The Kevin Sheehan Show - Best-Case/Worst Case

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Kevin gives his 2022 Washington "Best Cast/Worst Case" season records on the show today. Ben Standig/The Athletic and Tim Murray/VSIN did the same. Lots more Commanders' talk with Ben and a ton of college football weekend recap with Tim on the show as well. Kevin also shared his thoughts on Maryland's season-opening 31-10 win over Buffalo.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Chean Show. Here's Kevin. Labor Day is here. Finally, and that means for many of us, football season is here. I hope you're enjoying your Labor Day.

Yeah, the first or most of the first weekend of college football, first full weekend of college football in the books. One more game tonight, Clemson and Georgia Tech. What a wild game last night between L. and Florida State more on that coming up later on in the show. But yeah, we are now into the rhythm of fall, which includes, for so many of us, the rhythm of football season. You know, for a lot of you, high school football and Friday night,

college football Saturday, the NFL on Sundays and Monday nights and Thursday nights. And, you know, it's hot here early in this season. And before we know it, the pumpkins are out. And we've got a crisp, cool, all. autumn, you know, October into like colder weather and holiday time. There's nothing better than this stretch of the next four plus months. It's the best. And it all kicks off in the NFL on Thursday night with the Bills and the Rams.

Yeah, the Bills and the Rams. What an opener. The defending champion Rams, Matt Stafford apparently fine and well. And the Buffalo Bills, who have become over the summer, the clear cut consent. his favorite to win the Super Bowl. You pretty much cannot find anybody that is even a co-favorite at this point. Buffalo is pretty much over the summer, and part of it was they looked really good in the preseason. I don't think the preseason means much, but in a game against Denver in the preseason a few weeks ago, Buffalo scored 42 points. They scored six touchdowns on their first six

possessions. Like there are four possessions in the first half all ended in touchdown. And then their first two possessions of the second half all ended in touchdown. I mean, that's pretty damn impressive. Didn't they do that in the playoff game last year against the Patriots? Didn't they score like seven touchdowns on seven possessions? I'm looking that up right now. I think I'm right about that. It was a 47 to 17 final.

They went touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown in the first. half. Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, end of game in the second half. So seven touchdowns on seven possessions. So they must have missed a couple of extra points. The last possession was three kneel downs to end the game. Buffalo at my bookie right now is plus 580 to win the Super Bowl. They are the favorite. The Buccaneers are the second picket plus 720. And the chiefs are plus 980 as the third favorite. So Buffalo being roughly 6 to 1 and Kansas City being roughly 10 to 1, Buffalo is a prohibitive favorite to win the AFC championship game and advanced to the Super Bowl. And certainly the last time we saw them in that epic playoff game against the Chiefs, 42 to 36 in

overtime with the incredible Josh Allen performance, a game that, you know, we thought they had won, a game that changed the overtime rule for the playoffs this upcoming season because they never got a possession. The Chiefs went down and scored a touchdown on their opening possession. Now both teams guaranteed a possession in the playoffs in overtime. But the bills really have pretty much across the board become the Super Bowl favorite. We'll get our first chance to see them and what is a big time, hell of a first game matchup. We don't always get that. They try to give you a really,

attractive matchup. I can remember a couple of years, you know, like the Eagles played the Falcons on a Thursday night game. The Steelers one year played the Titans in a Thursday night game. There have been some that haven't been great. But Rams with a healthy Matt Stafford apparently now, he's well ready to go against Buffalo. Buffalo is a two and a half point favorite at My Bookie. My Bookie, by the way, is our show sponsor today. You can get your winning season. off to a good start by going to my bookie and using my promo code for their double deposit bonus. It's quick, it's easy. You deposit 250 bucks into your account. They'll add another 250. So you will have 500 in your account to use to bet instantly on as many games and prop bets as you

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Your winning season begins today exclusively at MyBooky. Yeah, we are leading up this week to the beginning of the NFL season. And today's show has a theme to it. It is going to be our best case, worst case show. And that is, of course, I say of course, maybe not, of course, to all of you. But that is a best case, worst case

on the commander's record in 2022. Ben Standing will be on the show. We'll talk a lot of commanders and then he'll give us his best case, worst case. And then Tim Murray is going to be on the show. Tim and I will talk a lot of college football, and then Tim will give us his commander's best case, worst case. I'll give you mine as well coming up here in just a couple of minutes.

I did want to mention a couple of things to start. Ryan Kerrigan named assistant defensive line coach today by the team. That came out of the practice this morning and Ron Rivera's comments. Good for Ryan Kerrigan, starting his post-NFL career as a coach. and he'll be a great addition. He was highly respected when he was on this team with the young players like Montez-Swet and John Allen and Chase Young even for one season. But they officially today announced that Ryan Kerrigan is an assistant defensive line coach

for the commanders. Good for him. So I wanted to get to a couple of things before I get to my best case, worst case. I want to start with my excitement over Maryland football. football over the summer and then last week in particular. I am excited about the Terps and they got off to a winning start to the season beating Buffalo on Saturday 31 to 10. It was not impressive overall, but I'm not really hung up on that because if you saw some of the teams expected to be really great on offense, some of them performed and even overperformed and others sputtered a little bit. And I thought Maryland on Saturday sputtered a little bit offensively. in their 31-10 win. I mean, look, it's a 21-point win. They were never going to lose this game against that team.

But I was kind of expecting, you know, a 40-to-50-point output. You know, Loxley opened up his first season here with 79 against Howard and 63 against Syracuse back in 2019. And last year, they put up 500-plus yards in an opening season win over West Virginia. But they sputtered a little bit. Leah looked a little bit off with his accuracy. They struggled with pass protection. But they had some explosive plays, especially from Roman Hemby.

They were running back. He had a 33-yard touchdown run on their first drive. He had a 70-yard touchdown run to open up the third quarter. And Maryland got what they needed, which was a win. It's funny because a lot of my Maryland fans said, ugh, they didn't look good. and they didn't look like what we thought they would look like. I thought pass pro was an issue.

I thought they struggled again with penalties, which have been a common theme to the Loxley era here. They've been a highly penalized team, and they were again the other day. But they'll have two more chances to get on track offensively before going to Michigan to start conference play in their fourth game of the year later on this month. They have Charlotte this coming week.

then they have a game a bigger test and a real test against SMU on this 17th, a night nationally televised game on FS1. But I'm still, for those of you wondering, I'm still optimistic that Mike Loxley has his best team here and that they can win seven regular season games. I wanted to make a couple of comments quickly about the game. Number one, Buffalo had the ball at the end of the first half at the 41-yard. line, their own 41-yard line after they stopped Maryland on a fourth down, and with 20 seconds to go from their own 41-yard line in a game that was 17-7, they took a knee. I just made a note to myself, why would you ever do that? Your one throw, one decent-sized throw, two to three throws away from field goal range, they had timeouts, too. I don't, why do you, whoever takes a knee at the 41-yard line with 20 seconds to go in the half, Also, there were a couple of performances that stood out.

Maryland's got some NFL players on their roster. We've talked about their receivers. They've got an offensive lineman who is an NFL potential first rounder, second rounder. But Jacori and Bennett, their past defender, their corner, man, he looks like an NFL player to me. He's, again, I don't know anything about Buffalo, and they're not supposed to be good. But his performance really stood out to me. for you Terp fans that care about this part of the conversation. The last comment I'll make is it was a terrible crowd.

It was hot. It was Buffalo. They had a much better crowd last year for West Virginia. And yeah, there were a lot of West Virginia fans in the crowd. Every time I see some of those shots of College Park during games in recent years, and then I saw some of the shots of an empty stadium in the second half going around on Twitter on Saturday. The only thing I can think of is, Wow, Mike Loxley is one hell of a recruiter.

I mean, he continues to recruit big time talent out of the DMV. And Maryland does not have the environment at home that a lot of other places have. Teams are recruiting. He's out recruiting for players, schools that were sold out and standing room only for lesser opponents than Buffalo on Saturday. It'll improve, you know, if they're good. And there was a time, and it wasn't that long ago. But, you know, Ralph Regan filled up that place for many of those years when they had really good teams under him. And I know Mike remembers those years.

And I'm hoping for the same. I've said this a million times. Maryland is one of those, you know, schools that is basketball first. There are many more football first schools than basketball first schools. And it's never going to change. Maryland's always going to be a basketball first school. in terms of the students and certainly the alums, that's important and that's the most important. But I'd love to see Michael Oxley have a big time year because I think he's got the talent.

And, you know, the quarterback was a little bit erratic from an accuracy standpoint. Leah Tunga Vailo in his opener. But I expect them to get better. Okay. All of that said, let's get to best case, worst case day. Ben Stand it coming up, Tim Murray coming up. This is my best case commander's record, my worst case commander's record and reasons why. It's the ceiling and the floor as far as I'm concerned for the upcoming season.

I'm going to give you the floor first. I'm going to give you the worst case record first. I think the worst case is seven and ten. I don't see their floor being much lower than seven wins. Now, some of you will probably debate me on that and argue, come on, Sheehan, of course, it could completely implode. It's happened many times with this organization, and their floor really is something like four wins or five wins or three wins. But here's why I say seven is the floor. You know, Ron Rivera's never had a team implode.

