The Kevin Sheehan Show - Cooley Film: Alex Smith's Grade

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

A show doubleheader with Kevin and Thom to start talking about last night's MNF game, the latest from Ron Rivera on the NFC East division race, and what Rivera said about Dwayne Haskins and the QB situation. Then it was "The Cooley Film Breakdown" which included the grading of Alex Smith, Kyle Allen's brief start, and the rest of the offense.  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 Cheon Show. Here's Kevin. A double-header Tuesday, Tommy to start, Cooley with his offensive film breakdown to follow. I watched the Monday night game last night. And you know, Tommy, you know this.

I've always been a Joe Flacco fan. Not because I think Joe Flacco has been an elite quarterback. It's funny how with Joe Flacco, after he won the Super Bowl, and he signed that big deal. The real conversation about him, and I think it's done him a bit of an injustice in terms of a reasonable evaluation of his career, but it was always about, is Joe Flacco elite or not?

Well, he was never an elite quarterback. But man, you know, under the bright lights in big games over the course of his career, he has always played his best. And I'm not saying last night on Monday night, football, you know, as an 0-and-8 football team. But it was on Monday night against the Patriots, and, you know, it's a national audience. And I swear to you, right before kickoff, I had this feeling that Flacco was going to play well,

so I bet the Jets plus nine and a half. You know, I don't have a lot of faith in New England right now. And he came out and lit it up. I mean, he had two touchdowns. He threw for 200 in the first half, two touchdowns. You know, the funny thing about Flacco, and I'll let you respond, And the bottom line is one of the best big game quarterbacks of the last 15 years. He has more road playoff wins.

He and Brady than any other quarterback in NFL history. He and Brady both have the most number of road playoff wins ever. He's 10 and 5 overall as a playoff quarterback. And if you go back to some of their big regular season Sunday night games, you know, or a Christmas Day game against the Steelers. He always played well in those spots, always. But anyway. You know, part of the reason we think he does that,

and you could see it when the camera would be on him on the sideline. He's got that vacant look. Oh, my God. Like there's not a lot going on there. He is, and I think all of us maybe know somebody in our lives that is just oblivious to everything, which means by extension they're oblivious to pressure. They don't feel it because they're oblivious to everything.

And there was a shot of him after he'd just thrown his second touchdown pass, and it was a phenomenal throw to Jameson Crowder for a touchdown that was first ruled incomplete and then overturned by replay, justifiably so. But there was a shot of him on the sideline with that, you know, just vacant look. You know, that flak go like, yeah, I'm just out here throwing it around. And Steve Levy just said, There he is. That's Joe Flacco. Has he ever been rattled by anything? And the answer would be no. But, you know, it does him a disservice the conversation about him being elite or not.

He's never been elite. He has always with good talent around him, which Baltimore didn't always put around him. If he was healthy, he can spin it, Tommy. He has always been able to spin it. And he's been one of the best deep ball throwers in the game during the course of his career. That's never been in dispute. The problem with Joe is, you know, Joe will be out there and, you know, here comes the pressure. And Joe just, you know, takes a hit, sack, you know, or throws ball, sales one up in the air and it gets picked. He's had some horrendous games over his career. I'm not disputing that.

But in the biggest games of his career, you go back and you look at those playoff games. You know, the 2012 Super Bowl run that the Ravens had was not defensive led by that Ravens team. It was offensive led. It was Joe Flacco and Juan Bolden. He had Dennis Pitta and a couple of big tight ends. He had Ray Rice at running back. That was an offensive team. And the other thing, too, Tommy, and it's not why I bet the Jets last night plus nine and a half

because it didn't occur to me. I did think that, you know what, Flacco will probably have a big game. But, you know, they pointed this out, man, he has done well against the Patriots and Bill Belichick's defenses over the years. They have had so many playoff games against the Patriots, a couple of which they lost that they shouldn't have lost, like the game in which Lee Evans dropped the touchdown pass in the AFC title game and then Kundif missed the short field goal that would have forced overtime.

They lost a game where Flacco threw four touchdown passes against the Patriots in the postseason. But Ray Rice or somebody fumbled late. He's always, for whatever reason, been a problem for the Patriots to deal with. Anyway, I was sort of happy for him. They lost the game and he threw a pick late, okay? But they covered and it was an easy cover. Anyway. Yeah.

So that was that. That's Monday night football. You know, just when you're expecting the worst Monday night game of the year, you get a game that wasn't as terrible as it seemed. Yesterday, I just want to point out, people might have forgotten this. And you might have forgotten this. But I'm still undergoing my eye treatments. Oh, I didn't know that. Are you okay?

Yes. Yesterday was the fourth treatment where they stick a needle in my eye. Oh, Jesus. And the best part was, I was waiting to tell you this, this beautiful, you know, attendant is, you know, getting my eyes ready. And she says to me, she says, you know, you have the most beautiful colored eyes I've ever seen. Oh, Jesus. What do you think of that? What do I think of it?

She said, do you hear that a lot? I said, not from pretty young women. I don't. I'm surprised you didn't say yes all the time. I hear that all the time for people. I don't know, man. I don't know what you want me to say. I don't, I can't even, you know, I haven't seen you in a while in person.

So I'm pulling up pictures of you. Do I think you have great eyes? I don't, I think your eyes are average. I think your eyes are very average. What color are my eyes? Green, are they green eyes? Yes, they are. Yeah. I have blue eyes.

And whatever. I mean, what else? What do you want me to say about that? I mean, you've had people buy you lunch in restaurants recently. You've had people before they stick needles in your eyes, tell you how lovely your eyes are. You think she was just setting me up because she knew I was about to get a needle stuck in my way? Yeah, of course. Of course.

All right, you want to talk about the washing? Yeah. Speak of the stick of needles. in somebody's eye, Ron Rivera stuck one in the eye of Dwayne Haskins yesterday. I think that it was a very interesting presser yesterday. I think it was very interesting for a number of reasons. We'll get to that, but I did want to first, before we get to that, get your impression of two things because you haven't had a chance to weigh in on it.

First was the game on Sunday, and second was the Jack Till Rio tweet. Retweet. You did see that, right? Please tell me you saw that. Yeah, about, you know, you're not the boss of me? Take your whiny butt somewhere else. You're not the boss of me because somebody was criticizing his team on Twitter. It's funny because whenever I go off on things like that, as you know, you get a huge response.

And I get the people that say, oh, my God, you know, okay, boomer, get used to it. I mean, this is the way it is. And then the truth is, more times than not on things like this, more people agree with me. It's like, Jesus, God. I mean, is he that sensitive? He's an adult for crying out loud. He's responding to a guy with 70 Twitter followers. Yeah, that's sort of my point.

Like, what is the point? I mean, come on, man. Just win. Your two and six football team coming off a loss. But anyway, your thoughts on the game and anything on that that you want to speak about. Well, this was the game where I said, and I thought you agreed, but I'm sure you'll change your tune now. that this was the game you had to win.

In this winnable stretch of games that Ron Rivera has declared as their march to the NFC East title, this was the game you had to win against the one-win giants at home. And you didn't do it. You know, I mean, you didn't beat the Giants for the second time in three weeks, I might point out. So we can put the whole, you know, NFC East title, that glorious six and ten division title that everyone dreamed of. We can put that to bed. Okay, that's over. Is it?

Yes, it's over. The coach doesn't think it's over. Of course he doesn't think so. You know, who knows what he thinks. Yeah. I mean, he can't really think what he says sometimes. but he doesn't think so. You know, and one of the things that he said after the game,

and, you know, I'm sorry, he's fair game. He's the head coach. He said, he told, you know, you can't give a team a, you know, a 20 to 3 lead at halftime and expect to win. You know, he said he told his player, sis. He said, but he said, but this is something we'll learn from. And I'm thinking, this is a new. concept for NFL players that you can't give up a 20 to 3 lead at halftime.

I mean, it's just, it's, oh, I thought you were going somewhere else, which is, you were behind in almost every single game this year at halftime, except for the last one. The last game against the Cowboys is the first time they haven't been behind big at half time, actually the giant game. But, you know, they've been behind big at half time. halftime in every game this year. Yeah, and you know what? That's not Alex Smith kind of game.

Yeah, but it turned into a weird sort of, you know, Alex Smith opposite game. He brought him back and then he turned the ball over, you know, so he did the two things you didn't expect. Well, no, I mean, the turnover thing is exactly what I expect when he's trying to, like he said, force the ball and make something happen. That's not Alex Smith's game. Yeah, but my point is Alex Smith doesn't produce comebacks, and he also takes care of the ball. On Sunday, he produced an amazing comeback with an amazing performance, and then he did what he never does, which is he didn't protect the ball. You know, the comment that he made in his protection of Alex Smith's interceptions, and I'll read you the quote, he said, look, He helped to count for 20 points.

We had well over 250 yards of offense and a half. Granted, we had three interceptions that he threw. One of them was J.D. McKissick, which, you know, McKissick tripped. That obviously was not Alex Smith. The other ones, he tried to force things to happen again because we were kind of in desperation mode. It's hard to fall the guy who's trying to make something happen when we're in desperation mode. He was really protecting him because neither one of the last two were desperation mode throws. They had plenty of time to get into field goal range, plenty of time.

They were only down three. There was nothing desperate about either one of those situations. So he really went out of his way to protect Alex Smith because that's who he wants to play here because he doesn't want to play Dwayne. Right. And look, I just think that what you saw is, you know, and I pointed this out in my column. And you wish you could read on Washington Times.com slash sports. that this is Alex Smith. You know, in the six and three record he had in 2018,

they led from the start in all of the six wins. And the three losses, they had to come from behind. And they were coming from behind in the Houston game where he got hurt. This is when he's forced to have to win the game, instead of manage the game, this is what you're going to get. Yeah, but Tommy, what we. got Sunday was so much different than what we thought we were going to get. Because you agreed with me that seeing him, you know, another time was not something anybody wanted to see. And he really was

very good. He was decisive. He was quick getting the ball out of his hands. He was more mobile. I mean, the third and two conversion to McKissick, where he avoided pressure and flushed left and then backed up and made a throw. He was actually damn good. I mean, the three turnovers are bad. One of them wasn't his fault. The other two were. But he was, I mean, look, the bar was low.

I understand that. But he sailed over it. And you had a Giants team that was playing with a 20 to 3 lead. Yeah, it wasn't 20 to 3 in the second half. It became 20 to 10. It became 23 to 10. It became 23 to 20. I mean, you know, they, they, um, I,

Look, I mean, my expectations were that he was going to soil himself, not from a standpoint of being nervous, but because he just isn't physically able to do it. He totally proved Ron Rivera right in that he can physically do it. You know, that was completely different from what we saw against the Rams. And Rivera, by the way, said, if we see him again, it'll be different than what you saw against the Rams. We're seeing it in practice. Yes, you're right. You're right. It was physically different.

And he did physically show that he can execute in certain situations. But, you know, we're so caught up in the Alex Smith comeback story that we forgot what Alex Smith is like, who he really is when he's, when he can play. You know, it's no bargain. It's funny, though, Tommy. You know, you just made me think of this for the first time. So you've done another, you can go now. You know, the offense of Jay Gruden never adapted to what Alex Smith really was. Alex Smith is a get it out of your hands quickly, quick game, and very much a checkdown guy. He's not a throw the ball deep down the field guy. You have to put talent

around him. He's never succeeded without really good talent around him. And I'm actually sitting here, And I'm thinking about the second half of that game and what Scott Turner did with him and what the game plan was really coming in anyway, even with Kyle Allen. And it fits him. It fits Alex Smith much more than what Jake Bruden was trying to do. But it doesn't work if your team is behind, falls behind.

Well, what we saw on Sunday was we saw them getting their ass kicked at halftime 20 to 3. and them have two opportunities down three to tie or win the game. And he put them in that position. He did. He was on fire. At one point, he was 17 of 20 for 272 yards. I know, I know.

