple defenders to hit Pat Friarmooth over the middle. And then there's a throw later in the game where the Steelers are running this kind of wrap concept where you have just a little sit route and then behind it you run the dig. Justin Fields puts that again right on Calvin Austin. They had a safety screaming down from the other side. So he kind of vacates. And so when Austin catches it, he's got wide open grass. And he goes and basically closes the game off that throw. So I thought the fact that Fields was able to make some of those throws, even if again, they don't, you know, they didn't score that many points this week and the

offense wasn't crazy. The fact that you're just getting these slightly better layers of his game where he's doing this. He's not turning the ball over. It's like, okay, man, they've kind of got some stuff to build with here. Yeah. And I always felt that way about him. I mean, I thought that he progressed a lot last year from where he was the year before. I just felt like for a bunch of different reasons, like the Bears made the right decision in doing what they did. But there was always a competent NFL quarterback in there with the right help in the right situation if you gave him enough runway to get there.

And I do think that what we've seen from him in Pittsburgh is not necessarily surprising. And this is kind of what I hoped we would get. Like I just did not want to see Russell Wilson as the quarterback for this team. It was not interesting to me. I felt like there was so much more of an upset. with Fields. And if he could mitigate the negative plays, some of the splash plays that you would get, he ran for a touchdown again today, made him a more compelling choice to be dropped into that spot. And through three games, I don't think we have any evidence on the other side of that.

And I would certainly expect to see him continuing to be the Steelers quarterback even when Russell Wilson gets back healthy. Yeah, I hope so, because I don't think the efficiency would change with Russ. And Fields is certainly more explosive. And if he's a young player who can keep adding stuff to his game, It's pretty exciting. Let's get to our next one here. Did you see what Malik neighbors did today? I sure did. How could you not? It seemed like every time he was on my screen, he was just making the most, I mean, I guess we're used to it now, kind of seeing a, or we're getting flashbacks of OBJ, right, of like, oh, this super, this young superstar receiver in a Giants uniform making plays neighbors, man. He just made some absolute bombs in this game. He reminds me of Jamar Chase, just like the way he moves, the body control, the size. I mean, even beyond the touchdowns, the play he makes over Emerson on the left sidelines, for his first catch. Martin Emerson is not like a small diminutive cornerback. Doing that and making that sort of physicality,

showing that sort of physicality against a guy like Martin Emerson is fucking impressive. And then the body control on the first touchdown, that's the Chase thing. The plays that stuck out to me early in Chase's career are some of the things that he was doing at the sideline, where he would be able to kind of turn his body back for the ball while getting his feet in bounds.

and when you combine the size and explosiveness with that sort of body control, you're just talking about a different sort of beast. And I think that neighbors has shown that already. And like that first touchdown to me was a perfect example of like why he has shades of what Jamar Chase felt like early in his career. And these plays were cool too because the one where he makes that just super acrobatic catch in the back corner of the end zone, that was like, okay, that's why you drafted him. He can go do that stuff.

And obviously he can also do some insane stuff with the ball in his hands. That's why you drafted him. When he dunked on Emerson, not that I thought he had bad ball skills coming out or anything, but you didn't draft him to be a ball winner. And so the fact that he can still have some of these plays where he can just go dunk on a guy, it's like, all right, man, if he can dunk on people, he can make acrobatic catches, you know he's just a turbo, you know, just incredibly fast car when he has the ball in his hands. I mean, he's a very, very bright player. He is on pace right now for 210 targets. What did you put it at at the beginning of the season? Because I know you were on this about like he might break the record or something.

I think I said he would break the rookie record. And I think the rookie record, Puka said it last year with like 160, I think was the final number. So he's very much on pace. He's absolutely shattered that. And why wouldn't you? You should throw him the ball at least a dozen times a game based on who he is and based on what the other receivers on your team look like.

