The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 4: Titans-Steelers postponed due to COVID-19, Andy Reid vs. Bill Belichick and Adam Gase’s hot seat

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

As the NFL deals with their first COVID-19 outbreak, The Athletic’s Robert Mays and Lindsay Jones break down what we know about the Titans’ positive cases, the impact on the schedule moving forward and what failed in the testing protocols.Plus, they dive into the showdown between Andy Reid and Bill Belichick and can the Browns run past the Cowboys this weekend? They discuss their matchups of the week as well as Adam Gase’s job security in New York. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays, joining me as she does every Thursday. It's Lindsay Jones. Lindsay, how are you? I'm good, Robert. How are you? I'm doing okay.

It is, there's a lot going on. We did not talk about the Titans situation on yesterday's podcast because I knew that I would be digging into it with you. We're going to get to the Patriots Chief's game, which is the game of the week. We're going to get to some Adam Gay's Sadness, which has come to Dom. a lot of conversations over the last week or so. We're going to get some of our favorite matchups of the week, our biggest questions heading into week before.

But before we do any of that, let's get to what has been undeniably the biggest NFL news of the week, something that you've been chasing and talking to people about, essentially since it happened. So the Titans had several players test positive for COVID-19 earlier this week, along with some personnel. I just want you to kind of walk me through it. This is the Michael of Scott.

I'm five years old. My parents have given me a lemonade stand sort of thing. So if you're talking to me, like I'm five and I don't understand this, can you just walk me through what has happened with the Titans in the past 72 hours or so? Sure. So this is kind of the scenario that we all kind of feared would happen at some point this season, that there would be one person tested positive. There would be somebody who got infected comes into an NFL facility, unknowingly transmits it to other people within the building. All of a sudden you have an outbreak. So right now, as of, you know, this is Wednesday. I guess late Wednesday afternoon, early evening, there have been 10 positive cases,

new confirmed positive cases within the Titans organization since last Saturday. So over the last five days, four players, six other staff members. Neither the Titans nor the NFL have detailed who those other six people are. We know there is one coach outside linebackers coach Shane Bowen. He's their de facto defensive coordinator. And this all kind of started, really, that, you know, if we walk back a couple days, was on Saturday morning, they got Shane Bowen's positive test back. So this was before the Titans left from Minnesota. So they sent Bowen home.

The rest of the team, you know, they did some contact tracing. They decided that nobody else needed to be ruled out. They traveled to Minnesota. They played the game on Sunday against the Vikings. Flew home to Tennessee. Everybody came back into the building for testing Monday morning. 5.30 a.m. on Tuesday, they get word of eight new positive test. Cleared the building. Everybody goes home. Meanwhile, the Vikings have to shut down their facility.

Everybody goes through additional testing. They're going through the contact tracing. And now Sunday's game between the week four game between the Titans and the Steelers that was going to be in Nashville has now been postponed. They're hoping that they're going to be able to play it either Monday or Tuesday. That's what the NFL has said so far. But a lot of that is going to depend on kind of what happens next if there are more positive cases. If within the Titans organization, they had an additional positive case for a player that was returned on Thursday morning from Wednesday's testing. And given what we know about this virus and the incubation period, excuse me, they're not out of the woods yet. It would be naive of any of us to assume that we're three or four days into this and that they have this outbreak contained. So as of now, you know, there's one game that is on hold.

The Vikings Texans game is still supposed to go on as scheduled. But I don't think the Vikings are completely out of the woods yet either. They need to, I think, make it a few more days without any positive test before they can feel confident that they've made it through this. But yeah, so this is the first outbreak. It's the first major test of the NFL's protocols. And, you know, we're starting to get some answers about. how is the NFL going to handle this in terms of when do you shut something down?

And we have to now take a really deep look at what happened. What were the flaws in the system? The testing process failed. Did the protocols fail? Was this an individual team breakdown, an individual person breakdown? Because look, it's... What are the answers to those questions? Because that's my first response is where is the crack in the system here?

Is there any sort of idea? Do people have any guesses? Where does that conversation start? Well, I think there's a couple of things that we can look into here because there's testing and is there a flaw in the testing protocols? And then was there something else in terms of mask wearing, social distancing? And Troy Vincent, he's the NFL's executive vice president of football operations. He's been the guy who's been sending the very sternly worded memos.

You know, he sent one a couple weeks ago warning coaches that they were going to get fined if they didn't wear their masks. He sent a memo to all of the clubs on Wednesday morning that basically said, you know, you guys have been slacking on protocols and saying that they have noticed some kind of lapses in distancing, mask wearing, you know, all of the things that are very explicitly laid out in a 71 page memo that all of the teams got on September 5th. And Mike Brayble was very clear that he has read. He has seen the memo. He said he read them verbatim. which is there any other way to read something right yeah i mean that they're following them like to to the tea but that's all going to be part of this you know the NFL is going to be investigating and

trying to figure out exactly what happened and you know i don't know if it does a ton of good to you know finger point a ton of like well this guy was the you know patient zero or whatever here but it's going to be very instructive for the rest of the league to find out where were the lapses Or this is what can happen if, just with one positive test when one person comes in. And I don't want to speculate about exactly how it was contracted because, look, there's millions of Americans who have gotten this disease and in many number of ways. But the NFL and the NFLPA have laid out very clearly a list of prohibited behaviors, things like house parties and going to bars and going to concerts.

And, you know, they can get wine. Where are there concerts happening? Where can you go to a concert? I miss concerts. Well, Robert, you and I both live in major metropolitan cities that have pretty significant restrictions still in place. Yeah, there's those smash-mouth concerts that were happening a couple months ago. I guess they are happening, just not in my kind of sphere of the world. Yeah, I think you can go to Red Rocks has started having these like 150 people in Red Rocks type of concerts.

God, that'd be great. Red Rocks alone, it's the exact way I'd want to be in a concert. Yeah, it's kind of an ideal scenario. But, you know, so they have laid out all these things that are. prohibited. And if any of the members of the Titans or any other team, like the Oakland Raiders, or the Las Vegas Raiders, excuse me, I need to put money in the fine jar for that, if they have violated these behaviors that are very clearly written out. And one of the kind of the catch-all in that is that players and all team employees are required to abide by state and local

regulations. So, you know, I mentioned the Raiders here. They're now under investigation because a number of players, including Derek Carr, went to a charity gala for Darren Waller's charity, and were photographed mingling with fans, not wearing masks, and that gathering had reportedly more than 100 people, which violates the Nevada state rules. So they're under investigation. The Raiders have already been punished. They had a locker room violation with an unauthorized person in the locker room a couple weeks ago. That was $250,000. So the NFL serious about making sure that these protocols are adhered to. So I expect they're going to be much more vigilant about not just what's happening on Sundays in terms of mask wearing and distancing on