And so, I look, I mean, people are like, wait a minute, you just said last week, you had a show title, Time to Release Alex Smith. And I understand that. But, you know, I'm not, I'm not ties. in to one opinion when I have new information. And Sunday was new information. And by the way, I don't really want Alex Smith to be the quarterback. I'd much rather be in a situation where they thought Dwayne was a better option, but they don't. We'll get to that more here in a minute. But you made me think about it. And the truth is, is that the weapons around the quarterbacks

here are better than we thought they were at the beginning of the year. McKissick Gibson McLaurin can all play, and they're all very good in space, and Turner's doing a good job of getting them the ball in space. Alex is a very good checkdown quarterback. I mean, they created a whole stat around Alex Smith being a checkdown Charlie at pro football focus. So this is what he's been, and he hit the checkdown, and he hit the quick game stuff, and they ran some bubbles. He also threw the ball down field very well, but with a lot of action that looked like they were going to throw it on a bubble or they're going to throw it short. I don't expect much the rest of the way with him at quarterback. I don't, but I think he can manage this offense well. I think it was obvious on Sunday why he is the backup and why they feel more comfortable with him and Kyle Allen in there because they both.

Look, Kyle Allen, Tommy started really well. I really thought I was going to be right early in that game. Even though they were down with the turnovers, I'm like, Kyle Allen looks totally comfortable. They're going to score. They're going to move the ball today. And they're going to win this game. And then he got hurt. And then Alex came in and you know what they did?

They moved the ball. They moved it a lot, you know, in the two and a half, three quarters that he was in there. Yeah. And I would contend to you they move the ball because the Giants let them move the ball. Yeah, I don't. Until it became apparent that the Giants. needed to, you know, to change that. And by then it was too late for them.

And in a way, they were lucky that Alex Smith reverted back to Alex Smith. I don't think, look, I don't think the, you didn't expect much from Alex Smith. I don't think the Giants did either. Yeah, I don't think I agree with you on that, but I haven't watched the film on that. I don't know that the Giants relaxed all of the sudden. They were really coming after him, actually, when you think about it. He had some pressure that he had to deal with. They obviously abandoned the running game,

although it was never part of the plan to begin with on Sunday. So they were very much a one-dimensional team as well. So I don't know that I agree with that. But look, I don't know what we're going to get Sunday. I just, the bottom line with Alex Smith is he way exceeded my expectations, obviously. That's not the bottom line, though. The bottom line is can you win with Alex Smith? The answer, I think, is no.

Of course it is. Yeah, I think the answer is no. Now, you're going into a game on Sunday. Detroit's not a good team. Right. But Matthew Stafford can put up points. Can the Washington offense put up points? I mean, against Detroit?

Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, maybe they can. Maybe they can against Detroit. You're facing Joe Burroughs. Who can put up points. Alex Smith can't put up a lot of points. Well, again, I think you're probably right.

But what we saw for three quarters on Sunday was a guy moving the ball up and down the field as a one-dimensional throwing quarterback with some guys that can make some plays. Even bad defenses prepare to play on Smith. We'll see. I tend to, I would lean with you that, look, I was starting, I'll tell you what, seriously, even down three nothing, even after the second turnover and the first drop pass, I thought, yeah, look at Kyle. He is comfortable. He is confident.

And they are going to be, you know, they're going to win this game and they're going to be in this, and we're going to have a real conversation about this team being, you know, not a good team, but a team that can win this division when this day ends and then he got hurt. I don't feel that way about Alex Smith, but my point is that I feel much differently about Alex Smith today than I did a week ago, as I should, based on what I saw. So I think somebody said here back in the summer, if everything was 100% equal, Alex Smith would be the starting quarterback. Right. I think Kyle Allen would have been if all things were equal. I don't think so.

I do. You might be right. I might concede that. But he wasn't even part of the conversation at that time. He wasn't part of the conversation at that time. So Rivera said a lot yesterday. Yes, he did. First of all, I think he may have said too much.

I'm not, it wasn't one of those days in, and I wrote, I read the transcript. I didn't watch it. I heard some of it, you know, in the bites played on the station yesterday. But I mostly read the transcript. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I think it was one of those days where I would have preferred him to say a lot less. Because I actually think there was a lot that was revealing about what he said. First of all, one of the things that he clearly admitted, and I think this is a consistent thing with him, Tommy. I think he's proving to be consistent, and I think we have to take him at his word going back to when he first said it when he benched Dwayne.

He really believes they can win this division still. You know, he said the reason we're starting Smith, in part, is because we're in the same situation, like we were a few weeks ago when we benched Wayne and went with Kyle. Nothing has really changed in the NFC East other than he said we've lost the tiebreaker now to the Giants. As we go forward, we have to see what happens with the rest of the division. It's still a close race. And so I think he really does. believe that this thing is winnable.

He said about Smith again. He said, quote, I believe we're in this in this situation juncture because of the way we are. Just so everybody's clear on that. He said, actually, that's not the bite I was the quote I was looking for. But if you're the coach and you're trying to motivate a two and six team, of course you're going to put out this carrot of look, we have a chance to win the division title. Yeah. I mean, what? How many tools do you have to motivate a two and six team? Well, you know what? The funny thing about this team is, you know, and I do not think that the other day was a flat performance. I disagree with anybody that we

called a flat performance. They made mistakes early that really hurt them, but I didn't think they lacked energy or that they were getting their ass kicked in that game. They just, they had, you know, three turnovers, five total, but three during the course of the game that really hurt him. Here's the quote I was looking for, the follow-up to that. He said, you know, how is it at two and six you're not getting discouraged to speak to what you just talked about too? Quote, mostly because we're still in it. Let's be realistic. What's the best record in our division?

See my point? Keep your fingers crossed. You just never know. But at some point, you have to win football games. That's the truth of the matter. I don't get discouraged because when I look at the roster, go over it with you right now. You can see how many young guys are playing, guys that have one, two, three years of NFL experience. I believe the numbers right in between

25 and 28 players that were playing with first, second, or third year experience. And then he starts mentioning players and he said, look, there's a reason for optimism. Maybe I'm overly optimistic. It's how I feel. When I sit here and look at these names, you know, and he starts listing some of the names. Anyway, he... I'm sure most of them are on the defensive side of the ball. Well, he mentioned Cam Sims as somebody as an example. But he should have mentioned some young guys on offense, Terry McLaurin and Antonio Gibson and J.D. McKissick, who's still young. McKissick, Tommy's really, that was a really good pickup.

It search seems to be. Yeah. So let's get into the part where he talks about and really, really spells out what the issue with Dwayne is. that they haven't been, you know, implying this, and if not more directly, talking about this. But we will get into that right after this word from one of our sponsors. So there were a lot of questions about the quarterbacks, about Smith, about Haskins, about the future, whether or not a quarterback, their quarterback of the future is even on the roster. I don't know who asked that question, but that was a very good question to ask.

I'll get to that answer in a moment. But I wanted to start with this, Tommy, and that is, in talking about Alex Smith, he got to a part of the answer where he said, given who he is and the way he came back, it doesn't surprise me to a degree that he's got an opportunity and he's earned an opportunity. We'll see how it goes. Like I said, things may change depending on where we are as a football team and where we stand in the division. but for right now we're still in the middle of it. This is why I said I think he's being consistent on whether it's true or not. He's being consistent where he was back before the Rams game and benching Dwayne and starting Kyle. It's for the purposes of starting the guy that is most familiar with this system and gives us the best chance to win. And he believes that's Alex now. But I did think it was interesting at the end where he said things may change depending on where we are as a football team and where we stand in the division.

But for now we're in the middle of it. did he tell us that Dwayne's going to play it? They lose the next couple of games. He may have. He may have. Look, things are going to change that are beyond his control. I mean, the fact is that since Kirk Cousin's left, nobody lasts behind center for this team very long.

You may get your wish. We may have four or five quarterbacks this year. Really? No one does. Yeah. I mean, look it. Go back. I mean, you know, who plays a lot?

long time before they wind up getting hurt, whether seriously or not. So, I mean, look, God, God love Alex Smith, but he's not, he's not going to last back there. I think, you know, and so this, this, this decision's going to be taken out of Ron Rivera's hands before he ever has a chance to make. Yeah, you're not suggesting based on the owner taking it out of his hands. You're saying things like injuries or whatever. Circumstances on the field. Okay, but one of the circumstances he just described is we're not in the hunt anymore. But that would be his decision after that.

I'm saying he's not going to have a choice unless he likes Stephen Montez on the practice squad. I think he's telling you, and by the way, I think he's praying that he doesn't have to make this decision. But I think he said there, look, things may change depending on where we are as a football team and where we stand in the division. but right now we're still in the middle of it. So if they go from the middle of it to the bottom of it and out of it, he's saying there that at that point it may not make sense to play Alex anymore. It may make sense to play Dwayne. I don't think he wants to be put in that position.

I think he wants Alex to win the next couple of games so they stay in the middle of it. And he may actually wait until they are mathematically eliminated before he does what he doesn't want to do, which is play Dwayne. And that could be, you know, December 15th. you know, because of this, because of the division. Let's get to Dwayne. Okay, so. Let's get to Dwayne.

Okay, I want to start with this on Dwayne. This is where he starts to give messages about Dwayne. He was asked about Alex Smith's dedication, and he said the following, quote, his work ethic, I think it's legendary in terms of throughout his career he's done it. That's just the way he's been. Those are the types of guys that have success and have long careers. It reminds me of Philip Rivers who's still playing. Philip was one of those first in's last outs when I was with the Chargers for four seasons. That's what I saw.

I would be pulling into the parking lot somewhere around five-ish. And lo and behold, here comes Philip. That's just the way he is and who he is as a player. And that's who Alex is. Alex is an early guy and a late guy. He does everything that you're supposed to do. And he does it the right way. Then the question comes, well, what can Haskins learn from Smith?

quote, again, it's really how to prepare, how to take what you're getting, the information that you're getting, how to disseminate it, how to transfer it onto the field, how to do those things. Again, my example of coming in early, meeting with coaches, meeting with the other quarterbacks, having discussions, talking about what you're seeing and not saying, just studying and preparing. I think that's important. I think that's vital for a young quarterback to have those kinds of examples. Then he adds to it about whether or not preparation and being a person that, you know, understands how to prepare is innate.

And he said, I think it is a little. It's something that some guys grow and develop and understand how important it is. A lot of times, guys will rely on their great talent. That talent will get you by for a while, but there's a point in everybody's career where everything catches up to talent. The only thing that separates it are the guys that work the hardest. This is him telling you why Dwayne Haskins was demoted to third string, and seems to be barely the second string at this point.

This is, in case you haven't figured it out yet, this is an indication of what a disaster is Dwayne Haskins is behind his. seeds. Yeah. An unmitigated disaster. I mean, this is not a new message. No, it's not. This is the message we heard early in the season from him.

This is a message the last coaching staff put out there last year about this guy. And I mean, he may have worked like he, it's all been documented about how hard he worked in the off season coming in the training camp. But I guess that once he got the training camp, it all went south. This shows that Dwayne Haskins. is an absolute disaster. When at this point, you're still talking about the coach

is still talking about work ethic and showing up early. What does it take to show up early? I mean, how much effort is there in that? I mean, just for the brownie points, why can't you do that? Why can't you beat the coach in the building? I mean, you see it, he values it.

How could you not figure that out yet? It's Tommy, when he was out, about whether or not this kind of stuff is innate. He said, I think it is a little something guys can grow and develop and understand, but it's really interesting about that. You have to be willing to learn. You have to be, you know, you have to sort of catch on to these clues, even if they aren't direct all the time.