They're fine. Like the other guys are fine. You should be throwing him the ball an absurd amount of times. and it's very nice to see that they are. And with this, well, as it went today, maybe Daniel Jones will fully be like, okay, I don't even have to think about these other guys. If they're open, they're open. But if they're not, I'll just go find this guy.

Do we want to have a conversation about the current state of the Cleveland Browns? Or we just accepted that this is where things are? I think they're just terrible, man. Some of the offensive line injuries have made this team like a much worse version of the team we thought they were going to be. And I just don't really see the light at the end of the tunnel here. We've seen this over the first three weeks where opposing defensive coordinators when they play against certain offenses, they're like, I have no respect for you. I don't think that you can operate as an NFL offense if I just blitz over and over and over again.

That's not necessarily what Shane Bowen has been at this point in his career. I mean, it hasn't been somebody that's sent a ton of pressure. In this game, he blitzed on 57% of Watson's dropbacks. on those plays, 55% pressure rate, seven sacks, 8 of 18 for 92 yards. That's how you shut down any offense. And honestly, that is the right way to do it against this offense, because what did I say last week with the Jaguars, they were kind of getting some pressure on him, but they just couldn't tackle him.

Okay, well, if you send enough bodies to where it's impossible to not have a free runner to go get him, then you're just going to get him because he's not going to do a good enough job replacing these blitzes, outside of Amari Cooper making a couple of plays at now and then. I don't think they have enough wide receiver talent to just go throw it up to guys and they'll go make a one-on-one play or anything. So offense just doesn't have enough answers. And if the run game's not going to be, you know, it's Uber efficient like it has been in years past, what's the answer?

And what's the answer going to be if their defense isn't going to be one of the best, like, three or four units in the league? And we knew the defense is probably going to take a step back. I mean, today was a significant step back against the Giants team that had struggled to move the ball pretty consistently against lesser defenses over the first couple weeks. But there is a chance that this thing gets pretty bad. And I don't know what the answer is because if you're the Panthers, you can move on from Bryce Young.

Like you've traded a shitload to go get him. But in theory, like you can move on from him and just decide we're going to draft somebody else. DeShon Watson has to be on the Brown's roster next year, essentially. But based on what he is getting paid and what the guaranteed money looks like, I don't know what it even means if you decide to bench him, but I also don't know how you can continue to pratt this out there. That's the thing. I think if it continues to be this bad, it's going to get to a point where it doesn't matter if he is pleased with his circumstances or being on the bench.

Just throw James Winston out there. And if the other 52 players on the roster are happy with the state of things, then that's fine. And you just kind of have to eat the fact that you're paying him a trillion dollars to just be on the bench and just be there for no reason. I think that probably has to be it at a certain point, or at least I think you have to have a very real conversation about it, because how can you look Miles Garrett in the eye and say, we're going to continue doing this? I know that you're the best defensive player on the planet, and I know that you play your heart out every single week, and I know that the defense has carried us for a good chunk of the last year, but this is the best thing for us is for this guy to continue

you playing quarterback, even though he gives us absolutely no chance on that side of the ball every single week. I don't know how you can continue to do that. I really don't. I just don't think that you can. And again, I think we said this earlier at a different point too. James Winston, he is what he is, but you can run a serious NFL. It's like the Andy Dalton thing. You know what you're buying when you put in a guy like this in the roster, but you know what you can get and you know that you can run a serious NFL offense and see what your other 10 players on offense are. And I think there's value in that. Let's keep rolling through these. Did you just. see Juwan Jennings today?

Dude, every time. It's Juan Jennings just like one of the best 10 receivers in the league? Dude, I swear at least once a year, he does this, right? Where he has a game like this, or Kyle just cooks it up for him and he just gets a bunch of free plays. But it seems like at least once a year, Juan Jennings has a game where you're like, are we sure he's not the second best skill player on this team? And obviously everything that he does, you know, every film head is going to be like, dude, what he does as a blocker and some of the stuff over the middle of the field. But he's a really, really good athlete, actually, for a guy who is that big. Like, some of the plays that he can make in space, like, he can really tear away from people,

some of the separation that he got in the red zone. I mean, he's just, he would be probably a more recognizable name if there weren't four other all pros playing outside of him and catching passes alongside him. I think the Niners are probably going to be fine. We talked about the Steelers and what the Steelers have done on defense on third down. The Niners are giving up 50% conversion rate on third down right now. I think they're like 10 of 70. on third downs, like over a certain stretch over the last couple of games.

