The Kevin Sheehan Show - Dominant D!

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Cooley and Kevin today recapping Washington's 27-17 season opening win over the Eagles. Plenty of discussion about the rest of the NFL day as well. 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.

A Victory Monday show with Cooley coming up here in a moment. But if you guys are hungry at night and you're wondering what to do during this pandemic, use DoorDash. It's perfect right now. We've been using DoorDash all the time during this pandemic. I mean, somebody in the house might want some Chinese. Somebody might want pizza. Somebody might want a burger. And DoorDash gives you it all.

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Right now, our listeners can get $5. off and zero delivery fees on their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter my code, Kevin DC. That's $5 off your first order and zero delivery fees when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter code Kevin DC. Don't forget. That's code Kevin DC for $5 off your first order with DoorDash. You don't want it. You don't need it, but you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Chean Show. He is Kevin. Yeah, new open to the show.

We're going to have some changes to the podcast. You know, we don't make changes quickly around here, Christopher Cooley, who is on the other end of the line. And we'll get him a better sounding, you know, set up as well as we move forward. He's by phone today from Wyoming on this Victory Monday. How about that win yesterday? That was impressive. But we're here on Monday, and we're going to be together much more often on the podcast, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, moving forward.

Good morning to you. How are you? Good morning. I like that new open. I like that music. Yeah, that's actually, I'm glad you said that. That's very nice of you to say. That's my son's band. I use some of his music because you know what I don't have to do? I don't have to pay for that. So that's perfect to use a little bit of his music to get us into the show. And I don't have to pay any copyrights or get any permission for it. Because I basically said, I'm going to use one of your songs. And I'm going to use it as sort of the under to the new open.

And he said, fine. So there you go. It makes it a lot cleaner. For those that don't know, when you use music in radio or in the podcast world, you have to pay licensing fees. if it's real music, if it's trademarked music. So I'd prefer not to pay those fees. It's always better to get stuff for free.

What about that defense to start? We're going to go through our game take here in a moment. And by the way, I promise you that Cooley will be in a better setup soundwise here shortly. We're working on that. And I also promise to all of you, we're not going to put a lot of production into the show anymore. because the underrunning music under certain segments, I get it. You know, it's totally unnecessary. We don't need it.

What I will be having more of, and this is good news for us, is more ad reads that we're now into football season. But, you know, stick with them and spend some money on our advertisers. That helps as well. But overall, Cooley, let me just tell you this one thing. I was hoping to see signs that the defense was going to be much, better because I thought it should be and would be with a better coaching staff and with the addition of Chase Young.

And by far in a way, I think we saw something that is sustainable defensively, even though Philadelphia was a wounded team. That was, for me, the big takeaway and the reason to be excited about the next game and the next game after that this year. What was your big takeaway? Oh, it was absolutely the defense. I think at some point after 17-0, well, after 17-0, there were six possessions that Washington started in Philadelphia territory. Six.

Right. That's unheard of. I don't remember a game in a long time where you started that many possessions on the other side of the field. And for an offense that was struggling quite a bit, it's so huge. So to get those picks and to get the pressure and to force the – it was awesome, Kev. It was absolutely awesome. They were fast on defense. And it's funny, you and I had this conversation on Friday.

What's more important is it the past rush or is it the secondary? I think I told you you – it really does have to marry, and they have to marry coverage of Blitz. I thought Del Rio or Rivera did a really good job. with multiple coverages and multiple blitzes and a lot of different presentations on defense to keep Carson Wentz completely off balance. And he was, he looked like an absolute dupus out there after they were up 17-0. Yeah, the team speed, coolly to me, was so obvious in multiple spots. But I think just the aggressive posture in terms of their scheme,

I'll get to this when we get to our back and forth in our game take. But the thing that I was really blown away by is even when they got burned early, being aggressive, they stayed after it. And I felt like, and I don't know that I heard Rivera say this, that even though they were down 17 nothing, they had three to four sacks already, and they were pressuring wents. And I think they wore wence down. I think that pick at the end of the first half is a terrible throw. and in some ways a tired throw.

I know that seems crazy to think that maybe there was the beginning of a comeback because the defense was starting to wear Wentz down, even though they were down 17-0-0. But I felt that way, did you? I don't know. No, I have gotten a couple calls from former employees up to that point. Basically, everybody said, these guys looked terrible. I didn't feel that way.

I thought at 17-0, they were in big trouble. I actually thought it was a mistake to try to force the ball down the field and that situation. And afterwards, Peterson said we wanted to continue to put pressure on Washington. And I just personally thought at that point, I think a minute 44 left in the first half when went through the pick. Yeah. You didn't have to do anything else getting out of that half.

You're in pretty good shape. Your defense was shutting down the Washington offense. You were moving the ball at will. getting the big plays that you expected to get, and they probably would have continued to come up. But that said, you also think about the momentum of the game and your quarterback who you believe in, and you're not too worried about throwing a comeback into quarter's coverage.

But, man, that changed it. That was like I labeled it AF after Fabian. Yeah. Because that game was all after Fabian. Everything for Washington happened after the pick, and just it was momentum. It really was. And there were some crazy things that happened after that that we'll get into, I'm sure.

But man, that was so big. All right. I'll let you go first with the things that you wanted talk about specific to the game. And then I'll go after you. So get started. We will definitely talk about some of the things that happened around the league yesterday as well. But after their first home opening win since 2014 and their biggest comeback win since the Code Red Tampa Bay game, this show is today on this Monday going to be 95%

Washington football team victory over Philadelphia. Go ahead, Cooley. Well, I think one, in an unbelievable fashion, Washington, I'm startled every time I say that, Washington was down, the Redskins last year, which was who they were last year, were down, or we're up 17-0. So it's funny that this game kind of flip-flop, and it was a role reversal. But there were some critical moments in that game, Kevin. I mean, up until 17-0, Duane Haskins was three of 13. It was really ugly, and it wasn't totally pressure. He was just off.

And I don't know if he really got on throughout the game, but Moreau makes that interception. and he goes four for four on a drive, which he caps off with a touchdown to Logan Thomas. They were all quick game passes. It was a slant to Terry McLaren. It was a slant to Inman. It was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, quick game. It was a quick out and then the quick corner route.

It was all plant and throw. To me, that's like, get your guy going like that early in a game. I know guys always have these plays and everything that they want to come up with, but I just love getting your guy going. And I thought that would get Duane going more than it actually did. As it started the second half, it wasn't huge. But I liked that they made points off of a big-time turnover in a situation where the game was going to be over essentially if they didn't. Yeah, I mean, so I thought that Dwayne was off early in part because, first of all, why don't, you know, we should be expecting.

him to be off a little bit. They haven't had preseason games. This is a new system, but I thought he was under duress a lot. I thought that there was, you know, West Martin getting thrown into the backfield. I thought there was some immediate pressure and that that was as much a factor for his early troubles as, you know, as anything else. I mean, he was rusty and there was nothing there that looked good and promising. But I thought a lot of it was pass pro, which I'll get to my list of things that I liked and didn't like. But I thought a lot of that was pass pro early.

Yeah, I think some of it might have been. And I was thinking about the West Martin where Malik Jackson shoved him in the back. What was funny is, J.D. McKissick had a big-time chip on the edge, and it bumped his guy right into the back of Malik Jackson, and that really made it hard on West Martin. But I just, I thought especially early, he really didn't climb the pocket as much as he potentially could have. I thought a big part of some of his misses was that he wasn't really driving off his back foot.

They were a lot of front foot weight throws. And I thought that he rushed him maybe a half a second. Now, I'm with you. There was some absolute pressure. But to me, I thought that he could have climbed up a little bit. it better, made a couple more throws. But at the same time, it's the first game of the season, and it's on the biggest stage right there against the Eagles, and you've got to get your guy comfortable.

And I thought they did that as they went forward. I wasn't impressed. I literally went through and watched all of it on film this morning. I don't think in any way was I overly impressed with DeWain. But at the same time, other than a couple of plays, he protected the ball. All right. Let's stick with him, because I'm going to go through. the things that I liked and didn't like, and you've got some things as well, but somehow we've

gotten into him here early, even though the story of the game was the defense. Let me, let me just tell you what I thought, and you tell me where I'm wrong or right. First of all, we've already described the fact that he didn't look good very early. Again, I think a lot of that was he was under pressure, under pressure immediately, but he looked, you know, off, he looked rusty, started three for 12 for 32 yards or three for 13, whatever it was. The first six drives of the game offensively were five punts and a missed field goal. You know, the missed field goal is not his fault, but the other drives of the five drives that they punted on, three of them were three and outs.