the sidelines and the travel protocols and all that stuff. But what is happening in the buildings Monday through, you know, Saturday, really, because what this Titan's outbreak shows us is that just daily testing is not enough. I think there had very much become this idea around the NFL of, oh, we all tested negative, so we're fine. We can just live our lives like normal. But that's not the way this virus works. Just because you test positive one day doesn't mean you can't, you weren't exposed the day before and it's still, you know, incubating hasn't shown up yet and that you can't, and that you won't test positive the next day and having our, you know, and we'll have already spread it to people. So that's why they're saying, keep wearing your masks,

wash your hands. Don't congregate in groups. So it's, you know, it's not sexy stuff to talk about. But it does have the potential to have very real ramifications, you know, on this season. Look, the Titan Steelers, that should be the game of the week, right? I mean, outside of this Patriots Chiefs game, that's going to be the game we're going to talk about. But now we don't even know if it's happening because of COVID and it's going to affect other teams, other players, you know, the calendar down the line. So just a lot of really big questions. And, you know, hopefully they'll have. have this contained soon, but I think it would be naive or any of us to assume that, you know,

just in a couple days, everything will be back to normal. So my, just the way, my first response to this is I think about it and hear everything that you're saying is that, one, this could be way worse than it is right now, because if he was tested positive on Saturday and had him, it had it, and some of these guys that, you know, had it, there's no way to know if there aren't five to six to seven to eight more guys that do. And are there guys in the Vikings that have it? So they're not out of the woods yet. And hopefully this is as bad as it gets, but it certainly doesn't have to be.

Why aren't there, why isn't their testing on Sunday? What is the thought process behind not having day of game testing? Because it seems like they're testing every other day. Wouldn't that just be one more protocol you could put in place to kind of catch some of this stuff? Yeah. So that is a, it's a really good question. And I think that's one of the things that they have to look at right now. And that's something that maybe will change or they have to look at and see.

if it's going to change. So, you know, the final game day, game week testing cadence, they kind of finalized that right, heading into week one, just a couple of days actually before the start of the regular season. And we remember back to training camp, the big issue with testing wasn't lots of guys testing, you know, having new confirmed cases. It was these false positives. It was Matthew Stafford having a false positive, getting put on the COVID-19 list, his family facing all sorts of public backlash, you know, in early. It was right after the start of training camp. And then there was the day that there were the 77 false positive cases based on a lab error in at the bio-reference lab in New Jersey that affected a whole bunch of teams. So there was this immediate backlash from

around the league from the teams, especially that said, well, what's going to happen with these false positives? I don't want, you know, would if Patrick Mahomes has a false positive on a Sunday morning and they force him to miss the game and he wasn't actually, you know, infected. So there is not, the NFL has not explicitly said why there is no Sunday testing, but the working theory is that the fear of the false positives is a big part of that. The other part is that just strictly based on timing and the tests that the NFL uses as their primary tests are these, they're called PCR tests. They're the ones that take about 24 hours to get back, sometimes less depending on where

the lab is located. They're the most sensitive. I've got tested multiple times. I'm aware of the vacillations in response time, even if they say it's quick. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, I mean, if I was going to go get one just at a drive-up clinic, I wouldn't get mine back in 12 to 24 hours, probably, unless I paid a lot more money. But, you know, so these are the ones that are more sensitive, more accurate, but also they,

you know, since they are so sensitive, they can pick up kind of the old viral matter. But then the rapid test, the ones that you can get the results, you know, within a couple hours, if not less time than a couple hours. They're not as sensitive. They're more prone to being inaccurate and having a false positive. So right now they're using those tests. The rapid test is confirmatory test. So if somebody tests positive, they'll get that secondary test. And if that one also comes back as positive, then it's a confirmed positive case. So, you know, so this was the risk reward, right? Is that you, or the gamble that the league made and the NFLPA made is that by not testing on Sunday morning, you shouldn't be ruling anybody out because of a false positive.

But in this case, maybe if they had been testing on Sunday morning, maybe they could have caught a couple of these Titans players or a couple of Titans coaches who then, you know, had positive results from their Monday test, would have kept them out, could have isolated them wouldn't have exposed those players to the Vikings because that's the really big absolutely that's how it gets out of control yeah is that when another team is exposed and that you know and it's not just these two teams too once you get into a game day environment there's officials there's the cameramen there's um you know the the locker room attendance i mean there are other people you know some stadiums have fans in the stands and yes the players don't have direct

contact with the fans, but there's just a lot of really big kind of public health questions and things going on there. And even beyond the public health questions, you get to the scheduling question. So if it goes from one team to two teams, now you're affecting four teams the following Sunday. So if we're talking about the Titan Steelers game, let's say it's not postponed. Well, let's say it's postponed for a while. It can't happen on Monday or Tuesday. That's the decision they ultimately make.

What mechanisms are in place with the way the schedule has laid out or with the league's thinking that Cowan would allow them to get around that? issue, play all 16 games, and make sure that we kind of keep this thing on the tracks. Yeah, I mean, there's no simple solution. You know, the NFL didn't build in a lot of contingency plans into the schedule back when they created it in April in terms of, you know, overlapping by weeks and, you know, kind of a collapsible schedule where if you had to pull one whole week at games out or one team, you could just easily move things around. So, you know, there are dominoes that could fall. So if it's, if it's strictly the,

Titan Steelers game that would need to get rescheduled. There's some ways you could move it. They do not have the same biweek, but they have common opponents that have the same by week. So you could shuffle other teams by weeks to reschedule, you know, that game later into the season. It's around week seven or eight. It's moving.

I think the Ravens would have to move a game. There's a lot of other dominoes would have to fall. So all of a sudden, you're not just affecting the two teams and then the four teams. You're affecting, you know, a lot. Dominoes continue to fall. the other potential option that they had left on the table is that it would be that that first week in January that would normally be the wild card playoff week that if there are a number of games that have had to be postponed you can move them into that first week

in January the playoffs start a week later there is that by week between the championship game weekend and the Super Bowl that you could in theory pull out nobody's going to be playing the pro bowl right so you know in theory you just have one week before the Super Bowl or they do have flexibility in terms of pushing the Super Bowl back later into February if they if they needed to. There's no reason not to. I mean, it's just that's just the NFL's stubbornness taking over. It's like, no, we're going to play it because that's what it's scheduled for.

I also, I don't think they're going to play the Pro Bowl this year, I would assume. I don't think they have actually already canceled it. I was going to say, would you put it past the league though to be like, you know what? Maybe we could try to do this for like the pennies in revenue that the Pro Bowl would create. They're just not willing to let that go. It wouldn't shock me at all. They were like, you know what? maybe we can do that, a game that no one cares about in the world.

No, it wouldn't surprise me at all. It's all about the money. I mean, they're letting, you know, fans in right now when I don't, I don't really know why because they're able to make a few bucks off of it. So, but yeah, so those are, I mean, there's not a ton of great options. You know, there's, there's no options to play 17 double headers like the St. Louis Cardinals had to do in baseball after they had to miss a bunch of games. Football just doesn't have those sort of options.