So I do think there's a certain volatility to the way that things have gone for that team. And if you look at what they've done on offense consistently, I mean, they obviously had the turnover last week, the pretty interception that was brutal and then they had the sacks. But for the most part, they've continued to move the ball pretty consistently. So I'm not in a spot where I'm really worried about them right now. I just think that it's been a couple bad breaks over the last couple weeks and playing against a buzzsaw of a Vikings defense that they're not going to have to see every single week. Yeah. And you're again, you're missing some of your best players.

And even Brandon I, you like, you know, was kind of absent for a lot of the off season. Like he'll just looks off right now to me. He just does not look like he's really clicking right now. He does. But like, what is your confidence rating that a month from now he'll look? I'm sure. He might look fine. The fact that he just looks like a little bit rusty right now and the timing looks a little bit off. I think that that's been the case since the start of the season. No, absolutely. And when you're in offense where the passing offense is so built on, timing and trust and all this stuff, it throws a little bit of wrench in the offense. But again, I think a month from now will probably be okay. Yeah, I think the defense definitely, I mean,

we talked about it coming into the year. Like, this is not the same sort of defense from a personnel perspective that they've had over the last few seasons. And I think some of the issues that started creeping up last year, I don't necessarily think have gone away. But I do think the offense is going to be enough of a juggernaut when it's at full strength or close to full strength, that the defense is not going to be that big of a problem. Like, if this is the, 14th best defense in the league. And the offense is what we think is going to be. This is still going to be one of the best teams in the NFL all the way till the end, right?

Yeah. I mean, we said coming into the year, too, they could take a step back on offense and still be one of the best in the league. And they still are. Like, we're like a mildly worried about a game where they still scored 24 points. Could have been 27 if they didn't miss a field goal towards the end of the game. Like, they will probably be fine and in a game where they didn't run the ball as well as I think they want to for a lot of this game.

But I think in most weeks, as we've seen the other couple of weeks of the season, they probably will just be able to run the ball as much as they want to. So, like, yeah, offensively, I'm fine. Defensively, it's kind of what I was a little bit worried about, where they're missing some stuff. They're missing a little bit of that, some of that depth and just stuff that holds the defense together outside of the stars. But, again, if the offense can score 24 to 32 every single game,

they'll probably be okay. Right now, they are fourth in offensive success rate and fifth in EPA for play on offense over the first three weeks. Still, we're saying, how weird it feels and they're still one of the best in the league. Yeah. And that involves a game against the Vikings last week who I think over the course of the season are going to prove to be one of the best offenses in football or best defense

in football. Last one here. Did you see how terrible the Cowboys defense looks right now? You can't not. Like here's my visual for this game was Derek Henry got loose on a run between the tackles and he breaks one tackle and then he gets maybe 20 yards down the field. field, he just absolutely puts a hand in a man's chest and throws him to the ground. And that is what this entire game felt like for the Ravens offense. Like it was just, they got anything they wanted.

The Cowboys couldn't get in their gaps, couldn't tackle. It was, it was a nightmare all game long. The stat that I thought was very telling. The Ravens receivers had an average of five and a half yards of separation on Lamar's dropbacks against zone coverage today. They're just playing seven on seven. Like you're just playing against air. But isn't that how the game felt? I mean, guys are just wide open throughout this entire game. And if the run defense is going to look how it looks and guys are going to be wide open all the time, what do we do in here?

