The Kevin Sheehan Show - Cooley Film Breakdown: Defense

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

Washington had one of it's best defensive games in years. Cooley on the show today with his "Film Breakdown" on Chase Young, Daron Payne, and the rest of the defense. Cooley and Kevin talked also about Bill Belichick calling Russell Wilson underrated. 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.

All right, another show with Cooley coming up. We'll get his film breakdown of the defense here in a moment. But quick word about DoorDash. You've counted on restaurants. They're now counting on you. And DoorDash is the app that brings you food you're craving right now, right to your door. Ordering is easy. Open the DoorDash app.

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The Kevin Sheehan Show. Here's Kevin. Yes, it's a Thursday, and Tommy's going to be with me tomorrow because we're doing Cooley's film breakdown today of the defense. And then next week, Cooley will do Tuesdays and Wednesdays with film breakdown. And Tommy will be back on his Tuesday, Thursday, schedule as well. We'll just do both of them on Tuesday. A lot of feedback, and I really appreciate it, and I don't know Cooley if you saw a lot of it,

but I know people were really excited about the film breakdown being back. And certainly, you know, a lot of questions about the Haskins review. You gave him a C-minus. You were complimentary about a lot of the things that he did. and some of the other things, not so much. But the one question I had just about yesterday's film breakdown of the offense, and we'll get coolly started on the defense here momentarily, is do you think the offseason,

which didn't include an opportunity to have full mini-camps, OTAs, just an odd off-season with a new coaching staff, how much better would Dwayne have been? I mean, you know, the management of the game was really flawless. in terms of penalties and all of that. But how much of the off-season and the limitations to this off-season do you think impacted them offensively in the opener? I think a little bit. The timing with some of his guys and some of the concepts that they were trying to run would have been improved, I think, a little bit.

As far as the off-season changing what he was going to do in the offense, I'm not 100% sure, from every offseason that I've been a part of, it's pretty much week one, install, week two install, your generic stuff, and then as you get to the season, it fits the language, but it's nothing that you've been doing. There's a lot of nuance to the game plan. And so I think for the most part, for Duane, it's going to be getting used to Scott Turner

and the nuance of the offense as they progress through the first three or four weeks. I really think for me, and I'm not a quarterback or I wasn't a quarterback, it took a year before I really started to understand some of the nuance and started to play the play within the play. You know, instead of what was on the paper and what we were doing exactly, you know, starting to be able to utilize techniques and things that I wanted to do and make adjustments in my second year, way more so than the first year. So I don't think it was detrimental to his development in his year. I think that they could have been one more step along, but my opinion of it is that it will take him eight games before he felt completely comfortable with what he's doing, and then really it will take him going back and evaluating this year

at the end of the year and having the sense and the feel for all the stuff. And you also have to keep in mind, you're seeing all these coverages to new concepts that you've known. never seen in real time. So there's a lot of experience gained in playing a season. I do think it'll take Doreen a year before he's really comfortable. I think we'll be able to evaluate him as he progresses through this year pretty closely. And I don't think you'll be guessing on what he is by the end of the year. By the way, one of the things that I found interesting was all the conversation leading up to the opening weekend about the teams with new coaches and they were going to be at a disadvantage.

advantage. And, you know, Cleveland, the Giants, Dallas and Carolina, and Washington all had new coaching staffs. Washington is the only team that won. Dallas certainly had a chance to win. Carolina had a very good chance to win. Teddy Bridgewater actually looked pretty good in his debut down there. I actually think that might work out for him at Carolina. And Cleveland's got, you know, Stefansky there, and he's got all this talent. I mean, Chubb and Hunt are, are a great combination in the backfield. They've got Landry and Nujucco and who knows what the state of Odell Beckham Jr. To me, that situation is less about the coaching, and it's going to be more about

Baker Mayfield. I just don't think he can do it. Do you? He certainly hasn't proved that he can do it, and he has so many weapons around him. And by the way, a dynamic run game where he should be able to balance everything he's doing. They were in the top three in the league last year and rushing the ball. And they looked like they could run the ball a little bit against Baltimore, especially early in that game.

Yeah, they did. Find some balance as a quarterback, especially when you have some weapons. If you can run it, you can get into some run-action pass stuff and some boot stuff. Man, I just think that you're so dynamic offensively. And so if he can't do it this year, they're going to make decision quickly. I think so, too. There's already discussion that Case Keenum could play. sooner rather than later.

They're already talking about, you know, Case Keenham, who was with Stefansky in Minnesota, you know, being the quarterback in Cleveland. That's the Thursday night game tonight to see Cleveland and that rush attack against Cincinnati and Joe Burrow in the Thursday night game tonight. Cleveland is a six and a half point favorite. I'd lean Cleveland in this game.

Cincinnati had some injuries from the game. Two other quick things just to get to before we get to defensive film breakdown, which I would assume would have a lot better grades attached to players from Sunday when you have 31 pressures and eight sacks. But Alan Robinson says he's going to stay in Chicago this year, so it looks like that isn't going to happen. He had a conversation with Matt Nagy and with the GM Ryan Pace. There's that.

And then this morning, Bill Belichick in preparation for the Seahawks. and that's the Sunday night game, the Patriots and the Seahawks, which should be a good one. He said about Russell Wilson, quote, honestly, I think he's in a way underrated by the media or the fans. I don't know, but I don't really see anybody better than this player. This guy is a tremendous player, closed quote. You rarely get that kind of discussion from Belichick about anybody.

his own players, the opponent's players, and he basically really complimented Russell Wilson and suggested that Wilson was underrated by the media or the fans. I think that that may have been the case a year or two ago. I don't think so anymore. I think most people who have a debate with friends or do it in the form of some sort of media outlet, understand that Russell Wilson's among the top four or five quarterbacks in the NFL without much debate anymore. I think that you're absolutely right, but I think the reason that you would consider him

underrated is because people disrespect the development of Russell Wilson. And I think a lot of people still think of Russell as a guy that's going to run around a lot that's going to make all these scramble plays. And if you look back even like three years ago, and early in his career as well, he was a guy that depended on off-schedule offense. And I think the thing that you forget, or that if you're not paying close attention, is that Russell Wilson doesn't need off-schedule offense at this point, and he doesn't need RPO, and he doesn't need read option.

He's dynamic. He's becoming a pure, true passer. And that's the thing that's really scary about Russell Wilson. Your game plan has to change. It's not just, hey, force him left, force him left, make him roll, make him get out of the pocket, and then we've got to plastic. That's what they call. That's what defensive players call it when the quarterback gets out of the pocket.

We got a plaster. What is it called? Plaster. When a quarterback gets out of the pocket, it's called plaster. Cramble drill. Yeah. That's a universal defensive term for the scramble drill. Okay.

So what do they just start screaming plaster? I don't think they scream plaster. I think when they coach it, they talk about plaster. That would be hilarious, though. Especially with no fans You just start hearing a bunch of guys You go plaster, plaster. I don't understand what plaster means, though.

What does it mean? It means Get on your dude and stay on your dude Like plaster sticks to everything. Okay, now I get it. Okay, that makes a little more sense. And the other thing with the plaster deal is once he's out of the pocket,

I mean, you can bang into dudes and stuff. You know, you can have contact with the player, not with the ball in the air, but... they can contact the receivers. They're really... I think Russell Wilson's incredible. I think Bill Belichick's right. I don't think he's underrated

because I think people consider him an MVP type candidate. I just think a lot of people misrepresent what Russell has become. I did my NFL power rankings for the first time today. I didn't ask you to prepare for it, but I was just thinking about it because I really think Seattle's... It could be a Seattle kind of a year. They just have so much, not to mention the fact that they have him,

but they have more than that. I actually think Chris Carson's really good. You know, they Metcalf obviously came on last year. But defensively, do you know who played well Sunday? Was Quentin Dunbar for them. And Jamal Adams, in his first game as a Seahawk, had 12 tackles, one sack, two and a half tackles for loss. Like they're going to be so much better, I think, defensively,

than they've been. I mean, they still have Wagner, right? They still have, who else do they have in addition to Wagner in terms of the old standbys defensively? They've got Shaq Griffin. Who else do they have? I forget. The Seattle Seahawks are, I mean, they still have Bruce Irvin and K.J. Wright. They have three dynamic linebackers. I mean, they, I like Trey Flowers at Corner. I think he can be a good player for them a lot of the time. he said Jamal Adams Demontre Moore is a pretty good defensive end Jordan Brooks plays okay for him when he comes in at times

they have guys man they just they do they have a ton of guys I had Casey one I'd Casey won Seattle too and I had Seattle in front of Baltimore in my power rankings and then I had Pittsburgh and Buffalo to round out the top five I think Seattle would be Baltimore in a game in a playoff game

I think you're right. I'm going to take, I'm going to side with Russell Wilson over Lamar Jackson until Lamar Jackson proves he can do it in the biggest of games, which he hasn't. I don't blame him for that first playoff loss to the Chargers two years ago. He wasn't really the starter until late in the year. And I don't really necessarily put the blame. They couldn't stop the run, you know, in that playoff game. He battled back.