So, you know, it wasn't good. He had that nice scramble, which was the biggest play of the game that led to that field goal miss, and he sort of tripped himself, but it was clearly against man coverage because the DBs returned, and he ends up with a 19, 20-yard run. and then the Moreau interception happens, and then, like you said, he got into a rhythm. McLaren for 21, Inman for 11, and all of a sudden, you know, he's in some confidence and on that touchdown throw to Logan Thomas. It was perfect. But a couple of just bigger overall thoughts. This is what I liked about him last year, Cooley. He's a gamer. He doesn't get rattled. He doesn't

seem to get worried. He keeps coming back. He nearly threw a pick or two. There was one right before the missed field goal that Maddox nearly picked off that comes to mind. I love the way he competes, and I love his quick release. And I think it's something that I talked about a little bit last year. I know his footwork isn't perfect, and you can speak to that in more detail, but he's got a very quick release. And when he quick releases it more than, you know, sort of on a slower developing thing, even if the footwork's not right, I think sometimes the accuracy is better. The quick release throw to Logan Thomas for the touchdown, which is a beautifully designed play, he's wide open where the one defender's got McKissick and the flat or Thomas. He goes

McKissick, Thomas is wide open. He recognizes it. Flicks it. I mean, just flicks it. He had a throw to Sims Jr. in the third quarter down to the two-yard line under pressure. Super quick release. He had the third and eight versus the blitz to Inman on the slant on the drive that gave him the lead in the fourth quarter. Super quick release. I loved that about him. I also like, you know, his ability to manage the game. No timeouts because of play clock. No delay at games. You know, they go hurry up and he seemed to be in total. control on that stuff. You can tell me if I'm right. I think he recognized and saw a lot of zone coverage at times and was very decisive on that stuff. Obviously, he was in the shotgun a lot.

They worked in some zone read keeper, zone read option pitch. He didn't look great on that stuff, but he didn't look terrible on that stuff. I thought overall, you know, if somebody, and we know a lot of these people that live and die with box scores. If somebody looked at 17 to 31, 178, one touchdown, got sacked three times, inaccurate on some throws, they'd say, eh, he was all right. I thought it was a winning performance from the quarterback. After a rusty, shaky, under pressure start, netting it out, I thought Dwayne Haskins was a part of that, a big contributor to them winning that game. I can't disagree, and that's the really interesting thing about Duane, is he seems to come up and make big plays in big moments. Did you say you disagree or don't disagree?

I said I cannot disagree with you, that he isn't the contributing factor on offense to why they won that football game. He does come up with these big plays and big moments, and he does come up with consistent three or four throws that he puts together in critical. moments. I mean, we went through that first touchdown drive where he goes four for four. After the Moreland interception, you're talking about reading zone coverages, but quick release, he hit Sims down to the two-yard line. That's a bad throw. I mean, that's not the route. If he throws Logan Thomas or Inman on the outside, both of them are walking touchdown. Oh, they are? Sims is the only player that's actually covered. But because of that quick release and strong arm, when he really steps into a row, he's got an ability to fit balls into tight places.

So you're looking at it and you're going, well, you throw Logan Thomas, or you throw the other guy on the outside all running vertical routes. Either of them are walking in. But at the same time, what are you going to say? At the completion, you get down to the one-yard line, and so you're converting off turnovers, which was huge by Duane. And, you know, the tempo was good throughout the day, offensively. there were almost no penalties on offense, which was awesome.

Were there any penalties? On offense, I don't think there was a false start. I don't think there was a hold. The penalties early on defense, they were all in the defense. Neutral zone infractions, 2.15-yard penalties. Yeah, there was an illegal touching on special teams. I don't, yeah, I don't know. Cooley, you might be right.

I mean, and the other thing with DeWain is he still seems to just get away with things more times than others. I mean, you talked about some of the option stuff. He had a pitch to McKissick that he should have never pitched. The McKissick bobbled. Yeah. And he ended up getting away with it. He had to throw to Logan Thomas on a third down where he just rushed it on a crosser that was undercut and really easily could have been picked in that situation. like it was third and two, I think.

Just run. That was man-covered. Just take off. He had a critical sack fumble that Geron Christian gave up where I thought the ball could have been out, and Christian ends up falling on it and recovering it. And by the way, the next Redskins' offensive play was run from the Philadelphia 20-yard line after the Moreland pick.

Right. So you're looking at three or four of these situations, and you're saying, geez, I mean, if he doesn't get, get away with these. These are disasters, but he did. He did get away with him, and it seems like more times than not, he does get away with a lot of these things. Do you agree with me on his release that it is very quick? Oh, yeah. I got a lot of power behind everything. I mean, almost to a fault. I think that it's so quick, sometimes he has a little bit of trouble putting touch on some balls that I

think he could put more touch on. Right. Like some of the flat. Some of the flat throws, it's quick release, it's a bit of a flick, and they were caught, but they're not, they didn't look like great touch throws. Yeah, they're hard. You've got to really ensure the catch in those situations. And so instead of really running, by the way, Wensmiths a bunch of those throws, too, I thought Wendt's terrible on a lot of short and underneath those.

So, look, in no way is it perfect when you grade it all out. it's not going to look great either. But at the same time, they scored points when they had to score points. They made big plays when they had to make big plays. I mean, just a little thing, but you're up, I think, 24-17, and you get the ball back at midfield. All you've got to do is kick a single, and you're essentially up 10. And it's a boot to Sims, and it's a great play action fake.

These out put it perfectly on Sims, and in a critical moment, they make a huge play that essentially steals the game. How about before that? At 17-17 in the fourth quarter. The third and eight to Thomas, which may not have been a great throw, great catch and a great get-up and leap for the first down by Logan Thomas, but then he's got third and eight versus the blitz and throws a perfect ball to Inman for the first down.

No, those were big. And I thought the ball to Thomas, I thought Thomas was short on the route. I don't think he was short. I know he was short. It was third and that's an eight-yard route. That concept everyone runs. Great job by Thomas, though. the first down. I mean, great job, but it's hard when the quarterback's thrown a route

a hundred times. And all of a sudden, the guys breaking it off at five and a half yards and said eight yards to put it exactly where he needs to put it. Some of it has to do with the receivers at times. Yeah, he missed some throws. He's been missing throws. That's a thing that he's got to continue to work on. But at the same time, he made some big time throws, Kev. And I thought they were going to have to be a little bit better in third down situation. I think that was one of my keys to the game or the Redskins win if they're 50%. Right. But on critical drives when they scored, they converted third down.

Right. That those, they didn't have a lot of big plays. When they scored, they got third down conversions, and that was what they had to do. They were three for four in the Red Zone, too. I mean, this is a team that struggled in the red zone in recent years, and they got three touchdowns in the red zone when they got there. Yeah, I, you know, we'll go to the defense next. I thought, Dwayne, you know, to me it was a winning performance.

He didn't turn the ball over. You're right. He may have gotten away with a couple, certainly the one to Maddox was big that Maddox to drop that. But, you know, every quarterback that you watch gets away with one or two during the course of a game. I just, there's something about him coolly too in watching him, and I felt this way you know I did about him last year, that even when things aren't going well, I don't know that he ever loses belief in himself. Like, I don't ever see a guy that loses confidence. No. You agree? Never. I agree. I agree.

don't think he knows how to lose confidence. That's a good, that is a good, look, sometimes that can be a bad thing, but I think under the pressure of being a quarterback in the NFL, you can't get rattled. You can't lose confidence because of a couple of bad series. I mean, he's over there talking to his offensive linemen. He's trying to fire up the defensive line, and then he makes the halftime a speech because Rivera is getting an IV. you'll bring him up speech man I love it now is he going to have to do that every week

I don't know I don't know if he's going to have to do that every week before you get to the defense the other things I liked from the offense I actually thought that Scott Turner did a really good job in this game I thought they had good balance on play calls in first and second down situations I thought they had some opportunities created I loved some of the two-back sets that they had with some of the backfill of action and what they can build off of that. It was Gibson and McKissick or Barber in there. There was some good run versatility that, to me, tied together and looked a lot like zone, but there were some quick trap. They had one where I thought they got

Gibson to the edge, where you downblocked the tight end and you pulled your center guard and tackle. It was almost like a Lombardi sweep. Yeah. Green Bay Packers that they got big time yards on. I love that. some of the RPO stuff they mixed in that I don't think was executed perfectly, but you can build on and you can see throughout. I think could be really big. I thought throughout mixing screens into the game plan were effective.

You mentioned getting into it in the red zone, and I wrote this down. I love shotgun runs. Gun runs on the goal line. Let's do what we normally do. Let's not try to get into a goal line situation, especially against the Eagles defense, where they're going to put six or seven guys on the line of scrimmage.

Let's get them in gun situations, and let's go ahead and run the ball and no penalties. I mean, it's not all amazing, but there was some good stuff. I thought Antonio Gibson actually has a burst. That was something that I really liked. I think there's going to be a ton of ways to use that guy, and although he only had two receptions, I think he can be really effective in the passing game as well.

there's some stuff there, Kev. They got some stuff there. They'll have to stay healthy on offense, because I don't know how much stuff they have, but they do, and Duane continues to build. Yeah, when I get to some of the things from the game that I had some concern over, one of them is going to be the offensive line,

which we'll get to then. I thought Logan Thomas looked really athletic. I'm sure you're going to tell me he's not a very good blocker, but I think, you know. No, no. He's a pretty good job. He's physical. Okay, good. Because he definitely has, you know, that quarterback athleticism, hands, and I think he's going to become a favorite for Dwayne.

And I like Sims Jr. also. Yeah, he's awesome. I really think that he has a chance to be a difference maker in some of these games. And, you know, with all the sweep action, the motion action, the motion action, action. God, there was a lot of it. There's a lot of two-back sets with Gibson and McKissick. You know, I can see Sims getting the ball on a lot of these games on some of that motion and some of that fly-sweep stuff, right? I mean, he didn't have one carry in the game yesterday, but I could see a game where he's got two or three rushes minimum.