And even on the non-wide open. Nothing. Like even on some of the non-wide open plays, there's a there's an out route like a quickout that Lamar Jackson throws to Nelson Agglore. He catches it. I mean, he's open. And then Agler just breaks a tackle and runs for like 30 more yards. And it's like you can't tackle in the fast game. You can't tackle in the run game.

You're letting receivers just run free all over the field. I mean, it's just the Ravens got every single. They needed a get right game, the Ravens, right? And man, this seems like the defense to get it on right now. So we've had three games from the Cowboys this year. Week one, they play a Brown's team that we know now is arguably the worst offense in the NFL and has an unplayable quarterback. Over the last two weeks, the Cowboys are.

dead last in defensive success rate in that game against the Saints and then playing the Ravens today. It's not like the Ravens have been lighting the world on fire offensively, right? Like they did not move the ball of that consistently against the Raiders last week. What is this Cowboys team? If their defense is going to be like a bottom 10-ish unit, which doesn't seem shocking, right? I think that people have the Cowboys in their minds is this hyper-talented group defensively. And I just don't think that's true. Like Michael Parsons is really, really good. DeMarcus-Lorence is a very good player. Osir-I-Diguizua is like a solid third piece along the defensive line. Is there anybody else really that's part of that equation that you

think is a difference maker in the front seven period? No, certainly. Not the linebacker room. Like, I know DeMarion Oversone has a couple of nice flashes as a space player. He is not all the way there in terms of, you know, being where he needs to be. And then the other linebackers have not been a big piece. And then like, Maisie Smith at defensive tackle, I don't think has been the player they wanted him to be. And the depth off the edge. Like, you know, we kind of said coming into the season, we're used to this team having five guys that they can go to. They kind of just got the two right now. I mean, Marshawn Neeland has made a couple of plays, but it doesn't feel the same. If this defense finishes like the 23rd best unit in the NFL, this could be like a seven-win team.

Because the offense, we love Dak. Dak is a very good quarterback, but it's the same issues we talked about coming into the year. Like, they have CD Lamb on offensive. line that is young and has question marks, even if they had their moments in the preseason, and no other weapons and no way to find explosive plays. And that's the thing I want to say about the offense. All they have right now is efficient passing. Like, DAC is going to give you that by virtue of being on the field. Yeah, by existing.

Yeah, by existing. But you don't have any explosives in the passing. Well, I mean, outside of like CD Lamb miracle plays, which he's going to give you that. But other than that, you don't really have that much explosive passing. So you can't really just have these 30 to 35 games where you're just going into shootouts. You're probably not going to get those. But because you can't run the ball that well, you're also not going to like condense these games and make them, you know, shorter and control the possessions and all that stuff and give your defense a rest.

So you're in this spot where you just end up in a lot of games where you're down like 14 to 3 earlier something because your defense is allowing points. And all you have is this passing offense that can get you six to eight yards consistently. That's just not enough to win games against like most teams in the NFL at this point. Yeah, I mean, it just feels like it's going to be a wholly uninspiring season from this team if it continues down this road. Based on what they look like the last two weeks, I don't have a huge reason to think that we're going to see a left turn at any point, especially with what's going on with the defense. Speaking of teams that we're a little bit worried about, let's get to it's so over. It's over. So over.

The Miami Dolphins offense and very likely the Miami Dolphins season if Tua Tunga Lowe is going to miss a huge chunk of time. It's pretty over, man. It's pretty over. They cannot have Skyley Thompson out there. And then Tim Boyle ended up having to play staff to them. That cannot be your two answers at quarterback when, you know, obviously, you know, Tung ofai Lolo was healthy last year, but this is a quarterback who has a history of not staying healthy. The two guys they had behind him are not good answers.

They got to give somebody a call. you know, you're going to bring Ryan Tannahill back into town. I don't know who it is at this point, but it's got to be somebody. Like, you have to make a call. I don't, I don't think if the, if they want to keep this thing right until Tua gets back, they're going to have to get a different answer to the quarterback's position. It feels like. I don't think we really understand, even if Tua has limitations, right?