He's never had a truly terrible season. His first season in Carolina, he was six and ten. his Super Bowl season, the season after, excuse me, the Super Bowl, they were six and ten. Cam Newton was injured for a big portion of that year. He was seven and nine here, seven and ten last year. He's never had a team quit on him. His teams have always gotten better. They've played their best football at the end of the year.

We've talked about that a lot. I just don't see a Ron Rivera team quitting on him. And, you know, you factor that. that with, and you know I'm not much of a schedule guy, but you factor that with Washington has Jacksonville, Detroit, Houston, and Atlanta, and the Giants twice on their schedule. These are the teams that are predicted to be the worst teams in the league. Now, it's a schedule thing. I don't really buy in to that a whole lot. Things change dramatically, and for all we know, Jacksonville and Detroit could have huge turnaround seasons, and they don't play Houston and Atlanta until late November.

They don't play the Giants until December. So who the hell knows what these teams are going to be like? I hate playing that game, typically. They also have Chicago on the schedule, not supposed to be a good team. I just don't really think they can win less than seven. I'd be surprised if they don't win at least seven games. And by the way, if seven is your floor, like seven, depending on when you, win the seven, you know, if you end the season with a four-game winning streak, well, you know,

you were never in contention. But if you can get to six sometime in November, you're in contention, you know, in what is perceived to be a weak NFC. I think the floor is seven wins. Rivera's never had a team implode. I would say to you that this team on paper doesn't stink. It certainly doesn't stink. It's not great either. That's probably another reason that I don't think their floor is super low is I just don't think this is a bad roster. Again, I don't think it's a great roster, but it's far from a bad roster. It's far from the worst roster in the NFC. I see seven is the floor. Seven and ten, worst case. Ben Standing is going to be on the show. He also had me on his show today. And he asked me a question. He said, what's your vibe about the season? Like,

you have a vibe on the team. My vibe is what it typically is, and what I would say it is 75% of the time. And that is, I don't really have a vibe. The vibe is, who the hell knows? And I say that because every year in the NFL, you know, there are four or five teams that you're pretty damn sure are going to be good because they've got the quarterback. There are two, three teams that you're pretty convinced are going to stink.

and the other, you know, 23, 24, 25 teams are, you know, I used to use the example. They're somewhere between 6 and 10 if everything goes wrong, 10 and 6 if everything goes right. And now it's, you know, probably more like 7 and 10 in 10 and 7. And I think they're in that mix of teams. You know, they're not one of the worst teams in the league. They're clearly not one of the best teams in the league going in. They're part of that big blob of NFL teams where if you stay healthy and you're quarterback plays well and you get a couple of breaks, you can be in the playoffs.

And if you don't, then you can be completely out of it and not have a great record. I think that's where they are. That's my vibe on them. That's my vibe on 22 to 25 NFL teams every single year. And that's really where they've always been. I guess there have been a couple of seasons when we thought that they were among the worst teams. There's never been a season since I've been doing this as a career where they've been one of the teams you expect. to have a big time season. You know, again, we've mentioned this many times. It's been since 2000.

So 22 years since the last time there were any Super Bowl or NFC championship type of expectations attached to this team. 2000 was off of their 1999 division winning season, a playoff win, a near second playoff win at Tampa. And, you know, they had that team coming back. and then they had that incredible offseason where they signed every big fantasy football guy, Dion and Carrier and Bruce Smith, et cetera, Jeff George. So, you know, it's the vibe is, I'm not sure, but I do think the floor is seven.

Now, I have said all along, I could see this team winning 10 games. But for today, as we've gotten closer to the regular season, I'm going to say, that the ceiling were the best case is 9 and 8. Could I see 10? I don't think I can see 10. I mean, I'm close to saying 10 as the best case, but I'm going to say 9. Because realistically, what we've had from Ron Rivera here, seven wins, seven wins, you know, his teams don't implode, but they haven't been real good either. I'm not a fan of Wence, as you know. I'm not a fan of the trade, even though I think they got better and I think they should be better on offense. But I have big questions about them defensively.

It's so odd, but this is part of kind of the, you know, 22, 23, 24 teams could go either way. When you don't have the elite quarterback, the conversation about you every year changes. A year ago, we were saying, great defense. Let's just hope the offense gets better. But this defense, I mean, it could be the 85 bears. I didn't think so, but I certainly thought it could be a really good. good defense, even if it wasn't reflected statistically as compared to 2020 because of the

quarterbacks they were facing. Herbert and Allen and Rogers and Mahomes and Brady and Wilson and the list went on and on and on last year. And let's keep in mind that they did not invest heavily into their defense either. They essentially are doubling down on the players they have and have actually netted out less talent after losing Settle and Dionitis. You know, they essentially have said, we believe in what we have here. We believe in Jamon Davis in year two. We believe in Cole Holcomb. We believe in not many linebackers, but we believe in our D-line, and Chase is going to be healthy,

and Montez is going to bounce back, and Duran Payne and John Allen are going to be, Allen's going to be great, and pains in a contract year. We just didn't have enough. We had communication issues in our secondary. Remember, that was the Jackdale Rio line. But we just faced murderers row in terms of quarterbacks. offenses. We don't face that this year. So they've doubled down on that. But I'm not confident in the defense. And I still am a Duran Payne fan. I'm a Montez Sweat fan. I'm a huge John Allen

fan. I'm a Chase Young fan. And hopefully he's back. I personally think their back seven is still a huge question mark. And I think this year, whereas last year the issue was stopping quarterbacks in dynamic offensive weapons at wide receiver and tight end. This year you're facing a litany, a long list of teams that are excellent rush offensive football teams. Last year they finished, I think, seventh was it, DVOA against the rush. Bit misleading. They didn't face a lot of teams that really were run first teams.

This year they do. This year they got Philadelphia twice in their division. They've got Tennessee. they've got Indy, they've got San Francisco and Cleveland later on in the year, they've got Atlanta now with a dual threat quarterback, they've got Minnesota with Dalvin Cook, if he's healthy. Yeah, they're going to have to stop the run this year. I'm not so confident.

I'm confident in the front four. I'm not confident in what's behind it. Offensively, the bottom line is I think they should be better, and I'll be disappointed if they're not better. but I still, even though Wence's ceiling is higher than anything they've had since Kirk Cousins, I'm still skeptical about what Wence is going to be. I believe in Scott Turner. I believe in some of the weapons.

But I don't know. I think the Brian Robinson issue from the shooting and how long he's out is kind of a big deal, even though I'm a big fan of Antonio Gibson. I think they're going to use Jonathan Williams as they're starting running back. I like their weapons. I'm still not sold on the QB. And last year, with really a better overall team in Indy than Washington has, the Colts went nine and eight.

And by the way, an excellent coaching staff, an excellent organization, in fact, in a bad division too last year. And they went nine and eight. And so I'm going best case. nine and eight. Worst case, seven and ten. I think the floor is fairly high. I think the ceiling is fairly low. But, you know, if they reach that nine and eight, eight and nine area, they're hopefully in contention. And with this organization really year and year out, the best you can really hope for, I mean, like logically hope for, is that you get to December 1st, and, and you're going to, and

And when they put up the playoff scenarios as a full-screen Kiron on Fox, and they've got the division leaders, and they've got the current wildcard teams as the 5, 6, and 7 seed, and then outside looking in that Washington's one of those teams that's really close to the 5, 6, 7 seed. They're 6 and 6, or they're 6 and 7, but they're only a game out from the team who's the seventh spot at seven and six. That's really and truly, you know, if you're hoping for contention and hoping for a postseason game,

year in and year out with this organization, that's kind of what you can sort of realistically hope happens. Nine and two starts, you know, seven and one starts, six and two starts don't happen. You know, they don't enter the month of November is the hottest team in the NFL with the second best record in the NFL. We haven't had a great start to a season really since 1996 when they started off 7 and 1. Finished 8 and 8 missed the playoffs.

That was the final year at RFK. I mean, the 6-3-1 start in 2016 was exciting. They were really good offensively. They were limited defensively. And they ended up going, as we know, 8, 7-1. and they miss the postseason. I think, you know, what you hope for is you get to December and you're six and six, seven and six and seven,

and you're in contention. And I can see that with this team. Best case, nine and eight, worst case, seven and ten. Ben standing next right after these words from a few of our sponsors. This segment of the podcast presented by Window Nation. Window Nation has a halftime show going on. What does that mean? means you can score new windows from Window Nation for half the price.

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Mention my name. There's no risk. They'll give you a free estimate, and then you can take that estimate and do with it what you choose. Shop it around. You're not going to find a better group to work with, with a better product, or for a better deal right now. Buy two, get two free, no limit, no down payment, no payments, no interest until the year 2025, 86690 Nation or window nation.com. Let's bring Ben Standig from The Athletic onto the show.

You can follow Ben on Twitter at Ben Standing. podcast, standing room only, and subscribe to the athletic. It's totally worth it just to get Ben's coverage in his prolific writing as the beat reporter for the athletic covering the Washington commanders. On this best case, worst case commanders record a day, Ben will give us his ceiling and floor coming up here in a few minutes. But I don't think you and I have talked since the Ravens preseason game. And I wanted to get your thoughts on their.

cut down to 53 because I thought there was a big surprise. Were there any surprises for you? I guess, I mean, I was surprised that they cut Danny Johnson and Corn Elder, not because, look, I think both of them had not secured a roster spot, but just the fact that they were these veterans, and they replaced them with two kids, basically, with no experience. So for a unit that, like, kind of needs some help immediately, that that was a little surprising.