Yes, he did. You remember that game and everyone was like, oh, yeah, well, they can't run the ball now until they're doomed. And he made some big throws in that. And that game against the Chargers. He did. All right, let's get to your defensive film breakdown right after I tell you quickly about MyBooky.orgie. That's the place. If you want to wager on tonight's game, and I'm not giving it out as a smell test, but I would lean Cleveland a little bit laying the six, six and a half, whatever it is.

But MyBooky.orgie.orgie is going to double your first deposit up to $1,000 if you use my promo code, Kevin D.C. totally worth it. Even if you have another shop that you're using, you might as well have a second one to compare it to. And if you use my promo code, Kevin DC, mybooky.ag will double your first deposit up to $1,000. You bet with the best, they've got fair lines, fair pricing, and you get paid if you win. Kevin DC at mybooky.orgie.orgie to double your first deposit up to $1,000. Your winning season begins tonight only at MyBooky. All right, Cooley, get after it. Defensive Film Breakdown after one of the most impressive and dominating defensive performances by this franchise in many years. I think that's not an overstatement as to what they did Sunday against Philadelphia.

Get started. Okay, so just an overview of the defense as this game progressed and a couple things before we get to the individual players, I thought that they did a really good job adjusting throughout the game and getting better in zone coverage. They gave up some holes. They had some open space early in the ballgame. They had some mistackles early in the ball game. And the first half wasn't necessarily pretty. It wasn't bad.

You were right when we talked about this on Monday that the defense was pretty good. They were just giving up too many big plays. And there were also big play opportunities that they didn't actually execute on. Eagles, I mean. So I thought that as the game progressed, coverage got so much better on the back end by almost everybody. That's fun. That's fun. I liked what they do. They play with almost three deep zones the entire game. They brought a lot of blitzes. A lot of blitzes were zoned blitzes, so they were three deep, four underneath, and some of those zone blitz looks. I thought they were really effective on early down and distances in the run game.

When they blitz their linebackers, Bostick was impactful as a blitzer. Throughout, they kept the Eagles offensive line off balance with multiple looks and multiple stunts and blitzes, which I absolutely loved. It wasn't just a straight four-man rush that got after him. It was a lot of different things that got after Carson went. And it was simplistic on the back end, which I loved, because the last few years I've watched cover two, cover three, man, cover four. You're like, why are we playing 19 coverages in a game?

Like, let's come up with some different fronts and some different blitz looks and play simple on the back end. We've had a young second. And they still have a young and new secondary. So don't complicate it on the back end and give them tough looks up front with their offensive line and quarterback. It was a really good plan that they continued to get better at throughout the game. throughout the game, especially in the second half.

There were just not very many holes and not very many windows for Wentz to throw football into, and they were good in the run game. So I thought that was impressive. I wanted to go through the fourth down and five that forced them out of field goal range. Yeah. Because it was really a cool look defensively. They had what looked like a six-man pressure. So Ryan Kerrigan's your left defensive end, he's wide.

Duran Payton's inside of him over the left tackle, or over the right tackle. On the other side, it was Alan and Chase Young both wide. In the middle, Bostic blitzed in what you'd call the A-gap between the center and guard. And then Kevin Pierre-Lewis looked like he was going to blitz and attacked Kelsey the center and held him. And then he was spying the quarterback for Went to bail in any direction. On the far right, you actually had Chase Young peeling for the back as the back came out. the back would have protected. Chase Young would have added to the blitz.

It would have become a five-man split. It was really a four-man pressure. And you got a linebacker in Bostic completely free through the A-gap. It was just, it's fun to see that. You know, I watched Blitzes last year. There were times where you see people blitz against us. Like, I remember someone was at home, and someone hugged up on Brandon Sheriff and made him pause and then bailed back into coverage.

and he allowed the interior pressure outside. I'm like, why can't we do some of these things? Well, we're doing these things now. Like Del Rio or Rivera created some really cool blitz packages where you created confusion with some simple hug rushes and what looked like full-on blitzes that ended up just being a four-man rush. Right. And that's so cool because you're protected behind that.

It's a zone blitz because you're bringing both your backers and you're bailing your defensive line. It's still considered a zone blitz. Right. But it's seven-man coverage behind it. It's a seven-man shell with a four-man pressure. It's really interesting. It's so interesting because I think I mentioned to you on Monday that while Chase Young was a dominant player,

there were Zone Blitz plays that he was involved in where he was in coverage. And I'm watching this play, and Cooley's referring to the fourth and four when the Eagles were up 17. to 14 at the moment. And this is, you know, this is a big play. The Eagles should have never gone for it. They should have punted it. It was an analytics play, which was stupid because the context was they were getting their ass kicked and they had been one for their last six on third down.

But I love the way Chase Young is actually, he's got the back on this play. And you're saying if the back stays in for coverage for pass pro, then he becomes the fifth rusher, but the five rushers are only three down linemen and two linebackers. Right. And I think the back should have stayed in. And he should have stayed in and probably picked up Bostic, but still at that point, you get a five-man pressure and you get all of your known rushers, your defensive linemen, with 90s numbers one-on-one.

Yeah. And at this point now, it was funny, we always had to do that. you'd always have to go through and identify known rushers. And some teams it would be tough. Like when you play a Greg Williams team, you're like, a known rusher is 29. Like, really? We're going to consider him a known rusher.

Yeah, okay. But known rushers are all 90s numbers in this situation. But you get them all one-on-one in those situations. Man, I would take our four guys up front one-on-one to get after the quarterback. So I thought good pressures throughout the game, some really creative looks defensively. and also some great individual efforts

as a game progress. You know, it's interesting. One last point on this. I don't want to disrupt you, and you can tell me to stop. But I'm watching this play again, and just one thing I'm reminded of. Bostick makes the sack.

He gets wents to the ground on this play, and by the way, flips field position, too, for them to take over there, which leads to the game-tying field goal. But how many times against this particular team and this quarterback, in recent years, have we seen Wentz duck that, the sack get missed,

and then he makes him pay for it on the other end. That's like the perfect Carson Wentz get out of Houdini Act to somehow duck underneath Bostic and get up, and then somebody's open, and I don't know if anybody's open on this play, but it's good to see them finish the sacks on him. Yeah, well, no one's open because the pressure is so immediate that there's nowhere to go with the ball. But to your point,

a year ago, Nelson Aguilar could have been open 42 yards down the field, and he's thrown a deep one over the top because he got Bostic. I think they only had one missed sack. I think Bostic was really the only missed sack. They had a couple where somebody else could have gotten a sack, but then somebody else finished the sack. Right. Right.

It was a good tackling effort as the game progressed. There were some mistackled early, but as the game went on, it became a pretty good tackling effort by this defense. So let's start this thing. And where else would you start but Chase Young? Yeah. I just don't know where else you were to start. I'm going to tell you right now that hands down, he was the best player on the field.

It will be the best grade. There's some good grades. But my God, what a menacing upfield rush with multiple moves. and the ability to play the run and speed off the ball. I mean, early, he's winning on an up and under with an end tackle stunt, and he's getting inside and he's creating pressure. The fact fumble early in the game on a third and five, it was a spin move.