It's, you know, it's not like college football or you get a game canceled. All of a sudden you pick up another opponent, you know, you kind of skits like a pickup game. That just, that's not existing here. Yeah, there's no Southern Alabama waiting around to play the Titans this week if they have to reschedule a game. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, the Steelers can't just make up a game on their schedule by picking up, you know, although, you know, I'd love to see them play Alabama or something. That would be fun.

But, but, um, but yeah, so the NFL has this outside advisor committee. They're meeting now. It's this group of, you know, ex players, ex-gms, ex-ex coaches who are working with Roger Godell, Troy Vincent, they're the medical advisors, the NFL PA's advisors to figure out these, figure these things out, when do you have to cancel? If you have to cancel, where do you move it? All of those, all of those sorts of things.

It's very complicated and so fun. Really glad it's all happening. Just a great time all around. All right, Lindsay, a week after a slate that it was difficult to pick a couple of games to focus on because there were so many good ones. We do not have that problem this week. It's almost fitting. that Jets Broncos is kicking off Thursday night football

because it is not a good collection of games, especially if Titans Steelers doesn't happen. But one that is the exception is definitely the Chiefs and the Patriots. I mean, Bill Belichick said this week, it almost feels like a division game this week because of how often these two teams play. So before we dig into the specifics of the matchup between these two teams,

I want to start with one big picture question. Right now, if you had to pick between Bill Belichick and Andy Reed to win one game, who would you pick? So who's my quarterback? All right. So let's set some parameters here. You have league average players at every position, including quarterback. So let's say that Kirk Cousins is your quarterback.

And then you have the Kirk Cousins of every other position at those spots. So it's like, I don't know, Charles Leno is your left tackle. Sammy Watkins is one of your receivers, just guys that are guys. And that's what you have to work with. You have one week to get ready for it. I know both of them are incredible with a buy, so that might not matter. But you have your normal get it on a Monday, play on a Sunday preparation schedule. Which direction are you going?

Okay. And the each team has the same roster. Let's be clear. It's the same roster. Same roster. They're playing each other. I'm going to go with Belichick. And it pains me to say this a little bit because I think anybody who's listening.

to this podcast for very long knows how I feel about Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, especially. But I, the thing that Bill Belichick has done better than any other coach in NFL history is that he figures out how to play to his player's strengths. And I trust that given a random roster of guys, even Kurt Cousins guys, that I would, I would take Bill Belichick for one game because the knocks on Andy Reid, right, are not his, like, schematic stuff. It would be game management. And, yeah, if I have one game, I guess, I'm going to go Bill Belichick.

Also, here's my other question. Who's his staff? Do we, do they have their current staffs? So you get your staffs. So you get McDaniels if you pick this. Okay. Yeah, then I think I'm even more solidly in the Belichick camp. So I tend to agree with you.

And for the reasons that you said, I think that we've seen Bill Belichick succeed with more types of teams and just over a longer period of time. The job he's done so far with Cam Newton and this revamped group is pretty much all the evidence I need. But with Andy Reid, I don't think Andy Reid is a lesser coach than Bill Belichick right now. I think the Patrick Mahomes is his muse and has pushed him to just an entirely different level. It's almost like when you have a band and the band is great to get. but when they splinter off, one guy's better as a solo artist than the other person was. That's like Andy Reid. Andy Reid in the band with Patrick Mahomes is just as good as Bo Bilechek has ever done.

But if you took Patrick Mahomes away from him, I'm just not sure it would be the same results. So that's where I'm landing on this. And I would say, I mean, because we've kind of seen what Andy Reid is with a mid-range quarterback. And that's a good coach. It's a very good. Yes. Those Alex Smith, the Donovan McNabb team.

I mean, those were those were good teams and he's still one of the best coaches of all time. But I mean, that's, you know, we talk about matchups a lot right on the show and the matchups of the week. This is the best matchup of the week is Belichick versus Reed. And there's so much to get into. And I just love, I just love thinking about what these two guys are thinking right now. When they're inside their buildings, game planning for each other, going back through the previous years that they've played. you know, I'm sure Belichick watched that Monday night game and what the, what the Chiefs did to the Ravens defense and took a lot of notes and probably learned a lot of things and probably was yelling at his TV about what the Ravens were doing. So, yeah, I'm just, I'm really, really excited for this, for this coaching matchup.

I just, I guess I wasn't expecting that we were both going to be on team Belichick here. I just feel like Belichick is, it doesn't matter what you give him. You could give him essentially the roster that Kyle Shanahan has worked with for the last two weeks, which is like 10 random. dudes off the street and he would be competitive in a game. I think that Andy Reid has benefited from Patrick Mahomes just lifting the lid. Reed is so creative and I think that the ways he's taken this offense had been spurred on by Patrick Mahomes being an unlimited player. So Andy Reid's creativity no longer has any restraints on it and you've seen him go to heights

that he's just never been able to go to before. That's the cool part of this. I just don't know if he could do that with a quarterback that actually has limitations. So that's the difference is that Belichick is just better with average players where Ma'Hombs is, or Reed has been kind of pushed on by the greatness that Mahomes provides to him. So talking about that matchup and what they're thinking right now, let's dig into that because I feel like the Andy Reid, Bill Belichick, Patriots defense versus Patrick Mahomes' matchup

is definitely the most intriguing part of this entire game. So to try to find some answers, because I feel like everyone's trying to figure this out this week, what the Patriots are going to do. I went back and I watched that Week 14 game from last season. to see what I could glean from it. And the answer was not very much. So it was pretty, from what I saw, it was a pretty even mix of man and zone

with not that many tendencies. So it's not as if on later downs they were playing a bunch of man or early downs they were playing a bunch of zone. I think on third in about mediums or so, you saw some press man coverage, but they also played some zone on third down. So not surprisingly, Bill Belichick,

not throwing out any overt tendencies that you can get a handle on. It looked, I mean, it looked like it. this is how they did it. Stefan Gilmore was covering Sammy Watkins. Jonathan Jones was covering Tyree Kill, which makes sense because Jonathan Jones was a 4-3.

So if you're thinking about your personnel, that would make sense. The Patriots blist on five of Mahomes' dropbacks. Five. Compare that to what happened on Monday night when the Ravens blitzed on 23 of his 47 dropbacks. What do you think his passerating was on blitzes on Monday night? I mean, what's perfect? It was just south of perfect. 151.5.

He averaged 10.9 yards per attempt. He was 19 of 23 for 250 yards and three touchdowns against the blitz. And when you look at what the Patriots tendencies were as a team last year, they blitzed on 37% of dropbacks. It was the sixth highest rate in the league in 2019. And they only blitz Mahomes five times. So where I land is somewhere close to what the charges have done to him and what other teams have done to him to give him trouble in the past.

the Niners, for example, in the Super Bowl. You rush four, you drop seven. That's how you do things. Easier said than done because he's pretty good against that, too. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was banging my head against my desk on Monday night because the thing that Belichick defensively does best, right, is he knows exactly how an opponent can kill you.