Even if he has limitations, which we, we know he does. His play style and what he is is very central to how this offense has to operate. when he isn't playing that way behind this offensive line and as part of this larger ecosystem, you start to see all of the weak points with how the rest of the offense is structured and how the rest of the roster is built. On throws of under two and a half seconds today, Skoward Thompson was 9 of 10 for 74 yards. On throws of over 2.5 seconds, he was 4 of 9 for 33 yards and took 5 sacks. You just can't be living like that.

But that's a good point about Tua. like again for as much for as limited as the offense can be in certain ways when he's on the field it also works because he's on the field when you can just get these these huge windows where you're throwing to tiger kill jalen waddle or even just a lot of the rPO quick game stuff he does like i know this is going to sound stupid but you can be a good screen thrower and tua actually is because it's just the ball comes out of his hand so fast and he's typically very accurate whereas there are some quarterbacks which just actually aren't good at that um and that can limit the offense in this way too like that's why Justin Fields is a bad screen thrower.

He is a very bad screen thrower. I'm trying to think of an example off the top of my head and Justin Fields is the first person that came to mind. That's probably the best one because yeah, the motion is a lot longer, not typically as accurate. C.J. Stroud is an excellent screen thrower. There are good and bad ones. There are.

And Tua is, to his credit, a pretty good one. And so when you take that element away, you take away some of the accuracy and confidence throwing over the middle of the field that Tua has, the offense is probably just not going to work the way that it is designed to work. And like there is some world where if you give McDonald or Mike McDaniel a month with a different quarterback that he can rewire this thing and do it a different way. But I think when you're like immediately thrown into this problem, you have to do it, you know, off a week's notice.

It's really, really hard. Sure. But guess what? We've seen other teams do on a week's notice. What did we just see the Packers do? And that I think speaks to a larger issue that we have with this Dolphins team is that while at their best they are extremely dangerous and explosive, it is an inflexible model on offense. It is structured in an inflexible way. When they have to play a different way than the

way that they want to, they really, really struggle. I think we've seen that when too has been on the field, and I think we see that when he's been off the field. That's a good point because the Packers ran such a normal offense that it's almost easier to pivot off of that, even if obviously the offense under, you know, Malik Willis is very different. With the dolphins, that's a good point. I don't even know who you would call if you want to run it the same way at this point. Like, what are you going to call the Jaguars? Go get Mac Jones? That might be your best vet. Like, I really don't know. You talked about the screens. The other stat that I wanted to throw out before we moved on, 42% of Scoward Thompson's attempts today came behind the line of scrimmage. Not serious.

That's, that is not real football. That is not real football. You're not even trying to play real football at that point. Not honorable. It's not honorable in the. the slightest. This offense already, to me, is not very honorable. And now because of the situation, they are diving even further into dishonorable football. It really sucks. Like, even, again, even I don't, to his health and his well-being is the most important thing here. And I think that is worth saying, and I'm not just saying that to say it. Like that, that's, oh, it's worth keeping in mind as we discuss this team and its future. It's a real bummer when you have an offense that objectively should be a watchable, exciting unit. Even if they had their issue,

over the first couple weeks of the season. It's like this should be a watchable NFL offense. The fact that one more of those has been removed in a time where it's harder to score points than it has been since I started covering the NFL, it's just sad. It's just sad that we have one more NFL offense that's just a complete non-starter now. And it comes with a team and an organization that we thought might be one of the most exciting offenses in the week. And a unique offense.

I mean, they kind of do some of the Shanahan stuff, but it's in a very different package than we're used to. And on a very different time schedule than we're used to. So, yeah, it's kind of stinks that we don't really get to watch this operate the way it should right now. Before we get out of here, let's talk about what we learned today in week three. I think I've learned something today. This is how we're going to wrap up all of these recap shows. And I'm going to start with mine. And we've alluded to this a couple different times over the course of the show.