The back chipped him. He chipped him into a spin move at the quick spin on Peters, and it's just awesome. And then the ability to get the ball out. You're like, oh, my gosh, there's a shake, move where he ends up getting underneath Peters, where it's like a one, two, three step. It's almost like a basketball crossover that he beats Peters with later in the game. The fact that he had on the Ionitis, or the quarterback hit that he had on Ionitis is a speed rush

around Peters that ended up being an interception, but the play was negated. Another sack late in this game, which was a sack fumble, was absolutely big time. I don't know what to say. I mean, so here's how I grade this, and then I could give it to you an A, B, C, D, essentially graded on a scale of one to five. And for me, anything over four is an A. Chase Young had 20 plays that are graded five. Oh, my God. I don't know if I've ever had that many true impact positive plays by one player in a game, not for us.

and certainly not on the defensive line. I mean, it was just constant impact play after impact play. And you can even go to the run game. I mean, early in the game, he's playing through both tight ends on the backside and making a tackle for a two-yard game coming off the backside, up a double team. Those are plays most defensive ends

if they're going to make it end up falling off into it at six yards. He splits Peters and got her on the front side of a zone play, and he makes a tackle again. You're like, this guy's making plays all over the field. And then maybe one of my favorite plays is a third and 20 where any young player would, what you say, pin his ears back and get after the quarterback, sniffed out a screen, ends up trailing it downfield,

Pierre Lewis misses a tackle, and Chase Young makes a tackle. He's just a rookie. I mean, he was just absolutely awesome. Did they? snack for the game, his ability to put multiple moves together, his ability to combine moves when something doesn't work initially. His one-on-post was either arm on either side coming off the edge and turn the corner and drive the tackle back is awesome. He went with speed, he

went with empowering, he, he wins with the spin move, he can win with the crossover, he can win with just a straight up and under. He's a pro-bowler. It's a pro-bowl performance. Did Philly know it? Did he get doubled a lot? Did they try to help on him? They tried to chip with backs at times, and they did try to help a little bit, but not as much as I would have expected, but it's hard to just always try to help. What are you going to say? Okay, so now if we're not going to chip with the back, we're going to take the guard and have presents from that side.

You can't because ionitis or Allen or pain are now one-on-one, and when they're one-on-one, they're pushing the pocket in the middle. This is a great combination. This D line is really, really good because it's not a D line that's just going to stop the run. It's not a D line that can just get after the pastor. There's some multiplicity to this defensive line in combination depth on this defensive line.

I mean, they're really good up front. So what was Chase Young's grade? It was an A-plus. Have you ever given out an A-plus? plus before? Yeah, I've given out some A pluses. Is this the best A plus you've ever given out? It's

one of the best games I've seen. I mean, I was, I'm blown away. I shouldn't be, because I know who he is. I'm not blown away. This is what he did Ohio State. He was so impactful at Ohio State. But this was against

Jason Peters, a lot of the game. It wasn't like it was off of the Eagles right side where they didn't have Lane John's. It was, most of his impact plays were off of Jason Peters. Now, maybe Jason Peters is the old as fuck, but it was Jason Peters. Yeah. It's, I mean, the guy's been one of the best left tackles in the game for years,

even though they brought him back to play guard and had to move him to left tackle because of all the stuff they've gone through. Yeah. He played 53 plays. I thought he was relentless throughout the game. I thought he was high motor throughout the game. I mean, a lot of times you see these guys that are the big-time impact rushers find ways to take plays off. He didn't.

He made plays in the run game. He made plays in the screen game. He chased the ball down field. He took good angles. He was fine dropping in coverage. I mean, he does not look out of place. And I think it was only three or four times at most. They ended up dropping.

He's not going to be an elite underneath coverage defender, but for them to be able to zone blitz, especially if people are going to try to slide. their line to him because that's what's going to happen is they're going to try to decide their line to Chase Young and then Washington's defense will be able to bring pressures up the middle or off the other side. So then you're going to drop him and you're going to have one less blocker on the other side to pick up any pressures. Yeah, I'm watching. There was a play that I had marked down on my notes Sunday. It was a third in seven and he really, he really, he He legitimately dropped in coverage with a bunch of people on the line of scrimmage.

And I think you would call that his own blitz. It wasn't exactly a zone blitz where you saw a backer sort of replace him as he dropped. But he drops so quickly. He's so athletic. This was relatively early in the game. And I'm just looking at my notes here. It's 10-0 at that time. and I think it was Collins that was right next to him lined up before the snap,

and they both dropped in coverage. I mean, what you said makes sense, I think, to anybody is they start to slide towards him. Now all of a sudden you drop him into his own blitz, and they're concentrating on him, and here comes somebody with a clear lane to the quarterback. If he got any benefit of getting one-on-ones this week and not having people turn to him, they will now. Anybody said, well, this rookie's going to be a good player, but let's find out, and we'll trust Peters. No one can do that anymore. Starting this week, all the concentration goes to him.

I just see this like, you never know what's going to happen, but I see him coming off the edge with speed. Kyler Murray bailing out of the pocket away from him, and Chase Young running down, Kyler Murray. Well, that would be interesting. I think you're going to see it. All right. Next up. Montez Sweat. I thought Montez Sweat had a ton of impact plays. I thought Montez-Swett looked like a first-round draft pick.

I mean, again, maybe he's coming off that. He was coming off that Eagle's right side where you didn't have Wayne Johnson. But there were multiple pressures by Montes Sweat. At times, he was able to take two off the edge in the run game and make plays. He had the sack on the boot. He maybe had three.

missed sacks in this game. I thought he had six or seven pressures. Again, run game, really good. He's a monster. He is a big, big dude. But holding the point when they run at him and being able to bubble the back is awesome. I mean, the penetration to force a sack on a third down right before they missed the field goal, I think ended up being an I-and-a-nitis sack was big time.

There's not a, like, I didn't have many negatives for Chase Young. I'm not going to give you a lot of negatives for Montes-Swatt. I thought, for the most part, on plays at him or on plays where he had opportunities to do something, he did something. He was an impactful player in this game. I thought Montes-Wed, he played 48 plays and had one sack? Was that what? Did Sweat end up with one set?

Yeah, it was a big one. I mean, it was a big loss on the play, and he sort of came free, if I recall, and Wentz just got buried. Whoever wears number 85 Was trying to block him on the front side of a bootleg and he just pummeled him Oh yeah, it was I just found the play Yeah Go fuck off It was early in the second quarter and the

Yeah it was a boot I didn't even realize that And whoever 85 is really didn't know that That wasn't going to work And yeah And what, Cooley this is where And I swear to you as I was watching the game Because I told you this on Monday I know they were down 10-0-0 and 17-0-0, but I thought Wence was getting pressured enough and hit enough and even sacked enough where he started to look tired.

And, you know, this was one of those plays. It's early second quarter. It's 10-0. And Sweat makes a great play and he makes the tackle. But as I'm sitting here watching it, Wence doesn't have any chance of getting out of his way and doesn't give much of an effort. He looks tired on the play. It was just to rewant with pressure. Whether or not he was tired, I still would debate.

I think maybe he was getting frustrated with itself. But, man, I mean, you just look at just Chayshung and Montez without anyone else. Like, on the first Kerrigan sack, he beat Peters, he missed a sack. On the, I think the first play of their second drive, he almost had a safety. He had a quarterback hit on that play. He had multiple penetrations, multiple pressures. To me, Sway had seven or eight pressures. What was his grade?

He was an A. but not an A-plus. Not an A-plus. Okay. Ryan Carrigan, who played 22 plays. Yeah. Early in the game, they had a little stunt with an edge pressure off the outside. They just didn't block it.

You still have to get wince down, though. Like, I don't want to take this out of what it is. I mean, it's a free pressure, okay? I get it. But you still have to get wince on the ground. And keep in mind, like, Ryan's a guy that had just, come into the ball. That was one of his first plays of the game. You've got to come in ready to roll, buddy.

And that's hard for a guy that's played 60 plays in every game of his career to come in and get ready to play 22 plays. And he comes and makes a sack on the first play. He made that play on the screen. That's a good play. I mean, we got a ton of credit for it. This first sack. It's like a second in 22, and you're like, okay, well, everyone on the defense is yelling watch the screen. But these, he's a ton of credit. Still, you end up creating. You know, this is the way you always talk about Ryan Kerrigan.

It's deja vu. He makes so many easy plays, but he makes them. I understand that, but for multiple years, it's, you know, Carrigan ends up with these numbers, and you're like, yeah, there's just a lot of times it just sort of gets funneled right to him. Like this first sack, nobody blocks him. Nobody. Not one person even attempts to block.

him. I'm sorry. I love Ryan, but the fact that Checheng wasn't the defensive player of the week, Checheng had two force fumbles in this game. He had at least two sacks. I mean, at least two. And it was probably a factor on five of them. Yeah.

And by the way, on this first sack that Kerrigan has, where he's completely unblocked, really it's sweat that should have had the sack. Sweat meant the sack. Sweat should have had the sack. Yeah. That's funny. He had another sack, Carragan did, late in the game, where they go with a run-action pass.