And he knows how Patrick Mahomes can kill you, and that's a few overblitz. And I just didn't understand why the Ravens didn't have a better answer for that and why they just kept doing the same thing over and over and over again. So I would expect- I think it's a great philosophical question, though, because what do you want to do? Do you want to do the things you know you're good at and play your game and lose?

Or do you want to do things outside of your comfort zone that you don't think you do as well and lose? I would rather go down swinging to a certain degree if that's the style of defense we feel most comfortable playing. I understand it seems counterintuitive and it looks frustrating when he keeps hitting big play after big play. and maybe they should adjust a little bit more than they did. But I can understand saying, this is what we do, this is what we feel best about. We're going to go down as the team we are. So let's just assume then that Belichick and this Patriots defense isn't going to be blitzing. Maybe it is five times.

Maybe it's a max of seven times. Maybe it's less times than that. What's the matchup that you think will be the best then for the chiefs to exploit? If they are doing that style, let's just rush four, let's drop seven. And who is it the guy that you think they can get the most out of? Is it, you know, is it Travis Kelsey? Is it Tyree Kill in that one-on-one matchup? Or is it Clyde Berra's Allaire who they didn't have much of a running game in early December when they played last year.

Is that a place where maybe the chiefs could have an edge this week? I'd be curious to see what it looks like. Watching that game last year, it seems like the Patriots, this might be a coaching point overall. I'd have to go back and watch more games, their corners get incredible depth in cover, too. And I think that that might be a response to how deep the safeties have to get. When you talk about teams stretching zones or stretching defenses with speed, it's so funny watching the All-22 seeing it practically with the Chiefs. You'd just see guys bailing out because of Tyree Kill and McCle Hartman.

It's amazing to watch it in real time. So I think that having that sort of depth, you can kind of exploit some things underneath. They're almost daring you to do that. So are they going to go to Clyde Edwards-Hillera in the flat a little bit more, take what's there, not try to push the ball down the field when there just aren't openings to do it? Kelsey's a really, really good receiver against zone defenses, though he's so savvy. So I feel like he's still going to be the focal point of what they try to do. But I think the answer is it's going to be difficult in the same way that it has been for them in the past.

For the most part, when teams play that sort of defense against him and when you have a strong pass rush with the front four, they can contain Mahomes in a way that we just don't often see him contained. He normally finds a way at the end, but I do think it's a way to slow him down. The question is, do the Patriots have that sort of pass rush? You know, Chase Venevich has been playing better than he did last year. He's definitely taking this step forward. But I don't think this group is like the Chargers with Joey Bosa or like the Niners were in the Super Bowl. They don't have that sort of talent up front to really make Mahomes uncomfortable without having to bring extra pressure.

Yeah, no, I agree. with you there. And that's where this is going to come down to those like individual matchups and figuring out exactly exactly the best ways to exploit it. I thought it was interesting to watch what they did. The Patriots defense did against Darren Waller last week. It's a great example. Not on Travis Kelsey's level, but he's kind of in that next tier of up and coming really good pass catching tight ends. And has the same spot in the pecking order of receiver on his team. He's the best and most important receiver on his team the same way that Kelsey is. Yeah, and I just, you know, they kind of did some combinations of, you know,

safeties with some linebacker help or, you know, last year a lot. They did, they would use kind of a corner, Joan Williams on a tight end and then bring, you know, some linebacker safety help. So, you know, I don't think there's one guy on that, on that Patriots secondary that's going to be able to cover Travis Kelsey one-on-one. So, you know, it's just going to be a matter of, is it Jason McCordy, is Devin McCordy, is, you know, do they get corner help? I just think that this Chief's defense or this Chief's offense, excuse me, is just so diverse, so scary that I don't know.

I just don't really see a way, a clear way that you stop them. There is no clear way. There's no good answer. And I think that the Patriots are going to do what they've done over the first few games of this season. They've had six guys in their defense of backfield play at least 115 snaps. They've had one linebacker play more than 100. That's been Juan Bentley. They pretty much have put

six defensive backs in the field on almost every single play a mixture of defensive backs. Joe Juan Williams, like you said, last week he had nine snaps, but several of them were in man coverage on Waller. Then Jason McCordy was covering him in the red zone. You have Devin McCordy down there a little bit. They're really mixing up.

They have so many bodies back there, whether it's Adrian Phillips is playing a bunch of snaps for them. Terrence Brooks is playing a little bit for them. They clearly are leaning into this defensive back heavy look. So if they do that, they're coming out in nickel and dime every single play, do the chief say, all right, let's try to run the ball a little bit. I think if they do that, and if they overreact to just the personnel on the field for

the Patriots, that's a win for New England. If you can convince them to run the ball more than they would in another situation, I think that's the first thing. You almost Jedi mind trick them with the way that you're lining up to get them to play a way you want them to play. All right, that's enough on that side of the ball and that matchup. Is there anything just within this game that might. be a little bit overlooked or something we're not talking about as much that you feel like

you'll be paying attention to. Yeah, well, we haven't talked about Cam Newton yet and what this Patriot's offense looks like. So, you know, kind of an important guy. And I've just been very curious to watch the kind of just this evolution. And look, it's only been three weeks. But, you know, I mean, how many minutes and hours did we spend over, you know, I guess since he signed around July 4th of what will the Patriots offense look like with Cam Newton? And what we've seen is that it's through three weeks, it's looked vastly different in each of the Patriots first three games. And that is really fun and also should be really terrifying if you are Steve Spagnolo and, you know, any other defensive coordinators that the Patriots are going to play because,

you know, we've seen a game plan that was very read option heavy, very Cam Newton running heavy. We've seen an offensive game plan where they just let Cam throw. And yes, they lost that game against the Seahawks. But they didn't lose it strictly because of that, you know, of their offense. I think their defense had some big roles in that too. And we've seen that, look, Cam Newton's a really, really good passer. And it was almost funny to listen to like the broadcast act like it was the first time that they realized that Cam Newton could throw the ball because he's damn good at it. And so we've seen a game plan where he threw the ball a lot.

And then last week against the Raiders, you know, they really, they even, they cut down on their read option plays even more. And they just had this really kind of classic straightforward rushing attack. where, you know, it was Sony Michelle had his best game of the season. And they were just really kind of running more of a traditional style. So what do you think is the best way offensively, that they're offensively to attack this Chiefs defense, given what we saw at Kansas City the way that they played against Baltimore in their run game on Monday night? And I'm also just wondering what might come next.