I'm trying to remember now what else happened. I don't think, I don't know if anything else is jumping out of me as being overly surprising. I mean, I think the thing is in general, we talked for months about how the death of linebacker and cornerback was very questionable, and they seemingly were doing nothing about it, and now we get all the way to the finish line. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, we agree we're going to change up a lot of stuff here. And I thought that was both interesting, but also, like, kind of frustrating that this seems so obvious. I know there's like salary reasons why you do certain things.

If you have veterans on the roster for week one, their salary becomes guaranteed, et cetera. And that may have been a factor in like the Johnson elder thing. But at the same time, the goal is to try to win Ronda Verre seems like he's in a, you know, in a desperate mode. But like, you know, there's urgency. So stuff like that has sort of baffled me. But what was your surprise one? Danny Johnson was the biggest surprise to me.

When I saw his name on the cut list, I was like, wow. I mean, I thought that, you know, it was Benjamin St. Juice, you know, who obviously, if he's healthy, he's going to be their nickel corner. But they really have liked Danny Johnson. They played him a lot last year. They played him. You know, he was running at times this summer, as you know, with the first team. And he was out there a lot. I was, I was, that was the one that surprised me. Again, the bigger conversation to me, and I know that you and all the guys, you know, you deal with the day-to-day and the roster moves. But, you know, will William Jackson, Benjamin St. Juice and Kendall Fuller be good enough, along with Bobby McCain and Cameron Curl? We'll get to Curl here in a moment. But, you know, the backups to the

backups are something that we end up, you know, getting knee deep in, but ultimately it's going to be those front-line guys that tell the tale on the season. I just was surprised because I thought they liked them. He's one of those players that I've known that they've liked, and I was surprised to see him on the cutlist. That's all. I mean, I think Danny Johnson, to me, is sort of the epitome of my general, the way I look at some of these things. In 2020, or in terms of roster building, in 2020, now he, of course, was a holdover from the previous regime, but in 2020, he's on the team for the most part plays a zero defensive snap. Okay, fine. The special team's guy, you need those.

fine. The next year, he's also not playing on defense until, I think it was the Green Bay game midway through the year. William Jackson's out. Danny Johnson has to play. And does some pretty decent things, and he's able to stay on the field for the most part in a reserve role the rest of the year. But based on those two years, he's clearly not viewed as really part of the rotation, except that this year, he was essentially the fourth guy all camp. Whenever anybody missed a day of practice, he was the one filling in. Now, he obviously he struggled mightily in the preseason games. I thought he was okay in practices.

But that to me is sort of like when we discuss like the lack of depth. Like that's like, I'm like, wait a minute. This guy he didn't play two years ago at all and barely did last year until you had no choice. He's your fourth corner? And like, that to me was sort of the confusing part. And we talk about the top three. Look, I think St. Hughes is pretty interesting.

Well, I'm not ready to pencil him and say he's a go-to guy. he's not only switching positions to be a slot corner, he basically didn't play last year for the most part because of the concussion. So to me, that's still a very big question at that position when you have your entire reserve now or second year players and rookies. That's going to be really interesting. You had the news, I think, on Friday about Cam Curl's thumb injury. I guess we'll learn definitively what the injury was and how long he'll miss, if any time, Wednesday, but do you have kind of a gut feel as to where this is headed? I really don't.

So, yeah, so the thumb injury, I was able to say that, you know, with some certainty. Beyond that, it's a little confusing. I mean, I heard a little bit about possibly having surgery. I'm not sure if he did or it was just a consideration. Either way, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, we see this all the time with linemen, where they just put some big cast on their hand and just go up and kind of move forward. I don't necessarily know that's an easy thing for a defense back to do, but, you know, it's conceivable he wouldn't miss

a ton of time, but I really don't know. We'll have to get more from Rivera. He's not going to, he doesn't have to reveal any type of injury updates until Wednesday when the official injury report starts to come out, so we may not hear anything before that. But yeah, I mean, you know, for a team that, ignoring the pre-existing injuries that they had coming into camp, they largely were okay. You know, some guys missed some days, but in terms of like ramping up to the season, they're okay.

And now in the last, you know, a week or so, we obviously have the very unfortunate Brian Robinson situation. And he was, to me, going to be a very, very key piece because of what he meant, not just as an individual, but as the type of offense they want to run, have more ball control, have a guy that can, you know, be consistent between the tackles. he's now out at least four games. And Cam Pearl, you know, I think the secondary has been pretty good all summer, but he is the real chess piece.

He is the guy that Del Rio can move into the box. He can play in the back end. He can play some flat corner. Like, he's the guy with the breakout potential that could be all over the place. But now at least perhaps he's out to some degree. I don't know. Again, maybe he doesn't miss any time, but the release up in the air. And that's such a bummer that these things are happening for these guys right now.

Is Derek Forrest the replacement for Cam Curl if Curls out? You would think so. You know, obviously when we talk about the Buffalo Nickel over and over again, Cam Curl essentially was playing that role. And Derek Forrest was like when they wanted a third safety, he's been the guy coming out onto the field and playing a combination of up and back, but a little more back with Cam Carle Moritz, the box. So I think that would be the case. My only wonder would be, you know, depending on,

you know, do they want, if they want some more coverage help, maybe Jeremy Reeves sneaks out there. I think Jeremy Reeves also is making some good plays around the line of scrimmage, but in general, therefore, it has looked like the third safety. So, yes, I would have assumed so. Do you think Logan Thomas has a chance of playing on Sunday? I mean, obviously, we would all like to have seen him have a little more contact than he had. So it's a tough call. He was ramping up more and more throughout practices. Now, of course, we've reached the point starting last week.

Well, we don't get to see anything really anymore. So, you know, we're done with that going forth. I won't be able to say, hey, he's done this, bad or the other. But, you know, in general, I think he's made some good strides. And clearly, they need the help at that position because their top three guys have all been banged up. I guess my one hesitation is this regime seems to be very conservative when it comes to injuries, which is reasonable. But like, you know, in terms of playing, getting guys back on the field, they don't seem to be the type of group that says, I just rub some dirt on it, let's go. So that's my

hesitancy there. But I do think Logan Thomas made a pretty good strides over the last few weeks, so it wouldn't stun me if he was able to go. You think Chase Young's out for just four games, or it ends up being longer than that? I'd get longer. I mean, you know, we'll go back to when Rivera first told us that Chechung would at least be missing sometime to start the year. He initially sort of referenced the Pupplest, and he said that he thought the Puplist was six games, which it used to be, but now it's four.

So the fact that he said that, you know, immediately had you thinking, all right, this is probably going to be at a minimum before and maybe the six. And when you look at the schedule, right, week five, is a very, regular Sunday, the week six is the Thursday against the Bears. So, you know, if you're not back for week five, you're probably also missing week six. So my guess would be he'll probably miss at least all those games. But, you know, we'll see. I know a lot of people on Twitter were speculating with a video of Kate Young at the Ohio State game walking onto the field.

In my timeline, people are arguing over whether he's limping or what's going on there. And, you know, again, the conservative nature of this regime in terms of injuries would lead me to think that you probably is going to miss more than four, but at a minimum, we know it's that much. All right. So I talked about this on my podcast on Friday or Saturday, whenever it was. Just I thought the comments from Ron Rivera about Antonio Gibson in the wake of Brian Robinson, Jr. going on the list that means he's out for four games were interesting because it led me to believe that Jonathan Williams could potentially end up being the Brian Robinson

Jr. replacement against Jacksonville and maybe here early in the season as their first down thumper and that it might not be Gibson. What do you think? I think that's a pretty good read. You know, I keep saying this every time I'm doing an interview. I don't want to try to sound like like a look at me, but you know, going way back to before the draft. Like I was talking. I was talking. talking about these guys are going to look to add a legit running back, not just like take some seventh-round flyer, but like add somebody because I don't think they definitively viewed Gibson as a guy who was a consistent chainbooker. That best stretch of last year was, to me, Gibson's best work of the year, that four-game winning streak. Yeah.

He was effective. He was efficient. They had a lot of ball control that kept the defense fresh. And I think Ron Rivera looked at that and thought that's what we need to do. and Robinson, just drafting Robinson epitomize that. But that said, this isn't just about an individual talent. This is about a philosophy. I think the question is, how long is Robinson actually out for, right? We don't know.

I wouldn't even want to begin to guess. He's out at least the four games. If he were to be out longer, right? Maybe they have to rethink what they're doing. He just view that Antonio Gibson is the best talent they have, but we've just got to get in the ball. But if it's going to be more of a Robinson will be back in a few weeks and we have this plan and we don't want to deviate,

then yeah, I think Williams is a guy that should get some work in that capacity. I wouldn't think he would be the leading ball carrier in terms of touches, but I absolutely think that that's what they're looking to do. Frankly, he's looked pretty good to me all summer that if they hadn't drafted Robinson, I think Williams would have had some kind of a role in the same way. So, yeah, I think to me they leave it in the Gibson as the, you know, get him the ball in space rather than try to drive him up the middle a ton, but at the same point, I would think his touches are going to go up.