They pull a guard from the backside, and he played through the guard and through the running back. I mean, it's a good play that he makes him not set. And then he had the fumble recovery late. It's like, these are stats that go in there. You're like, oh, and go in a fumble recovery. He is going to make a pro bowl this year with 12. 12 sacks and three fumble recovery. Somehow he's going to get a batted pass for a pick,

and he'll probably run it in for a touchdown. They'll have elite stat. That's funny too on the screen, though, because I just pulled up that play. Of course, at second and 20, everybody's yelling screen. And he's always done a great job of sniffing that stuff out anyway. I'm not suggesting that he doesn't because he does really anticipate that stuff. But everybody sees it coming, including him, and it just happens to be to his side, which makes him look better for anticipating it. But if you watch everybody pretty much you can tell was thinking screen, you know, like all of them were, but it just came to his side. Yeah, I mean, again, I don't want to disrespect the fact that he made the play.

I mean, he made the play and it's going to go to the record book. Like Logan Thomas got a touchdown and no one would have been seven yards of him, we still get a touchdown reception out of it, right? Right. Of course. But it's just different than a pure spin move off the edge with speed where the back is trying to help and you beat the back and the tackle and a spin move and you're like that just, those are players you worry about.

They're like, somebody's got to block him. We are going to have to block this guy. I mean, this first sack, which is minus 10 yards. I mean, for those of you that have the all-22 game pass, literally they forgot that he was on the field. There's not one eagle offensive lineman goes anywhere near Carrigan, and they allow a straight line straight to wince. It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny. But you know what?

That'll get you an NFL defensive player of the week award. I'm happy for him. I know. I am. I'm happy for him. What was his great? it wasn't all great. I mean,

there, it was a B. He was a B on 22 plays. I mean, look, I, I want to say Ryan Kerrigan's an A

in this game, but an unblocked sack to me is not a big time play. I thought he made one big time play with the sack and a fumble recovery of the bounce to him is another good play. The B's a good grade. You've got starters with Bs.

It's a good grade. And I don't think he'll debate that. There's a play where the one tied-in, blocked him and the ball bounces outside of him, and he's got outside contained, and it's a six-yard game. You're like, we've got to get off the tight end there. There's a couple of those plays where the tight ends blocking him, and we're kind of just standing there watching, it was a beat.

Okay. I love you to do that. And we're just sitting there kind of watching them, and we've got to get them off the tight end. We've got to get them off the tight end there, Ryan. We always call us the brother-in-law, technically. Right. Hey, we're both doing our job here.

Let's just hang out here for a minute. We both do our job. We're doing good. You're doing good. I'm doing good. We're doing our thing. We're doing it together. We're both okay.

But if it comes to me, if a play comes closer to me, I'm going to have to try harder, just so you know. If it comes to my direction. You know, there is in sports, every sport, there's the guy that just has the knack of being around the action and being around the ball. And, man, has he always had that knack and taken advantage of it? Yeah, he's got that. All right. Karen Anderson. Ryan Anderson played 12 plays.

I thought a couple times he showed a good burst up field. He made one tackle coming up the backside. That was a pretty good play. Not much to talk about was Ryan Anderson. I thought he was a B-minor. Or a B-ish in this game. And that is your front four.

Where are your D-Ns? The D-Ns, yeah. Let's get to our interior defensive linemen. We'll start with Matt Ionitis. This is, thing with Matt Ionitis. I don't know if he was a wrestler, but he would have been such a good wrestler.

He's always got good leverage, and he's always got good torque on offensive linemen, and he uses great hand technique. He plays really well with his hand. I like watching Matt Ionitis play, because he plays his technique found as anybody that I've watched play, and that's the only way he wins,

because he's not Durant Ping. But, I mean, constant upfield penetration on pass rush, if you try to pass block him one-on-one, he's a monster. I mean, he does this really cool deal where he'll undercut. Like if he's on the left, he'll upper cut with his right arm. So he'll get his right arm under in kind of a hook. And then it's just this throw, his right arm throwing the guard across his body

and his ability to shed late. It's fun to watch him do that. It happens in every game where he gets a pressure. he had multiple pressures at least one sack and maybe another half sack I thought it does a good job playing the run

all these guys do a good job playing the run even if they get moved a little bit it's not like who is that guy that Scott McLuhan signed that I just couldn't stand like five years ago Kendall Reyes Kendall Reyes where he's getting pushed

nine yards downfield yeah like double teams in the NFL are tough, especially when Travis Kelsey's part of it. They just didn't get moved. He didn't get moved. I mean, he had the one false start penalty.

Oh, by the way, Chase Young had like three false start, close to three false start penalties. He had one. You mean neutral zones? Neutral zone infractions, and Ionitis had the one neutral zone infraction on the interception. Negated the interception, which was crap because he didn't

really impact the play when he did that. It didn't change anything. Look, he can get caught in the wash a little, a little bit on some double teams and some run-game stuff. But for the most part, I thought he was really good. Matt Ionitis was an A. Wow. Okay. Jonathan Allen, played 36 plays.

Yeah. 36. Um, powerful rush as a D-end. I like, I like him coming off the edge with the bull rush as a defensive end. There was a play where he has a bull rush out the edge. It's a three-man pressure.

And he ends up forcing him out of the pocket and making a mistake. It's huge. I mean, quarterback hits off stunts. He was good on stunts all day. Like the detackle on their stunts, they were asking essentially to attack the tackle, to go out towards the tackle and almost block him to let Chase Young

or whoever else loop back inside. But then coming off, that almost blocked and redirecting back to the quarterback, I thought he was really good on some of those stunts. The half-to-act before the midfield goal was a big-time play. A couple quarterback hits or I wrote quarterback touch. Because that's what it

is now. You get to the quarterback leg and you just got touch him. You don't want to get a penalty. I touched you. If you were one half second later, I would attack you. I thought he was good. I thought he was good in the run game. I thought he was consistent in terms of shedding blocks.

He does a good job of getting his body, getting skinny to split double teams, like turning sideways to split double teams, but not really getting pushed or walled. I thought Jonathan Allen was an A on 36th place in this You surprised he had the fewest number of snaps of the interior guys? I am a little surprised, and I'm going to make the- Actually, Ionitis had fewer.

Ionitis had 30, Alan had 36, pain ended up having 52. Right. What did you say? I'm sorry, I cut you off. Were you surprised or not? I wouldn't necessarily say I'm surprised, but I would bet you there's an adjustment to the play count,

because I thought as Duran Payne went on throughout this game, he looked like he wore down a little bit. Okay. So I think that you would want to divide those plays. But Duran with 52 should probably have been closer to 42, and Allen and Ionitis could have been closer to 40 as well. I personally thought Duran Payne looked into the third and fourth quarter, not on every play, but as drives progress,

like he wore down a little bit, and maybe they could have gotten him out and somebody else into the game. Okay. Look, here's the thing with Tehran. Like, there was a tackle for loss that he had, I think it was like a five-yard loss or a three-yard loss, where he just punks the center of Kelsey. It's elite run penetration to a front-side zone play, and his ability to quickly get into the back field is really impressive.

Like, he shows these bursts of he is the best delinement on the field. There's no doubt about it. And at the same time, he doesn't get moved in the first. run game. Like, his ability to take on double teams, and he's the guy that gets doubled more than anybody else. He plays down on a shade over the center more times than anybody else, and he ends up didn't double the lot.

He does a good job with that stuff. Out of the three, I think he usually generates the least pressure inside, but also he's a guy that usually the center is helping on more inside. So he faces more double teams against past situations than anybody else. going to make less play. Not a lot of negative. I didn't like the third and two quarterback sneak. I didn't think he was ready for it, or Wentz got it on a two-yard play. Right.

Durant Payne was a B for me in this game. He was the one that caused the fumble, right, late, that Carrigan picked up. It was him, right? I thought I thought Chase Young did it, to be honest with you. Yeah, Young was there, too. Yeah. I thought Chase Young hit him, Payne. Both of them. right there. I'm just watching it from the end zone view. Okay.

That one was easier to see on TV. Right. Okay, I and I to say Allen A, Payne B, but you do you do agree with me that in terms of the upside of being a true menace defensively that he's got the most upside. Do you agree with that or not? I think that it's time to show the most upside. I got you. Because he doesn't make as many plays as Ionitis. Ionitis ends up making more plays. Now, maybe there are a couple plays where Ionitis gets washed more or walled more.

But I just, when you show it, you have it. Got it. I do think he's probably got the, it's so hard to say because they're very alike. There are some differences in all three of them. that make them great or make them a little bit better or make them not as good. I think they're all just really good. Overall, as a defensive line, it was an A-plus performance. I mean, it just was.

There was nothing glaring. There were no big gaps. There were no big holes. There was no movement. There was constant pressure. It was an A-plus performance by a defensive line. Like, this is the one where if you do this three weeks in a row, you can get nicknamed. I don't want any nicknames right now.