What's the next layer that Josh McDaniels is dreaming up that Cam Newton hasn't tried yet? I'll be curious to see if New England just says, we're going to try to push you around, especially if Chris Jones doesn't end up playing. He has a groin injury, so he's questionable right now. The interior of the Patriots offensive line is a question. Joe Thurney played center for them last week after David Andrews went on an IR with a broken thumb, which, can we talk about that for a second? These guys just playing different positions like it's no big deal and thriving. We're not talking about this enough. Zach Martin last week against the Seahawks just casually.

was like, I'm going to play right tackle now and be really good at it. That seems like it's easy. That's absolutely ridiculous. For Joe Thuni, with almost no notice, I guess people outside of the building didn't know, just to slide over to center as a guard worthy of the franchise tag, and to play extremely well, that's incredibly hard. It's really, really difficult to do, and he seemed to have no issue. So how that interior, I guess, front seven versus the offensive line, when you could throw

the linebackers in there, too. I thought that the Chiefs linebackers played a much better game last on Monday than I expected them to. Damien Wilson had a really nice game. Thought that they were their run defense in general was really solid. Great rush discipline from the defensive line. You saw them just understanding that they had to keep Lamar contained. So I'll be curious to see how that group matches up. New England really wants to run the ball.

That's the style that they're playing this year. They're leaning on it really heavy. They're playing faster than they did in week one. They played at the slowest pace in the league after week one. I thought that maybe that's something they would stick with just to kind of muddy up these games. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we went back to that this week, where they just said, we're going to let the play clock tick down every single time and we're going to try to win this game 21 to 17 and keep my homes off the field as much as we can. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense.

And look, Belichick and Josh McDaniels are probably the smartest duo, coaching duo in the league. and I don't think they'll be dumb enough to keep giving Patrick Mahom's chances. They're not going to punt to him in overtime, is what I'm saying. I think that I understand teams that want to say, all right, we're going to try to score with you. Like last week when Mike McCarthy came out and said, all right, we're going to try to go punch for punch with the Seahawks offense. When your defense is actively bad and your passing game is very good,

I have no problem with that. I think that you should try to be the team that you are. and play to your strengths. New England right now, their strengths are playing defense and running the ball. So you can try to shorten the game. That is the best version of who you want to be. Again, similar to what the 49ers tried to do last year. There's a way to shorten the game and still be aggressive.

You go forward on fourth and one, things like that. I think you have to split the difference. You have to try to score a touchdown in every possession. You don't kick field goals, go forward on fourth down, but still try to limit the amount of total possessions that happen in the game. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I mean, all of this basically comes down to it. I'm actually really excited about this game. And I'm more excited about this game than if Brady were still the Patriots quarterback. I just think it's such a different dynamic having Cam Newton as their quarterback now. And the matchups are just way more interesting. So this is by far away the game of the week with the asterisk about Steelers Titans, you know, two, three and O teams. I'd still give it to Patriots cheese, even if Steelers Titans was going to happen. So I think we're okay.

Yeah, I think so too. And I made the mistake of picking against the Chiefs last week and I'm not going to do it again. So if I had to be on record, I would pick the Chiefs to come out of this game. I would as well. I think it's hard to pick against them right now. All right. Let's get to our individual matchup of the week that we're most looking forward to what we think is the most interesting.

Why don't we start with you? What are you looking for? Maybe if the game isn't as high profile, but just back and forth that you're going to be keeping an eye on. All right. Well, I do think the game is interesting. It's not as high profile, but we got Browns Cowboys this week. And I'm specifically looking forward to watching the matchup of the Browns running backs, Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt against the Cowboys defense,

their Cowboys linebackers who have been fine. But I think, you know, this is the best, the best path forward for the Browns to win this game is to slow it down to let Hunt and Chubb do the bulk of the work. They've been really fun to watch together. It's just such an interesting. diverse, dynamic running back duo that we don't really see anywhere else in the league right now. And, you know, they're the only duo that's both over 200 yards through three weeks. You know, they have very different skill sets.

You know, Kareem Hunt is getting a lot of the receiving targets as well. You know, Nick Chubb is doing a lot of his work kind of in chunk plays in the middle of the field, not so much on the goal line, which fantasy players will notice. But I just, I really like this matchup and I really like this duo. And I just want to see, I just want to see more of that. And I think, you know, it's in Kevin Stefansky's like DNA to run the ball a lot. I mean, that's just really like who he was with the Vikings. So I want to see, I want to see, I want to see, you know, how much play action they can do.

I want to see how many screens they can do. So that that's one of the matchups, I guess, that I'm just most interested. What do you think? I know that you and I aren't maybe totally aligned on Nick Chub right now. Oh, no. I think that, so you look at the production. And a lot of the numbers with Nick Chubb fall in line with what he's been during his career, which is a fantastic running back.

Coming into this season, I probably would have said that I thought Nick Chub was the best pure runner in the NFL. He was up near the top of the league in yards after contact per attempt pretty much every single year, which is a sticky stat. Breaking Tackles is something that translates from season to season. And he's right up there again. He's second in the league and yards after contact per attempt. It's 4.25. And he's averaging over five yards per carry.

and he's ninth in rushing DVOA right now. The Browns' as a team are 10th. But the weird part is and the crazy part is, I don't think he's playing particularly well. The offensive line for the Browns, in my opinion, is probably the most improved positional unit in the entire league. So you go and you get Jack Conklin,

who hasn't even played that much, which speaks to the coaching that they've had. Jedrick Willis comes in as your first round pick. He's been good right away. I think Wyatt Teller, their right guard. We talked about him a little bit with Joe Thomas a couple weeks ago. he's been one of the best players in football through three weeks full stop. That line is mauling people in the run game.

And I don't know how well Chubb is seeing things right now. Because when I was going to this season, I expected this to be an outside zone team with play action stuff. Their run game has been much more diverse than that. A ton of pulling guys, a lot of power plays, really different looks in the run game, which has been really good for the lion. It's given them angles, allowed them to succeed,

But I don't know how well Nick Chubb is seeing that stuff. You know, when we think about continuity and how much practice time matters, I don't think we talk about running backs that often because it's just such a plug-in-play position in people's minds. But when the things in front of you are a lot different than they've looked in the past, there can be an acclamation period. So I think he's seeing things a little bit slowly, but he's so good and so powerful and so good at breaking tackles that the production hasn't fallen off at all.

And if your teams playing the Browns, that's a pretty terrifying proposition, right? The guy's averaging five yards per carry and he's not even playing very well. If he gets into a groove and he starts seeing things a little bit better, I think the sky is the absolute limit for this running game. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Kareem Hunt is really freaking good, too. Yeah, he's really good. He's starting to really get back into kind of his groove and remembering of why this guy

led the NFL in rushing a couple years ago. And, you know, I hope for his sake that he keeps his personal life kind of on the direction that it's going because, you know, he really has this chance now to kind of completely resurrect his career and one of the most interesting dynamic offenses. And I just love that it's also taking all this attention away from Baker Mayfield and this pressure off of Baker and Odell and the rest of this passing game. Because I'm not sure if that passing game right now is ready to get into a shootout with Doc Prescott. Doc Prescott, 500 yards a game, four touchdowns a game. deck Prescott right now. So if they're going to win, like I said, if they're going to win, Chubb and Hunt need to have a really, really big game.