Now, you know, based on what we were all thinking of a couple weeks ago, with Robinson out. You wrote about Curtis Samuel in your recent story on the athletic, in the athletic. You know, it was only three weeks ago, three and a half weeks ago, where, you know, he was hit and miss on practice, and there were more concerns about him. But since then, it's been pretty smooth. Is he 100% and ready?

And are they excited about him? I'm hesitant to say 100% because obviously with him, it feels like it's a, you know, you know, rap and plastic situation, a bubble wrap, I should say, situation at all times. But, yeah, he has been practicing. He is feeling pretty good about himself. I think they're feeling pretty good about him. You know, we saw, you know, even with preseason with limited game planning or not, no game planning, you know, Carson Wentz was looking his way a decent amount.

he was working out of the slot primarily in the preseason games. I think that's a pretty interesting deal because out of the slot in his last year, Carolina, in the post-Rivera regime, he was highly effective in that role. Yet Washington staff has largely used him on the outside. But with McCorn and Dodson, they can clearly use Samuel inside. And I think based on what we saw in Carolina at that last year, that's the best way to use him. So, you know, I think Curtis Samuel could be poised for a pretty good year, but at the same time, you know, every time he cuts on a dime or, you know, takes a certain kind of hit, you know, the soft tissue injury concern is going to probably exist.

And that's what will be interesting is, you know, can they nurse him all the way through a year without, without him being a constant injury report presence or even missing games? I can't sit here and say that. But right now, I think everybody's pretty happy. And that was sort of the gist of the story that Curtis Samuels. you'll know last year was a mess and he was in a bad spot mentally because of it, but he's back to being his outgoing self now and he's feeling really good about things. Does Ron Rivera need a winning season to be back as the head coach in 2023? I don't know that he needs a winning season, right?

It just sort of depends on how things go. I think he needs a good season from Carson Went to avoid issues, right? Like if Carson Wentz shined, but the defense is still a mess, right? I don't know, you could like hypothetically get rid of the defensive coordinator, keep Rivera and say, well, you know, there's some positive here, the Wentz trade was good, et cetera, and go that way. I think if it's like, you know, an absolute disaster of a season, where they have no shots to playoff and we're talking the draft starting in like November, you know,

then I think things could be different. I think, of course, you know, we're also waiting here for the deposition to come out from Dan Snyder in Congress, and we don't know what shoe is going to drop on that end. To the degree that Dan Snyder is focused on other things, maybe gives Rivera more leeway than you would think if they have three consecutive losing season. So I don't think he has to have a winning record.

I would just recommend he does that. Yeah, I'm going to stick with what I have been saying for a while now, and that is I just don't think he'll get fired before the end of his contract. I just don't think the Snyders are going to do that. they have, this is an odd circumstance coming off all of what they've been coming off of here over the last couple of years. And I mean, my God, they have hammered home the message of being the most diverse and inclusive organization in all of sports to the point where I don't know that he's fireable in many ways. And by the way, there's an expense to firing him early.

I could see Ron Rivera retiring early if things really don't go well and they fall apart. But I'll tell you this, Ben, right now, what we do know about Ron Rivera, players like him. He's well respected as a leader and as a voice. But, you know, he's 14 and 19. And if you go 7 and 10 again and you're sitting there at the end of this year, 21 and 29, and three straight losing seasons, and that would be three winning seasons in his last 12 or whatever as a head coach

or whatever it would be at that point. Man, they're going to be at that point very few people who believe in Ron Rivera, the coach anymore. They may believe in him as a person and as a leader and as a mentor to young men and as a responsible and empathetic voice in an organization

that didn't have many of them for so many years. But at the end of the day, if he's sitting there with three straight losing seasons and they're not a contender this year, there's going to be those of us, and I put myself into that category, who have believed in Ron Rivera, the coach, not as an elite coach, but as a solid head coach in this league, maybe we'll identify the personnel part of his responsibilities and say he's got to remove himself from that. But I think that that's really, and you're right, he's tied to Wentz. They are tied together. And if Wentz isn't good, then they won't have a good season. And if he is good, then they'll have,

you know, they should have a competitive season and people will think, you know, that there's still a chance. But I think there's a lot at stake for him this year in terms of the way he's viewed as an NFL coach. Yeah. And, you know, sort of to your point, like there is the view of Ron Rivera, the leader, the person, and there is Ron Rivera, the coach. In the NFL agent survey that I had last week on the athletic, the second part was just about the commanders. And there were questions about, you know, does Dan Snyder's, Dan Snyderness impact? What did you tell clients back going to Washington and things like that? And we can get more to that if we want.

But like in terms of the Ron Rivera aspect of that is for a lot. of agents is very key that they say that the owner, obviously that's an important component, but that they're more worried about what do you make up the guy who's running the day-to-day operations. And in that respect, Ron Rivera is viewed very highly. Yes. He is one of the most popular individuals clearly in the sport, which is different than saying, I didn't have people tell me, wow, what we're looking at Ben Fombardi here? But in terms of the demand, if you're going to feel comfortable putting your client with that guy,

and that you're going to feel good about that. I think we've seen that, right? I don't think the other team that has crazy knuckleheads or anything. It does seem like there's a different deal with the fact that McLaren and John Allen are sort of the poster child right now for the roster, I think says obviously they're very good players, and both of them obviously were acquired before he even got here. But, you know, that's where they're at.

It's not the way it was before, obviously, where you had some more tight-tier. or diet to your situation. So, yeah, there's reason to be hopeful with Rivera, but yeah, there's the person, they're a leader, and then there's the coach. These things do feel like they're kind of separate for the most part. Ben's annual survey of NFL agents that, I don't know how many years in a row you've done this, but it's so excellent.

And this is, I mean, another reason to subscribe to the athletic and read Ben. But there was a lot on Washington and Snyder, as he mentioned. But I want to just read real quickly the quotes about Ron Rivera because that, you know, Ben said, you know, that the take on him as a coach is different than the take on him as a person, which is, you know, around the league, he is definitely a highly respected guy. Here are three quotes. Quote, Ron is well respected. Rivera is a guy that players absolutely love, close quote. Second quote, quote, I think Ron Rivera's reputation speaks for itself, close quote. Third quote, Ron Rivera is a tremendously

close quote from agents. I would, you know, if you want to net out this stuff on Snyder real quickly, have at it. I mean, I read through your entire story. It's a great job. How many agents do you actually interview for this survey? This year I had 26. 26 NFL agents. So the take on Snyder netting it out was what?

So the question, as I said, was what does Snyder's, you know, constant headlines, negative headlines, affect what you tell clients about coming here. And I think the basic net is agents view as players in two different sections. The vast majority of the league has no, you know, they're young guys, they don't have a ton of options. The middle class in this league is fading. So you have to, you ignore a lot of that stuff and focus on the money. And even some people who have bigger name clients said the same thing.

But on the other end, guys who have options. and in this past year, sort of your Russell Wilson level people right there. We know they were looking for that are going to take a, not a long look at coming here because of all that, because if you do have other options, why put yourself in the situation of having to answer questions

or just be in that atmosphere of the deal? So I think, like I can say, on the one hand, the Dan Snyder aspect is not as a big of a deal for the majority. A player is money talks, and if they're willing to pay the most, basically, then great. That'll work.

But, you know, if you're talking to the true franchise changers, those people in general seem to be more, you know, unwilling to even really think about it too much. And, you know, look, again, look at the quarterback situation. Right. When people say that why do they go get Carson Went? Well, they could trade for him. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I think that had as much to do with it as anything.

That's right. Because I don't know who else they were going to get to sign here. Or, you know, and some guys, like, you know, maybe weren't even willing to do a trade here, right? So I think all that's a factor with Snyder. Yeah, there's one quote in here from an agent who says, with respect to your question about how Dan Snyder's off-the-field matters affect how you present Washington to clients.

He said, absolutely it does. One of the things that agents probably look a lot more than the general public when they're looking at where they want their players to sign is ownership. You want them to be in a place where they take care of their own and there's not a lot of drama. Obviously, that ownership group is just disaster after disaster after disaster, and there's one common denominator, the owner. So, you know, they've talked about cleaning up that building.

The cleanup has to start with new ownership until that happens. You're putting band-aids on it. You can put band-aids on it all you want, but if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck. But, yeah, to your point, your big takeaway was when players don't have many options, they'll take the money no matter where it is and where it's coming from, but players with options are more likely to steer clear here. I actually thought some of what you wrote or what you had from agents on Carson Wentz was the most compelling part of the story.