You can't be the guy that ignores this stuff or seems flacco oblivious to it. Because if you are, they're not going to waste time. you. I mean, this is where we are. I mean, let's just cut to the chase. Okay. Second coaching staff that said the same thing. Great talent. phenomenal talent. All right. But we got a problem because this isn't something that he's handling maturely. He doesn't prepare well. He doesn't have a great work ethic, you know, maturity-wise. And he doesn't seem to get it. Now, he was asked about, you know, what he would like to see from Haskins. And he said, that's a great question. That's something that we're hoping to see. We're hoping to see a guy with a talented arm

who's a good pocket passer who has the ability to make throws, but does he put it all together? Does he sit there and say, okay, this is what I've studied. This is what I've learned. Now I'm taking it to the field. This is what I see out there that's happening. And this is what I see when I go through my progressions and move this way and deliver the ball over here. That's the thing we want to see. And we've got to see him to continue. We have to see him continue to grow on and become a more astute player and student of the game. He's got the skill set. I'm telling you, the arm is legit. Now let's see him put it all together. That's what I'm hoping to get out of Dwayne for the next few weeks as we go forward through the rest of the season. I mean, yeah, look, he's not the

first person to say it. He was a little bit more harsh when he said it earlier in the season. The leaks, you know, hammered at home. Like, for those of you that are wondering, you know, why they're screwing it up and not playing him. You're not listening. Okay? It's him. It might be them too. It may be Scott Turner who said,

I want my guy. I don't want to waste my time with this guy. I don't see it with this guy. And maybe they could have invested more time and made more effort, but they don't see it in him. And they have every right to move on from it. And they're not the first ones that wanted to do this. So,

I mean, if you want to, if, if the, the harsh words at the beginning of the year weren't a wake-up call at that point, then I don't know what it's going to take to wake this kid up. I mean, if the message is still the same, that's a disaster. I mean, look around, I mean, if you're a Washington fan,

you don't need to be told this, but look around the league at the young quarterbacks and how well they're playing. And here you are the franchise still without a quarterback. But a lot of people will blame it on the franchise. Without an idea who the quarterback is going to be next year. Well, that's what he was asked about at the end. He was asked whether or not his long-term quarterback is on the roster. And he said, quote, well, that's the question we have to answer as coaches.

Is our franchise quarterback here? Is he on the roster? Is he being developed or is he somewhere else? Again, we'll continue to go through that and look at it and evaluate it and see exactly where we are. close quote. You know what I'm so glad did not get incorporated into that answer, and it was a possibility that it could have been. What if the answer was, well, that's a question we have to answer as coaches and as an organization with Mr. Snyder included. Is our franchise quarterback here? Is he on the roster? Like it wouldn't have shocked me

had he worked Mr. Snyder into that answer, which then. And Tanya, too. And Tanya too. But definitely Mr. Snyder on the football. decision. What if he had said that? What if he had said the question is, you know, that's the question we have to answer. As coaches, as front office people, Mr. Snyder contributing, we've got answered. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Well, I think, I think, I could just be mistreating this. I think that, you know, at this point, that the coach has seen that the owner is preoccupied with other stuff and he doesn't have to worry about him right now. Yeah, maybe, maybe.

You know? The owner is able to watch the games, though, Tommy. I know. The owner does pay attention to what's happening on Sunday. I understand that. Let me mention the owner for a second. And these are not constant revelations, but I'm just amazed at it. Do you think he has any sense of shame as to what he's done once again to this organization?

No, no, no, no. By forcing Dwayne Haskins on an organization that didn't want him, on personal people that didn't want him, and again, wasting another opportunity, the 15th pick in the draft, to get, you know, a quarterback. I mean, you don't think, I mean, I just don't understand the concept of lack of shame,

of saying, you know, boy, I really screw this. this up again. I've got to stop. No. It's never one thing. There's two things that have been consistent with this organization. They lose and it's never their fault. And that all starts at the top. It's never been his fault. When he hired Ron Rivera on the happy Thanksgiving introduction, he talked about we need to change the culture that was a shot at Bruce Allen. It's never, ever been his fault. I have talked to people, Tommy, who have said it's always someone else's fault. I want to win. I'll spend whatever it is to win. And yet we can't get the right people. It's never his fault. I guarantee you that he, in his own mind, rationalizes it as

Dwayne's going to go somewhere else and just prove me right. But we had a terrible coach that we should have fired, but Bruce wanted to give him one more year, Bruce's fault. that didn't want him, and that started the whole thing off on the wrong foot. And now I've got a coach who has the right to pick his own quarterback, and he wants to go in a different direction because he's got a different system. But Dwayne will end up somewhere and do well and prove me right. I'm telling you, Tommy. That's probably, you're probably 100% right. But, I mean, the things that we're talking about with Dwayne are embarrassing.

They should be embarrassing to the owner. I mean, these are remarkably indictable offenses that you don't work hard enough. You're not putting in the effort. I mean, how much? And in this sport, that's intolerable. Those are capital crimes. All right. What else do we have?

I got to get to Cooley's film breakdown. I got nothing else for you, boss. All right. All right. We will talk on Thursday, and then we can really break down that big Detroit game for them to get back to three and six. maybe just a half game out of first place. The return of Adrian Peterson. I know. Peterson was talking about it today.

He wants to show him that they made a mistake on Sunday. All right, thanks. See you. Okay. Goodbye. All right, Cooley's film breakdown of the offense, including Alex Smith's performance from the game Sunday against the Giants coming up right after I tell you about my bookie, which is a fantastic sports book and betting site if you are interested in that kind of thing. I would let everybody know that if you use.

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As I've mentioned many times, what you really want, if you're going to go ahead, and start betting, or if you're looking for a second or third site, you want a place that's reliable and trustworthy, and that's what MyBooky is. Go to MyBooky.orgie.orgia. Use my promo code, Kevin, D.C. We're going in-depth, play-by-play. The Cooley Film Breakdown. Here's Cooley and Kevin. All right, Cooley's film breakdown of the offense against the Giants. You'll start, I'm assuming, with the two quarterbacks, because we did have two quarterbacks play. on Sunday. Yeah, I'll start with the two quarterbacks, but before I start with the two quarterbacks, I want to start with one massive issue that came up in this game, in my opinion. And that was,

to me, a Scott Turner issue, and that was a lack of recognition of what the Giants were doing to them. So neither of the backs, Gibson or McKissick, are exceptional past protectors. Gibson's terrible. Mekissick is a guy that'll get on guys, but he's also not one of those stout, you know, really hold your ground, guys. He's little. So the Giants blitzed away from where the back was set in shotgun a lot, like a lot. That means the back essentially is responsible for anyone not the Mike linebacker, especially secondary blitzes from either side of the line of scrimmage. The Giants understood that. So quarterback gets to the line of scrimmage, running back sets on his left.

He says, hey, 55's the mic. It means the offensive line is responsible for the four down linemen and 55. Back now has the next backer next to 55 and then any secondary pressure. And the Giants just brought secondary pressure away from the back with hard speed rush. Right. They never adjusted for it. Never in the game. Broke Kyle Allen's leg, got Almond.

Alex Smith could have broke his leg, got him unblocked pressure off that side, had a sack late in a game in a critical situation, had multiple pressures off that side, had no answers for, had no adjustments for it, kept sending the back across the field to protect. Wow. You get beat on blitzes three times. You got to make change. You can beat twice. You got to make changes. So on the Kyle Allen sack, they never adjusted. they were so basically like Peppers is coming from hold on I'm going to pull this play the offensive left or excuse me the offensive right

well Gibson was there on that side yeah watch Gibson on that play yeah he whiffs it's not even really a whiff it's just to put your head down in hope like he's half going to cut him half going to bump into him Gibson's a terrible pass protector by the way Kyle Allen should have stepped up into the pocket. I mean, I hate saying that, but he went backwards. You know, he had a chance to step up into the pocket on that play. Yeah, but the problem with this is, is that that looks unblocked, and he does have to trust that that bag's going to get there, but he sees him free. Yeah. So he's immediately thinking, I've got to pivot out of that. Right. Alex did it two or three times, too, so clearly there was a problem. Jan did a good job timing those blitzes up, disguising a couple of them coming off the close slot player. But there were five or six of these where they had pressure. So why didn't they adjust? Just no doubt. I mean, I'm kind of surprised, to be honest with you,

that Alex didn't just slide his line. You know, the adjustment that you can make is if you see peppers or if you see Logan Ryan tight to the line of scrimmage, he can say to his offensive line, hey, let's any R call this, anything R. Ricky, Robbie, whatever. whatever you want to say. Right. You know, Rizzuto. Was that Rurudo? And then in that instance,

instead of Morgan Moses sliding down to the left in a slide situation when Morgan was going to help the guard with the tackle, the D tackle or the D end going down, Morgan would stay out. And then you would make the back responsible for 55. You'd make the back responsible for the middle linebacker. And so really all they were doing is they would put a D end, a lot of times it was fackerel,

head up over Morgan Moses. He would take one step at Moses to hold Moses so he couldn't get back out to help. And then he would bail into coverage. So if you're going to, like I'm slightly surprised. I'm not putting this on Alex, but I'm slightly surprised that you didn't see that twice. And you've got all these pictures and you got all this information of feedback on the sideline to say, just make the guy over the tackle, over your offensive tackle, the mic. You know what I mean?

Or make back on him. Let's just give him to the back and let's fan out to the blitzing. Secondary player. God, the big sack on him. I mean, the backs up to his left, and here comes the blitzer off the offside and just, yeah, I mean, that could have gotten Alex hurt that play. Yeah, I mean, it's, well, the big sack on Alex? Yeah, the big sack of Alex.

Gibson doesn't even see it. Well, Gibson's on the other side of Alex. It doesn't matter. He's responsible for secondary pressure. You have to see that. Yeah, so Gibson may have gotten fewer snaps in this game. because he's a terrible pass protector. Is McKissick any better?

Well, McKissick is better, but the problem with this cross-blitz is that with hard pressure from one of these safeties, McKissick isn't stout enough, so he gets knocked back into the quarterback when he comes across to pick up. Does that make sense? Yeah. They're going to knock him right at the quarterback. Where's the hot on these things? It's not hot.

It's picked up. The one that Smith gets sacked for a 15-yard loss. You don't need a hot. hot. It's a five-man rush to a six-man protection. Okay. There's no red seven. There's no red seven. No, you're picked up. Yeah, I see that now. It's a five-man rush. The big sack that Alex had, I think he still could have just dumped it in the flat. I think sprinkles out in the flat there. Yeah. And he could have dumped it immediately. It looks like he's looking at him. I don't know why he just doesn't catch throw. So what's your big takeaway out of this? Scott Turner never adjusted. Poor adjustments.

Yeah. Poor adjustments in this game. I mean, I mean, all you have to do is hop the back one time. Right. Like, pre snap, like hop the back to the other side. And they go, oh, they figured it out. Okay, let's go to pressure B. But because they never hop the back, because they never slid the line, they said, let's stay with pressure A, the entire game because they're not going to pick it up.

That's bad business, dude. That's bad business. And then secondly, we got to get these backs working on some protection stuff, especially Gibson. You know, the crazy thing, the crazy thing, and we'll get to this with Gibson, is two plays before Alan breaks his leg,

or dislocates his ankle or whatever, Gibson catches a swing out to the left and trucks the corner on the sideline, and then stands over him like, what's up, dog, what's up? Two plays later, you're going to cower to a blitzing safety? You just trucked that dude.

pretend like you have the ball in your hand and hit him. God, Clinton was the best at that. Clinton would, this would have happened one time. Clinton Porter sort of came across the line of scrimmage and just knocked him out. Yeah, that play that you're talking about. But you have to adjust. If you don't have the, if you don't have the personnel and you can't get it done,

you have to make the adjustments. Right. That's all I'm saying is a lot of these pressures and a lot of these problems came from this. Even late in the game, there's a third down sacker, there's a red zone sack they're on the 25 yard line in the third quarter yeah where he gets knocked out of field goal range somewhere in there yeah Moses actually tries to fan out to him I don't think it's moses's dude it was Logan Ryan off the edge and mickick it would have been his guy sees that moe picked him up and then mickickettick tries to check out I think it's it's the one where he threw the pick

yeah well that was the one at the 40 yard line yeah yeah McKissick should have been blocking Well, if he hit him on the check, if he makes a good throw on the check down there in field goal range. Sure, sure, but that should have been picked up. Anyway, that one blitz completely disassembled Washington's pass game with one backing gun. You think Turner knows it? Yes. He knows it now. He should have known it in the second quarter.

order. All right, Kyle Allen. This will be quick. Man, early, great ball on third and eight to Logan Thomas that was dropped. Yep. Settle move away to his right, away from pressure, great throw on the run, drop. Awesome throw on an RPO and first and 10 to McKissick. These are little things, but he's throwing just a bubble to McKissick. I thought, I think the safety kind of fooled him on the RPO came up like he was going to come into the box and play run and then bailed late. Right. But still, the ball's perfectly thrown out in the flat where McKissick can catch and run. And it's an eight-yard gain on a bubble.