You didn't grade Settle. Were you going to? Because he played 16 snaps. Settle played 16 snaps. Settle was a C. Settle has a good up-billed initial first couple steps. I think he gets himself out of place a little bit in run game with some of his initial up-filled movement.

It was hard for him to get into a true rhythm. It's hard to grade someone on 16 plays. I mean, you can grade it on 22, but it's really because he made three plays in this game. statistically. I do like Settle. He's not Alan Paineerianetta. All right. Coolie, you'll get to the linebackers right after this word from Liquid IV. This is the Athletics, Shield Capadia, here to tell you about Liquid IV. Nobody likes to feel dehydrated. Maybe you get a little bit of a headache, dry mouth. You just don't feel like yourself. But believe it or not,

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This is an area that there's definitely some concern. I know Cole Holcomb was banged up early in this game, but I think Cole Holcomb is the best out of this group, and he didn't play. He was hurt. I don't know if he was going to play. But let's get to the linebackers. We'll start with John.

Bostic. The positive. As a blitzer, really good timing of the snap, really impactful immediately in the run game as well as the past game. He had the mistsack on Wins. He had the sack later on Wendt in the game. He had some big plays.

He had a heck of a block on Wendt interception as well that Jimmy almost scored on. Big time block on the quarterback. I always love the guy that can get the quarterback. As far as the past game, I thought he was poor in zone drops. I thought he overreacted to quarterback eyes. At times, I thought he dropped to nobody. There's a third and 17 draw that he just chose aside and got blocked the back of like 15 yards on that play.

There's a pitch play where he is in the backfield, but he takes a poor angle. It's not a mistackle, but he doesn't touch because he doesn't touch him per se, but it is a mistackle because he should have tackled him. I'm really calling it a mistackle. I thought Bostick was still probably the best of the group and ended up making some plays. But there are some big concerns as far as your 3D, four underneath coverage with your underneath coverage in your linebacker positions. Boxing's got to get a little better. I do think that he plays with some good speed.

I think Bostick has some real speed. Yeah, me too. I said that last year to you or maybe, and people debated that. think he looks like he can really run. I thought I saw that last year. No, I would agree that he looks like he can run quite a bit. So I think Bostic can grow in this defense. He's making the adjustments, right, as the middle linebacker? Well, I think they make adjustments as a linebacker group, but they also make adjustments

in the secondary as well. So I'm not exactly sure what the adjustments they're making. Got it. Oh, he was a C plus. John Bostica graded is a C plus in this game. All right. Kevin Pierre Lewis. They loved him all summer. Kevin Pierre Lewis, I think, had more ups and downs than anybody else in this game.

So the first TD to Earths, these are the negatives. He way overruns initial stem of Earth's route and he gets picked. And, I mean, he's just lost. That's just not even close. the play where he's beat by Goddard down the scene, he's just run by. We can't just get run by that way. After he wasn't there either, we'll talk about that in a little bit, but that's just run by.

We just can't let it. We can't have that happening. We just can't. We're going to have to get hands-on. We're going to have to slow down at the line of scrimmage. We're going to have to get better at getting hip-to-hip. If we're fast, you know, we're going to make plays. I mean, we just have to.

We've got to be faster. We can't let Ertz or Goddard run by us. We can't do that. No, I don't like Kevin Pierre-Lewis in Man-Mand coverage. On a third and two, where I think Ertz made a play early in the game on Landon, Goddard beat Pierre-Lewis just as bad on the next end. So it would have been on first down to Goddard if Earth would have been covered. I don't necessarily like him.

man coverage. Had a couple mistackles, one up the middle as a kind of fold-in run player where it was an arm tackle

it was tough and then on a third and 20 had a mistackle where I told you Chase Young and run the thing down. I mean,

nothing's really hurt there, but it's a mistackle. Like, you're going to want to make those plays. And really, on a couple of them

it was almost poor angle of pursuit. There's an interesting play in this game that I'm going to let you bring up. It's the fourth down-in-four play.

that Earth drops. Right. Earth is in man to man with Derby. To that side, Pierre Lewis is the linebacker. He settles back right where he would be underneath the throw, and should be in the throwing lane of Earths. And then after about two seconds, he just starts to run towards Wentz, almost like he's delayed blitzing.

Oh, right. It's really, really weird what he's doing. Like, there's no way you're going to get there on a blitz. Maybe your quarterback spying and just decided to attack Wentz at that point. But to me, I'm going to bet on Earth coming over the middle. Like, if he just sits there in his eyes, he's going to make a win, turn that throw down. Darby gets beat inside, but maybe he's, Darby thinks he's got help inside a little bit.

Yeah, I'm watching it right now. I just have no fucking idea what he's doing. Well, it would appear when he drops to Ertz that he's part of the coverage on Earths. And then he just leaves him. Doesn't it seem that they're bracketing Earth? Yes. What you would call in and outing Earth? Definitely.

I mean, he just decides he just going to start running forward. He shows Blitz right before the snap, but then he drops. to pick up Ertz on the inside with Darby having on the outside, like they bracket him there, and then he just leaves him and decides to rush a quarterback from roughly 15 to 18 yards away from him at that point. It's like you're playing Nintendo and all of a sudden your controller got stuffed down. You're like, damn it. I knew I was going to make that play and the controller got stuck. Yeah, what was he doing there? Is that one where Jack Del Rio looks at it and says, hey, KPL, I've been talking about you all summer.

Ron's been talking about how much we love you. What are you doing here? I mean, this makes no sense. But, Coach, I knew Ertz was going to drop it. I wanted him to throw it to Ertz because I knew he would drop it. I thought I'd scare went. He seemed like he was scarable at that moment. If I brought pressure from 18 yards to three seconds into the play,

I thought it might scare him a little bit. He can't explain that play. I just think Wentz and Erch for not completing the ball. The positives. Oh, I didn't get to all. He also seems like he's at times in the middle of the field. Like when he's – so they play this four underneath. When he's one of the middle two players, God knows what he's doing.

There are times where Wynne's looks one way, and he's going the other way. What do we got going on here? When we're playing our zone, or we're going to put the zone match and play the receiver? But when you play him in the flat, the wider, the outside of the two, he actually can run, and he's a pretty good flat defender. So not a good interior zone defender, but actually a pretty good flat zone defender.

Okay. So that's some of the up and downs. Some of the positives, I thought when he did bring pressure and blitz. He had good pressure. He had a good move on an offensive guard where he ended up getting inside pressure. Some good run feels late in this game.

He had a pass breakup after the Fabian interception, the play after. Right. You know, this is really funny. Fabian has that interception right at the end of the half. Right. It's a deep comeback that he undercuts. The very next play, they run the same play, and they throw it to the same dude.

Oh, are you saying on their next possession after the pick? The next possession, the very next play, they basically said, no, that was a fluke. We're going to attack the same dude on the same play. This is bawdy, man. Same place? Yeah, well, it's a different receiver. It's Jackson on this one. I understand that, but it's the same play.

It's the same route. The ball is thrown to the same place. And if Kevin Pierre-Lewis didn't miss time his jump and look like Phil Mickelson, it would have been another pick. Yeah. I'm not really downgrade. It's a pass break-up, but that's a good play by Pierre-Lu. It's good depth as a dropper, and it's a,

good play to break that ball up. It just freeze frame it at the height of his jump and tell me he's more than two inches on the ground. Yeah, you're right. But no, it's still a good play. And then I described that fourth down and five pressure where he has a nice hug rush on the center. Like, he's got some stuff to him.

He's got some speed. He's got some feel for the game to him. He can play the run. And a lot of times it's just some of these coverage angles and some of these coverage spots are different than the new defense. and he's going to have to get a sense for it. Well, clearly they like him. He was only off the field for one defensive snap.

He was a C-minus in this game. KPL C-minus. Got it. Lastly, Sean Dionne Hamilton. Way too affected by quarterback eyes and zone coverage. The first play of the game, Went looks one way, and he just goes flying out of the zone, and it's completion over the middle of the Goddard.

You're like, are you going to let the quarterback just manipulate your defense that easily? I'm like, okay. Poor depth on zone drops after run action or play action type of plays. Play behind blocks on the backside of zone. Offensive guards coming up to him off of a double team and he's playing behind that block cannot do that. Consistently, I just thought poor zone feel to any dropback.

I think in the third quarter, Goddard catches one over the middle. And it's like, how are we going to allow that much space? And then he ends up missing the tackle. I mean, Goddard's coming off the defensive left, the Eagles' offensive right. He's running directly in front of Sean Dionne Hamilton. Like, crosses his face to sit over the ball. And Sean Dionne Hamilton shuffling the other direction.