And, you know, the net of it is there was a lot of mixed, but a lot of agent, you know, understanding of what's happened in the last two years, and it wasn't overly positive? No, it wasn't. And, you know, I tried in this case. I didn't want to just be like, give me your view of Carson went as pure speculation. I said, look, I presume you've had clients that have played with him in Philly or Indy, or, you know, you're talking to the people in those buildings at a minimum. What's your view, based on that, tell me your view. And, yeah, there were a lot of negative, a lot of negativity around went. I mean, to be honest, like in the main part of the survey, I basically listed, for those who didn't see it, I list the question and then have the

quotes below without really any interaction from me beyond that. In this case, I felt compelled to write it up more because I wanted to help balance it out because some of the quotes are pretty rough. I didn't even include some of the ones I just thought were sort of over the top because sometimes why it's just people piling on? Really? Well, one, I mean, there's 26 people talking to me, right? I can't include everything. So there's that. But like some of them I just thought were a bit much. I tried to go with the ones that felt the most, you know, more than one person was kind of saying. Well, let me read one of them. Let me read one of them real quickly so people who are listening to this have a sense of what some of the agents said about Carson Wentz. Ben's question was, you've got

clients who've played with Wentz, what's your sense of the quarterback at this point in his career in Washington's decision to acquire him? One agent said, quote, guys that played with him that I represent did not like him. They just thought that his personality was very standoffish. He rubbed a lot of players the wrong way. Now, that could change in Washington. I don't know him personally, but the things I've heard from players were really surprising. Never really heard players trash a quarterback like that before, close quote. Again, look, this may change and all the things we're hearing from all of his teammates is that he's making maybe unique efforts for him to be more of a guy that's around,

that's less standoffish, that doesn't rub players the wrong way. And maybe, you know, at his age, maybe he's learned from the last two experiences, and this is going to be a total resuscitation to his career. You're just asking these agents what their clients have said about playing with them. But anyway, did you have anything else on that on Wence? Yeah, I mean, I think part of the reason why I wanted to try to write it out of the post and just putting the quotes is, you know, I think the majority of the quotes had probably more of a negative slant.

But the interactions I've had, I mean, one, I spoke with Carson once the other day and I'll have a story about him up this week. hopefully people can check out. I found him to be pretty normal and nice and hard to see the other side. You talk to people in and around this team. Everybody seems to say the same thing. But I've also talked to people who've covered Carson went to his previous vibes or have been with those teams.

And it's a lot of like, well, good luck with that kind of vibe. So it's very hard to kind of figure out exactly right now what to make of it. But I think the key for me is nothing's happened yet, right? There hasn't been a single game play. of consequence. And if the issue is, you people talk about selfishness or, you know, I think one of the better quotes in there about Wentz was, you know, he needs to look at the situation for these two last two teams and say, how do that, how am I in this spot? What did I do, if anything, to contribute to this situation? If he can take ownership of his own flaws or his own issues,

then that can go a long way. And I feel like we're seeing a guy who's trying to do some of that when you hear how the players talk about it, but the games haven't happened yet. And if the issue is he doesn't take ownership of his issue, even after games when things go wrong, then maybe we have concerns. And that's where I'm sort of willing to give benefit of the doubt while not forgetting what a litany of people have said about their own experiences. We've seen losing end up being much more revealing of true feelings around here, and we'll see what happens.

I mean, obviously, I do think, you know, with all of this said and all of this understood about his previous two stints, he still is physically an upgrade over what they've had here since Kirk Cousins. All right, I want to finish up with this. Maybe later in the week before the Jacksonville game, probably on radio with Ben. Ben will be with me on radio as our Washington football team insider all year long again. But I want your best case record and your worst case. record right now. Yeah, I mean, I think best case of like 10 and 7, you know, I agree.

Carson Wentz is clearly a physical upgrade. His, you know, we've talked a ton about the inaccuracies in camp, but the good throws are pretty spectacular. And if the defense, look, I mean, the defense can't be worse than it was last year, at least statistically. So if the defense can get the middle of the pack, you know, I think there's both of those changes could be enough to get you up to 10. wins now, we're just going to assume injuries are at least reasonable, right?

Obviously, that's a game changer. I think on the flip side, though, you know, we're looking at a defense that still in the preseason was struggling significantly to get off the field on third down. We don't know how long Chase Young will be out. I don't know how long Brian Robinson will be out. And the Carson Wentz scenario obviously has not gone well the last couple of years, even though, I mean, the Colts did finish with a winning record last year, but, you know, obviously it was enough

negativity for them to do what they did. So, you know, I think on the flip side, I mean, I don't know if they can, you know, lose more than, or not win at least six. And by the way, on the upside, the schedule being what it is, maybe the biggest factor at all. This year they're not facing,

you know, a ton of all-star quarterbacks. It's kind of Aaron Rogers, Dak Prescott, and then figure it out from there. So the schedule works their benefit to the point that I don't know if they can win less than six, but if everything goes wrong, that would be sort of my floor, I think. We're pretty much on the mark in agreement. All right, thanks at Ben Standing on Twitter.

Subscribe to the Athletic, listen to his podcast, Standing Room Only. I will talk to you later in the week. I appreciate it. As always. Appreciate it, man. Thanks. Yeah, that was an unbelievable finish to a crazy game last night. which in my opinion, the team that missed the extra point there, LSU, was not the better team.

Florida State was clearly the better team start to finish, but still a missed extra point, a blocked extra point. And a 2423 Florida State win. One more game in the first full college football weekend of the year. And that is Clemson and Georgia Tech tonight. Joining us right now is my good friend Tim Murray. Tim is the co-host with Sean King on Vizan's prime time. Now 6 to 9 p.m. Eastern, they've moved him into a more of a hot spot, I would assume, right? This is a – when you go from super late night on the East Coast to 6 to 9, you know, while all the games are going on,

that is – that's a promotion, correct or not? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We're fired up. It's been one week in the books. and many more to go. Yeah, but, you know, it was a fun time slot, you know, being in the late night, you know, kind of reacting as games are going on.

But now the opportunity, obviously, on Mondays and Thursdays to get two plus hours of preview of Thursday night football, Monday night football. But, yeah, it's exciting, obviously, you know, afternoon drive out where we live, too, so any of our, you know, West Coast affiliates, whatnot, we're having that drive time spot. But I'm very excited about the new time slot, and it's been going well so far. coming off of this weekend, couldn't ask for much more. Honestly, a phenomenal first weekend.

You know, on Saturday in that early window, the App State North Carolina game, which we'll get to, you know, I'm sitting there, like you, I'm pumped up for the first, you know, college football Saturday. You know, obviously gambling is a part of it. But the usually week one, it's what's great about it, is it's football, and it's football from 12 noon until after midnight on a Saturday. But usually you don't end up with great games or, you know, memorable games. But we had several of them.

I mean, let's just start with last night because that's fresh on everybody's mind. Did you agree with me that Florida State was, I know that a lot of people liked Florida State to be a much better team? I thought they were the much better team for, you know, 58. of the 60 minutes last night. Yeah, I agree. I really do. And it would have been, I don't want to say tragic,

but it would have been unfortunate for Florida State to lose that game. I don't know. And Greg McElroy, I like Greg McElroy a lot. I'm curious, your thoughts as an analyst. I know people are giving them crap for saying that he should have, that LSU should have let them score down there. But I don't know why you run a pitch play on the two-yard line. It made no sense.

to me. But all in all, you know, I was impressed by Florida State. We'll see. You know, I am curious, though, Kevin, because when we have these island games on these Sunday nights, sometimes we get a little too over-excited, you know, saying Florida State is back. And I think I saw one of their players say that. You know, remember 2016, Notre Dame and Texas played that epic overtime game at both of those teams at losing record. So we'll see what happens. But I think Florida State, I thought, I was really impressed by Jordan Travis. He's kind of had to be up and down. and his mobility was really solid. I thought he had a really good job, and people need to recognize. Like, LSU, I don't think he's expected to do much this year, maybe have a 500 record go to a bowl game, but what their strength is is their defensive line. And I thought for the most part, you know, Florida State's O-line, which is kind of a hodgepodge of transfers and whatnot,

I thought they held up pretty decently. They have some playmakers out there. So I think Florida State's going to be an interesting, you know, team to keep an eye on. Obviously, they ran the ball really well in week of zero against Duquesne, but take that for what you will. But all in all, yeah, I came away much more impressive at Florida State. LSU certainly has some things to figure out. I was never a huge Jaden Daniels fan at Arizona State. He certainly has the mobility. And we'll see, you know, this day and age, Kevin, you know, players have a lot of power. And Kisham Booty, who is an all-American

and wide receiver wasn't really utilized all that much last night. Wasn't happy about it either. And he's gone on social media and he's scrubbed his social media clean of anything LSU. So that's always an interesting sign. Seriously, after one game? Yep, yep. Oh, my God. You know, somebody needs to get with these young people and say,

this is not what the NFL is looking for, my friend. So I want to circle back to your McElroy thing here in a moment. But for those that didn't see the game last night or didn't watch a lot of college football, that's what we're going to talk about here with Tim, okay? Who are those people? I don't want to be friends with that. You know, it's funny because I was having this conversation actually last night with Van Pelt. And he went to the Maryland game on Saturday, and I said it was an embarrassing crowd.

I go, you know, it's really remarkable to me. I mean, one of the most unbelievable achievements is Mike Loxson. Lee's recruiting record at Maryland because the shots of that stadium, that in UCLA Stadium in their game against Bowling Green. Now that was an 1130 a.m. start in 105 degree record heat out in L.A. but still, we know that when UCLA, not a lot's expected, although Stanford, Steve picked him to be a final four team on the show on Friday as the fourth team after Ohio State, Alabama, in Georgia. But the fact that Mike Loxley can get the talent that he's getting to Maryland, NFL talent year and year out, when you had a shot of the stadium going around on social media where I doubt there were 5,000 people in the stadium in that one given shot.

Now, that was probably in the second half, and the student section was kind of full to begin with. And look, I'm being hypocritical here because I didn't go to the game. And as an alum, I used to go to a lot of Maryland games. But, you know, a Buffalo on a hot Saturday early start with all the other games that were on. You know, my preference is to be watching, you know, college football in general. I watch the Maryland game start to finish. And I'm going to go to the SMU game in a couple of weeks. But anyway, that aside, I don't even know where I'm going with this.