Yeah, I think you've got to get Sims six plus touches in every game one way or another, at least six plus. You know what else I thought played pretty well? I was surprised. I thought John, Geron Christian, did a really nice job. Money made it. He took up the one sack. And he recovered the fumble on that play. Well, if you get beat around the edge real quick, you should see the ball come out. And he did.

And he did. He barely got it. But I thought he actually played me. I was really surprised by how well he played in that game. All right. We'll continue with our game take right after I tell you about earnest. Interest rates have hit record lows. many of you know that. We were talking about that the other day when we were talking on our real

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It's not available in all states. Visit earnest.com slash she and for more details. Terms and conditions apply. Ernest Student Loan refinance loans are made by Ernest Operations LLC NMLS number 1204-917. California financing law license number 6054788 303.303 2nd Street Suite 401 North, San Francisco, California, 94107. Visit earnest.com slash licenses for a full list of licensed states. All right, let's get to what was the star of the game, the defense, and one player in particular. First of all, again, I mean, to allow them to build a 17-0 lead, you said you didn't necessarily see it. I just had this sense, I didn't see it, by the way.

I didn't see that they were going to turn it around and come back and win the game. I just felt like even in the midst of being burned a couple of times, including on a third and 22, I thought penalties hurt them. There were the two 15-yarders, including the stupid penalty by landing Collins, where basically extended his arms and pushed the guy when they were already six, seven yards out of bounds. There were a couple of neutral zone infractions, but I felt like they were hitting wents and getting to them.

Like even down 17, nothing coolly. They had already sacked him three times. But after the Moreau interception, or counting the Moro interception, the Eagles are. offensively the rest of the way. Zero points, 93 total yards in 10 drives. One for eight on third down, five sacks, three turnovers, and nine negative yardage plays. Five of them were sacks, but nine negative yardage plays over their next 10 drives. I thought Wentz looked worn out. The Moreau Interceptions, the biggest play of the game, obviously it gave them a glimmer of hope

and there had been none before it. They didn't play any soft coverage. It didn't seem like to Me Kooley, which has been a staple for them over the last few years. And Chase Young was spectacular. Now, you do have to acknowledge, if you're trying to be as objective as you can, you can be excited about the defensive performance.

But the Eagle team was wounded severely. No Lane Johnson, already a mismatch of an offensive line through training camp, and two of their best offensive weapons, maybe their best offensive weapon, and Miles Sanders out, Alshon Jeffrey, the other. But you know what? You don't apologize for that. You don't just knock down the performance to say, oh, well, they were playing a team that was wounded. Lots of teams are wounded in this league. And lots of teams, you know, in the past weren't taken advantage of when they had the opportunity.

I thought Chase Young in particular was a wow in his debut. He was unbelievable. after 17-0, after AF, after Fabian, they also had two-fourth downstops as well. Yeah, right. We'll talk about one of them because I thought it was a stupid call by Peterson. Yeah, well, of course it was. But the entire defensive line is a wow factor.

It just, it was. And Philly's offensive line was terrible because there were blitzes where, I think two in particular where Bostic was completely unblocked. Yeah. One where he missed a sack and another where he had a sack. And, you know, they were discombobulated on the offensive line. But at the same time, when you watch Chase Young, that first sack that he had, it was like a Dwight Freeney like spin move on Jason Peters.

Right. That was lightning quick. And then the ability to go and get the ball and tap the ball out, I mean, geez, it was constant pressure. from Chase Young. You have to think of another one where he really forced an interception, and Matt I and I just went outside on a pure speed rush around the edge. Right. That I think Kevin Pierre Lewis picked and would have taken back to like the five-yard lines,

which was another huge one. He was splitting double teams in the run game, making tackles in the backfield. He was all over the place. And the thing for me is you want to see the speed from a rookie be what the speed was or what you expected to be from his college, from the transition point. And he was faster than anybody else on the field with his burst into the backfield.

He was so good. He's in, I mean, to me, the way he played, he's an immediate pro bowl or the rookie. If he plays like that, he's not just a very good player on your team,

which is what you want out of a first-round pick. he's one of the better players in the NFL if he plays like that. Granted, you know, they had guys banged up, but a lot of time it was Chase Young against Jason Peters. Yeah, who's 96 years old, but still, you know, the guys were a really good player. He was supposed to play guard. I know. He looked 96.

But, I mean, beyond that, the entire defensive line played relentlessly. I thought Montez Sweat looked really good. I like he had some big time play I did too in the game I thought Jonathan Allen was awesome my Ionitis

Duran Payne made some place pushing into the backfield Kerrigan getting in there man Kerrigan had an unblocked sack and a run action against the pulling guard sack and it sniffed out a screen on a second and 22 that he got a lot of credit for

that was it was great and uh no Ryan did a good job Ryan's a four down defensive end that's really clear Montez is a four-down defensive end. I think that's really clear.

Chase Young is going to be a beast. I thought Ryan Anderson came in and did a nice job when he came in. I just think their depth of their first eight or nine guys, even when you get into Settle and some of the – they're so deep up front. It's impressive, and they are going to scare people to death. What are you going to do, Kev? Are you going to think about doubling Chase Young when he starts making plays?

all of a sudden you have blitzes coming from inside. You can't worry about chipping him if you're bringing Bostick from different places. They had some pressures I thought were great. Some they didn't get away with, but still they're bringing four or five guys to a side. It was a lot of fun. They played fast. They played fearlessly. It was a lot of fun to watch that front.

You know, Young dropped into coverage a couple of times, coolly. It wasn't good. Like in a zone blitz look. On a couple of blitzes, I think Morland came from the outside and Chase Young dropped back into coverage. I thought, you know, this is something for you to really talk about more, but I just think Del Rio had Wentz and had Peterson off balance. I don't think they knew where it was coming from. And the truth is, they didn't even need to bring it because the front four alone without pressure, without a fifth or sixth rusher. They were fine. They were handling it. You mentioned the other guys. I thought Ionitis was really good. I thought pain at times looked like the monster that I think Del Rio believes he is too. One of the things I looked at earlier this morning, Cooley, was snap count because I thought in the first game, it might be an indication a little bit of who these coaches really like. And of all the interior guys, Payne had the most number of snaps. He had 52 snaps. Alan only had 36.

Ionitis had only 30. So pain was out there a lot. And you know, I think pain has like, you know, an extra gear compared to the other guys. And I don't know that you necessarily agree with me, but I think you saw some of that yesterday. Carrigan, man, I mean, it took one game for us to say, okay, Kerrigan should have been a 4-3DN for the last 10 years. And Montez Sweat, you know, at least we didn't see him drop into coverage. And he, I thought the overall team speed everywhere, including at linebacker. I thought Bostick had speed last year. And I forget if it was you or somebody else who debated me on that. I thought he looked fast. I thought KPL looked fast, even though he got, you know, matched up against the tight ends early.

Collins looks so quick. Appke looks fast, but God, did you nail that one, man? With the depth perception and the angles, there's no doubt that that is the problem with him. That was an incredible Friday. Yeah, Apki can really run and you like Troy a lot, but he doesn't have the best depth perception, which leads to bad angles. And I think we saw that. But overall, I mean, the team speed on defense that we haven't seen to go with exceptional rushers with speed as well, I don't know. I mean, Philadelphia has banged up the whole thing, but this to me was a sign of something that we're not going to just lose in game two. Or, is going to be easy to game plan against, which we'll get to in a moment because I thought

Peterson, you know, did a terrible job with play calling. But it was, you know, Young had one of those days as an opening day that made those that said that he might be Nick Bosa plus, and if he is, everybody around him is going to be better and perform better. But the guys around them are pretty good to begin with. Yeah, he's got a lot of talent around him, and that's going to help any young rusher, any young rusher, that you're not the one focal point. The fact that you have those guys inside of you, like Alan Payne, I'm United, and then another guy coming up, you had, whether it be Kerrigan or sweat, or even Ryan Anderson, and in a lot of those situations, you can almost say, hey, you've got to make sure you just push the

pocket from the backside, and let's let our freak go after it. That's, um, that's really good, man. It's, uh, it was fun to watch. And it was fun to watch these secondary players make some plays. You know, I thought Jimmy Morland, that interception he had as a young player, he baited a hitch. He started to look like he was going to bail soft in coverage, watched Wentz's eyes, he drove out of his back pedal off his back foot. And you're looking at a second year player that's baiting Carson Wentz into throwing a pick. That's big time. The Fabian Interception to flip his hips. I mean, essentially that's manned, it was a quarter's coverage there,

but to flip his hips and open up on a comeback, and essentially man-to-man. That's huge. I liked Cameron Curl. I thought Cameron Curl came in and made some plays. Seventh-rounder out of Arkansas. I just, I really thought there was a lot on defense that they had going for them. And I thought the game was called nicely. They played mostly zone coverage.

but cover three and quarters a lot of the game. And I thought they did a really good job. I actually think adjusting to some of the stuff in the second half was exceptional. They really started to see and key things that the Eagles were doing and we can get to Peterson. But at the same time, you've got to credit the defense for making those adjustments and coming out and playing big time. They got away with some stuff, too, by the way.

You mentioned the apt-y thing. You know, after Wentz throws the Mrow pick, Washington scores, Wentz had, he had Rager on a deep ball that he overthrew that Aftky got burned on, and then he had D. Jacks on a deep rocker. Right. He blew by Afti as well. Like, those are two plays that would have changed that game. The defense got away with a couple things as well.