It's almost like that, like, high school shuffle drill where the coach points one way, and then he points the other way. And then back pedal on the point. You're like, no, no, coach pointed the other way. way. No, no, no, no, no, you got to redirect. Side shuffle drill. That's funny. You pull that playoff, you're like, where the fuck is he going? John Deand Hamilton, honestly, he was an ass in this game. It was not good. You know what they have problems at the linebacker position. Deon Hamilton didn't play that much.

Maybe Holcomb was going to play more, but I did not be Sean Deon Hamilton impacted this game in a positive way ever. What's really interesting as I look at the snap counts and I did didn't pick up on this earlier this week. You know, they're in a base four, three, obviously, for the first time in 10 years. And you only had two linebackers who really played, Bostick and KPL. The only other linebacker that played was Dionne Hamilton, who played 15 snaps, which means they were either in nickel a ton or they had an extra delinement out there that was dropping, which I saw occasionally, certainly with Chase Young.

Which was it? They weren't in nickel a ton. They were in a lot of base defense, and I think Sean Dionne Hamilton played in base. Maybe, I mean... You played 15 snaps. Yeah, I guess you'd only say, I'd guess you to say there's only 15 snaps of base defense because they never played more than a four-down line, right? No, they didn't.

But Chase Young lined up, there were a couple of... There were a few plays where Chase Young didn't have his hand in the dirt. Yeah, but he's just a stand-up. defensive end at that point he's not playing linebacker. I don't know. They've got to find something else at linebacker, or they're going to have some problems in the middle of the field with some of the zone coverages that they're playing. If you're going to let quarterbacks manipulate defense underneath with eyes that easily, then then we're going to have some issues.

All right. You've got several secondary players to evaluate here to finish it up, and he'll do so right after this word from Indochino. Hi, this is Paul Tenorio from the Athletic. When I buy dress shirts off the rack, I tend to end up with shirts that drape off my broader shoulders and look boxy on me. Just the other day on vacation, we took a family photo, and the shirt I wore just looked way too big and wide. It was amazing how much better the photo looked when I switched into my new Indochino shirt. My wife and I had taken my measurements at home on Indochino.com and sent them in, and my new shirt emphasizes my shoulders, but cuts in so much better across my

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athletic at checkout. That's Indochino.com promo code athletic. All right. Coolie's gone through the D-line and the linebackers that played. We've already got our first A plus of the year. That's Chase Young. We also have A's for Mines. Montez Sweat, John Allen, and Matt Ionitis off of a defense that had one of the best days

any Washington defenses had in years. The linebackers, you weren't very impressed with. Let's get to the secondary. All right. We'll start with our guy and my guy, Jimmy Morland. Played 68 plays. Ronald Darby played outside the entire game. And Jimmy moved around a little bit more, but played a lot of outside stuff.

I thought he tackled really well in this game. I thought Jimmy made a lot of plays as a tackle. Like early in the game, when Colin's misses a tackle and a pounce. It's just Morland and he ends up making a play. It could have been a huge play. And Morland's making some big plays. Blowing up screens, that's one of the things that Jimmy does really well.

Right. When he's screen out to him, he's really good at attacking screens. So I love that. The interception was awesome. Him baiting went into that throw, looking like he's going to bail and then driving on a hitch with huge. He almost scored. I mean, the return was big as well.

He got shoestrung tackled by D.Jax, or he's going to score on that play. I thought in coverage, at times, he was pretty good. At times I thought he gave up a lot of space. They both played soft on the outside edges and gave up quite a bit of space to any in-breaking route. And went to miss some of those throws. But I thought he was slow to drive on some in-breaking routes. And even if he was in the slot, anything breaking inside, I thought he was a little bit slow to drive on.

There was one late in the game where they run a deep out, and he gets spun around, he falls down. So it wasn't perfect in coverage by Jimmy, but there's so many, like, no ball throws at both of these guys at Jimmy and at Darby where they're there. There was an impactful one late where they tried to throw an inside fade route that he's right there on a play. There are a lot of plays that Jimmy was close.

There's just a little bit too much space for me. To me, Jimmy was a B-plus. On his interception, does that young receiver, it was High Tower, I believe, that Wentz was throwing to, does he do a poor job of coming back to the ball? Is the ball thrown poorly? I mean, you can clearly see a great, you know, stop and then close on the ball by Moreland. It was great. I mean, we haven't seen any of the corners do that in a while here.

but did that receiver help out a little bit? I don't think so. I mean, you like a receiver to attack the ball, but on a hitch, a five to six-yard hitch, is a ball should be there. You don't really attack hitches. It's almost like five steps. Yeah, I got it.

And Jimmy just knew it was coming. I think you've got to give Moreland credit for that play for baiting, went into throwing it and understanding the concept. To me, it was a little bit of a gamble, potentially, but he saw it and knew it. I would credit Jimmy on that. You know, the other thing that you mentioned about him sniffing out that screen, you know who was really good at that when he was here and he's back is Kendall Fuller.

Remember how good Fuller was at sniffing out screens and bubbles? He was exceptional at it, and Jimmy is as well. And I love that because he's a playmaker. You know, that's the thing you love about Jimmy. He finds ways to make plays. And if you get beat on three or four routes but end up baiting and making pick is I take that guy over a guy that's going to not take any risks because the interceptions at the true impact moment of the game.

That interception, too, you've already mentioned it, but Bostick really did hustle getting downfield to make a really big block that if Moreland stays on his feet, it's the reason he scores. Oh, yeah, there's no doubt. I mean, it's a good play by Bostick to get downfield. But those defensive players, they love getting downfield and trying to block. It's like their favorite thing. Right, right.

Yeah. The positive, like, he can flip his hip and run. I saw that from Darby. Now, he did get run by one time. But throughout that game, his ability to flip his hips and run with a deep route was actually really good. And then I like his play the ball in the air skills. Like, he almost had a pick on a third and 25. But how many times do you see the receiver not go, or the corner not go play the ball?

It's like, you're not going to get PI if you go to attack the ball. is the balls in the air. Make it a 50-50 ball at that point. I thought he did a good job with that. They brought some corner blitz as I thought he was okay as far as a corner blitz kind of guy. I don't love Darby potentially. I think he's soft a lot,

and we'll get into some of the negatives. Again, in-breaking routes, and this is probably how they're playing them in cover threes. They're filtering them into inside coverage. But let's just say you're a corner and you've got an in-breaking route, and there's nobody else potentially going to threaten you to the outside. Like, can we not go attack that play?

When you say they, in cover three, so if you've got a guy coming at you who turns towards the middle of the field, you're turning him in that direction and then letting them go? Yeah, you're playing with hips facing the quarterback. They're kind of trailing him soft. But I just feel like if you don't have another potential threat, we should be able to close on that a little bit more. Right.

Like that's within, and it might not be within what they're doing scheme-wise at this point. The third and 22, I don't know how we get run by on third and 22. I just don't. I don't know how they get over the top on third and 22. Like that does it. It's a straight post route. It's not a double move. There's no reason to be squatting on that.

You've already shown me that you're filtering everything inside on in-breaking cuts. Don't get beat over the top in that situation. There was another third and eight where they bring up. brought a nickel blitz and ended up bringing like four off of his side and they end up completing it. It's like at some way him and

Troy Acky have to be closer in that situation or combo that off or figure out that they're going to play one. They both played soft and it was an easy throw. So they'll get that worked out. And then on the fourth and four he was beat by Erds, but Ertz dropped it. When you'd like your corner to be able to cover a tight end,

Earth's a good player. The third and 22 Rager makes a really good move. He does, but he shouldn't be on his toes. He should not have been, like, he got on to his, you know, got on a toe. My question would be, and I think anybody watching would be, that's on Darby, not Apki, right?

Yeah, I think that's tough. You'd like Askey to be there. Initially, when I looked at it, it looked like it was almost a quarter's coverage. And so I was thinking maybe he thought he had Inside Health from Land and Collins, because it looked like there was almost four across, but I think Landon's just,

I think he's a hook player in a cover three there. And so I think Landon would be the guy if that were to have broke in, that he'd be squatted on that. It does look. Because he kind of looked like four over the top, and I don't think it is.

I think it's cover three. But yeah, like, Apte can't be, he's got to be deeper than the deepest. Right. So yeah, it's on Afti, too, but Darby cannot get run by in that situation. Not like that.