Right. They out leverage the safety quick anyways. Third and one, bootleg that he gets to McLaren on the sideline is terrific. It's better ball fake too on the boot. It's just ball fakes. We're getting better on the run action stuff. Excellent throw on the run. Accurate ball.

Is that the one where McLaren lines up in the back field? Yeah. And then he's actually, McLaren is actually the flat player in boot. It's good play by McCloren. We'll get to that. Another play later in that drive, great play fake and timing to McLaurin on a corner stop route. And he's driving the ball. Like, it looks like he's really starting to drive the ball. And again, later, right before he's out, great timing on a hook, flat combination, the one where he got the ball out to Gibson and Gibson truck the corner. I mean, that's just really good timing. He hits his back foot. He understands

the high, low read between the deeper route and the shorter route, balls out, 12 yard gain. Boom, here we go. The negatives. had one RPO throw batted, probably more on Switzer than him. Sometimes that happens in RPO. And he's just got to, you got to have stronger ankles, man. But I did say as a positive, really good dry in the penalty, so he got his team a first down on that play. It's really a shame.

He really, my observation was, even though they were down 3-0 or whatever it was, you know, with the drop pass, the turnover, the fumble, but it may have been 10-0. I'm like, you know what? He looks good to me. he looks really comfortable. They're going to be all right with this guy right now against this team anyway.

Like I kind of feel intuitively, they would have won the game had Kyle Allen not gotten hurt. What do you think? Maybe. Hard to say, bud. I mean, the same thing is, they still have the Gibson fumble.

They still had the right fumbled punt. Yeah, I know, but that would, they were still going to be down in this game. Yeah. I have a hard time saying, I have a hard time suggesting that. I thought Alex did a pretty good job, and we'll get to Alex. All right.

So what was Kyle Allen? He was an A. Yeah. I thought he was really good. Alex, the positives. I thought he made quick decisions throughout the game, getting the ball underneath. Like first play, Terry McLaurin, Crosser, boom, here we go. Good ball, good throw.

I thought he was, to me, I thought he was accurate as well a lot of the day. made a big time throw on a third and 14 to right, which right was short of the sticks. And there was a penalty, but still, good throw to right, throwing him away from somebody. And Alex doesn't know that he's not at 14. You know, Wright's supposed to be running the sticks route. I mean, that was a good throw under pressure. Always good taking positive gains, you know, drop back early two-minute warning. Check down right now to McKissick.

Boom, here we go. Let's get yards. consistently throughout the game. I thought he, not consistently, but a lot throughout this game, I thought he stepped up and made good moves in the pocket. I got a better plan for the safety blitzing away from the back, though. Huge throw to Sims at the end of the half.

Yeah, huge. Great driving ball on Sims. If you go watch that play, watch the effect of Terry McLaurin, though. Terry's running a crossing route at about five yards, and he pulls all underneath coverage. that's the type of play that it starts to create offensively for you. You hit Terry underneath. Terry's run after the catch.

He was making all these plays. You're like, we got to play this dude. He holds both the backers. Sims is wide open over the middle. Huge throw to Sims second play of the second half. Really, they're faking a little screen outside. And Cam Sims does a very good job with patience, like kind of stock blocking the cornerback,

getting up like, ah, here I come. Then, oh, boom, release up the sideline. Really good job by Sims, releasing up the sideline. Good job by Alex with a little action there with the back and then pumping the screen and getting them to bite. That was nice. Sims had a heck of a play on a third and four crosser, but that was a good ball by Alex as well. You know, it was just a lot of these crossers, you get that ball exactly on them where they need it to run. Right.

And that's where it was with Cam Sims on. that crosser. It's not behind them. It's not in an awkward position. It's, it's hitting them in stride just out in front of their chest. Let them catch it with their hands. Like, don't put it on their body, catch it out in front of them. So they catch with their hands. They keep running. They had a holding penalty that put him in a first and 20. He does a good job getting the ball in McKissick. They get seven. They're in a second 13. And then excellent job going through progression. One, two, getting back to Isaiah Wright on a dig route. Number three, they convert that first down after they had first and 20.

That was a big play in the third quarter. The ball to Terry McLaurin on the vert route was excellent. I said maybe thrown into a little bit of coverage there. You said triple coverage. Well, it's not triple. I should have rescind. I knew when I said that it wasn't triple coverage. It was tight.

It was zone collapsing around Terry. It wasn't like they put three guys on McLaren and said, all three of you cover him. Right. But real good play fake there. He sees that McLaurin's got the safety beat. Really, the safety is the only guy that Alex is worried about. So they're running threeverts and Logan Thomas is alone on the single side.

That'd be the left side. Logan Thomas runs like a five-yard corner route. Now, maybe it's coached that way, but I've always had that as a deep speed corner, like 12 to 15. So you hold the cornerback in his third. Logan breaks out so fast that the corner bales and falls off into Terry and makes it a contested throw. Right.

I see that right now. I think Logan's short on that route. Now, again, did they coach it as a five-yard route? Maybe. Because maybe they thought the corner would jump him and hold on him. And if he were shorter, it'll keep the corner up. You know, the other funny thing about this McLauran play? It's supposed to be a run-action fake to McKissick.

McKissick does an awesome job aborting the run-action fake and picking up pressure off the blitz. The funny thing is, is I'm actually going to try to install this in my offense. Instead of any kind of run-action fake, just have the center snap a shitty snap up high so you kind of got to jump for it.

That holds the linebacker as good as anything. What? Watch David Mayo. The middle linebacker who he's got to throw over the top of to get to Terry McLaurin holds on the bad snap. It is a bad snap. And Mayo sees the bad snap and he steps up. Yeah.

There's no run action fake, but the bad snap holds the backer. This is great. I think it's great. I think it's nuts to be trying to practice bad snaps. Because one of those bad snaps is going to be bad enough for him to not hold onto it. No, but if you practice that in that fashion, that's a great snap. It was a bad snap by Rue. Yeah, it was a bad snap by Rui.

But they had to abort the run action fake, which essentially if it was a perfect snap, Mayo would have dropped off into coverage, sluffed off into where Terry was, and then he would have ended up having to throw, God knows what, because McKissick was picked up. Right. But McKissick had to pick up the blitz.

Now, that said, Isaiah Wright's, they're running, Verts, and Isaiah Wright's running up the numbers. He probably could have moved the safety and still hit Isaiah Wright up the same. But really good timing ball to Terry, and then he can say thanks to Terry McClure for the extra yards on that one, because that was what legit top five receivers in this league do.

Right. That was special. Third and four in the fourth quarter, you talked about this yesterday, the little play where Alex evaded pressure and kind of scrambles out to the left and gets the ball to McKissick on a checkdown. Yeah. That was awesome, man. Yeah.

That was a big play. And that was a bad ball behind McKissick. Excellent job by McKissick going to get that ball opening his hips up. It was the play for me that said, wow. Alex Smith isn't, you know, is actually healthy. Like he can legitimately protect himself and because he did protect. He totally protected himself. No, even the interception he threw to McKissick.

I mean, it's a pretty athletic move that he makes. You mean the one that he overthrew? Yeah. Yeah. Late in the game. You know, Kevin, this is amazing when you go back and watch this again. They're down 2320 and it's not the last drive. It's the second to last drive.

that ended on the McKissick Interception. He had a great rhythm going. He really did. He had three or four completions, like in timing, in rhythm. They had yards after the catch. I mean, one of them was like, they were trying to get that little pump screen again, faked it to Terry.

They're trying to get vertical down the field. Doesn't have anything. And then just dumps it off to Terry, and Terry gets 10 yards. It's like he really, I felt like he really started to see things there. Well, you said, you said, like he was very decisive. like he made really good quick decisions.

And almost, I mean, we'll get to a couple of the negatives, but really most of the decisions, the quick ones, were the right decision. It wasn't like he was throwing the check down because he was afraid of the pressure. He was high-loying the defense and that was what was available. Right. The negatives. The sack early,

that's his line sliding away. Gibson doesn't get back out. in time. Gibson actually never gets back out. He never sees the pressure on the edge. Yeah, never saw it. I still thought he could have thrown the flat, ASAP. Yeah. Like, just throw the flat.

It looked like sprinkles open. He had to, he looked, he was looking that way. He had to feel that pressure. I mean, shouldn't be taking a sack there. Still, in Alex's mind, he thinks last second, Gibson's going to pick that dude up. Well, it sounds like he's thinking, why won't Scott Turner tell Gibson, why can't we get the unblocked rusher blocked?

Because they're only sending five, and we got enough to protect, but we can't protect. God, that was actually an ugly sack because he was twisted again and, hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Gibson never sees it. No. By the way, can sprinkle, block him as well? He's the one in front of him. No, Sprinkles releasing on a route.

The quarterback could change the protection at the line of scrimmage and keep Sprinkle in if he wanted to. I don't know if that's available in this current offense, but you can change that protection. Like you could flip. So here would be a good answer for this to the tight end side is you can make this now a six-man protection with the tight end. Right.

And say, Sprinkle, you're in. then what he would do would flip McKissick to the other side, hey, come over here, run the flat. And then McKissick would essentially replace Sprinkle in the flat. Gibson, you mean? Yeah, Gibson would replace Sprinkle as the flat rut runner. Now, Alex

would have to dictate all of that. A lot of times, I mean, that's like 10 quarterbacks in this league stuff. Yeah. It's also a lot of trust in an offensive, like offense coordinator has got to have a lot of trust. A lot of times when you start seeing pressures like this, you just have cans,

or check with me's or kill, whatever you want to call it, where you go to line of scrimmage with either two plays called or two potential protections called. Like you can go to the line of scrimmage, right, and have jet protection, which would be your six-man protection with your back, and then can it with some 60s protection or some six-man with the tight end where the back's a free-releaser.

Right. You can do that. There's a lot of, There's an infinite number of things you can do here to adjust to this. You could go five-man protection and just throw hot. If they went five-man, which is just your offensive line, right. Three guys to one side would make him hot.

You know what I mean? Because his center sliding away, three guys at that side would just make it hot. You could just flip the line and slide him that way. There's a lot. They didn't adjust. I would be really surprised, though, if Alex after that play didn't go over and say, dude, can't do this. Cam Sims had a drop on a first and 10 of the third quarter.