It was really kind of an exciting overall way. weekend. There were so many moments, but those that didn't watch the game last night, LSU botched two punt returns, fumbled two punt returns, this freshman neighbors. They missed two kicks, had a field goal blocked and had the PAT with no time left on the clock to force overtime blocked at the end of the game, which is why they lost 24, 23 instead of seeing an overtime game. Florida State had the ball, could have put the game. away after the last fumbled punt. They were third and goal at the one-yard line at LSU's one-yard line with a minute 20 to go up

seven. Worst cases you're going to kick a chip-shot field goal to go up 10 game over. And they pitched the ball to the running back who botched it and LSU recovered at the one-yard line. And LSU went 99 yards in a minute in 10 seconds with one time out left at that point. I think did they have one time? I think it was one time out left. and then missed the extra point.

It was incredible drama. And then there was a lot of drama about a clock issue, inbound's knee versus out of bounds knee after a first down. Anyway, it was really a compelling game and finish for the most part. I think the worst take in the world, Tim, and I'm curious as to what you think, was what I listened to when I turned on Greenberg with Feinbaum this morning on ESPN. And Feinbaum was screened.

$10 million, and that's what you get, a guy that won't go for two when it's the obvious decision because you've got all the talent, you've got all the momentum. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's a debatable question at that point, going for two in the win rather than going to overtime. I'm not a big Feinbaum fan, to be honest with you, but that's beside the point. That take, which I saw much of after the game, after they had the extra point blocked, I did consider and was sitting there discussing with my son, would you go for two, would you go for two?

And to me it was very debatable in the moment. What did you think? Well, first off, Feinbaum has historically disliked Brian Kelly. And he said a couple years ago, he was like, Brian Kelly's a bad guy. And then the rebuttal was, well, have you ever met him? He said, no. So he's kind of always been an anti-BK guy. Not that I'm the biggest fan, but...

Well, you are a Notre Dame guy, yeah. I am, but, I mean, look, if people ask me, I'm very grateful for the years. And if Brian Kelly, people need to remember what Notre Dame was before he got there and what they are now. They're a perennial top-10 team because of Brian Kelly. And maybe he couldn't take him over the top, and his exit wasn't ideal. but hey, you know, that's college athletics nowadays. As for the two-point conversion attempt, no, I would have kicked the extra point because, you know,

I know that when you go into, you know, overtime, it is becoming a crapshoot, and now especially with the rules being what they are, where you only get two possessions now from the 25, and then you start the two-point conversions, you know, it becomes more of, you know, a coin cost. That being said, you know, if I have that, you know, if I have that, the best, I think the best unit on the field last night was the LSU defensive line. So if I could have forced overtime, I would have happily, you know, lined them up and see what we can do from the 25-yard line.

So, yeah, it's really easy for anybody to go on Twitter or television now and say, oh, they made the wrong decision. I mean, how often do you have an extra point blocked? The ironic part, Kevin, though, is that the special teams for LSU, as you mentioned, were such a disaster. The only coach, only one coach, went with Brian Kelly. Pullian. From Ellis, yep,

Brian Polian. He was the special teams coordinator, and they had two muff punts and two field goals, as you mentioned, or one X-point-1 field goal block. Yeah, the interesting part is there are a couple coaches that left that Notre Dame fans were like, yeah, we're good. And I think Notre Dame ultimately probably got an upgrade in Brian Mason

coming over from Cincinnati for Brian Paulian. So we'll see. but yeah, I probably would have kicked an extra point there. You know, I agreed with the decision. If anyone watched the North Carolina Appalachian State game, I love the decision there by App State to go for two. I didn't. I was laying a point in a half, so I did not like the decision.

I had App State laying one and a half. But no, no, no. In that particular spot, that wasn't a bad call. I had App State on the money line, so that was a roller coaster of emotions week one. I think the best tweet following the game last night was actually from one RG3, who got rave reviews for the Michigan Colorado State call on Saturday. I didn't watch much of that game, but I've said all along that I think RG3 is really good as an analyst and entertaining. But he tweeted out a picture of Brian Kelly on the sideline, and he wrote,

Brian Kelly thinking, I didn't change my accent for this, which was a great tweet. And it was just a fascinating end to a game. And, yeah, I didn't have a problem with them kicking. I mean, it's 97%. One thing about two-point conversions that people tend to kind of forget, they are across the board in terms of just average of conversions. It's a less than 50-50 deal, okay? It's like 48-something percent.

And then context is everything, you know, at that point. had just driven at 99 yards. And there was like a 15, a 10 minute delay before their touchdown pass. So any momentum that they may have had was somewhat diminished by the big delay over the clock issue. Anyway, real quickly on McElroy. So what were people saying about him? So I commended McElroy. I've always been a big Greg McElroy. He speaks his mind. He tells the truth. Obviously, he's got credibility because he won a national championship at Alabama. but he was very critical of the play call to throw a pitch on the one-yard line. He's like, what are you doing?

Just hand the ball off. There's no reason you're up seven. You could solve this thing away. So I tweeted that out, and people got on me because McElroy, I guess, had said that LSU was doing, making a mistake not letting Florida State just automatically score, which is what he would have, he said they should have done. So people were critical of that. But all in all, I just think Greg McElroy, he knows the game.

He does his homework. And I think he does a really good job. He does a radio show at Birmingham. So, yeah, he's just a guy that I think knows the sport incredibly well. And I think EFTN is utilizing him quite a bit because he's really good at what he does. So I, it's funny because I'm not a Tessator fan. I'm just, I'm just not about. big Tessitore fan with anything he's ever done. To me, he's a Thursday night whack,

you know, Nevada, you know, San Diego State play-by-play guy. That's been my thing all along. I thought it was a disaster with him on Monday night football. So I was listening to the two of them call a game. And, you know, I've listened to McElroy before. And I think he's really smart. I think he really knows the game. And I think he explains it very well. I also think he's fearless. He will criticize players, you know, as an analyst. And, you know, people that do what we do for a living, I love guys that aren't afraid to be constructively critical.

You know, even though some of those guys are people that, you know, he knows. And, you know, and he's probably, you know, family friends with in a lot of these cases, especially when he's doing SEC games. The one thing that I would say, because when you brought it up, I didn't realize there was criticism of him last night. I thought that he was trying too hard at times to be really, really, like there's a way you can say things and you get your point across. I thought he hammered home the point so much that he was,

there was a sense that I felt like he was impressed with himself doing it. But that aside, I do, when he said at 2417, let him score, you're really hoping that you can stop them and somehow, and I know it's a short field goal, but the odds are probably better that somehow they're going to miss a field goal, then you're going to score two touchdowns when you've only generated 17 points in total. And remember, the second touchdown is going to have to be after a recovered onside kick. So the actual, now if you're down one, of course you let them score. You know, it's the Carolina returned of the onside kick situation the other day.

Let him score. App State was still trying to tackle the dude. But in that particular situation, it's like, you know, the chances of recovering an onside kick in this day and age, after you've gone 90, you know, 80, 75 yards after a kickoff out of the end zone, you've used all your timeouts. It's a score to, it's, you know, it's pretty remote. I'm not sure which is a better odds situation at that point. Recovering an on-side kick and scoring two touchdowns or hoping that you get a stop and they miss a field goal. It's pretty bleak.

Now, the pitch is a dangerous play. I had no problem with them trying to score a touchdown on third and goal and running the ball because they'd run the ball all night. But a pitch straight back, and by the way, it was a quick pitch and a weird angled pitch, that probably was not the brightest thing. Anyway, wild game last night. Let's just talk about the weekend as a whole. Give me the team so far in week one that you were most impressed with.

Oh, Georgia. I mean, Georgia was unbelievable. And, you know, we had this debate on our show, my partner, Sean King and I. And, you know, I said that Georgia was my third best team at during the year, and he had his reservation because they lost 15 players to the NFL. And when I told them, I said, look, they've been recruiting at Alabama level. and I didn't expect him to win by 46, Kevin, but I was blown away at how well they played in that game.

I mean, to go out and beat Oregon, who's got talent, and I think still has an outside chance to win the Pac-12. I wouldn't be stunned if they did. But I think when you think about the level of competition, how much they had lost, the defensive coordinator is gone, and to go out and just absolutely obliterate them. And there were just different parts of that game where you saw, you know, Jalen Carter blowing up offensive linemen on Oregon and getting into the backfield.