And I think they can do it against that Dallas front. You know, their pass rush, you know, their pass rush has been decent. Alden Smith is leading to league with four sacks right now. But I'm not specifically sold on the interior of their defensive line or their linebacking corps when they're still without latent vanderesh. Absolutely. And I think that Joe Thomas has been okay. Jalen Smith has actually been probably the lesser of their two linebackers.

this season. In coverage, he's been all over the place. I think that that contract is looking worse and worse than more he tends to play. Are you saying the Cowboys give some bad contracts? I think they might have. I think they might have valued the wrong position and paid the wrong guys better than extending their very good quarterback. So I totally agree with you.

I think that watching what the Browns have done over the first three weeks, I'm really impressed with the vision and the plan that Kevin Stefanski has had and the willingness he's had to kind of lean on his assistant. coaches because he's a first-year head coach. He's 37 years old. He's somebody that's been in the league for a long time and understands how important it is to have a really good staff. And Bill Callahan has built that run game and the design of that run game has been impeccable. And I think sticking with it, Kevin Stefansky's a smart guy. He understands the numbers. I think he's more into analytics than probably most head coaches in the NFL, most coaches

in the NFL period are. It's probably one of the reasons he has that job in Cleveland. And them running as much as they are kind of flies in the face of what, numbers would tell you right now. But I do think that the way they've built this offense and insulating Baker-Mayfield and the way they have is the smartest way to do it. This is the best plan and the best overall approach for them to succeed. And I think their willingness to adapt that and really embrace it has been one of the reasons that they've been on the right track so far this year. All right. Let's get to mine. And I want to be clear about this before we start. There was a lot of Nick Foll's talk on yesterday's podcast. My matchup is.

the Bears offense against the Colts defense. And it's not so I can talk about Folesmore. I actually want to talk about the Colts defense. So through three weeks, the Indianapolis Colts are number one in defensive DVOA. So I understand it might be misleading that they've played some really bad offenses. They played the Vikings when you had Kirk Cousins doing Kirk Cousins things. They played against the Jets, who we will absolutely get to. And they played against Gardner, Michoud, who actually kind of tore them up a little bit

over the second half of that game. So if you look at some of these numbers, the Colts are getting pressure on 35.5% of their dropbacks. That is the second highest rate in the NFL. They're blitzing at the second lowest rate in the NFL. That's not surprising. The Colts under Matt Iberflue, so I think is a very good defensive coordinator.

Play a ton of zone. They don't blitz a lot. They do the things they do, and they play fast because of it. It's a simple defense, and guys have really come to understand it. DeForest Buckner has been everything they wanted him to be after they traded a first round pick for him. He has two sacks. He's got 10

pressures. He's been a monster. Darius Leonard has been really good. And shockingly, Xavier Rhodes has been really good. I think dropping him back into his own defense, not asking him to cover people one-on-one and having to him just be a cog in what they're doing, it's worked for them. So are they going to be able to keep this up against better teams? I'm not saying the bears are a better team, but I do think that they're better than the Jets. So I'm really excited as somebody who watches the Bears closely every week to get an up close and personal look at exactly what this Colts defense is doing because through the first month of the year, they've been as good as anybody in football.

Well, what's been really interesting to me about watching this Coles defense? There's a couple things that are that jump out. One, it's that, you know, the upgraded talent, strictly the DeForest Buckner, huge edition. I've watched that play where he, he like literally killed a Vikings guard. They like made a movie trailer out. Poor Jersemaio, who has never played much in the NFL, which is getting thrown to the wolves in DeForest Buckner. My God. But so there's some obvious talent upgrades there.

And that is what's going to carry you week to week to week. And it's getting guys in the right position. Especially when you have a simple defense, talent lifts you. It honestly reminds me of a lot of those Lovie Smith-Tampett-2-esque teams where it's like, we need one dominant three technique, a linebacker that can kick your ass and solid, secondary players that know the positions they're supposed to be in. That's exactly what they look like right now. And that's what they have there. And, you know, and they, they've already sustained some injuries. You know, they lost Malikooker. Rock Yassin had a weird, you know, he was like taken from the stadium in an ambulance a couple weeks ago, but sounds like he's going to be able to return

fairly soon. So they've, you know, they've been dealing with some losses, you know, some injuries on the defensive side. The other thing, though, is that they're just scoring and producing takeaways at a ridiculous level. They've scored on pick sixes in multiple weeks. They've had multiple pick sixes in multiple games. They've had safeties in back-to-back games. And takeaways are random, right? I mean, that's not something that you should be able to depend on week after week. But there is something that when you do, when it does happen and back-to-back games, there's just something about kind of creating your own luck and just feeling like we're going to score and our defense is going to score and we're going to get those takeaways.

And you start getting that feeling that like maybe there's really actually something special and it's not just a good, a good defense, but there's something actually really special there. And, you know, it would be naive. We cannot expect that the Colts defense is going to continue to score. They scored 16 points last week. Well, you know, two touchdowns and a safety. That's not going to happen every week.

I can't imagine that that will happen against the bears this week, especially since Mitch Trubisky is not playing quarterback. But, you know, they're clearly feeling it. And it's really, really, really fun. And that game, you know, got bumped up on my list of games to watch. And not just because of the quarterback debacle for your Chicago Bears. Debuckle? They've solved the problem.

They've solved it. They've solved it. They could have had Cam Newton. The quarterback resurgents in Chicago. I'm all in on the Nick Folsom. It took me one week to talk myself into it. I'm just setting myself up to get hurt again. But yeah, I'm with you.

I'm just excited to see what they look like. I don't think they'll be the best defense in the league by any stretch. Again, playing the Jets and the Vikings team figuring it out, that tends to help your numbers. The turnovers are definitely going to come back to Earth. But I do think that they're well coached. They've finished 19th and defensive Digaway last year without DeForest Buckner, without Darius Leonard for a good chunk of the season,

with a huge question marks a corner. I think that they've done a really good job, kind of assembling pieces on that defense. And again, I think Maddie Rufluis is very good at his job. So I'll be curious to see what, they look like for the rest of the season. All right, Lindsay, typically we each pick someone who we think has the most at stake in a given week.

We are not going to do that because there is only one answer this week. And that is Mr. Adam Gase, the head coach of the New York Jets. Where do you want to start with the Adam Gase experience and kind of where we're sitting with it right now? Well, one, he's only coached 19 games with the Jets. It's impossible that that's true. I was looking at this before we started recording. I expected him to have a record of like 10 and 35.

as the head coach of the Jets or something. He's only coached 19 games. It feels like he's been there for 20 years because this has been interminable. I cannot believe it's only been a season and a half. Just because think of all the shit that's gone down with the Jets since that. I mean, Sam Darnold got mono. I mean, the Levi-on-Bell contract. Everything with Jamal Adams.

I mean, there was a lot of stuff to win. The hyper-drive comment last week, every single the eyes at the press conference, it has been a, even if. it weren't in New York, I feel like this would have been a jam-packed year and a half of Adam Gace. Adam Gase follies with whatever franchise he had landed with. I cannot believe that we've done this. I probably said it was an okay hire at the time because I didn't think the Jets or the Dolphins' talent was that good. I was very, very wrong about that because everybody who has left Adam Gase's umbrella has been great.