You know, Curl, you mentioned Curl, correct me if I'm wrong, but he came in, he's a safety, but he came in as a nickelback with Apke on the field, with Collins on the field, with Darby on the field, with Morlin on the field. Obviously, they had no Kendall Fuller yesterday, so it looked like they were using either Moreau or Curl as the 5th DB. on Carrigan, you know, this goes back to 2011, the opener against the Giants, his very first game. He anticipates so well, he sniff stuff out so well. He sniffed that screen out yesterday. By the way, I thought they were really good in the screen game. They were flying up D.Bs, making tackles. You know, there were multiple, take the eight sacks out of it. There were another

four or five negative yardage plays where there were tackles in the backfield. I mean, they were playing on the other side of the line of scrimmage. But I was impressed with Curl, too, and now you know what they thought. I mean, he played enough to make you understand why they were fine, you know, releasing Sean Davis. But do you see Curl with Fuller coming back, with, you know, Curl maybe splitting time with Apke at free safety? Or do you see him, you know, settling into the role that he was in yesterday, which was more of a nickelback. It's hard to say what they want to do in that situation. I'm sure they want Troy Aske to continue to grow and be able to be a big part of that

secondary as the free safety. But my curl looks fast. I thought Acki looked fast, too. Well, he is fast. I mean, I thought he came up and made some really good tackles. Yeah, I thought the entire secondary, other than I think early in the game, and Collins, there's three or four tackles. I thought the entire secondary tackled.

Well, I thought Jimmy Morland was exceptional at making tackles throughout the entire day. Yeah. I mean, Carl made some big tackles. Abki made some big tackles. I thought they were consistent. That was a worry, I think, for anybody going into the season without having played any preseason and tackling a lot was, are you going to be able to tackle? But the secondary did a really good job of limiting big plays as far as

yards after contact, yards after catch, whatever it may be. I mean, they're just impressive defensively. They're going to win games this year because of that defense. Yeah, it was so impressive. You know, anytime you end up with a plus three turnover margin, really hard to lose an NFL game. The Merot pick really was the game changer. You go in 17, nothing at half.

That happened with a minute 37 left. You know, Dwayne's had no rhythm offensively. you're just, you have no confidence. I'm saying as a fan watching it, but when they got on the board late, it was huge. Cooley, I want to get to a couple of things that I really thought Doug Peterson and his offensive staff really missed out on. First of all, they got completely sideways with the pass run ratio.

42 passes, 17 rushes is not a way to nullify a dominant pass rush. you know, you've got, if you're going to stop and slow down a pass rush that ended up with eight sacks, four more than anybody else had in the league yesterday, and constant pressures, you can't be one-dimensional, which is where they got. They were one-dimensional, and they were dropping them back. They weren't even getting them on the move at all. And he wore down, and it seemed like they didn't notice at all. That would be my first criticism of Peterson. I I didn't think he did anything to protect his quarterback, and I thought Scott Turner did do a lot to protect Dwayne,

where I thought the pass pro was very sketchy at times. They had a 17-0-0-0 lead. Yeah. A 17-0 lead, and his quarterback's sitting back there looking for the big play. They're trying to get the big play. They're not just taking what's available underneath. Now, the Redskins, or the, excuse me, Washington did a good job in coverage. but the Wendez's sitting back there jacking the ball off trying to make a big play throughout that game,

missing multiple levels of throws. At some point, you've got to realize, my guy is missing right now. My guy's missing. I've got to protect him and be able to run the football. I did think that Washington did a pretty good job stopping the run. Me too. Absolutely paramount. I mean, it ended up being like 3.7 yards per carry.

And I think on a third and 15, they had a draw where they got, That's right. 13 yards. Boston Scott, yeah. Realistically, you take that one play out, and it's 16 carries for about 42 yards. So it's really even less. And then they did have some tackles for loss, and they had some plays at the line of scrimmage. They were a stout run defense, which was huge.

But Peterson quit on it. He absolutely quit on the run. He put it on Wintz, and it was so clear and apparent that Wince was in over his head. You keep saying Warned out. I don't know if he's worn out. I just think he was wildly inaccurate. I really thought about you watching the game because you played this really exclusive golf tournament over the weekend.

Started out hot 3-0, 3 holes up, and then you shit the bed. And that's what Wentz did. They started out pretty hot, and he shit the bed in the second half. You shit the bed after Fabian made the pick. You couldn't make anything. It can't complete throws. But when you're dropping back in front of an offensive line that isn't really very good and you're missing two key weapons and you've been sacked eight times or let's just

say five on the way to eight and you're getting pressured every other time I mean you got to come up with a better idea um you just have to come up with a better idea and I I I think the inaccuracy was because he was under pressure and because he was he was starting to feel it that's what I thought let me let me get to this because I hear I fear you but even when you say that, if you're looking at the pictures on the sideline, who used to say that? Yeah, you're going to go look at the pictures. If you're looking at an iPad now, you're looking at the

Karegan stack early where he's completely unblocked. They just botched it. You're looking at Bostic with two pressures where he's completely unblocked. You're looking at Montez's sweat on a boot to him where you put a tight end on him initially, and that's a tough block for a time. I mean, it wasn't,

there was definite pressure. I'm not saying that, but if you're looking back at it, It went three or four of those first pressures in sacks. It really missed assignments. Okay. It wasn't just a pure beating. He shouldn't have panicked. By the way, Cooley, you know what I forgot to mention to you?

C.J. said this this morning. Do you know how incredibly difficult, more difficult it would have been for Philadelphia yesterday in that kind of game if there had been a crowd? with the defense at eight sacks and the constant pressure and how loud. There's nothing better than a crowd when your team's coming back from a 17-0-deficit, and defensively they are just dominant, which is what they turned into. They turned into a dominating defense during that game. That crowd, it may have gotten worse for Philadelphia had there actually been

a crowd with the noise pre-snap, with defensive guys being able to get a quick jump. You didn't have any of that benefit from being at home, and they still, I mean, I'd like to know, by the way, that actually would be an interesting thing, right? To go back and look at how many eight-plus sack games have there been in NFL history for teams? It's a high number for sacks for a team, and how many of those games were at home? like in front of a home crowd because the home crowd helps the defense more than it helps the offense for obvious reasons. But you didn't even have the benefit of that and they still dominated.

Well, they dominated. You would have also likely negated three or four pre-snap penalties or encroachment or false-star penalties on the defense. Right. Because you wouldn't have been able to go hard count. You're absolutely right. to keep them somewhat off balance with a good town and a good cadence. All right. There were three decisions by the coaches, Peterson and Rivera, that I'm just going to refer to as

sort of analytics decisions in the second half that really helped determine the outcome of the game. The two made by Doug Peterson, I think, were the wrong call and backfired because of context. And the one made by Ron Rivera was the right call and it paid off. and I'm going to go through them chronologically and how they happened. Philly's first decision, which was sort of an analytics math, you know, decision, it's a fourth and four with four 37 to go. I'm sorry, fourth and four at the Washington 45 with one 17 left in the third quarter,

and they're up 1714, okay? Fourth down and four, by the way, it was more like fourth and four and a half, because I went back and looked at it. They're up by three. and, you know, analytically, which Peterson's a big analytics guy, hey, it's fourth and four, you're in their territory, you just go for it, because it's forward, you know, going forward on fourth down, and it's fourth and that's what we do.

That's what we do, fourth and four and a half. And here's the context, which made the decision in the moment wrong in my view. And I felt that way as I was watching it. First of all, they couldn't block anybody at that point. He was under duress, the quarterback was, and you were going to have to throw to get it. Secondly, in their last six third downs, on their last six, third downs, they were one for six. And now all of a sudden they think they can convert a fourth and four and a half. You know, a math, you know, analytics decision with that context,

you know, and by the way, here's some other information to go with it, right? So if Peterson were to say to you and me, the reason I did it is because I really wasn't concerned about Washington's offense. Okay, it was 17, 14, and they were hit and miss at that point. But maybe he thought, if I turn the ball over to him here and we miss, so what? Well, that begs the argument of, well, if you don't have any confidence in their offense, pun them deep. You know, pin them inside the 15-yard line, inside the 10-yard line. You're punting in their territory.

It's fourth and four and a half. Why give it to them with a huge advantage at midfield? So I thought that was a horrendous decision that Peterson made and really cost them. They had a three-point lead, the offense for Washington, who knows if they've got to go 90 yards down three points. And the bottom line is fourth and four and a half. I don't care what the math says overall. The context of that, the odds were stacked against them with the way Washington was playing defensively and the way they were playing offensively in that moment.

It was just stacked against them. So that was the first one. What did you think? Oh, I thought it was completely boneheaded. I don't understand that call at all. I don't understand if you weigh any context whatsoever. You have 17-13, your quarterback struggling, and you want to throw the ball. And by the way, you're getting a ton of pressure.

And I loved it. They brought a blitz there and came after it. Yeah. I loved it. I thought that was an awesome choice. I thought it was an outstanding defensive play. but I mean, what are the, I mean, you look at, you look at what you would get on a third and four. What's your third and four percentages, you know? I can go find the Eagles on third and four last year, but I'll bet it's not more than 50-50.