You know, Seths and Bennett played really well. Really well. So, you know, he, I would say Georgia as a whole. And then I was blown away by Anthony Richardson. You know, the quarterback from Florida, you know, he was really, really dynamic. And you had heard last year, and if you watched SEC football, you saw glimpses, but he never could kind of put it all together. But I thought some of his playmaking capabilities, the two-point conversion where he jumped in the air, broke a tackle,

you know, was able to get the two-pointer. So I think individually Anthony Richardson for Florida really blew me away, and I'm curious to see how he goes. I hope it's not a situation, Kevin, where he kind of gets overheights. And people are saying he's going to win the high. He's going to pump the brakes a bit. But he was fantastic in that upset win over Utah. and boys are detrimental for the PAC 12 when Oregon loses by 46 in a showcase Kevin and Utah as a favorite goes on the road as a top 10 team loses to a expected

mediocre SEC team but to me the two most impressive performances was Georgia as a unit and Anthony Richardson as an individual well you and I you know mediocre minds think like I think the best start to finish game of the weekend and it was the game I was most interested in going in was Utah and Florida. And I thought the quarterback play on both sides. I thought Cam Rising was amazing for Utah. And the fact that he threw a pick there at the end was shocking to me, because I thought Utah was going in for the win in the cover, by the way, and I had Florida plus the number. I thought Anthony Richardson, I thought their quarterback play overall, all weekend long. I mean, there were so many outstanding quarterbacks. I'll give you one right now that's a little bit off the radar because they lost the game.

but I was impressed with them as a team. I thought Ben Bryant was outstanding at Cincinnati down at Arkansas. And I think that he actually really looks like he, and by the way, KJ. Jefferson, the Arkansas quarterback was great too when he was cramping up, you know, during the game. That game really was misleading in terms of the score. Cincinnati missed two field goals. They had a lot of penalties that really hurt a couple of very questionable penalties. They got the push if you bought the half point to play.

7. But I thought the quarterbacking in that game, I thought the kid May from North Carolina in the craziest game other than last night's game of the weekend was outstanding. There was quarterback play all weekend long, but Anthony Richardson, I knew, you know, watching him last year, like you said, that there was, you know, some excitement around this kid. In one game in watching him, and I don't know where he was projected before Saturday, But after that game, to me, he's a definite first round quarterback selection in the NFL draft next year. He is today's NFL quarterback. He's got the arm.

He's 6'4 and 225, 230. He's got incredible ability to make people miss as a runner. He's fast. By the way, he's got a quick release. That game start to finish was so good. good for a first game of the year. And you knew that this was, you know, in the swamp, Saturday night, Utah had that incredible bowl game against Ohio State. They're so well-coached, so well-coached. He does such a great job. And it's Napier's first game in Gainesville. That game was so good in Richardson

and rising. But Richardson, to me, I mean, he's, I'm assuming after this weekend, and maybe it was the case before this weekend. But really what we've heard mostly, right, is obviously C.J. Stroud, who I did not think played well, and young, and to a lesser degree, Levis at Kentucky. Richardson's a top half of the league, top half of the first round pick right now, based on what I saw Saturday night. It certainly has a talent, that's for sure. And, yeah, if you can put it together, They got a big one this weekend taking on Kentucky. Kentucky's got some, you know, I don't know if Rodriguez, I don't think he's going to play one of their top players.

They're running back. He had an off-season issues. They get a DUI. That's something to keep an eye on there. But, yeah, Florida is really impressive. And I imagine you want to get to the Ohio State Notre Dame game. You know, I think one of the biggest overreactions, Kevin, is that Ohio State's offense is, you know, not as good as we expected.

I don't agree. I think Notre Dame had a really good game plan. and when push came to shove, they made some big plays. They had a couple big drives. You know, I think Notre Dame has a lot of questions offensively, but, you know, it's kind of funny where we've become as a college football, you know, fandom. I know what you're going to say, yeah.

People said, well, what the hell happened with Ohio State? They beat the number five team in the country by 11, you know? By the way, that's what Ryan Day said, too, afterwards. Yeah, so like, yeah, there were some issues there, but they were trailing at the half, and they shut out Notre Dame in the second half. Notre Dame, I think, has some serious questions offensively, which I think most people knew about. But defensively, this is one of the better defenses in the country, in my opinion. You know, with the front, I mean, they have a first round pick and Isaiah Foskey, who for the most part, I thought Ohio State kind of controlled. They've got veteran linebackers.

Brandon Joseph is a borderline first round pick. he was an All-American at Northwestern two years ago at the safety position number 16. Cam Hart, number five, who is a good counsel kid, I thought had some ups and downs. I thought they took advantage of them a little bit, too, did Ohio State. So all in all, I mean, Jackson Smith and Jigba played like one series. I mean, this is a bona fide, you know, first-round pick, and he was hurt. So I think the overreactions on Ohio State not being as good as we expected are a little much. And I actually think that if their defense has figured it out with Jim Knowles as a defensive coordinator,

you know, that was their issue last year. The offensive will come. I think the defense, if it's as good as it looked on Saturday night, Ohio State's the real deal. I loved Notre Dame defensively on Saturday night. They were so disciplined. They tackled so well in space in particular. And I'm really rooting for Marcus Freeman. and I think they made a big mistake, though.

On the go-ahead touchdown pass, I think it was the first time they had, they sent everybody. They went zero coverage blitz. They had essentially, and it was well put by Herb Street during the game, right? Herb Street did that game. Herb Street said, they're doing to Ohio State and Stroud

what a lot of teams did to Mahomes last year. They're playing too deep. They're playing deep coverage. or two, they're saying you can move the football, but you're going to have to make one good decision after another, and it's going to take you a while. You're not getting the big strike against us. And by the way, it takes a good defensive team and a good tackling team to be able to pull that off and do it, by the way, in getting them off the field and forcing Ohio State to punt as much as they did in the first half. But on that touchdown pass that gave them the lead,

it's third and 11. And they came with everybody for the first time all night. And I was like, oh, my God, because Stroud would have taken the checkdown, and they would have been kicking a field goal there. I thought that it's funny, we'll see what happens during the course of this year. I'm a believer after weekend one, and I don't want to overreact. And I agree with you on Ohio State. They're still going to hang 63 on three or four teams this year.

All right. But I'm wondering if like this Stroud young Heisman deal, and by the way, first quarterback taken debate all year long, is going to just end up including more quarterbacks like Anthony Richardson by the time we get to October and November. And certainly by the time we get to bowl season because Richardson to me looks like more of what you're looking for in an NFL quarterback today. Now, I don't know anything about him personally. You know, all of the due diligence stuff, who knows. And, you know, everything that said about Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud, we've learned a lot more about them than we have Richardson. But Richardson looks to me physically every bit of a potential NFL star quarterback as Stroud or Young. You know, as Stanford, Steve pointed out to me on Friday, Bryce Young, because he was at, you know, he was at the championship game.

And he said, standing on the field, there's no way that that kid's six feet. He's five, nine or five. He's like, he's five, ten, or five, eleven. Now, that doesn't seem to matter as much in football anymore. But anyway, I just hate, I was rooting for your squad. And many people in my life will say my closet favorite team, the Irish. But I really thought that they had a hell of a game plan. defensively. I did too, and it's funny, I tweeted out the same thing as soon as that play

happened. I said, look, Hindsight's 2020 or Steve Spurrey would say 50-50, but, you know, to drop, and it was a delayed safety blitz, too. They didn't even get to like a line of scrimmage. And CJ Stroud, his biggest strength is he gets the ball out quick, you know. And I thought the game plan for Notre Dame, I mean, the first half, they couldn't ask for more. They had one drive that was bad. They kind of picked on Cam Hart. You know, the biggest thing for Notre Dame moving forward, and look, I'm pretty realistic. You know, I think this is a nine and three football team with some landmines out there. You know, a team like UNC on the road in a couple of weeks, are they going to be able to

score enough against that UNC team? I mean, their defense, North Carolina's defense is absolutely god awful. I mean, Florida A&M, who got held to three points last night against Jackson's state was moving the ball up and down on UNC. So we'll see. But, you know, there's some tricky games there for Notre Dame, but I think overall I came away pretty encouraged. And I don't have any worries really right now about Ohio State. If anything, I think that defense is going to make them better.

I mean, at the end of the day, Kevin, people have to remember. We'll see about them defensively, Tim. We'll see because Notre Dame is... They have three five stars. They have three five stars up front. They were blowing up Notre Dame. offensive line. Now, remember, Notre Dame's All-American Guard without Jared Patterson due to injury. And they were limited offensively with the quarterback playing his first game. Yeah.

Yeah, and they will be. I think they'll get better as the year goes on. And, you know, they play Marshall this weekend. So we'll see how that game, you know, plays out in a little more comfortable situation there. But yeah, like you said, I was very impressed by the defensive team of Notre Dame. You know, I thought they put together a really good game plan, recognizing that they didn't have the same athletes as Ohio State. And sometimes you fall into a trap where you think that, oh, you know, we're as talented as them. No, Notre Dame even said as much, I think, pregame said, you know, they have elite players all over the field. You know, the thing that people don't recognize, too, is that Trayvion Henderson and the other running back for Ohio State,

Mayan, I forget about saying. Yeah, he was great. They were really good. I mean, their run game was really solid. So Ohio State can beat you many ways, not just throwing it with CJ Stroud. All right, let's just real quickly, because I'm going to, we're going to end with Tim giving me his best case, worst case on this best case, worst case show for the commanders this year. But we haven't really talked about the Carolina App State game. One of the all-time crazy games, more than 1,200 yards in the game, 62 points scored in the fourth quarter. Appalachians State scored 40, 40, 40, 40, zero points in the fourth quarter and lost the game. They scored six touchdowns in a quarter, in a quarter, and lost the game.

It's one of the more, I mean, you get this in college football, you know, you get these 60 something to 60, you know, 50 something games. This was 63, 61, Carolina. but I'm watching this game. I don't know if you were watching it as it was happening. I was because I had App State. Even at 4935, I'm like, if they get two touchdowns, just please don't go for two to try to win it.