It was a decent ball. It was right over the middle. Yeah. It was first and 10 of the third quarter. I thought he could have just thrown the swing. He had more leverage on the swing. He threw those four or five little spot routes where he could have thrown swings, but most of them were completions, a couple of them to Logan Thomas.

there's a second in 10 with five minutes one second in the third quarter they went with a run action play I thought that he had Logan Thomas wide open on the seam route which would have been a bigger play he still ends up hitting the checkdown but he's too affected by no pressure on this play there were a couple times where I thought he was a little bit too affected by what I wouldn't consider pressure yeah i'm watching that right now i see that yeah Logan thomas is to me it's is the guy it's got to throw quickly into that scene yeah and and that that play is a quick hitter play like that's like every like that's a big time high school play too a lot of high schools like tight ends catch one ball a game that's the one they catch just like that bang scene like fake hand

off boom tied in right over the top in the scene right um i thought he had a shot there he still a checkdown on that play. So it takes a second and seven sack a little bit later. He had a high, it was a five-man protection. He had a high-low read with a corner and a whip route. I thought he could have thrown either, either, either. He's just got to make a decision and go with it. I think that's on the same drive, but like he was good at hitting the checkdown a lot in this game. He's trying to get the ball over the top. I still think Logan Thomas is running in the corner. I think he had McKissick on a little whip route underneath. Just throw the whip. You know, if you think you can fit it into the corner over the top, which I think you could have,

then you got to put a little touch on that ball over the top. But one way or another, you can't take a sack there. You got to make a decision. Oh, did we talk about the first interception? The McKissick falldown play? We didn't. We didn't talk about that. No. That's shitty by Alex. How so? There's not real pressure there. And McKissick's got to get himself. out, but he should have had all day to wait for McKissick to turn around there. McKissick, by the way, tripped over a player, it looks like to me. Yeah, no, he tripped, no, he tripped. He didn't trip over the grass.

He tripped over the interior lineman's leg when he was trying to get out into the checkdown area. No, absolutely. But still, Alex has got to wait for him to get out. He just does. I mean, the thing about this play, I mean, I'd save it from McKissick, but his dude doesn't blitz like he has nobody to pick up

and and he's got three guys sliding to that left side the center's going that way which which means you have nothing to do so get the fuck out on the route like let's regain 20% of our eligibles here you have flim flamming around in the backfield and then you get tripped on your way out and it's because

you just didn't diagnose your dude quick enough right don't sit there and think like maybe I'm gonna help what's his dude Martinez I'd have to go back and watch the play. I can't remember his dude. They bring three guys off the left side. McKissick doesn't have any of the three dudes. And so just get out.

Peppers was coming again. Yeah, but they're sliding into it on that particular play. So he shouldn't have had anybody. That's a lot of McKissick. But it's also, Alex didn't have pressure there. He definitely got, that is a, that's a happy feat situation for Alex. get her get rid of it yeah no doubt there you go oh no i mean that's a lucky pick by them right but still that's i mean to me just sit and wait for your guy to make to ensure that he's going to

get turned around i there's a ton of trust in mackisick though uh he missed a checkdown throw late to mick speaking of mickisick um i thought mickisick dropped that one are you talking about the one No, McKissick did drop two balls in this game, but he did miss a checkdown to McKissick. Or the ball was batted by 98. I couldn't tell if it was batted, but it was bad. The ball of McKissick on the interception was just a shit ball. I mean, if I'm a coach, I'm going to accept that. You know, I don't have much to say to Alex.

That's like telling a receiver don't drop the ball. You know, I thought he made an athletic play to buy some time through across his body. and if you watch the interception, McKissick's drifting forward closer to the line of scrimmage before the ball is thrown. So he's at about four yards and it's coming up to about two. If he kept his depth, then Alex,

he wouldn't have been high. But that said, McKissick's trying to be friendly to the quarterback. Right. This is just, this is another one of those things that's like, it's a bad ball and you throw a bad ball and you set,

especially when you throw a bad ball high, they get picked, every once in a while. A lot of times this ball falls to the ground with no one there. This is a really important play in the game. Very. Because it's just before the two minute warning, they're down by three. It's third and ten at the giant 40. If you don't get any yards there, if you throw incomplete, I think they bring Hopkins out to kick a 57-yard.

You think so? I wondered that. It's a no-win day. He definitely has the leg's strength. you're not going to take a chance of punting, and are you going to go for a fourth and ten when your quarterback's been, he's been good.

I think they trot Hopkins out there, so you can't throw the pick. My question to you on this play is, and I'm watching the routes on the coach's version, what's his number one read on this play? Well, his number one read is one of the inside. So basically he's got four routes that are sitting down, at about 10 yards, right, right inside the sticks.

They're running cover two. So in cover two, your outside routes would be dead on these sits and you'd be working two inside routes and those inside routes are essentially working leverage. Logan Thomas ends up having leverage to his side with blitz pressure off that side, off the right side. It's just Alex, I mean, I think Alex could have got rid of this ball, but he feels immediate pressure from the safety blitz. what I would say to you more importantly is Logan Ryan is lined up on top of Logan Thomas

and he is creeping down pre-snap. McKissick sees him. This is the blitz. I'm talking about. Yeah, I know. But he's seeing the safety away from the back. I know. Kisick sees him.

McKissick is going to go pick up Logan Thomas. For some reason, Morgan Moses feels factual drop, which I just, Logan Ryan. Yeah. Morgan actually feels the D.N drop and he tries to get depth. to go and pick up Logan Ryan. McKissick senses that Moses picks him up, and so he turns around and checks down. I think McKissick probably should have went over

and ensured that his dude was blocked. But could Alex, Alex is looking to his left first, which to me is like, dude, throw off the blitz side at your tight end. If he'd plant and throw to Logan, he could get it to Logan. Yeah. It's just an unfortunate deal here.

You know, it's not a bad call on third and ten. They had Logan Thomas, and it's just one of those things where, I don't know, it's also one of those things where McKissick doesn't tip it. It's probably not picked. But to me, it's just,

it's not a route combination. It's a coach not understanding that this is the, okay, this is the most critical play right now in the game. You have to get yards. The Giants have said, said, you did not pick up Blitz Package A all game. We'll bring it again. And they don't pick it up.

At least they tried to pick it up here. Well, they did, but this is tough on Moses because Moses essentially has Fackerel initially. He's got no guard help. Sheriff's going to go down. He has Fackerel. When Fackerel steps one step, Moses drops. That's definitely. McKissick's dude. I don't think there was any pre-snap call or adjustment,

but McKissick adjusts. I don't know. He could have thrown it immediately to McKissick. Yeah, he could have. He could have also realized, like, so the Giants are showing pressure off both sides, but every single time this game, they've pressured away from the back. Right. So all he has to do is hop McKissick to the other side because we've struggled to pick up this pressure away from the back.

Let's just say, hey, look, sideline adjustment. Hey, look, if we see this double edge pressure, they're going to bring it away from the back bell to the back side. So let's just hop the back to the other side. Alex looks at McKissiki goes, come on, hop over here. And that means Peppers is coming from the other side. They could adjust to that, but you have a line slide going the other way. Okay.

So to the other side, you would have sent Cornelius Lucas to the widest. Switzer would have went out to Leonard Williams, the defensive end. Your center would have stayed back. back to the left side and you would have picked it up freely. It's just no adjustment. This is the fourth or fifth time this pressure's got him in the same game. The same pressure. It's unacceptable.

Hop the back. What about the last pick? The last pick's a bad one. The last pick of the day is they fool Alex with coverage. It sucks for Alex. It was so funny because who's, Vilma's like, yeah, he baited that pick all day. Not necessarily.

They're running a sticks route combination and just a hook route combination. Terry's spotting up inside the numbers and hash. Pre-snap, the Giants make it look like cover three. So Logan Ryan looks like he's the deep safety responsible for the deep third of the field. As the ball snapped, they turn it into cover two. where one safety bells to play half and the other corner plays the other half. And Logan Ryan plays the Tampa middle linebacker,

which essentially gives him free reign to rob anything in the middle of the field drawer. He's not responsible. Logan Ryan is not responsible for anything over the top here. Jay named this Orlando. I've talked about it. A lot of people call it cover two sky, where the corners play the two,

or cover two invert. but you're showing Alex what looks like cover three. He thinks he's going to have three deep, four underneath. He sees the underneath defenders react up and he never sees Logan Ryan. He didn't see it was covered to him. He's obviously trying to throw to Terry. Yeah, yeah. No, he just never saw Logan Ryan.

Yeah, right. He didn't, he expected Ryan to be playing deep in the middle. But how do you not see him? Because Logan Ryan's, it trusted what you saw priest now. But you're not, Logan Ryan's not doing a good job of selling cover three. it's not cover three I know it I know it isn't

yeah but he's not doing a good job of selling that it's going to be covered at three well at the snap of the ball he's 18 yards deep it's the ball snapped the ball snapped on the 30 yard line sitting right there in front of the quarterback's eye the quarterback threw it right to him

yeah it's car it's dog shit I'm not telling you that it was a good play by Alex Smith the coverage fooled him I would run I would run a ton of this. Like if you have a nickel corner who can play deep half and an off safety that you trust a little bit like peppers that can play another deep half,

I think this is one of the coverages that's really tough on quarterbacks. Just because they think they have big openings in the middle of the field around 15 yards, pretty snap. The reason is you think if you were to think it's three deep and you have any underneath players reacting up, you're expecting that you have that middle hole. You know, it's really interesting to hear you talk about this, and I felt this way over the years. There's this, you know, well, it's supposed to be that.

That's what I'm looking at. That's where the hole will be based on the way they're playing it. And it's because there's consistency with things like cover two or cover three or, you know, quarters. Like there's, if you read it that way and it is that way, that's where those. players are supposed to be. Like how many times when you're watching a game as a fan? Do you see a receiver coming underneath to where another guy, another guy that's covering a receiver is running away from him because he's covering.

Like the quarterback's expecting the other corner or the other cover guy to run out of the picture and to be opened up underneath because that's what his responsibility is in the defense that they're playing? I've always thought every once in a while, why doesn't a DB just guess and understand that the quarterback is going to assume, and I guess this is what you're talking about here to a certain degree, but it really isn't, they just disguised a defense and they ended up being in a different defense. But sometimes, like, if you just act like you're in the defense that the quarterback has seen and you're going to play the responsibility that that defense typically dictates, just don't play. play that defense, come out of it and go to where the quarterback's Reed would take them. Am I explaining that well or not? You're explaining that it perfectly.

Like, it's the best explanation you can give. And it takes certain defensive coordinators and also communication with certain types of players that will dictate that you allow that to happen. Like, the best example I have. Giving them the freedom to do that. The best example I have of this is Arizona with Bulls and then Becher in Arizona with Tyron Matthew. Like Tyron Matthew is the epitome of what is he doing? But he's just got such a great sense for what the offense is doing that he robs things that he shouldn't rob.

Like the wild card player that's out of position, but he's not because he knows what you're trying to do. Yeah. Yeah. No, there are certain guys that are really, really good at doing it. But it's tough, Kev. I mean, it takes a smart player. You have to be given the freedom to not to come out of your responsibility, basically. Right. And a lot of times, like it or not, coaches hate it.

Yeah. I drew this up, and if you do what we say to do, we'll win football games. Right. Quoting Ron Rivera. Well, sometimes players make plays, and the special ones are the ones that win games for you. Right. Special players. Tyra Matthew.

So, like, when we paid Landon Collins two years ago, I was more upset that they didn't pay Tyra Matthew. Right. Pyr Matthew is a better player than Landon Collins because he can do that. And it's also what I suggested with Landon Collins earlier this year, where I said he is a responsibility only player. He's a react and play responsibility player. He's not a sense what you're doing type of guy. And I think a ton of where he's gotten beat throughout this year was trying to be Tarry Matthew, trying to do what you said. Well, I mean, it can be a disaster on the other end.

But like one of the- It can. It depends on the guy. Here's an example. Third and 17. Like third and 17 is such a predictable play, right? They're going to run draw, they're going to run bubble. They're going to run something just to pick up eight, nine yards,

improve punting position. And I always wonder why the corner's playing with depth. It's like we're playing sticks. We're going to let the ball come in and everybody just got, you know, everybody rally and tackle. Well, on that bubble, once you see the linemen start to move, I'd love to see a corner because the offense would never expect the corner to jump the bubble on third and 17.

But once you know it's the bubble based on a lineman, right, starting to move in that general direction, why don't you just go for it? Like, I mean, to play the other side of that, you're asking a corner to read lineman? Read bubble.