Even if it is the context of that game, they're one for their last six on third down. And he's facing a relentless pass rush. They've got to get, what, 20 yards of the tie. game up. Right. Not even. Yeah. Now, on the third and four, maybe they were frustrated because Ward was a little bit open and he missed him. You know, the play resulted in John Bostic coming on a blitz, wide open. Not only do they not get the fourth down, they lose nine yards of field position on the sack in the process. So now Washington's starting their next position. You know what, I'm sick of this, Washington. I'm not apologizing, and you're not apologizing either. If we say something other than

Washington, we're going to do our best, but we're not going to apologize or correct ourselves. At fourth and four, at the Washington 45, again, in that context, when he got sacked, the skins had the ball on Philly's side of the field now needing three to tie, which they went and got it. And it's 17-17. I thought that was a dumb decision. Here's the second of the three- Hold on. Here's your other analytic to that, just for context for you. In 2019, on third and four, the Eagles were 37.5%. Wow. On third and five, on third and five, they were 50%. And on fourth and four, they were 50%. They had eight times on fourth and four, where they went for it last year, they converted four of them. In that moment of the game, you're going to take last year's third down percentage, last year's fourth down percentage between the two of those and put it right around 44% chance.

but you get that first down, that is not, to me, the analytics, those are not good odds to give Washington the ball back at midfield. I thought that was boneheaded. They should have punted him to be no question. And by the way, just to be clear in this, this is not for me an anti-analytics thing. No. I just have always felt in this conversation that if you go strictly by the math

and you go strictly by blackjack rules, which is totally different, as we know, because we know what the cards are that are in the deck, and we know how many decks there are. There's just too much context that you have. It's a piece of information that has to be combined with the other pieces of information. And the other pieces of information were overwhelmingly against going for fourth and four and a half. They just were.

Which to me makes the analytic punt. Yeah, punt. punting. That to me means that the right thing to do is actually punt, not only in a decision by a coach, but analytically. So the second sort of, I guess, analytics decision in the game, Ron Rivera was faced with. Fourth and one, it was a long one, seven minutes and 26 seconds left in the game. The score 1717, and the ball's at the Eagles four-yard line, and Rivera decides to go for it. To me, that was the right call. Analytics-wise, it's fourth and one.

what the fourth and one numbers are. Even the fourth and one on a condensed field, which I think those numbers are not as much, is not as favorable as they are in the middle of the field. But context-wise, for me, it's like, okay, if they miss, that defense is back on the field against the Eagles from their own four-yard line. You know, go ahead.

If they miss, I'll take that shot. If he makes it, they've got a chance to go up seven and they eat more clock. And they did make it. was a bit surprised with the play call. You know, they get Sims in motion, sort of looking like Sims could take a quick, you know, handoff, and then they pitch it to Barber, who, by the way, I thought was very good in short yardage with Vision, Cooley as a runner yesterday. And they've got Moses pulling as a right tackle, and he's pulling any way out to the outside. And they get it.

But it didn't look like at the beginning of that play that he was going to get it. that little toss play is hard to stop. And if you think about how many times it's been third and one, or fourth and one, and it's been our defense on the field, and somehow they get that stupid toss play. I mean, we give that play up so many times. I actually do like the play call. I like that more than I like throwing it in that situation.

And I'm totally with you. I don't think that you would be wrong to kick a field goal there. especially with the momentum of the game and the way your defense is playing. But at the same time, you say the same thing. Look, if we give it to them here inside the 20, we'll play defense, and it'll be a tieball game. There's something about that call, especially in a fourth and one, that really makes your team believe in you. It shows you believe in your guys.

To me, that's a belief call. in the previous call we discussed by Peterson is on paper. It says to do it. Some guys crunching some numbers up there told me this is the right move. So here we go. I just, that's the part that drives me nuts, is that, you know, and Jim Harbaugh did a lot of it last year. John Harbaugh did a lot of it last year.

Well, you know, we've got the numbers. We trust our analytics guys. They've given us what to do in these situations. We're going to do it. No, it can't be that. It's got to be, we've got the information, we appreciate the information, and we understand what the math is, and now we're going to combine that piece of information with what the hell is going on in the game. Okay?

Because the third and final, you know, sort of analytics move was made by Peterson down 2417. There's 437 left in the game. He's got all three timeouts left. He's down seven. He's at his own 42, and it's fourth and three. Now, at that point, okay, let me give you more context. Philly's now won for its last eight on third downs. They missed the other fourth down that they went for, and they're getting their ass kicked by Washington's defense.

It's just, it's not, he couldn't have felt confident beyond some analytics guy who said, this is what you have to do. he couldn't have personally felt really confident that they were going to make it, given the context of the situation. Now, if they punt it, you know, they can get a stop. They got plenty of timeouts left. They got more time in the game. If you hand it over there on your own 42, they're going to kick a field goal and be up 10 and it's going to be game over. Now, to be fair, Ertz is wide open and he should have made the catch for the first down. He dropped it.

But a ball wasn't perfectly thrown, but he dropped it. And Washington takes over, and it's pretty much near game over at that point. I think the right call would have been to have punited it for Philadelphia. Obviously, hindsight, as Spruyer once said, is 50-50, but it really, I just think the context was they weren't doing anything against this defense. You know, the odds were they weren't going to make it. Well, Peterson is going to say that he doubted up the right play in the right situation. to give you my feelings on this, and there's another call that Washington had early in the game that I thought a lot the same.

It was a third and three, the previous play, and they threw it deep to Deshaun Jackson on an inside fade. Now, if you think back into the, I think the third quarter, on a third and two, went scrambled, or went, had a quarterback sneak for a first down. That was their one first down in the second half. Yeah, it was a third and two, and he had a huge push for a quarterback sneak. A lot of times, and you see this so much in the NFL, if it's third and three, third and two, and you know you're going to go for it, a lot of teams will run the ball in third and three. It's a catch-em-off-guard type of deal. Everyone's got to play the past.

And if you can get one or two, then you're in a fourth-in-one situation with a guy like once where you can sneak. So I think the big mistake there was the call on third and three to try to take a shot to Deshaun Jackson. Now, they got a one-on-one look that they liked, but at the same time, I think, you know, know you're going forward on fourth down, and Peterson does, then get yourself at a better fourth down situation. To me, that would have been a play where they could have run the ball, or even just essentially had two sneaks in a row by went and probably converted right there. The same thing happened earlier in the game. Washington down 7-0 at midfield on a third and two had an incomplete pass, and then chose to pun it on fourth and two at the 48-yard

line. Right. 7-0 early in a ball game 3rd and 2 if you think of it a 4-down situation we have 2 downs to get 2 yards To me I thought that was a mistake made by Maybe Rivera or maybe Turner But if I'm the head coach I'm saying on 3rd and 2 Can we get a yard so Duane can sneak it on 4th and 1 at midfield

Right and that was that was That was the one prior to the missed field goal by by Hopkins Correct. As everyone plays these analytic games, you're sitting there saying, we'll get yourself in a fourth and one. Right. It's early in the ballgame, and you're trying to gain some momentum and get first downs on offense, and you've had a three-in-out already. You don't want another three-and-out. So that would be the one that I would have changed or done differently for Washington. But, yeah, you're fourth and two to Ertz. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you're going to look at it over and over, and Ertz is going to say it's my fault. You're going to say we had the look we wanted. But at the same time, I think it was Darby on Earth, right?

Yeah. Look. I mean, it's not a premier matchup. Of the two decisions, of the two decisions that Peterson made, that's the less egregious for me. The fourth, you know, with the lead, the fourth and four, fourth and four and a half is really a bad decision. But right there, if that's me from my own 42 with all three timeouts and four and a half minutes to go in the game down a touchdown, I'm not handing them the game with a play that I don't think I can convert on. and my offense is really in trouble.

By the way, I said that it was their only, they had more than one first down in the second half. They had several first downs, but they were being very much dominated in the game. All right, we'll get to a couple of the things that we didn't like from the game yesterday, right after this word from Indochino. Hi, this is Paul Tenorio from the Athletic.

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The first one with two minutes and 16 seconds left coolly. It was fourth and fourth. Philadelphia's 10. They're up 27 to 7. and they just went for it. Now they drew Philly off sides and they got the first down. I think the play there is to kick the field goal. Now maybe he's thinking my defense is so dominant.

I don't want to try a field goal and have it blocked in return for a touchdown. But that's not going to happen either. You know, that's a real long shot possibility. I think you just kick the field goal there and go up 30 to 17 and force them to score two touchdowns to beat you over the final two minutes and 16 seconds. And then, you know, this one less of an issue. but 31 seconds left in the game, fourth and goal at the Philly 11, and they just sort of went for it. I don't know why they wouldn't have just kicked the field goal there.

But the first one in particular, I was a bit surprised. I don't think anybody asked them about it after the game. I don't have a big problem with that. They had played so well. But I think the move there is to kick the field goal, don't you? Yeah. I think even Daryl Johnson, that's who was on the call, right? Yeah.

Who I didn't like on the call. but I think even Daryl Johnson at that point said, yeah, they'll just, I guess they'll make them run one more play. I'll take another snap sitting there going, it was fourth down. Yeah. What are you talking about, Moose? They'll make Philly run some more plays.