And I probably stepped on it more than I should have. But when I was watching what the Vikings and the Packers were doing today, and then I watched what a team like the Bears is doing, the fact that they all play in the same division is pretty funny. But you can feel the difference in how you're living. If you have one of those guys that is like the architect, play caller, kind of figurehead for your organization on offense, and you don't.

I think that we've reached a point where, it is so clear who are the haves and who are the have-nots. And in this era, again, when it's really, really hard to score, if you don't have one of those guys, if you are one of the have-nots, it's almost impossible to get over the hump. Like what you're having to do and the uphill battle that you're having to fight against some of these teams, everything else needs to go so correctly that it almost doesn't matter. Like the Bears defense is one of the best units in the league right now. What they're doing down in and down out, they are one of the best defenses in the NFL.

And it just wouldn't matter. Even if they were playing this way, the fact that what's happening on offense completely sabotages all of that. And that goes for so many teams around the league. Like if you are one of these teams, especially with a young quarterback or especially with question marks at quarterback, like the Vikings have, like the Packers have, and you have one of these coaches. Like we mentioned with Kevin O'Connell, they're just going to be one.

of those rising tie types of guys. The guys who step into that building on that side of the ball are going to become the best versions of themselves. If you don't have one of those, I don't know what your path forward is in the current NFL. Even teams like the Steelers, where Mike Tomlin is a fantastic coach, consistently putting that team in the best possible position, your ceiling is inherently going to be capped. And we talk about what needs to happen and everything else needs to be going right.

you look at the Steelers skill on defense and what that defense is. That's the only reason that the Steelers are a viable NFL team right now, considering what the state of their offense looks like. And I like Arthur Smith. So I just feel like we've gotten to a place where there is such a stark contrast between the haves and the have-nots and what the path forward for those two types of organizations look like. And I think that if you were one of those teams that doesn't have one of those guys,

it's pretty demoralizing right now. it's it's kind of like what you just said where if you don't have one of those guys you have to be perfect everywhere else like not like having one of those guys it's it that's just how it goes and like if you don't have one of them you have to have one of the best three or four best quarterbacks in the league like Josh Allen you know you have to be the bills or or you have a very good point if you have one of the quarterbacks it helps but that's cheating right like that's cheating that's you could say that about any team in any era it's like just have the best quarterback it's like okay yeah no that's not really a novel concept.

Or you have to be something like, and this is even a team that is still struggling despite this, you have to be a team like the Eagles where it's like, okay, I don't know if this is built all that well, but the offensive line is so good, the skill talent is so good, the quarterback is good enough, that's like, okay, we're still a good team anyway. And even then, that is a team that we talked about earlier. It's like, I don't know how great I feel about this even despite all of that. So it's a great point that you can, if you have a super, super talented play caller, like a guy like Kevin O'Connell like we're seeing now,

if you can get that out of guys like Sam Darnold, it allows you to get top eight quarterback play without top eight actual quarterback play. I don't want us to be fixated too much on play calling. I don't want that to be the term that we keep coming back to here because I don't think this is about some guy like up in an ivory tower, like constantly pushing the right buttons at the right time.

It's what we mentioned with these teams. It's the detail. It's how well coached they are. It's the teaching. It's the teaching to every single position. When you watch one of these offenses and you see the level of detail along the offensive line, what the protection plans are. That's something that I keep coming back to. When you watch the Vikings today and you watch how sound the plans are in protection, I think that what we overstate sometimes, I think that offensive line talent is very important.

You want a really good offensive line. But I think that really good offenses can mitigate holes in offensive line talent and really badly designed offenses expose gaps in offensive line talent. So I think it's just about making sure you're accounting for your weaknesses and accelerating your strengths all across the unit because you're explaining the intent of why things are happening, the detail that things need to happen with, and you're constantly putting guys in the right positions. And I think that when you look at teams that aren't doing that, that's when you see some of the gaps and talent in ways you wouldn't if those teams were better coached.