Yeah, I mean. Because it's down in distance. Read bubble would be great. But the corner can't read. The corner can't have eyes on the offensive line. Okay. Well, whatever it would be that a corner, look, we've seen them. Kendall Fuller, Morland, you know, the guys that have red bubble and screens really well.

Whatever it is that they use to read that, in a third and long, super long, you never, that pass is completed with ease. And a wide receiver gets up field for eight, nine yards, 80% of the time. There's never. I hear you. Here's the one that bothers me. Okay. like you drop chase young into coverage if you were that dn wouldn't you just try to understand like what are their four concepts and where are they trying to go underneath if they need to go

underneath like i'm dropping in coverage no one expects anything that's the take a risk play that i that just drives me nuts it's like go where you think they're going to be go where they're Like, don't just sit in space. Right. Like, those are the guys, like third and 17, and you end up dropping Chase Young or something, who in the hell cares if you're a little bit out of place? You still should be able to rally and tackle.

Right. Go try to make a play. Right. Like, go play. Yeah. Go be a football player. Right. And some of that stripped in the NFL and in college football.

Yeah, I mean, you're playing, you know, you're playing three on three. two-hand touch in the backyard, and you're on defense and you're covering your friend who's a wide receiver, and he's going to run the button hook, and you're going to jump the button hook, but your other friend who's the quarterback fakes it and he throws a touchdown pass, so what? You guys kick off, you're up seven, nothing. But be a football player, like, have some anticipation, like, to try to make a play. There's no doubt about it.

Well, let me give you the other thing. You like the button hook reference? I love the button hook. Just run right around the button. Here's the other thing that drives me nuts, too. This is why Logan Ryan is able to make these types of plays. Washington has not shown anything where they're going to stutter and go in the middle of the field. Like there's no vertical threat through the middle of the field that scares anybody.

Have you seen one vertical seam route thrown this year? No. Play with speed down the middle of the field, and now you can't take those risks. If I was playing us, I would jump sticks every play. I would as a coordinator have the balls to say, third and eight plus,

they beat us deep. They're going to get us once. But I'll bet we pick two of them, because they are not going to run takeoffs. They're going to go to sticks. because the tendency is like 100% right now. Yeah, you think Scott Turner is easy to scout, man. Easy to scout.

I wouldn't tell you that he doesn't try to create balance, but I would say that there are too many tendencies right now in situational football. I think he's doing a good job of getting the ball out of the hands of the quarterbacks pretty quickly, like all of them against teams that, you know, could give them problems if they don't. Well, the Giants aren't one of those teams. And the only problem that they gave them was an easy pressure to pick up that they had no answer for. All right.

Alex Smith's grade. So this is what I said with Alex Smith is I said really, it's like a B plus A minus without the interceptions. A couple of the picks are happenstance picks. I still, the last one's bad. I still think it's a C plus grade. he threw three picks and they're on him and he took two sacks that i think is on him you can't turn the ball over like that i see it as a c plus kev yeah but there was enough there that you especially with the guy that didn't take the starting reps all week that

i'm not discouraged by Alex moving forward i'm not i was a week ago um but what i saw sunday i feel the same way. Like, can he give him what we thought Alex, that Kyle was going to give him? Maybe without the mobility, without this same level of mobility, because Kyle can really move. Kyle can really move. There are also a place where Kyle moves and he doesn't need to move. Right. So, so I want to read this to you real quickly from Rivera's Presser yesterday when he was talking about Alex Smith and he said, look, you know, he helped, help. to count for 20 points. He put up 250 yards of offense and a half. And he said, you know, JD tripped on one of the interceptions. And then he basically really tried to protect Alex on the other

two interceptions saying, and I'll read it to you, it's hard to fall the guy who's trying to make something happen when you're in desperation mode. It's unfortunate that it happened. Again, he's probably still a little bit rusty, but we'll see how he is in the next coming week because it'll be the primary quarterback getting primary reps, so we'll see we'll get an opportunity to judge him. But again, it was because we were kind of in desperation mode on the final two picks, which just I wanted to. That's not true. That's what I said to Tommy. That's just not true.

They weren't in desperation mode. They just needed field goal range. And the last pick, there's a minute 23, and it's a second and six. Right, exactly. You're at the 32-yard line. you just need to get a first down right there. Right. There's no desperation at all.

Agreed. All right. This is an incredible conversation, which I love when we get into, but let's move it along now on the skill position players. Kyle Allen's 10 snaps, Renee. Alex Smith would have been an A-minus B-plus without the picks, but with the picks he was a C-plus.

Terry McCorn. I can't believe he didn't get the fumble. on the first play of the game. Like, of all the guys that didn't get it, Terry had a shot at it. Like, the easiest shot at it. I'm not downgrading him for that. Just, you know?

Right. I'm just suggesting when you watch that play with the All-22, you see Terry have a good look at it coming late and belly flop and not get it. That's the weirdest thing with those fumbles. I went into slow motion only on fumbles. Like, ball on the ground and every, you know when you have that dream,

some people have it in different ways, but I've had it a lot of times where you're fighting somebody and your punch just doesn't go. It's like, and you even hit them, you're like, I always fell that way on fumbles. It's really weird. Everything slowed down, but so did I. Right.

I don't know. I don't know how to explain that. But that's a good thing to slow down on those. You've got to be. Yeah, no, like it shouldn't be. I was also slow. It was slow motion, but I couldn't get there. Okay.

I don't know. I'm looking at this by Terry really should have had it. It was like, how do you not have it? Yeah, how did he not get it? Okay, so go through the game with Terry. Dude, the first third and one, that's awesome off script by McLaurin. He's coming out of the back field. He's the flat player on, they're expecting,

quick throw to Terry, let's move the chain's third and one. He senses and feels Alan flush, so he turns and wheels up the sideline. That's when you go off script like that, you're short you go deep you're deep you go short that's just the easy scramble drill rules so terry wheels up the sideline and then senses a hole right there turns around finds a spot awesome job making a contested catch that's huge that is like i'm playing quarterback and i know 17s the side i'm flushing i'm going to him. He will find a spot for me. That is a big time play by Terry. A really nice catch on a little RPO fake with what looks like a corner route that is a stop. And maybe it was just a 10-yard

quick spin out. But I think on that catch that the second catch he makes, he just senses that he doesn't need to break out very far to the corner that he's already open. So he turns and hooks up. Right. I love that. Either way. It's a good catch there. Break tackle after a shallow cross on Alex's first play. Alex first play in. He breaks a tackle. He breaks so many tackles, dude.

I'd be interested to see his yards after the catch in this game. I didn't add it up. Really good blocking in space on a couple of those bubbles to McKissick. Throughout the game, great working downfield to get blocks throughout the entire game. The play on the four verts that he scores on, it just, that's what the best receivers in the league do. That's it. They make a big play in traffic and it doesn't stop them. There's no go down. There's contested catch, take a hit, keep running. Kev, there's not 10 receivers in the game that make that play. Right. I mean, not consistently, and Terry consistently has shown that he makes that play.

There was a little fake pump screen that now it just whipped and threw it to him out in the flat. He was just standing there. But he still gets 10 yards. And then the awareness, even it's a first intent, but even the awareness to make sure you get the first down, like he reaches the ball out to get to the sticks. I love Terry in this game. He was an A. It was just an A.

It was a solid, solid A. Made plays big time throughout the game. I can't really fault anything that Terry did in this game. I thought he was excellent. Cam Sims. Pull up the first play of the game. Just the vertical release on the first play. The dude looks faster this week.

I don't know what it was. I don't know what happened, but watch the first play of the game and watch the vertical release. The Gibson Fumble play. The Gibson Fumble. And it's just play one if you're evaluating a receiver. Watch Cam Sims come off the ball, vertically attack the secondary.

He looks like he's got a true burst. I mean, it's like pure open step and go. It's big time, man. Now, shit, recovering the fumble by Sims, but I mean. Well, Logan got, Logan. Yeah, Logan Thomas got. the way. Yeah, again, I'm not downgrading dudes or not. To me, sharper routes throughout the game. Just simple things like the button hook, which he ran early in this game. He didn't get the ball,

but he does a great job of pressing vertically to 12 yards before he does his button hook. And that pulls the underneath coverage hard enough that the quarterback has an easy decision on the high, low read between the underneath defender. Like so many times I see these guys on that hook route, hesitate step, pause step, try to do something, get to eight yards because their internal clock goes off. And then it completely tangles the timing for the quarterback. Really great route.

Again, no ball, but I'm just looking at this guy individually because I thought he had a good game. I thought he was much, much sharper. on a lot of the stuff. Huge play on that dagger deep in route. Yeah. Great throw by a good throw by Alex. I think everyone West Coast calls it a dagger because it's a deep in and go.

It goes inside and the dagger's outside. So it's a D and G. You could call it a dog route too if you wanted to call it. But anyways, everyone, everyone West Coast calls it a dagger, but it's a deep in route. But really it's, I love this by Sims.

So if you watch that deep in route by Sims, I've been critical of our receivers in the past and receivers across the league. When you have soft zone coverage, don't go double-sticking air. Cam Sims does an excellent job of just speed cutting and rolling hard into the middle of the field, into the hole in the middle of the field, which keeps him on the move. It doesn't take away anything from speed, and it makes it so much easier for the quarterback to know where you're coming out at. And it's also it's great depth on that play.

It's great depth to get over the initial level of coverage, and it's a great speed roll into the middle of the field. Big play of the second, first play of the second half. Second play of the second half, the big one down the sideline. They're selling a screen. Yeah, great job selling the screen. He does an excellent job of selling that stock release and having enough patience to not jump that route.

Like you see so many guys kind of go up and they're like, I'm all excited because I'm going to get the ball here. And I'm going to go too fast. It's an excellent job of patience there. He's a hands catcher too, which is nice. He's a hands catcher, which is great. Yeah. And we talked about Alex throwing a great ball in the third and four

where he's running that little crosser just out in front to ensure the hands catch so you keep running. But, man, it's a great release on a shallow cross, true speed across the middle of the field. and then really good finish with a stiff arm. I loved it. I think the other thing I like about Cam Sims is he works his balls off to get blocks. It's not always awesome.

But on those bubbles and the RPO stuff, like he's out there fighting his guts out. Those receivers, they do fight to block. Coach Joe. Fighting his guts out. That really was the third and four. It's such a good job, too, after the catch, the whole way downfield. It's big time.

Yeah. The thing I see from Sims in this game that I haven't seen yet is I think I see a guy that we can stretch the field with. And I think that there's some potential as they gain more trust that you can start taking shots. Like I think Sims is a guy that if you were to get man coverage and he gets a decent release on anything go outside, that I'd throw him a 50-50 ball and find out. He's 6-5. and he's got good hands. And he competes. Yeah.

We're still this kind of take those big shot. This was the first time we've seen him be legitimately productive. You know, he's been in games before, but we've never seen him get this kind of activity, have we? No, because they went with Enman, which didn't last long. Should have lasted two weeks less. Well, Enman was unable to play.

He was deactivated, groin, right? I think he was growing. I don't care. I know you don't care. I'm just telling you why he wasn't in the game. Watch this film and watch Inman's film. Right. And tell me who you would put in the game.

There's not a question. He had a drop on a little over-out with a low ball that he probably could have come up with. Third quarter, it's first and ten, the first play of driving the third quarter. But really, I thought Cam Sims was really good in this game. I mean, there's a couple plays. Oh, like, I wanted to talk about this just because it's like one of those coaching points that I always fought with coaches on. So they try to run a toss play. It's the third drive of the game.