But, yeah, I think you just kick a Philgo. Yeah, you go 30 to 17. Barring some crazy fluke, like, let's just say you got someone behind somebody, and then now you're only up three. Phil goal would tie it. I think you'd go for points there. And it's Philly, and keep in mind that Doug Peterson thought he was going to step on the gas.

He wanted to score 50. To me, it was, I thought it, I actually thought about it. I did. It kind of bothered me, too. I thought, is he just trying to, is this sportsmanship? Was that what it was? No, it wasn't sportsmanship. I think it was him just saying, I think it was him just saying,

I think it was him just saying, hey, we'll go for it. And if we miss, our defense has them backed up to their 10-yard line. They're not scoring again from deep in their own territory. Maybe that was it. I don't know what it was. It was interesting. It was strange. But the other things more sort of, I think, not debatable, although I don't think that was debatable.

I just didn't think that their pass protection was very good. I thought that you said Christian held up with the exception of the one. I thought interior-wise, I didn't think Sheriff, I thought Sheriff got blown up a couple of times. West Martin obviously got blown up. I mean, we saw that. That's become a meme already. I thought that their pass protection, I think they schemed around it really well with some real quick throws, and Twain throws under pressure pretty well.

Now, if it's immediate pressure, like within a second and a half, which was one of the plays. Like, if you go back to, I'll give the play. After they missed their field goal, and Washington took over, really good field position, they missed their field goal to go up, whatever that would have been. It was a 53-yarder

after the sack. The dumb sack that went to. Right. A bad sack that he took, exactly, that knocked them from like a 40-yard field goal to a 53-yarder. The first or second-down play after that with good field position, Brandon Sheriff gets run over by McGill.

And literally, if you time it, it's less than two seconds, and Haskins is down. And I thought that was a big opportunity to score off the Miss Field goal. But I just didn't think pass protection was good enough, and I think they're going to have to improve that. Well, you're talking about a really good front. You're also going to talk about a lot of really good fronts because you consistently play really good fronts. And so, yeah, I mean, there was some immediate pressures. There were also some that I thought could have been avoided. I mean, there's a sack that Duane takes where he's taking five steps out of shotgun,

and he's got Sims wide open, and you're like, they're just to throw it. He's there. Hit him out of the break. There's an RPO sack that he takes. You can't take a sack in an RPO situation. I think that was the... I think that was the sheriff's act. Was that an RPO?

I think it was an RPO if I'm thinking... I'll go back and look at that before we do any film breakdown. I'm not sitting here saying, I'm going to put pressure on... It's Dwayne's fault. No, there was some absolute pressures, and there were some place that you would like better protection but if you were to tell me that Geron Christian and West Martin were going to start

and we were going to give up only three sacks in that ballgame, I got to give them some credit, man. Maybe not a ton of time, but you know when you play that team, you're not going to get a ton of time. So I don't know. I thought they did an all right job up front. Yeah. There wasn't a lot to really nitpick from this loss.

The penalties early. You know, I guess Troy Appkin. you really called that one. It was amazing how spot on you were all you were with that call on Friday. But man, you know, after 17 nothing, that was one of those true defensive dominations of a team. You don't see a lot of that in the NFL. You know, we've seen it a couple of times with San Francisco and Baltimore and a couple of the really good defenses in recent years. And Cooley, I don't want to get crazy because it's one game.

and Philadelphia was banged up and they were missing big pieces. But I have this sense that they are just going to be good on defense this year. And good enough to really compete in a lot of these games. They're going to play some good teams. And next week is a challenge in Kyler Murray. And they've got obviously Lamar Jackson in a few weeks. But they also have some teams where, I think a Jack Del Rio and a Rivera with that talent are going to really be able to scheme up a defense that turns people over, too, with the rush that they get.

They're going to end up with some turnovers this year. I think you're exactly right. I found the play, the sheriff play. It was an RPO play. It was. Inman is running a five-step slant. He's wide open. That ball has got to come out.

Even if it's early on the break, you just don't have time in RPO to sit there and say. second guess it's a plant and throw. So either Inman runs a five-step slant, and it should have been a three-step slant. It's hard to say with what they called. Right. And so it could be a little bit on Inman, but it's a slant play that I think he should have been in there. So I'm not going to be concerned about that one.

There you go. There you go. I do think it's a defense that's got some real potential. I mean, my concerns, takeaways from the defense side of this, I thought after the first drive, which was horrendous, I thought they really started to bounce back. But my concern would be, is this a defense that when they don't get pressure on early down and distances has the potential to give up big play? There were a lot of big play opportunities that Went had in that ballgame that he didn't hit.

I mean, I looked at five or six throws that he missed down the field that could have been big plays. He threw a deep end at the Sean Jackson when his clearing route is completely wide open down the middle of the field that he doesn't throw. I didn't love Kevin Pierre-Lewis. I didn't think he was entirely effective in the run game. I just don't see him as a guy that can run with tight ends and play tight ends. I don't care if he has speed. He seemed like a guy that was off-balanced and out of position when he had to play the tight-ins. To me, Cole Holcomb would be.

I love Cole Holcomb. So maybe I'm a little bit of Homer. Holcomb got hurt on a special teams play early yesterday. That's why. But he wasn't going to start. No, you're right. You're right about that. No doubt.

I mean, I think I looked at this earlier. I think, you know, it was the safeties, the two corners, Darby and Morland and KPL that played all of the snaps on defense. you know, and then it was like Chase Young and Payne next, I think it was. It's interesting. Here it is, I just pulled it up. They had 68 defensive snaps. And in looking at the D-line, all right, Chase Young played 53 of them, because we know we're going to see rotation.

Duran Payne played 52. Sweat played 48, and then it's John Allen at 36, ionitis at 30. And then Tim Settle played 15. 16 snaps, and Ryan Anderson had 12 snaps. But interesting that, you know, I don't know, I've had this sense in watching pain that he's the one that could turn into an absolute top three to five player at his position, talent-wise. I just don't see him as a true pass-ratcher.

And now if you want to be a top three-to-five detackling the NFL. You've got to be a Cox or Donald from the inside. You've got to be a pass-rrisher. You just do. I don't think that he can't be. I think that there are times when he's got overwhelming power. And he does have, you talk about that innate, the innate quick. You know the quick twitch thing, I think there are times when you see more quick twitch out of him than I, I and Idaeus or Allen.

But he's got to develop something a little bit more of the past pressure. Well, that said, he played nose all last year in the three-four scheme. so he's going to develop as a four-downy tackle. And there are some things that he's going to get better at. Yeah, I mean, for the most part, man, a couple things at linebacker, a couple things in the secondary where you just don't want to get beat over the top. But for a young secondary and a brand-new defense,

a completely new system, I think you look at this game, and you just think it's huge. You're never going to look back at this score and say, yeah, that was a Philly team that was banged up, though. Right. You look, if you're, like you hoped, five and four, six and four as you get into the midpoint of the season, you're not going to look at the score and go, ah, well, beat them and they were bad.

You know, that was a huge win at home. This is our first home opener that they've won since 2014. It's the first time they've won a division game in their last 10. You know, I'm looking. First I think they'd be a Philly in the last six. This is a massive win. It's a massive stretch of the season. I actually saw a stat today that teams that lose their first game,

their chance of making the playoffs is 24%. That's crazy. Losing your first game and your 24% chance to make the playoffs. That's crazy. That doesn't seem right. It is. I'm looking at some of these snap counts. There are a couple of things that are interesting to me.

Number one, I've already mentioned, just the interior D-Linman, that, you know, it was really pain that had the significant percentage of the snaps. He was on 76% of the defensive snaps, whereas Matt Ionitis was in 44% of the snaps. Allen, 53%. That's interesting to me. The D-Ns, do you know that Kerrigan only played 22 snaps? As good as he was, as impactful as he was, he was only on the field for 22 of the 60s. snaps, whereas Chase Young out there for 53 snaps, Montez sweat out there for 48 snaps.

And even, now, you know, something that I did notice, I saw pain lined up as a defensive end a couple of times. Oh, they went up all over the place. They lined up all over the place, and they did some fun things with some stunts inside as well. And then offensively, for all of the talk about all of the excitement over Gibson, and Gibson got some touches in the game. The first two plays of the game were Gibson rushes. He was only out there for 18 of the 70 offensive snaps in the game.

Right. He's a rookie. McKissick was out there for 31 of them, and Barbara was out there for 29 of them. So there you go. The guy, you know, after the offensive linemen, McLaurin had the most snaps Sims the second month. Logan Thomas, the third most. So there you go.

Sprinkle and Bob, Sprinkle had the second most at tight end, if you're wondering, Logan Thomas had the most. I always like looking at that early in the year because you get a sense of, all right, what did we see in preseason this year, nothing in preseason,

and what are the coaches really think? You know what I mean? Like, okay, so all the beat reporters were telling us that this player was definitely going to start and was going to be out there a lot. What are the, what did the coaches really think? Well, you know, there's no Kendall Fuller defensively. So, you know, you were missing that piece. There was no Thomas Davis defensively either.

So you had some, but, you know, clearly the KPL and the Bostic stuff and the pain stuff, which you kept hearing from the coaches and the defensive coaches, they like those players. They like those players a lot. Anyway, huge one. Hey, the Washington offensive summary on PFF is out. And? Duane was a 52.8. Out of?