I mean, you even said this about multiple years of different Frank Reich offenses. And then when they immediately got a different guy in there who called the protections a little bit better, protected his guys a little bit better. And, you know, I don't know if Dave Canales is quite in this tier yet that we're talking about of this style of offensive guy. He's on a good path, right? But the fact that he could come in immediately to Carolina in this offensive line, again, they added some guys. guard, but they just look more put together. Like, they just look like everybody knows where to be. The pocket is built the way it's supposed to be built.

And everyone's doing their job correctly. They're not really blowing assignments just every now and then you lose, which is going to happen to anybody. This is a very good point. And bringing up the Steelers, I think, is, and this is something I noticed today, the work that Zach Frazier is doing before the snap and setting protections and how they seem to be going to the right spots all the time, even with some of the concerns they've had at that right tackle spot as they've cycled.

between options. That to me is a very good example. Like, it's just about putting your guys in the right spot. And I think creating protection plans is as important as anything here when we're discussing which of those offensive coordinators and which of those coaches are putting their guys in positions to succeed and which ones aren't. So that's my rant for today is that I just, when I'm watching these teams, you can feel the ones that have them and you can feel the ones that they don't. And the chasm between those to me feels very, very wide right now. Yeah, I mean, I love it because my what did I learn today is actually pretty similar to that. It's that coaching, whether it's like,

you know, the confidence you instill in a player through either literally just talking to them and being like, hey, man, I believe in you, or going out and acquiring a guy and, you know, letting them know through acquisition that you believe in a guy or just some of the coaching details and getting guys to buy in and believe that goes such a long way. Look at guys like Quentin Johnston who people last year, man, they were ready to completely throw him away after what he was as a rookie for the charges. And this year, I don't know if he's ever going to be, again, as good as a first-round pick receiver should be. But he looks like a solid NFL wide receiver with a role. And he looks like he's more confidentnesses in his hands.

Because I think Jim Harbaugh came in there and be like, hey, man, you're a talented football. Let's get you to play some talented football because you have that. Malik Willis, what he's done in Green Bay. I mean, even Matt Lafleur was talking, he said, obviously they went out and traded for him a little bit before the season. And then LaFleur, just every time he gets a chance, he is just so effusive about the work that Malik Willis is done, which obviously, you know, to me speaks like, okay, Lafleur is also putting in a lot of work to make him work and like they have a great relationship. So just the fact that they have that relationship, I think has gone a long way for him. Look at Sam Darnold, like you mentioned with

Kevin O'Connell. Even two years ago with Gino Smith getting what he got from Pete Carroll. I mean, it's just when you can really instill that in a player and let a talented guy know that he is talented and play ball, it can go a long way. And I don't want to make it sound like this is some pixied us that you can just sprinkle on any bad player and they'll become good. But it does go a long way for guys who are clearly talented and just need a little pick me up. It's part of the conversation that we're having about that guy being in the top of the organization. How you communicate to your players and what that messaging looks like is part of that overall equation. And you absolutely can feel that. And I think that Sam Donald is a very good example.

Just somebody who's clearly playing with a lot more confidence because he came in and they were just like, we are going to do everything we can to get you to be the best version of yourself. And so far, I think that we have seen what that looks like. Yeah, like I said at the top, three years ago, there were some pockets in this game. I know Sam Donald would have bailed for him or done something stupid. But in this game, he didn't. And it's just really cool to see players take that kind of step with the coaching instability they have with them.

All right. That is all we've got for the week three recap. We will be back on Wednesday with our midweek show. The one we did last week with Sam and Stephen, I thought, was a good example of what we're going to try to be doing in those Wednesday shows. So very excited about that one. My buddy Mitchell Schwartz is going to be joining us on that show. So very much looking forward to that. And then we will be back on Friday with our week four preview.

Until then, sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We will talk to you very soon.