They toss it left. Cam Sims is about two yards from the end of the line of scrimmage. And he's got a downblock on Fackerel. Normally, this isn't that hard. You don't want to let them spin back out and you can't get too much pressure up the field. this was like the funniest thing I fought more with anyone on this is what foot do you put up

do you put your inside foot up or do you put your outside foot up like a lot of a lot of coaches think that you got to put your your outside foot up he's on the left so they think his left foot should go up because they believe you can just step with your right foot down to have that better blocking angle

I'm actually doing this as a speak right now it's so funny I personally always liked to put my inside foot up because I felt like I could drive better off my outside foot and then get down quicker and harder. I was good at this block. It's completely distasteful footwork by Cam Sims. And if he was having any argument with the coach about which foot he should put up,

his inside foot can't go up anymore. It's back. Back girl gets way back into the backfield and blows up the play. Again, are we going to go crazy with receivers on downblock? on big linebackers? No, we're not. But you watched that toss, and you're like, you had to have some plan for which way you wanted to step.

They worked on it. Trust me on this. They worked on that footwork. Despite the footwork, sounds like he had a pretty good game. Yeah, I thought he had a very good game. I thought he was an A-minus in this game. All right. Isaiah right.

It's 16 plays. You had to catch on a third and fourth. 14 penalty called back. He was way too short, but it was a nice job of separating there in the middle of the field. They just panicked and ran it a little bit short. This was fun. I like to get guys on these. It's the first and 20 in the third quarter. It was after the Ruehye holding penalty. They throw a check down to McKissick. Yeah. Isaiah Wright gets out and has a pancake block for McKissick. Go get him, buddy. I love it. I love it. I love it. it. And then they rewarded him

the next play. It was the one where I said Alex went through his progressions really, really well. He's running a dig at about 10 yards. He's kind of that third breed. That was a great block on Peppers. And Peppers turned running and congratulates him. Yeah, Catoed him, man. I love

watching young receivers do that. That's how you play the game. I mean, Pepper's got up and went to him and said, that's a hell of a block, dude. Yeah. Good work, man. You got me. You got me on that one. You know, might not get me on the next one, but you got me on that one. The next play, the very next play, he runs that dig route.

On his left side, he's got a 10 to 12 yard dig and they have a level behind it, five yard. And Alex gets across the board and he throws the dig. But really, it's a nice job by Isaiah Wright, starting the stem of his route, the initial stem to push outward to get the DB to kind of cross over and open up to create space back to the inside of the field. with its creative leverage. And it's a good separation, man to man with speed cut.

And it's a big first down in that situation. They convert right there. I thought it was awesome. And then late in the game, he had two nice plays on those bubble screens where he does a good job finishing with the ball. Blocked hard was effective as a receiver. I thought Isaiah Wright was an A in 16 plays.

Wow. Sims Jr. had one catch in this game, 16 plays. I will say this, though, on the Cam Sims deep in at the end of the half, watch Stephen Sims Jr. clear out the middle of the field. That's how you play with speed. You vertically press the middle of the field and take the safety completely out of the equation, and that allows that dagger to have more space on that second level and then more space to run. I'm watching them. Hold on.

But just the awesome speed there in that game. And then, you know, the one catch, he's trying to get out of bounds late in the game, and he doesn't quite make it out of bounds. But still, it was pretty good. There's not much to fault Stephen Sims for. I would say he's a B in this game. Didn't have a massive impact in this game with just one catch, but I would give him a B not just terrible.

Batat played 13 plays. I thought he was where he was supposed to be most of the time. I don't think Bata had any catches in this game. But to me, was okay as a receiver. could be a little bit better as a blocker. Bad it was a C plus in this game. Okay. So to summarize your receivers,

Terry McLauran was a straight A. Terry McLauran was a top 10 receiver in this game. And he has been, you know, he's going to be one of those guys that, like he could have a hundred catch here. Yeah. Cam Sims was an A minus.

I think Cam Sims could actually impact this offense. Cam Sims did enough this week for sure to ensure that he's that second guy. There's just, no doubt. I thought Isaiah Wright was really consistent on 16 plays. Did a good job with the ball in his hands was an A and Steven Sims Jr. was a B. Batte who played 13 plays really didn't impact was a C plus in this game. The running backs. Yeah, let's get to the running backs. Antonio Gibson. God, Gibson, he really strong in this game, dude. He did. Obviously,

we understand the fumble. That's a great run after catch, though. Really good. I mean, outruns back on the sideline. He's taken off up the sideline. The helmet hits right on the ball. You know, I think everyone knows this, but Gibson didn't have a fumble in college. I didn't know that.

I think he's at two this year, right? Okay. Or is this the first one? I don't know. To me, he's also a guy that is starting to show natural hands when he catches a ball on the flat. You had a fumble in the Cleveland game. Yep.

I had that catch out in the flat and then he punishes the corner on the sideline. That's a good one. That's a good one. There was a great run that got them the first play of the second. So there's a great run down in the red zone

in the third quarter. The play that preceded the one yard jump over the top. But it was an awesome cut and a good run for whatever, nine, ten yards to get them down the one yard line. It was awesome. Big ups going over the top there. That was a weird little play. It didn't look like the line fired off,

but good job getting over the top. The negatives. I mentioned punishing the corner on the sideline. The next play is absolute horseshit. It's a horseshit block trying to help protect Kyle Allen. He puts his head down. He barely makes contacts with peppers. I mean, two plays ago,

your truck and corners talking shit. And now you're afraid of contact. Broke your dude's leg, man. That's what it is. that doesn't inspire you to become a better blocker. I don't know what the fuck will. Dislocated ankle. Yeah, you get it.

I do get it. It's on you. You really have it on Gibson. No doubt. Now, the reason I don't completely, I think it was last week after a big run that he tried to protect. he had that it might have been two weeks ago I could find it but then the play after

he had a huge run that got him down to like the five yard line he did the same thing trying to cut block somebody like turn his head and basically fall to the ground remember he's not you know he's a wide receiver by trade yeah but all you got to do is hit a dude yeah he's not afraid of contact so what I'm saying what I'm suggesting to you is he's afraid of missing his responsibility

Now, he doesn't know how to get that job done. So don't cross-protect him. It's still on him. All he had to do is go hit peppers. If you pull up this play, you could probably watch it on the game. You probably see it in the game. Yeah, you can see it on the regular tape. On the regular game.

But you've pulled this play up and you're like, is this the big physical back that drills people on the sideline, runs over corners, talks trash to him? And then a couple of plays later, he's trying to go for two broken legs on the day because he doesn't see peppers, the same blitz, which is insanity, the same exact pressure coming off the edge, and it gives up a sack.

On a second nine situation, at the 26-yard line. Like, you just picked it up, dude. Yeah. Just picked it up. Yeah, that was the big sack on Smith that we've already talked about. Yep. Had one run play where he over ran a cutback. He's dead set on getting to the edge.

There's no edge there. It's poorly blocked to the edge, and he just kind of tries to force it to the edge. Gibson played 25 plays in this game. He was a D-minus. Our boy, J.D. You can't, you can't, for me as a back, you can't blow protection stuff. Like, that's, I can't put you in the game

if you can't protect when you're in the game. And he's just not a natural enough runner right now. They're going to have to figure something out. The answer to me right now is, so here's a good answer for you. they had a ton of two-back stuff where they had McKissick and Gibson in the game. Right.

Put McKissick in the back field. Let Gibson be the receiver in a lot of those situations, tendency break more times with that stuff. You know, like find easier ways for him to protect. If he's in, you've got to understand, like maybe we're going to have to slide lines to some of these pressures. That's tough to do. You don't want to have to do that.

McKissick played 20 more snaps than Gibson did in this game. Yeah, no one was happy about those two misprotections. There's, there's just no way. There's just no way. I'm sure Randy Jordan's pulling his hair out on the side. And I'm like, we've been practicing this. That's for those ones. The position coach goes in the meeting the next day.

And they're like, Randy, what the fuck? And he's like, it's on me, but I know. But I told him, but it's on me. But I told him. I've been working on it. Randy. He's young, he's young. But I told him, but it's on me.

He's young. He's young. we've been telling him he's he was really excited about the Dallas game when he had the 128 yards I needed I need to do a better job of telling you know next next game next play next game he was still excited about that one um it's on me though but you know what if you noticed once he missed those I got him the hell out of the game I couldn't put him back out there yeah I got coach I took him out I took him out for sure The positives.

I mean, look, we can go through this, play by play by play if you want to go through this. Like his ability to catch balls out in space as a receiver or as a back with natural hands, turn up, make a guy miss is exceptional. I don't think I need to waste any more time on that. Like, it's got great finish after the catch. I mean, the bubble that he really, I think,

the one they barely touched the side. if he did. I don't know if they looked at that as much they could have looked at that. I don't know if he went out. I know the play you're talking about. I think I went back and looked at it and he was. Either way.

Yeah. God, the knack for finding a little lane right there is pretty special. Yeah. I mean, that was awesome. And the thing I love about him is he can run little speed outs and little things as a receiver displaced outside the numbers. and he's really comfortable with that, and he's comfortable catching balls out in space.

The third and four in the fourth quarter, it's really, to me, this is so good by it back. It's just, there's a bunch of stunt inside stuff. He knows he's getting out and he fights his way all the way out. And that's just, you love a back that knows you've got to regain 20% of your eligibles, which is a McVeigh, my favorite McVeigh thing. Like, got to regain 20% of our eligible. receivers. And then to open his hips up and catch that ball with his hands behind to give Alex

a target. That was that was big time man. The the other one I love is the Terry touchdown. You know, four verts. He's got to protect secondary pressure and he aborts the play action fake and he picks it up and gives Alex time to throw that thing. That's why he's in the game. That's it. I think it's such a I think that I think it's such an underrated. portion of the game for fans that they don't understand. You basically told everybody why Gibson coming off the best game of his career in terms of 128 yards on 20 carries against the Cowboys only got 25 snaps in the next game and the other guy got 20 more.

Now the other guy is really good. You and I have both talked about this. But pass protection for a running back is so important in a league that throws the ball much more than it runs it. And you've got to protect. And he obviously isn't very good at it right now. No, he's not very good at it right now. And he's not good enough as a runner right now to do it.

I thought McKissick should, I consistently think McKissick should have more carries. Yep. I mean, it's just like he does little things. There's a trap play early in the game and it's not perfectly blocked. It's a second long situation. He just hits it up in the hole and it's like a six-yard gain. But he's willing to hit it up in the hole.

I thought he had two drops. He had a drop on a boot on the sideline. He had a drop on a checkdown in this game. We went through the first interception where there's 58 seconds and a half. You're going to try to score. There's a three-man pressure to his side, but none of those guys are his guy. And he's in there, flim-flamen.

It's get out. And then he trips. But he trips because he's too late to get out. You know, as the linemen start to get bowed backwards, it really narrows those lanes to get out. He should have been out right now. Key your guy, no come, out. Make it look like five men protection.

If you were a coach, if you're a coach and the players were sitting around after practice, just the players, they would be doing Coach Cooley with the flim flam. They'd be using her flim flam over and over again as a way

to talk about Coach Cooley. Yeah, how about when Coach Cooley says flim flam? Yeah, he said flimflam five times today. I was flim flim flim flam. Flimming around, McKay. Yeah, because it's what I do. It's a joke term. I know.

I did in my notes type flim flamming, though. I know. But flimflam has different, it has different. F-L-A-M-M-I-N. It has no G. It's flim-flamming. It has a couple of different meanings, because when you and I would pull a flim-flam,

it wasn't, it wasn't McKissick flim-flaming around. No. That was, there's a verb, which is flim-flaming, and then there's a next. which is the flim flam and we've pulled the flim flam like when we would talk about like you know the Auburn Vanderbilt women's basketball game as the first part of the show and we would go on for 10 or 12 minutes and you would be like how did Tiffany Johnson not knock down that open three she never misses that open three and then people would be like what do you guys are you guys serious we're like yeah we are serious

Because if she doesn't feel like, if she doesn't feel like she's going to hit that shot, she's got to throw, she's got to pass that thing to Jenny McLuhan. And Jenny's going to definitely hit it. Yeah. But Jessica Blackman, I mean, if she didn't have that knee injury, she could have guarded the whole thing anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered. But I mean, once- She did have the injury, and we knew that because of the torn lateral meniscus.