I think it's out of 100. Okay. The highest-graded player was Morgan Moses on offense at 81.2. Did you think Moses was good? I did think that Morgan Moses was good. I was impressed by Morgan. Who was the third best? I'll give you the defensive grades.

No one else was great on often. Chase Young had the highest grade on PFF, 86.5. Of any player in the league? No, no. Of any player on the Washington defense. Fabian Moro was 86. After that, the next highest was 69. And that was...

Ryan Anderson, Jimmy Morland, Ronald Darby, Matt I and that it's all right there on 68, 69. Matt I, they hate Matt Ionitis. They graded Matt Ionitis as 68.1. That's not necessarily a C or D, per se. He had a false start penalty. So that's, like, heavily downgraded.

Without that, he's probably 75. Yeah, it's funny. I think what we're going to see all year long is, you know, if Haskins has statistically these kinds of games, that you're not going to get a lot of a positive overwhelming reaction. I thought it was a winning performance by Dwayne Haskins. I did.

I think he came through in the big moments and he was rusty early, but I think he felt the pressure. But I thought Dwayne Haskins was everything that, you know, everything that I like about him was on display yesterday. Would it be better if he were more accurate, if it were, you know, I'd like to see him with a lot of time to throw the, football, but I thought he was fine yesterday. I didn't have any problem with it.

You're going to continue to develop the way he's playing right now. And when you ask, would it be better? Yeah, there are a team that can start to score 25 plus points a game if he becomes more accurate. I know they did in this game, but I'm talking about 25 plus points when you're not getting the ball on the other side of the field, every other possession. Conversely to Duane Haskins, Carson Wentz was graded a 41.3. He was the lowest player graded in the game.

for either team. Wow. That's interesting, too. Don't you think to a certain degree because it's really, I think on some level it's sort of unfair to him. I just didn't think he had a shot in a lot of situations yesterday. I don't think he had much of a shot. Yeah, Carson Wentz was terrible. He was terrible in that game. Actually, I was wrong. Avanti Maddox was the well-fellar, 36. played 61 snaps. Okay. So, yeah, anyways, I just, I thought Wentz was awful. I thought he missed throw after throw and had big play opportunities and didn't make them.

I thought he overthrew receivers in the middle of the field, threw behind receivers. I mean, there was, I think there was a screen that Goddard or hurt that he threw out to the left that would have been about 25, that he threw it right at the feet, almost behind the line of scrimmage. I don't care. He was bad, and they had some drops as well. but that's sometimes how you win ball games. It doesn't matter to me, how banged up Philly was, or if Wenz didn't play the way Wentz is supposed to play. Who cares?

They won. I agree. They won a big game. Let's get one last thought before we talk about the rest of the league for a little bit. It's Kyler Murray, it's Arizona. The Cardinals are seven-point favorites next week. And that came, it seems a little high, but they did beat the four. 49ers.

You know, I watched some of that game on Red Zone. I don't know if you saw enough of it, but, you know, Kyler Murray is a completely different animal, and they've got weapons. DeAndre Hopkins had 14 catches for 151 yards in his first game. And you know who's really good, coolly is Kenyon Drake. Like, he's a real weapon. He was a steel last year when they made that trade. Tyler Murray is a potential MVP candidate.

He was awesome. He had 100 juggerussing in that ballgame. If it wasn't for two knees that he took great. I did watch. I did watch a lot of that game. I think that Arizona, as they grow, they're going to be a pretty good team. I mean, Hopkins changes that dynamic completely.

They do. and then Murray and Drake being able to run the ball. I mean, Kenyon Drake still had 60 yards in that ball game. How about that division? Seattle, the 49ers, the Cardinals, and the Rams. I mean, there's not a better division top to bottom in the NFL. Like, it's not even really close. Like, what would be the other division that's even close?

I think the NFC South is pretty good. Yeah, maybe the NFC North. I don't know. By the way, real quickly, you know, so Kyler Murray did have 100. yards rushing on 11 carries, and they took two knees for minus nine yards. Do you know why was minus nine yards? I actually don't. I don't. For the kneel down, Cliff Kingsbury, just keeps him in the shotgun, and they just snap it to him, and he takes a knee. What do you think about that? That's so weird to see. When you watch high school games, and it's safer.

You think it's safer than being under center and taking a knee? What if the snap sails over his head? How many snaps sailed over his head in that ballgame? I don't care. How many snaps does he take under center? All it takes is one snap over his head deep in their own territory, up four, for him to be under center for the rest of his career? He doesn't take snaps under center. I understand that. If they don't snap the ball, they're not accustomed to that.

It's not something that you used to. I've had this conversation with a lot of high school and college coaches, the end of the game. deal. And all of them say the same thing is we never practice the snap under center. Well, then you know what I'm going to do? And I don't think they did this. I'm going to put somebody behind him. I'm going to line somebody. That actually would be what I would do as well. They do that in the victory formation, the famous victory formation, there's always two players next to the quarterback under center and one player about 12 yards deep. That's right. So if they're going to snap it back shotgun, I'm going to have a player standing five yards behind him.

So if it sails over his head, the other guy catches it, or if he bobbles it or something, the guy can come up and help him and fall on it. I just... They didn't do that? Are you sure they didn't do that? I don't know that, actually. I don't think they did. I remember watching it thinking, wow, that's a little bit dangerous.

You know, I've got the game pass open and in front of me, so I can pull it up real quickly. Let me just see. Here it is. Hold on. Oh, there was the Kenyon Drake run. and here comes the snaps. Hold on. Yes, they have somebody behind.

Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can stop that now. The guy's seven yards exactly behind Kyler Murray. The interesting thing from that game is Jimmy Grapple, terrible. He's Cooley, I'm not a fan.

I'm not a fan. He throws late. He throws inaccurately. He's really inaccurate. I also think he's got some. game or baller to him, but I don't think he's a good like a good throwing quarterback. I think you and I talked about this at some point last year,

and I think someone told me that it talked to one of the Shanahan's or something that actually I know it was, it was from the Shanahan, was that he misses so many throws and he's late, but his release is so quick, almost like the Wayne, a lot of times, that his release is so quick that he gets away with more than you can believe. Right. And so you've got to act yourself as a coach. I mean, you know, is it worth it?

It's not exactly how I drew it up, but man, that release was so fast and he's so talented that he can pull it off. So when it plays over, what do I say? All right. Let's get to the rest of the league after I tell you about my bookie. My bookie right now is a $100,000 survivor pool that began in week one of the season. And I think you can join it now, two. Contestants must select one team to win its game outright. Point spreads are irrelevant. didn't you and I do this on the show

a Survivor pool pick every week for when we had the radio show together? I think we did. Survivor pools aren't easy either. I mean, people that think oh, all I got to do is pick one winner a week. Yeah, but you don't get to pick the same team twice. My bookies we did do that, right?

I don't always do it. I'm doing it right now. You're in a Survivor pool? I have not been in a survival in a while. I was last year I made it to week 13. No one makes it to week 13. I had three guys left. I made it to 13 in law. That's pretty impressive. You should have hedged against that. You should have gotten the rest of the guys together and said, hey, let's just, let's split this thing.

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They'll double your first deposit. Your winning season begins today only at my bookie. My smell test off to a real rocky start. Now, last year I got up to a red heart hot start and finished poorly. I was one three and one yesterday. I had Washington plus five and a half winner. I had the Dolphins plus seven. Cooley, they were deep in New England territory.

And Fitzpatrick does what he does. Like, he'll get you down there, and he'll make a great, a bunch of good plays. Then he threw a pick. And they had a chance to cut 21 to 11 to at least 2114, which would have been a push. Play Greg Menoskey defense. He's placed off the entire game. You know he's going to throw a pick at some point in the red zone.

I had the Jets loser. It's so true. I had the Lions. Blame Adam Gaze for the Jets. He's terrible. I had the Lions in DeAndre Swift, the rookie from Georgia, dropped the touchdown pass. And I had the Bengals plus three,

and they should have won that game, and their kicker missed a kick that would have forced overtime. Tonight I do have the Giants plus six and the Broncos plus three. Let's start with, as we go around the league real quickly and talk about the other games from the weekend from yesterday. Let's start with the cowboy game last night. Did you think that was offensive pass interference on Michael Gallup? Nope.

That was egregious. Terrible call, right? You know what it reminded me of? This was going to be my buddy you got. Jalen Ramsey flips his head back as that tiny push-off comes. It reminded me a mellow tremble when he used to take it to the hole. Oh, my boy remembers mellow. It's so true.

You know what I'm talking about it? Miller would always get to the line. He'd flip his head back every time he'd go to the hoop, and it looks like he was getting fouled. If you watch Ramsey on that play, that's exactly what he did. And I think whoever was, it was called. It was like, yeah, that's a good play there by Ramsey.

Selling it. He did sell it. It's a terrible play. He got beat by Gallup. That was ridiculous. I'm happy the Cowboys lost. I'm always happy for my guy, Sean. But my gosh.

And that's inside of two minutes. So are we not? challenging that? What's the deal there? It was inside two minutes, right? So it's got to go to the booth and they've got to come down and no, no, no, that rules out. That rules out. Remember? They took the rule out. Yeah, that's what I was thinking that during the game. I'm like, they have to be out. Here's one thing. I'll be honest. I was in and out, dozing in and out during this game. But I thought Dallas looked good offensively.