Ryan Tannahill, several Jets position players, or several Dolphins skill position players. It is unbelievable how bad this team is right now. Let me read off some stuff for you. The Jets are currently 31st in past defense DVOA and 31st in offensive DVOA. They are dead last in EPA per play. They're scoring touchdowns on 33% of their red zone drives.

That's dead last in the league. The Seahawks are at 100, by the way. and I think they're only five teams. There are six teams even below 50%. And the Jets are at 33%. They are the worst possible football team that you can imagine in today's day and age. They do nothing well. So my question for you, if the Jets, I mean, is there anything else to say?

You're laughing right now. They do nothing well. They're a horrendous team. So I don't like to call for people losing their jobs. When a coach gets fired, a lot of other people get fired. They have staffs. they have families, everything. But sometimes you have to deal with the realities of this stuff.

If Adam Gase loses to Brett Rippin tomorrow, tonight, after people will be listening to this, is there any conceivable reason why he should remain the head coach of the New York Jets? No, I don't think so. And, you know, I think it now feels inevitable. So whether it's October 2nd or November 2nd or January 2nd, I think the outcome is going to be the same. And, you know, you tend to hang on to a coach who you know is probably going to get fired if he's a guy that the players are still responding to, that, you know, the message is getting through. If the roster is good, you see some sort of chance for them, this thing to turn around. But I don't think any of those things are happening with the Jets.

I mean, have you heard any stories coming out of that franchise about guys rallying around, rallying around Adam Gase, the way that Falcons players have rallied around Dan Quinn in recent years? no, that hasn't happened. If anything, he's been at the center of a lot of the drama that's gone on, the stuff with Labion Bell, some of the Jamal Adams stuff that before they ended up trading Jamal Adams away. And, you know, the reason that Adam Gase was hired by the Jets was not because of the job that he did as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. It was because of his reputation for working with quarterbacks.

And he built his reputation as a quarterback. guru by working with Peyton Manning. Which is the biggest bunch of bullshit, I can possibly imagine. And Peyton loves him. They are, they hit it off right away when Peyton took that or when Peyton came to Denver. They hit it off right away. You know, he's, you know, Peyton is in his corner, has given him endorsements, you know, and I think he is a good coach.

And I, and I've known Adam a long time in Denver. And, you know, we personally get along well and all that sort of stuff. But I don't think this is the right situation for him. I don't think being a head coach, I don't know how much he loves it. I don't, he never seems like he's like juice to be a head coach. It just never seemed to be the right fit. And he was hired to develop Sam Darnold. And Sam Darnold has regressed by every measure in the year and a half or so in the 19 games.

And yes, there has been some bad luck mixed in there. There's been some very questionable talent around the rest of the rest of. to the roster, both a receiver and especially on the offensive line. I mean, they made all these efforts to try to improve their offensive line this year, basically by just throwing out all these new bodies. But with the exception of Mackay Beckton, who's been hurt on and off through three weeks, they're not any better on the offensive line, really, than they were a year ago. And Sam Darnold is getting worse.

You hired this guy to make Sam Darnold better. There's a lot of drama with him with everybody else in the team. You're basically become an embarrassment of an NFL franchise. So I don't know why you would prolong what really is going to be the inevitable. Can you remember a team that sounded as beaten down as they sound? When you hear Adam Gates in front of the media, he looks like he's the most miserable person in the world. Donald came out and had his press conference earlier in the week.

It looked like a hostage video. I mean, it is the tone surrounding the most important people in this franchise is unlike anything I can remember. When teams lose, they're clearly not having a good time. And you can see it. But it just feels like this is an entirely different step. And when you're thinking about, I think the Dan Quinn point is a very good one. With the Falcons, what are you really, really missing out on if you keep Dan Quinn through the rest of this season?

You're not milking everything you can out of the 2020 season. I'm not sure how much you would be able to with a different coach. With Donald, every week you continue this is one more week where he's getting lost. Lost and going further down a rabbit hole you do not want to go down. You need to salvage him by any means necessary at this point. And I just think if one more week, every single day he's in this situation is detrimental to his development. I'm not sure if Sam Darnold is salvageable at this point, but you need to do something to try to figure out if he is. Yeah, I think so.

And look, does this become a situation? Does they fire him? Does Greg Williams become the interim head coach? Is this just a repeat of the browse? I don't think it's an accident that Greg Williams continue. becomes the interim coach of all of these terrible teams. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't Adam, you know, Gase wasn't dying to bring Greg Williams on.

It was a little like interim coach insurance almost. So, I mean, there's kind of a system in place there, you know, you keep Dowell Loggins is the guy who can keep working with Darnold throughout this year. Man, there's definitely not good, man. It is a bunch of people who have not been successful in other places. Right. So, I mean, I just think this, this all has to be, and this is just a real. really rough time because you have to make that decision about Darnold's future, you know,

if you're going to pick up as fifth year option, you have to pick that up next off season. And if this is already shaping up to be a completely lost year, just why prolong it? And yeah, I mean, this point, I think you're pumping up his trade value. If they finish with the number one pick, if they have the worst record in the NFL, there is a zero percent chance that they keep Sam Darnel, right? Why would you? If Trevor Lawrence is there, you absolutely draft Trevor Lawrence and trade Sam Darnold. The question is, how much can you get for Zand Arnold?

Right now, it's pretty much nothing. If you have some semblance of hope by the end of the year, he has some flashes, he starts playing like he doesn't hate everything about his life. Maybe you can squeeze something out of that deal. At this point, that seems like the best case scenario for them. God, poor Trevor Lawrence, man. Let's just. Well, at least he wanted to coach by Adam Gase.

That's true. That's true. He can get coached by Brian Dable. I don't know. Eric B. Beanie, whoever, somebody who actually comes from, at least Eric Dable or Brian, Eric Dable, just combine them into one person.

At least Eric Bietamie and Brian Dable have had success in the NFL with someone not named Peyton Manning. That's a step in the right direction in terms of building a solid foundation for Trevor Lawrence. Yeah, the other guy that Adam Gase had success with was Tim Tebow, and it was basically just making him look like a semi-functional quarterback. He hasn't done that with Sam Darnold, so that's better than he's done in anything since. And he definitely didn't do that with Ryan Tannehill.

All right, Lindsay, every week we try to answer the one big question that we have going into the weekend. What is your one big question heading into week for? All right. Well, so, you know, this slate of games isn't fantastic. It's not like last week where I just, I needed, I needed like 18 shots of espresso just to get through the morning's games because they were so exciting. But look, we have. You made that we're breaking down. Nick Foles against the Colts defense doesn't let you know that we're not really dealing

with a great slate here. A little bit, a little bit, yeah. But we do have Vikings, Texans this week, which are two teams that I think a lot of people would have picked to either be in the playoffs. I think a lot of us pick the Vikings to either win the NFC North or be a playoff team in NFC North. And, you know, the Texans who have been a consistent playoff team recently, but they're now sitting here at Owen 3.