That's bonehead. What was his great? He was a B-minus. Okay. Fabian, 31 plays. I thought he was good in coverage throughout most of the game. The interception was the game changer. I mean, that was just absolutely huge.

I thought Fabian on 31 plays was an A-minus in this game. Really? I mean, I'm going to give him an A because of the big-time play. He didn't give up any throws at him. There was maybe a couple opportunities where a ball could have been thrown. but it wasn't. I think no throws given up and the game-changing pick.

That's an A. I like Fabian in this game. And then we will get to the safety. Just real quickly on Fabian, because, you know, over the years, there's always been this conversation about, you know, he's definitely with his size and his length, looks like more of an outside guy, but then there's been, you know, I think even you've mentioned,

you know, he can play in the, slot. Where is he best suited? I see Fabian best suited right now as an inside guy because he plays the versatility. I don't think he plays with as much trust and confidence watching him last year on the outside. I think he's played with more confidence inside. That doesn't mean he can't play outside. But there's a reason that they play Jimmy Wolland outside instead of Fabian for every snap. Yeah. Okay.

Landon Collins. Here, Cameron Curle didn't play a lot. I thought I thought he actually looked really well, or looked really good on a couple plays, but it was pretty average. You know, I thought he really average feel for space and underneath zone coverage. Missed a tackle off the edge unblocked at one point. He did blow up a screen, and he blew up another run play, but he was a C-minus of this game. It wasn't as good as I thought for Cameron Carroll. Who was the nickel corner in this game? It was Fabian.

When Fabian was also, but it was also Jimmy, but it was also Jimmy Morland at times. I think they matched up the formation stuff. Because Jimmy would play inside and Fabian would be outside at times. The reason I asked the question is because Apkey and Collins never came out of the game. And yet Curl played 22 snaps. So when Curl came in... Yeah, Curl would have been your nickel when Curl came into the game. That's right.

Okay, I just want to make sure... But it was almost like... You almost consider it like a three-safety look when Curl came into the game. Okay. It doesn't matter. They're secondary players. And Fuller is... He flipped-flopped a little bit inside outside.

And I think that may have depended on what receiver or what formation. I don't know exactly how they keyed that, but they kind of flip-flopped a little bit. And even Derby at times played around. But, yeah, I don't know exactly what they were doing there. And Fuller will be ready to go this weekend. Yeah. We're going to finish on a high note, so I'm going to do Troy Apkey right now.

I think everybody understands that Troy Afti wasn't very good in this ball game. Miss tackle on Goddard on the first play. I thought on the first touchdown to Earth, he was the lurk safety it looked like. He's barely on the goal line. The ball's thrown right over his head. He's not playing anybody where he's playing. I mean, it was bad by Pierre Lewis,

but if you look at that first touchdown, I can't tell you what Troy Acky's doing on that play. I think he's what you would call the lurking safety of the keen eye safety, but to me, it's not impactful. he had the helmet-to-helmet penalty that was absolutely not needed. The ball was thrown low, the receiver wasn't going to go anywhere. All you had to do is touch off. You don't know if you need to go and put helmet-helmet.

And that was costly. I think that was a second-ten and they ended up getting the first down in that situation. They ended up going down and scoring on a drive. So that was costly. It was awful help, in my opinion, on the touchdown that Pierre-Lewis gave up to Goddard, the deep ball. go look at the play and obviously Pierre Lewis gets run by. Apkey's the single high safety. Wentz looks at Goddard the entire play.

He's looking hard left and everything he's doing in his body language should be telling Troy Apkey to break on that ball two seconds or a second before the ball throw. He has no chance of getting anywhere near the throw. It's a great ball. It's a great ball placement. It's a good route. And it ends up creating width to the sideline. But Traiaki has no chance to make no play in any way on that ball.

And I would say if Went stared dead at the middle of the field or look right a little bit and held the safety, then that makes it tough. But he looks that down like Goddard. Like he's 10 beers in and Goddard to 9 at the bar. He's just oogling him. You know what I mean? Yeah. He's just oogling him.

That's got to be able to make a play on that. he gets run by on the deep ball by the rookie. The end of the half, they're two. By the way, just real quickly on the Goddard play, this is one of the few dropbacks where there's no pressure. It was four men, and they never sniffed him, and it was really one of the only times all day. Right.

I mean, there were a couple that he got rid of quick, but it's a fall out fairly quick. This is a straight dropback against their start, you know, sweat and young and pain and Alan. And this is the only dropback I can think of where the pocket stays completely clean. He never gets touched and he throws a perfect ball to Goddard. All right, go ahead. Sorry. There are two plays at the end of the half.

He gets blown by. Who's the rookie, Yeager, 18? Yeah, Jalen Rager from TCU. Yeah. Rager. Yeah, he gets blown by by Rager, but it's an overthrow. He gets beat by D.JX on the next play, and they don't get a completion. It's just angles for action.

I said this last week. Unless you do. He's just got to find a way to take better angles, and he's got to understand some of the speed of some of these receivers, because he's fast enough to not get run by. So if you're going to be the deepest, you better be the deeper. Yeah, I mean, Wenz made a bad throw to Rager at the end of the half. I mean, that would have been an answer to the Moreau play, which turned the game around, and it would have been 24-7 at half.

He runs right by him. It probably would have been hard for them to overcome that. I mean, Rager beats him badly. Yeah, no, there's no doubt about it. Ackke was, like, Acky's a pure F in the first half. He was better in the second half. There were not big plays over the top. He was more consistently in position.

He made some tackles coming down and failing in the run game. He was better in the second half. I think you still give Apki a D, and it did. Like the numbers I graded it out end up being a D for Apki. D is in dog. Yeah. And he's going to have to be better than that in the secondary because this is a defense that's just too scary in third down and nine,

that you can't give up the D ball. You can't give up the big play because you have so many opportunities to sack, to get sacks, to make plays. third and 22s and deep balls over the top. We cannot get that up. And now lastly, Landon Collins, this is the last safety,

unless you have something on that. I don't, but I, I'm been looking forward to this one more, in terms of the, you know, after the D-line more than anybody else. So go ahead.

This was such a tale of two halves for Landon Collins. So the first half of this ballgame, in early, he's got a couple of mish tacked. But, like, right away. On that first drive, you had a mistackle, which would have been a tackle for loss, and the ball bounces outside. And he had it.

He used to make the play. The Earth's boot on the first drive, he doesn't see boot initially, and then he's flying out to try to recover from it, and the Earth cuts back inside, and he's got a mistackle on that play. Third and two, he's man-to-man-man on Earths early in the game, and he ends up giving up a conversion there on third and two. Like, what is going on here? You're missing tackles.

You're out of position. It's not good. It was an ugly first few drives for Lannibal. Had a terrible penalty, too. And he had the idiotic penalty. I mean, it was a D first half. That's the C-minus first half for Lansing. They go into the locker room,

Duane Haskin gets them pumped up, whatever. Really, it was almost like this defense changed when Fabian Moreau made that. pick. Especially the secondary, because in the second half, he was driving on balls. He ran, they had a dig play with the tight end that he undercut and then went had to throw it underneath and then Landon Collins goes and he really breaks that play up.

A pitch play that he's running through blockers, there's a guard pulling out, he dies under the guard and he makes the play in the backfield. It's a great tackle. He'd a screen on a second 13 and he's got a tackle for loss. first play in the second half was a great start you got Boston Scott in the backfield yeah right right consistently in zone coverage

I thought he was an outstanding zone defender as a hook player in the second half really really did a good job with feel for route concepts more so than just trying to play the quarterback was in position throughout was impactful made tackles made plays was there was where supposed to be. He was an A in the second half. So I ended upgrading

Landon-Colns a B in this game on 68 plays, but it really flipped after the Fabian pick. And I think it was probably just one of those things where it was like he needed to get comfortable. He hadn't played a football game. Right. So, I mean, really

impressive between Landon Collins and Apci. It dynamically changed the defense in the second half. The pressure was there the entire game, but there were some big plays and there were some big-time open receivers. And some of the run action pass and some of the things went to have some easy throws in the first half. And Tev, I think, as he threw a couple picks, he started looking for things, the secondary started feeling better about what they were doing. And the secondary,

as much as anything, changed the second half outcome of this game. I'm so excited about the rush and the line. It was there in the first half. It was just the secondary wasn't. And so as the two married in the second, they got really good. They're scared. All right. I have two questions for you. Okay, two when we come back. I need to tell everybody real quickly about Ernest, which is a great opportunity to refinance a student loan, whether it's the student loan that you're paying on behalf of your child or it's a kid that you have that's got a student loan. Interest rates have hit record lows, which means it's a great time right now to refinance anything, especially a student loan to lower your monthly payment. If you've been making that same monthly payment on

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Ernest Student Loan refinanced loans are made by Ernest Operations LLC NMLS, number 12041917, California financing law license number 605-4788-303. 303 2nd Street, Suite 401 North, San Francisco, California, 94107. Visit Ernest.com slash licenses for a full list of licensed states. All right, I want to finish up with two quick questions on the last two days of film review and film breakdown. The first is this, defensively off of today's, what would you do with APKee? What can you do with APKee? And will a consistent pass rush and an overwhelming pass rush just bail them out or is there a solution there? You've got to definitely have a conversation about being deeper than the deepest.

and he's got to have a sense for where the deepest is coming from. And to me, that's such a game plan thing, and he's smart enough to understand that. And it's basically like your pass rush is going to bail you out. If we ended up giving up something underneath for 16, come up and make a tackle, and we'll get better at driving on balls and making plays. But at this point, we're too good defensively to give up the big play. We're going to make somebody make a mistake because of our rush. don't make the mistake ourselves.