We'll get to overtime and maybe we can pull it out. But, you know, down 5649, they score and they went for the two. And there were, when they went for the two, there were 28 seconds. left in the game. There was still like a full game left to be played over the final 28 seconds. This game didn't even go to overtime, and there were 62 points scored the fourth quarter. So they go for two, and, you know, it was a shame because the quarterback missed the two-point conversion before to a wide-open receiver and then tried to run it and got stopped. So they got stopped on back-to-back two-point conversions. But they line up to kick an on-side kick. And this was, I don't even

know who called the game, and I'm not going to call them out by name, but these were two of the most, it was, these were two of the most math challenged announcers as a pairing I've ever heard. They had no idea what was going on in the game, the significance of various plays, the score, the clock, they didn't know anything. They were literally like two people brought in to call a game, and it was like the third time they had ever watched a football game. When they kicked the onside kick, Carolina, the only chance when you're up one, 56 to 55, that you could lose the game after you've recovered on sidekick with the other team having no timeouts, is to actually return it for a touchdown to make the lead an eight-point lead, which, you know, with a two-point

conversion, you can score, go for two, and you can tie the game on the other end. Well, they just didn't know what was going on, these poor guys. But App State, by the way, didn't know what was going on because they were trying to tackle the guy rather than letting him score. He scores and the Nap State goes down in 28 seconds, or less than 28 seconds at that point, because after the return, I think there were like 19 seconds. In 19 seconds with a big kickoff return, they score a touchdown to make it 63,61, and they went for the two and they missed it. And it was just, it was, it was truly, I don't think, I don't know that we'll ever see what we saw in a football game again, a team,

scoring six touchdowns in the fourth quarter, 40 points, and not winning the game. And they had a 14-point lead in the first half. So they had a 14-point lead in the first half, scored 40 points in the fourth quarter, and somehow lost the game. They're also down 17, down 20 going into the fourth quarter. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, it's funny because in that early window, Kevin, I had South Dakota State plus the points, and then I had Appalachian State. So I had a bet on a game that won 7-3 with two safetys and a field goal in Iowa. And I had a bet on a game that had a hundred and twenty-four combined points.

Yeah, it was wild, and you also negated the fact that the UNC, the UNC guy had a personal foul for on sportsman like conduct. Right. So that allowed App State to get more. So, yeah, just an absolute wild game. And, you know, we'll see. App State plays Texas A and this week. Are they going to have anything left to the tank when they go to college station for that game?

But, you know, how about the fact, Kevin, that these Power 5 teams are going on the road? All this happened in the state of Virginia, by the way, or Virginia and North Carolina. So you had on Friday night, I had Old Dominion. They get the win out right. then on Saturday I had East Carolina catching I think they close like 12 and a half Yeah something like that

And they talk about another Another college kicker situation Kid misses the extra point Then misses the game winning field goal attempt So you feel for the East Carolina kicker And then the North Carolina App State game So yeah It was a I mean that was all in the early window there

And you know North Carolina State and Utah Those were two of the teams They got the most hype this preseason And it's week one, so we'll see, you know, Utah could come back and win the Pact 12, and NC State didn't lose, so they still have everything in front of them. But I was not buying this NC State hype. It was, to me, it got fully out of control. You know, Devin Leary to win the Heisman.

You know, maybe they make the playoff. You know, everyone out there saying they're going to win the ACC. I do like Dave Dorn as a coach, though. I think that they've been a well-coached team. No, and they've got players, you know, and they beat Clemson last year. I just, I'm not fully. sign in and they played tonight, obviously, Clemson. And I laid 13 in the first half of Clemson.

Personally, I think Kevin is the situation where Davo is just enjoying all the criticism, and he's going to come out and lay it on Georgia Tech tonight. That's my guess. That's my bet. We'll see what happens. All right. We didn't even mention the UTSA Houston game, which I had UTSA getting four. So once it went to the third overtime, we were saying.

with the stupid two-point conversion thing. By the way, another situation of broadcasters. I don't know if you caught this, and I don't, you know, whatever. I mean, calling these games is challenging, but they went into the second overtime, and Houston goes for two, and that broadcast goes, wow, this is a surprise. I'm like, no, it's part of the rule now. It's the rule, I know. You have to go for two in the second overtime now.

That's a new rule. You kick an extra point in week, overtime one, have to go for two and overtime two if you score touchdown and then you go to the two-point conversions and over time three. But yeah, it's funny. UTSA wasn't really on my radar and then I was watching your guy, SBP, give out his winners. And I'm like, oh my God, UTSA's only catching four

against Houston. I'm like, yeah, that's I had them. That fits me and you. I had a 3-5 and one weekend with the smell test. The most painful loss was Bowling Green plus 23 and a half. UCLA had a fourth and five at midfield with like two and a half minutes

to go up 21. And they threw a bomb instead of punning it and scored a touchdown. So that one was painful. Bowling Green was up 17-7 in the game. And, you know, when you're getting 23 and a half and they're up 17-7 in the second quarter, you're pretty much feeling like that's going to be a lock. There were a couple of those that were painful this weekend. I had a – I'll give you this, though. So I had a couple painful ones. I had Purdue catching three and a half. I didn't – yeah, I didn't play that. that. Yeah, I liked it, but he didn't play it. Running the ball. So that was a tough one.

But I did, our buddy, Steve Sands, and I were texting on Thursday night, and he said, Central Michigan. I'm like, okay. And they were getting there. I had them. I had them. Yeah, I had them. It was 51 to 15, and that was my first pick of the year for the smell test. And I just, I did what I usually don't do. I just checked out to see how many. Many people were just crushing me on Twitter, and there were a couple that were like, dude, you just have to stop.

And so I just waited and waited. And of course, I chalked it up as a loss. And they came back. They actually had the ball back down 14 with a chance to make it a seven-point game. But anyway, great, a really phenomenal, exciting, wacky week one. And next week we get, you know, Alabama, Texas at noon. And you already mentioned it. I can't wait.

Kentucky, Florida, to me, is the, is. the game might be the game of the day. Florida's a four and a half point favorite. They'll be ranked obviously. They'll bust into the rankings this week, but they're a four and a half point favorite. What were you going to say? Well, I was going to say for those, I mean, I'm on the West Coast, so I get to enjoy them more so. But if you're a late night. Baylor, BYU. Kevin, this might be the best host 10 o'clock slate I've ever seen. So you got Baylor BYU, which is two top 25 teams. Oregon State absolutely blew the doors of Boise State on Saturday night. And they play Fresno State.

And I know our guy, Stanford, Steve, loves him some Fresno State. Jake Hayner's back as their quarterback. That game's at Fresno State at the pickum right now as time of recording. And then what's the late night? Yeah. What's the real late night? Mississippi State or Mississippi. Arizona State at Mississippi.

Or sorry, Mississippi State at Arizona. Oh, Arizona. Yeah, I know. went to San Diego State and kicked San Diego State's ass. Yeah, I know. And Mississippi State smoked Memphis. So the late night's late, that game starts at 11 o'clock Eastern. So if you're a late nighter, Saturday night's going to be wild.

Leaving into the first NFL Sunday of the year. So give me your best case commander's record, your worst case, Washington record. I think best case, they can win the division. I really do. I think, you know, this team is upgraded on talent. You know, obviously the loss of Brian Robinson is detrimental, but we'll see when he comes back. I mean, you know, all accounts as your listeners and you know,

I mean, it sounds like he has a chance to play sooner rather than later. So that's exciting in that regard. But I think best case, Kevin, you know, you could be looking at an 11-win team for the first time since, what, 91? I mean, this team, I think, has the potential. You look at the division. It's not daunting. So I think that's the best case.

I wouldn't say the most realistic, but I would say best case would be 11 and 6 and you win the division. Worst case is 7 and 10 somewhere in that ballpark. You know, Carson Wentz turns into be Carson Wentz, you know, like he was last year in Philadelphia. Maybe you get some injuries at the wide receiver position is, you know, Chase Young doesn't come back fully healthy or comes back later than expected. So I think there's a potential there.

and that's a pretty wide variance. And you look at the win total is around 8, 8.5. And I think that is, you know, what is to be expected. You know, you could be two wins better than what Vegas thinks or two wins worse. So I would say best case, 11 and 6 wins division, worst case, 7 and 10, and maybe even last place in the NFC. At 1 Tim Murray on Twitter co-hosting Vizen Lives Primetime 6 to 9, Eastern with Sean King, the former Tampa Bay Bucks quarterback.

Thank you for doing this. We'll talk, I'm sure, before next weekend. Weekend number two, which I didn't even mention Tennessee and Pitt as a pretty good 330 game. I'll talk to you. Thanks for doing this. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt, Kevin.

Always a pleasure. Tim Murray, everybody, one of my favorite people to have a conversation with about football college football in particular. Thanks to Tim. Thanks to Ben. I'm going to leave you with kind of a Scott Van Pelt Sports Center, the best thing I saw today. This was the best thing I saw from over the weekend. For those of you that are Foo Fighters fans, they had this benefit concert at Wembley over the weekend on Saturday for Taylor Hawkins, who passed away, tragically a few months ago.

And his 16-year-old son, Shane, was on the drum. for my favorite all-time foo fighter song, My Hero. I'll leave you with that. If you haven't seen it, definitely, you know, Google it and watch the performance by his son. It's an incredible performance and really moving if you're into them. All right, that's it. Back tomorrow with Tommy.