There's only one team in NFL history who survived an O and 4 start to make the playoffs. That was that 92 San Diego Chargers team. So one of these teams is going to be in a really bad spot sitting there at Owen 4. And my big question right now is with the Texans, are they as bad as Owen 3 looks? Or are they just really the victim of probably the most difficult schedule start of anybody in the NFL having to play the Chiefs, the Ravens, and then the Steelers? Those three teams right now, you know, there's only one loss between them and that is the Ravens losing to the Chiefs. So this is as difficult of a start to a season as any team has had to have in the NFL. They still have one of the top five quarterbacks. I mean, would we put Deshaun Watson,

top five, top seven, you know, one of those upper tier quarterbacks. If they lose this game, then I'm putting the like the alert, alert panic on the Texans and just kind of blowing up their season. But for a game between two oh and three teams, I'm actually, really, really interested to see a lot of what's going to happen. You know, the Vikings obviously played a lot better last week. They almost beat the Titans. A Titans team that we now know was playing without their defensive coordinator, and they had to shift some play calling duties and stuff around.

So they seem like they were maybe starting to get it together. We're getting a little closer. And, you know, now the Texans who have, you know, some talent, but maybe just haven't been able to show it because of the other teams that they've been playing. You will get no sympathy from me about the Houston Texans this season. Every single thing that this franchise has done for the past six months has been even longer than that. Probably a year has been to its own detriment. The way they've valued players, the way they've acquired players, the way they've thought about how they build their roster,

the way they thought about how they built this offense. Do you know who is dead last in the NFL and play action percentage? I'm guessing it's the Houston Texans. There are very simple ways to help. your quarterback, build a plan for him against the Blitz, having hot, just having really good hot plans, kind of insulating him with easy throws. The Texans don't throw screens. They don't use play action. They essentially have thrown to Sean Watson out there and said, good luck, buddy, figure it out. And every once in a while, like he did against in the first half of the

Steelers, he's good enough to do that. Asking him to do that is unfair. It's not how you should be doing this and it's how they've done it with both the way they've played schematically and with the way they've assembled talents on this team. So do I think they're better than 0 and 3? Yeah, probably. But do I think they deserve to be anything but 0 and 3? And do I think that they're going to be a relevant team for the rest of this season? No. I just want to be clear. Every time you're saying they, do you mean Bill O'Brien? I'm trying to be less mean. I'm just trying to spread out the blame here a little bit. The plan and the execution of that plan have been poor. And I'm not. I'm trying to spread out the blame here a little bit. I do not expect it to go any other direction.

Having one of the best vertical passers in the entire NFL and using play action on 14% of your dropbacks is a crime against the sport. I just feel bad for Deshaun. You said you don't have a lot of sympathy for the Texans. And it's certainly not for Bill O'Brien. I do for Deshawn Watson. I really do. Like imagine the last couple weeks, those first two weeks of the season and watching, you know, his two peers and Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson and in the situation. Or DeAndre Hopp gets catching like 10 passes.

a game. And yeah, exactly. And going, what is going on? Why did I just resign here? I mean, he's got a ton of cash now, which is great. And a ton of security, but I'm sure. I can just imagine him as that Wolverine meme just laying in bed looking at a picture of DeAndre Hopkins. That's probably what he's doing right now because it's the only solace he can find. All right, my one big question, it's a pretty simple one. We don't really have to belabor this. Can the Saints get their shit together? Like, is this going to happen in any point? Sean Payton, came out this week and said that they defended the bootleg last week like a high school team, which I think is a pretty accurate assessment of the way they played against Green Bay.

I thought even if the offense struggled with Drew Breeze's arming question, with Michael Thomas being out of the lineup, all that stuff, that the defense would be able to carry them. When I pick this team to win the Super Bowl, I pick them because I thought they had the best roster in the NFL. They have not played that way. And we talked about it with Sam Monson on yesterday's show. They look old. but even the players on this team that aren't old haven't played very well.

Malcolm Jenkins got picked on against the Raiders, but it's not as if he's been the lone culprit in that secondary. Marshawn Lattimore hasn't played well. Marcus Williams hasn't played well. These are all pro-type players that just really haven't gotten it together this year. And we've seen them in the past really put it together after rough starts to the season, especially on defense. So coming out against a lion's offense that has some talent is a pretty good group,

but is by no means one of the top five. units in the league, can you come clamp down this team and show that you're a team to be reckoned with here moving forward for the rest of the season? I would like to see them put together a complete game. Yeah, I would too. And look, I mean, Drew Breeze's downfield passing game, it's just not coming back. Like, it's not something he's going to rediscover in October. But they haven't had that in years past. Over the last three years, they haven't had that. And they've been fine because they're so talented. And this year, the talent has not been able to take over. So they need to adapt. And look, Michael Thomas practiced today.

He was spotted during the open portion of practice. So we'll see. I mean, high ankle sprains are really tricky. Getting him back will be huge. But now they've got some offensive line injuries they're having to deal with. I do have faith in Sean Payton and his mind. But you're absolutely right about, you know, they're not getting enough out of the rest of their talent. And I don't know.

A lot of us pick them to make the Super Bowl. And so I think we're hanging on to this idea of they should be good. and this is the end of this window with Breeze, and they need to figure out a way to win when they can't maybe rely on him being the same player that he was before. The thing is, though, they have those offensive line injuries, but I have faith in their ability to overcome them.

It's one of the reasons that I thought that they would be able to sustain pretty much anything that happened to them is because they were so deep. So now you can bring in Cesar Ruiz, who you drafted very high in the draft. They have depth in those areas, and they've been missing Marcus Davenport, and David on Yamada left missed last week.

They have players in those spots to kind of make up for that. So even if they've been banged up, outside of the Michael Thomas thing, there's no even one, two, or three injuries where it's like, ah, you know what, let's give them a break here. They were supposed to be able to transcend stuff like that in a way that other less deep teams couldn't, and they still haven't been able to. So now, if you get a little bit healthier, if you get a little bit of a groove, can the best players on your team start playing like it?

That's my biggest question here. and I would like to see it sooner rather than later. All right, guys, that's all we got. I am, uh, I'm not sure I'll be watching, uh, Jets Broncos. I think I might practice some self-care and dig back into the leftovers. Oh, I'm going to watch every snap. Oh, I'm sure you will. It's going to happen.

I'm probably going to live in live, I'm probably going to live in Denver. I mean, I have to. It's what my entire timeline, Twitter timeline is going to be talking about. I just, I have to watch the train wreck. I'm not excited about it, but I'm going to watch it. And, uh, I'll probably have. have a beer or six to get through it.

I don't do things that are good for me, so I will be watching the game as well. I shouldn't if I was just playing, really considering my mental health and trying to do the best things from myself. But I probably will be watching the game. All right, guys, we will be back on Sunday night with me and Nate breaking down the week for Slate. Until then, please do me a favor. Subscribe and rate the podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

Really appreciate that. For now, though, we're going to take a break. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the football. We'll talk to you on Sunday. This was the Athletic Football Show.