I don't know who they have. Cameron Curl. That position. Yeah, they do have Cameron Curled, but maybe Cameron Curled better deep over the top, but I didn't think he was entirely comfortable as an underneath zone defender, so I don't know if that makes me feel better

that he would be the guy over the top. And like I said, after he got better in the second half of this ball game, there were not nearly as many opportunities for the Eagles to get past him and over the top. his brakes on balls were better, his movement, out of his back pedal was better, and then he looked more comfortable. I just said, fuck it.

I'm just going to go do whatever right now because I've been trying too hard, and it's not working. They cut Sean Davis after giving him $2 million in guaranteed money because obviously they fell in love with APK. So my sense of it is they're not bail in on APKee anytime soon. They kept Cameron Curl and cut Davis too. And Curl, you know, apparently was very impressive to. all of the coaches, but they use curl more as a nickel corner in this game than as a free safety replacement for APK.

This is one of the adjustments that I would think about making or conversations that I would think about having, which is impactful as the defensive line is. And I'm going to use Seattle as a really good example of this, maybe not necessarily in the last year or two, but they developed their 3-D coverage where they exclusively played 3-deep with some blitzes and stuff out of it, is that you've got to get your linebackers to get more depth, your underneath players to get more depth, and get used to rallying up to the

ball, and in doing that, you're telling your 3D players, like, you just don't get beat over the top. Like, if we turn something loose into the middle of the field, our linebacker depth should force the quarterback to have to throw over them, and it makes it tougher throws, and we're just begging

people to check the ball down. Like, you've got to start begging people to throw the checkdown, and then rallying to the ball. because I think that was initially one of the problems that Abki had early in this game was there were some completions at 12 yards in the middle of the field, like the first play to Goddard, where now that safety feels like he's got to come up and attack those type of plays. And so I think that you have to tell him, like, look, we're going to get better depth.

So maybe if our backers had 10-yard, 12-yard drops, we're going to get to 14 and rally up. So I think that will help him or could potentially help him. It's just you've got to be more consistent, and you're underneath drops as well. I'm not saying that he was overcompensating, but there were some plays made in the middle of the field where you're like, okay, do I have to come up? I have to come up harder to at least make this tackle. So I think those kind of went hand in hand a little bit. And then you just constantly have to remind everybody like, hey, we can't give up the big play here.

I guess just communicated and talking and explaining situations. and to me that that is got to be refreshed on every single play. It's almost like a center fielder or a shortstop. One down, guy on second, plays here, they've got to consistently think situationally, because Troy's smart enough to do that. So I don't think you have to replace him at this point. I do think he's a smart enough player,

and I do think he has enough athletic ability. I mean, the angle thing is something that I would be concerned about is because there's going to be times where he thinks he is going to be able to make a play. His angle isn't good enough. It's not necessarily that he wasn't in an initial position the second the ball was thrown. It's that he's not running down the right track to go get the ball. It's just funny that you brought up Seattle because, of course, you know, with Cam Chancellor and Earl Thomas back there, it's a little bit different.

And I think Mr. Thomas is available to be had. Of course, he's got some troubles. And I don't think that they would sign, Thomas, do you? I don't care too much about troubles right now. I don't. I thought about that so much. It's like talent outweighs morals in the NFL, in my opinion. Do you want to win?

Here, can you not create trouble for us? Ha-ha Clinton Dix is out there. How bad was he? And then how... He was actually not the worst in coverage, just if you're... he had to come up and tackle anybody. It was not looking comfortable. He was interested.

He just didn't look comfortable. My last question was just, you know, and we talked about it a little bit yesterday at the beginning of the podcast, that people are so optimistic after one game, and it's one game. And there was just constant praise for so much of what happened.

And your film breakdown, you know, obviously identified a few areas of concern, linebacker on defense. and you're still watching a guy in Dwayne that's developing. And they had some offensive line issues. You would have traded for Alan Robinson in a moment, so you obviously think they need a receiver. What would you think your biggest concern on this team is after one game

and a breaking down film? Where's the area of the team that you're most concerned? Offensive line. Okay. Would be my biggest concern, the left side of the offensive line. it's not just protecting the way. Can we just run the ball? Can we run a zone run play without any true creative movement?

And I guess I shouldn't say that because you watch like Kansas City or a lot of teams run the ball now. Baltimore, Tennessee, they're using a lot of movement and a lot of misdirection and a lot of things in the backfield. But you can't, you've got to be able to move people a little bit up front. And I just didn't see that enough by this offensive line. I saw an offensive line that gave up way too many tackles that was not able to get movement in double-team situations

that was not able to create creases for the running back and then I saw an offensive line that gave up too many quick pressures. That was another thing. If you're going to give up pressures like that, you're going to be in trouble. So if they can't run it and they can't create some run-action opportunities off it, It's got to be basically misdirection type runs and some of the things, RPO stuff. I think that they'll struggle to protect away after that. That would be my number one concern.

My number two concern would definitely be the linebackers in combination with APC and some of the zone coverage stuff. You know, I have to tell you, and I'm being totally honest with you, it's so much better than it used to be, your film breakdown. So much. Oh, my film breakdown? Yes, because I, think it was so much more concise. I think the letter grading system is a game changer. So we're not there trying to explain one week why a 72 is a D and the next week why 72 is a B minus. I think that

that was always very confusing. So I think the letter grading is just much, much easier to consume. and you had a really good game in week one to, at least from my interest level, and I think for a lot of people listening, there's like a sincere interest level after you watch what happened on Sunday to find out, you know, who really was incredible. You had on defense, Chase Young with an A plus and said by far he was the best player on the field. You know, sweat was an A. Ionitis was an A.

Alan was an A. Fabian Moreau was an A. You gave Morland a B plus, APCIA D, but Collins was a D followed by an A in the second half. But there's just a lot of, in that front four, there's a lot of talent, isn't there? I mean, there's something to work with. If you could end up having a dominant pass rush this year, it's going to be a much different team than the one we watched last year. There's good a front four really, if you want to play it this way, front five or six. any team in the league.

San Francisco's awesome. There are some good defensive lines, but this is as good as anybody's going to be in the league. With Chase Young. Chase Young changes the dynamic. Tomorrow, I do want, the plan moving forward is Cooley will do Tuesdays and Wednesday's film breakdown.

Tommy's still going to be with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but Cooley and I will do a separate Tuesday film breakdown show, and then Wednesday, like we did here, doing the defense. He'll do offense Tuesdays, Wednesdays, he'll do defense. Fridays he's going to be with us. And tomorrow, I do want to ask you, you know, as we preview the Cardinal game and we'll do skins win if. I want to ask you about what you saw with the coaching staff. And we'll do that on tomorrow's podcast because I don't know. To me, it seemed like they were so much better coached overall, certainly for a first game, because we've seen a lot of bad first game. Are you kidding?

me defensively. Like, did you see any other than a couple of players getting run by? You didn't see glaring gaps. You didn't see blown coverages. Yeah. Think back for the first couple weeks and throughout most of the last few years. And even if you go back to Joe Barry and go back further than that, go back to the Shanahan. Like, how many times did you see, God, he is, he's not covered.

Yeah. Well, save it, because I just teased that you were going to answer. that question tomorrow as part of our Friday show. I'll put it together for you. Put it together for me. All right. Thanks. Great job. Everybody back tomorrow. Hopefully you enjoyed Cooley's

film breakdown of one of the great defensive performances this franchise has had in a long time. Have a great day. Great evening. Back tomorrow.