Let's stop. Let's stop. The best was, I would be. make i would be making up names and coolly would actually be going to the rosters and giving real names that was true sometimes okay um mackisick how did he grade out uh mcissick was a b okay uh tight ends logan thomas is the only tight end that's going to get graded sprinkle ran five plays it's there was no sprinkle was nothing um Logan there's a lot with Logan i probably wrote more notes with Logan Thomas and i don't know if there's how much it matters but

at times really good on the backside cutting off in some of the zone plays one got the guy on the ground with great cut block love that and then later on a toss play the one i talked about with cam sims he's trying to cut a db out in space and it's a pure whiff it's five plays later sometimes we're good at cut blocks sometimes we're not good at cut blocks uh the third and eight drop can't happen third eight early in the game he's got to come down with that ball yeah that's huge um oh i wrote did i just see him sit down on a shallow cross rather than and keep moving. The first play that Alex Smith was in, we sat down a shallow cross. I wonder if Logan Thomas just said, he's got to sit down. I'm done with this. Like, I don't know what Turner's doing. I got to sit this down in this zone rather than running into where the players are. I'm not listening to the coach anymore.

I'm going to sit this one down. You know, that is the best. It's so obvious to anybody that's ever played basketball and understands about finding that hole in the middle of a zone, like not moving, spacing so important, not moving to where the guy in the zone is, but finding the spot in between the two guys where you can be fed the ball.

And the way you explained that a few weeks ago where I don't understand it. They just keep running through the zone into where the other guy is. Yeah, I remember when we had to tell Charlie Cummings, they're not playing man defense here. They're just not. Yeah.

You got to find a spot to sit it down. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know, coach. Had a couple catches in this game, mostly on those underneath spot-type routes, had a decent, I think it was like a second 10 that he converted for a first down. The Sims third and four, great vertical release to really create. what is a hashtag natural pick, but created good space and that kind of natural pick.

You know, a lot of times I think he had peppers over him and tied it. It'll get jammed up there and their crossers trying to come right behind him. The crosser runs right into his back and then we're all down. That was a good vertical release on that play. Some of the negatives, you know, we mentioned the drop. He also had a drop or a pass breakup late in the game that Peppers was all over him. He just can't win. He's just not a true winner in man-to-man coverage.

Right. You know, he's running a shallow cross and he goes up two yards and kind of sticks his feet in the ground like three times that has no impact. And then he starts to take off across the field and peppers is like, I got you, bro. I got you. Like he can't get, and he struggles to get hands off his chest as a route runner. And so anytime they get Logan vertical or anything, he can't get his body turned to really get hands off of him. He just gives up way too much. Had a holding penalty in this game.

that was really a costly penalty. Ultimately, he's head up blocking and you know that play's going to bounce outside and he's stepping down to try to influence the defensive end down. And then as soon as you influence, you turn torque or you turn and drive vertical and allows him back outside

and then he holds. And it's like, dude, if you go down to influence and then he starts to come back outside, you're aft. The play's done. If you're influencing, truly get him and you didn't torque, it's over. Because if you grab,

you're now the focal player on the end of the line of scrimmage. You're going to get called for that every time, every time, I said. Every time. I meant to say every. The interception at the end of the half, I think that Alex is trying to go to him. He's got a 10-yard in route and it's hard man-to-man coverage. And that's where you do have to give like one, two. You've got to give something.

It's just a sloppy rolled in dig. And you've got to give your quarterback a winner in that situation. You got to show your quarterback a winner. And I just don't think there's enough that he does that. Later in the game, they had another one of those little fakes where they're trying to throw that pop over the middle. Alex looks too long at Terry comes back, but man, he is drifting way to the middle of the field, way to the middle of the field.

And you're like, there's nothing in there. Don't bend it so hard in the middle. Stay up to see him where there's space. This is two minutes, five seconds left in the third quarter, if you wanted to look at that. but Alex stays maybe too long on the left side of the field with Terry, thinking about a go ball and he comes back and he looks at Logan, but Logan's covered because he ran into coverage. I mentioned I thought he was short on the Terry touchdown on his route,

but that's not, I can't grade that. I don't know how that was coached. Logan Thomas was a D. Okay. And that's your skill dudes. Let's get to the offensive line and finish this thing up. Let's do a wrap up here on the offensive line. The offensive line that I spend more time grading than any other position

than we get to and we don't really do. Well, they all play 54 plays and they're impactful on every single play. Yeah, I know. True. You know, it's just one of those things. All right. Yeah. I forgot. Think about that, everybody.

Cooley breaks down every player on every play. The offensive linemen aren't shuffling in and out. They're playing every single snap. unless they get hurt. So that's a lot of snaps that he's got to watch on offensive lineman. There are so many times where it's like ball out, good throw, and I get to the end zone copy and I kind of get past it. I'm like, I got to watch it.

And then you go back and you're like, oh, man, Switzer got up and under. I got to downgrade him. It didn't really impact the play, but it could have if the ball wasn't out immediately. Oh, boy. All right. Let's go. Big fellow. Paul, at least Lucas, we'll make this really easy.

I thought it was good in past protection throughout most of the game. I do think that he gives up a short edge a little bit too quick. But to me, I thought he was pretty good as far as pass protection, didn't give up a bunch of pressures. He is not really athletic at all. So he struggles getting on the second level and he struggles in space in the run game. He's good at the first level of attack, though, and he's a decent zone run blocking offensive linemen,

but he's not a physical, powerful offensive lineman. And he's not fast enough to really get on guys quick with that, that have leverage on him. I mean, really, Lucas was probably an A in the past game. He was a C in the run game at best. They didn't run it a lot. So I'm going to give Lucas a B in this game. Okay.

Switzer. Yeah. I just, I don't want to spend forever on this, but I thought this was interesting. The second play of the game, there's a ball batted. It's an RPO throw. The backside of RPO,

so you're running away from Switzer, if you're going to give it. the backside of those RPO plays, you really have to protect a little bit. It's not like you're going to sell run because if you go down and sell run, that de-lineman, if he loops or does anything, he's going to get back into that quarterback's face.

Man, if I was playing an RPO type of team, I would loop my detackle away from the back outside that guard every time. I would loop him hard outside because the guard steps down just trying to show run a little bit, but it's hard for him to get back. That ball's batted. but man, if you loop that detackle, you can leave,

Kev, really leave the extra defender in the box to play run, influence pass, and really pressure the quarterback in that situation. It's a good way to play RPO. I don't know how much I put that on Switzer, that PBU, but he did give up a little too much color on the edge. The third play of the game, this is on everybody. It might be the quarterback. I didn't go and listen to the snap count stuff, but I could.

you can actually hear the quarterback call Mike on every single play. They miscount the box and it's a no gain on a run. Switzer's going to the safety who's blocked by the receiver. They leave the backers unblocked in the middle. It's just a disaster. Could be on the quarterback. I don't know who's calling that. I do think there's some things that I watch in Switzer where I'm really encouraged.

And some of that's in the zone stuff. Like his step and open crossover on some of the front side zone stuff, like trust to really leverage and stretch guys in the, the run game is good. He's getting faster off the ball. He's a good downblock counter type of player. If he's got a downblock and pin to try to create a gap counter as a gap scheme play, where the, and when you say gap scheme play versus zone scheme play, gap tells the back this, you're hitting this hole. I think Swites is a good gap scheme player and getting better as a zone scheme player. The backside of the zone play when they're running away from him, I think he struggles

to maintain the block. He's got a good initial step, but he's, just got to continue to trust to go in some of these situations. He gave up a couple, he gave up a sack late in the game to Williams on a second and seven when they're in Philgo range. It's like he had Leonard Williams outside of him to his left and he really sets and slides hard to his left. And you're just like, yeah, yeah, don't have to overset it. Williams loops inside.

And then where I think he struggles is when he's just quick setting guys instead of dropping for depth, he really, really. he quick sets and gets his head down, kind of bends at his waist and gets his head down. He's got, if he's going to quick set, he's got to stay lower and keep his head up. But I thought Switzer was a C plus in this game.

Chase Rue, we mentioned the box count thing on the third play. I mean, just some of those run plays. You just can't afford to miscount where you're going with your double teams, Kev. Yeah.

Because you turn linebackers free in those situations and it makes it so easy for them to play gap defense. gave up a couple pressures back across his body when he's going to his right. He's really good going to his left, going to his right in this game, a couple pressures where they're coming back inside of him. So he starts to move right and they're looping back inside to his left. Had a holding penalty that was costly and he didn't need to hold. If you want to pull that play up, it's three minutes and 46 seconds in the third quarter.

It's a first down to 10 at the 40 yard line. The only reason I suggest you pull it up is because to me, this is exceptional by Ruiye initially going right with enough lateral movement to stretch the detackle where he can't play the cutback. And then he holds on too long with his left hand and the ball cuts inside of him and they can see his left hand. He didn't need to hold. There's no chance that that detackle gets in on that play. But I mean, the only reason I say pull it up is because if that plays four seconds, the first three and a half is clinic. And the second is the best example of why we run zone.

Because you don't have to sustain the entire amount. He can cut behind it and your guy can't get in on the play. If you stretch him, don't hold. She was too late to help on a sack late in the game and Philgo range. He's trying to help the up and under I said with Switzer. Rue is just late coming back. He's got both his arms out to both sides. Like, no one's getting around me, but he's too late to get back

can help there that's not totally on him. I think Ruey is much better moving to his right than he is to his left, especially in this game. And when you watch some of the run plays, if they are moving, stretching to his right step gains a full six inches, his left first step. If he goes left, gains about one. He's got to work on that left step in this game. Ruey was a C.

Okay. Brandon Shera. Yeah. Man, the third play of the game was an awesome pancake block on a zone run. It wasn't even his guy, but he's like, just helping out on zone, just knocking you down going on my track. That was awesome. He as a polar, he's exceptional. He's physical.

The negatives still some of the zone plays way too inside out on zone to his side. And by that, I mean, just trust to open, cross over one step and get them to flow with you and then attack. He's open and then his second step steps up the field, which turns his left shoulder. older forward and his ass in the hole and then it just forces a cut. That's how he was coached for four years here in the Callahan system. That's not the way this system works. I can see that because I can see how Ruey and Swites are operating inside. That's just overcoming coaching.

And that's how it was. That's how they wanted to do it in the past. A couple pressures in this game. One on a third and 14, Alex Smith's first drive. He was absolutely steamrolled. They actually called a. penalty on Moses for illegal hands of the face. I don't even know what they saw there,

but it's really because Sheriff's steamrolled in that situation. But for the most part, like Sheriff's really pretty consistent in pass blocking throughout this game. Oh, he did have one false start early too. Right. Alex came in. I mean, I have a hard time with the new quarterback who's louder, whose cadence has a little bit different tempo that they haven't seen in practice.

That sometimes happens. To me, he was really average in the run game. have been better. He was really pretty good in the past game. Sheriff was a B in this game. And that leaves us with Morgan Moses as the last offensive line integrate. I thought Morgan has had his worst game. I thought he gave up too many pressures. I thought he was poor past enough stunts. I thought speed off the edge hurt him in some of these situations. Yeah, I mean, just I wasn't necessarily impressed with Morgan Moses. And you have been most of the year.

I think he's been excellent most of the year. I thought Morgan Moses was a D plus in this game. Ooh, okay. All right, there you go. Lucas B, Schweitzer C plus, Ruey C, Sheriff B, Morgan Moses D plus. The highest rated players on offense were the starting quarterback in an A in his 10 snaps. McLaurin A, Cam Sims, A minus, and Isaiah Wright was in a. McKissick was a B in the game.

All right. Back tomorrow with Cooley's defensive film breakdown. Enjoy the day.