I thought Elliott looked really good. I think they've got a lot of weapons. I think C.D. Lam's a weapon. Cooper's obviously a weapon. Gallup can run. And I thought DAC actually played pretty well. If you watched the entire thing being on the West Coast, maybe it was easier. It's a tough-

It's a tough loss for them. They also had the decision that McCarthy made going for a fourth and one down three in the fourth quarter instead of kicking a field goal with about 11 minutes to go. I think it was a fourth and one, right? It was fourth and three. It was fourth and three. It was not a fourth and three. Yeah. I'm sitting here looking at it right now. That was the dumbest decision of the week. Yeah. Now they had opportunities to win that game. They still had opportunities, and I'm sure that's what he's thinking is we are playing well offensively and we can score. But at the same time, Rams can score.

I would tie the ball game. How awful are the Rams uniforms? What did they do to their uniform mix? There were six new uniforms. They looked gray. I actually liked them. Oh. It looked like basketball summerly uniforms.

Like, hey, just take these guys and wear these during the games. Here you go. These are your practice grade. We forgot to pack the actual game uniforms. so we'll wear the practice great. They were like this weird dull gray, but the blue was so shiny for the numbers. The Rams have had one of the great uniforms

over the years in the NFL. I'm not a uniform guy. I hate the new logo. I think it looks stupid at midfield. That stadium looks beautiful. I just thought the uniforms looked so rag-tag. It just didn't look very good. Enough on that.

Brady's debut. much of that game did you watch? Because I watched a lot of that game. I was, so here, this happened to me. I could not get the Red, the Washington game. I had gotten Hulu, and I was trying to pull it up on my computer. I actually went, I talked to you yesterday. I went to buy on TV. Right. So I didn't have forever trying to get up on Hulu. How'd that work out? didn't have my TV, my TV hadn't mounted yet. On my computer, my Hulu had West Coast games on Fox and CBS. It was into the second quarter when I finally just said,

screw it, put the TV up. And when I've logged into Hulu on the TV, the Washington game was on that Hulu account. Same account. Hold on. Did you watch? I ended up watching, I ended up watching, it took me a little bit longer to finish the Washington game,

but I didn't look at any scores or anything that was going on while I was doing it. So to me, it was real time. So that said, I missed some of the next game. I took a little bit of a break, but obviously I watched the highlights and all of the stuff involved. They should be way more explosive. Tampa should. But the Saints are a good defense. Saints do have a good.

Actually, both the final score is 3423, okay? But in watching that game, I thought both teams were really good defensively, including Tampa. I thought they were really good on defense. They were super aggressive. I don't know how many – I'm going to pull it up right now because I want to see how many times Breeze. Breeze only got sacked once, but, God, he was hurried consistently in that game. Levante David is really a special player to me. Sure is.

They've got so many good players. players defensively, and they've got Todd Bowles. They, their results should have been better yesterday. Brady had a couple of bad interceptions, one terrible interception. There was also an opportunity where they got him back in the game. By the way, I thought he looked great physically. He looked less, he looked thin or thin down. I thought his arm strength looked great. I just thought he made some bad decisions, which may come with, you know, being on the same page with your receivers and a new offense, the whole thing. I'm just going to tell you right now, I know I picked Tampa to win the

Super Bowl last week or to get to the Super Bowl and lose the Kansas City and they lose the opener. I also said on Friday, I think they'll start slowly, but be a team that's playing great at the end of the year. They have too much talent not to be a really good team. And they've got good coaching too. So, yeah, he and Evans were never in sync. That was the thing that was really obvious. Also, Leonard Fornett. Well, Evans was hurt.

He was out there. Yeah, but he had a hamstring big time into this week. So there you go. Evans only had four targets, one catch. Evans was not healthy in that game. So there you go. You know who stinks? Leonard Fournett stinks.

I can't stand for that. He's slow. He looks heavy. They took a risk on him. The year that they had Bordles and they had that defense and, you know, I know he was like top five leading rusher last year. Ronald Jones, however, and I know you really liked him, he's their guy. He's the guy that's got to get the bulk of the carries. New Orleans, on the other hand, there's a play where they use Tassum Hill on a fourth down play or a third down play.

Tampa's defense is fast. but so is New Orleans defense. Both of those teams are good defensively. I think both of those teams are good teams, but I don't know. We'll see. Brady just made a couple of big mistakes. You know, the pick six by Janoris Jenkins was a terrible throw. It was just a non-Bradie kind of throw.

It was weird. I think that's the thing you're concerned about if he continues to get older. He starts to make throws that he thinks he could make that aren't there. I mean, obviously, you see it was a guy like Philip Rivers continuing to make bad throws because he used to be able to make that throw. Yeah. I mean, that's the concern. Does Brady believe he can make throws that he can't make now?

So I didn't see and really didn't follow. Let me mention this before we get to Philip Rivers, because I'm just looking at the games I hadn't planned on getting that. But I know he had a big day statistically, but he also had a couple of back-breaking picks. But, you know, the teams that had the lowest over-under-win totals in Vegas, Washington, Jacksonville, Cincinnati, and Carolina. Washington and Jacksonville won outright, and Cincinnati and Carolina probably should have won outright, but certainly could have won outright, worst case. Jacksonville beat Indianapolis in their opener, the only game yesterday that allowed fans. Gardner Minshu was with Jay Gruden calling...

The game was 19 of 20 for 173 yards and three touchdowns. Oh, I love Gardner Minchew. My Gleach product, man. You get a guy that used to throw in the football, and that's Gardner Minchew. He's going to be a good quarterback in this league. He already is. He's a starter. That was a huge surprise, though.

I thought Indie would be better. I mean, Jack. Frank Wright took a knee. that game before that game. Do you see that? I didn't really pay attention to a lot of the stuff other than stuff before the Washington game with Alicia Keys singing the black national anthem, which she can just sing. She's so good. She's so good. Philip Rivers had two picks through for 363 in the game. They didn't run the ball effectively

enough. And they lose to Jacksonville 2720. It's opening week, but Jay Gruden scheming up offense. It wasn't like, you know, Minchew had through a lot for a lot of yards, but he was 19 and 20. That's pretty good. I actually talked to Jay a couple, maybe six weeks ago now, we sat down and talked a bunch of offense, and it's still his offense, but it was interesting. He said, you know, over the past six years with McVeigh and with Campa and O'Connell and everyone coming through, my language has changed to where it doesn't make sense the way it should. Everything had to be too wordy and too complicated. And he said, with this COVID stuff, all I've did is limit the language of my offense.

It's so good now. It makes perfect sense. Really? I thought that's interesting that Jay really went back and thought of it as an offensive coordinator or as a play caller. And did how I make this make sense? Wow. Mitch Trubisky, who won the job from Nick Foles after they traded for Foles in Chicago

and gave him a new contract. Trabisky is probably about to get benched as he's terrible through the first three quarters, and then he leads three touchdown drives and throws three touchdown passes in the fourth quarter to rally the Bears from a 23-6 deficit to a win over the Lions, a game in which Adrian Peterson rushed for 93 yards for Detroit and also caught three balls for Detroit in that game. But that's a bad loss for Detroit. And Detroit had the game won on a touchdown pass to DeAndre Swift at the end of the game with six seconds left, and he just dropped it, just flat out dropped it right in his hands from Stafford. And, you know, they'll lose.

I felt so bad for him. For Swift? He'll never, that will haunt him. I mean, for the rest of his life. I mean, that was perfect throw right in his hands touch. It was an amazing play call. I kind of turned away when I saw it and then you see the official come in and wave incomplete

rewind you dropped that yeah oh buddy that one is brutal because I thought the lions played well Stafford's really good I like Stafford was last year before he got hurt yeah and Stafford is he's really good he almost threw for 300 in that game and I thought the Lions were balanced against a really good bear's defense.

That's the other thing. Stafford threw for almost 300. They rushed it for 138. AP averaged 6.6 a carry. Yeah. And that's a great Bears defense. The Lions should have won that ballgame. They absolutely fell apart in the fourth quarter.

And they still should have won. Yeah, still should have won. And they would have covered. Typical of a Sunday in the NFL. for me on Twitter. How's your boy Kirk doing? Really good quarter? So anyway, I wasn't paying attention to this game,

but I did very, very early this morning just go through it because I was watching it, the score pop up, and they took their opening drive and scored, and they were up 7-3. This was, just so everybody understands, this was not a Kirk Cousin's loss. And it's not because of his statistical numbers. It was because they could not get the Packers off the field.

at all. I knew this was going to be a problem for them. They don't have to Neil Hunter, their great pass rusher, for the first three games of the year he's on that three-game injured reserve. Aaron Rogers wasn't sniffed. He was 32 of 44 for 364 yards, four touchdowns, didn't get sacked once. The number of pressures, the Vikings had two quarterback hits in the entire game, a game in which Green Bay ran nearly 80 plays. because they couldn't get a stop of the Packers.

Now, Kirk did throw a pick at the end of the first half when they finally got the ball back. And he wasn't the worst pick. He threw it a little bit behind a deep hook. I haven't even seen it. It ended up getting under. It wasn't the worst pick ever. It's one-on-one coverage. The DB makes a – I think it's the I air Alexander who had a safety in the first half.

Yeah, on a corner blitz. Which only eight players in the NFL have ever done in the game makes a good play on that ball. Kirk actually made some good throws. I watched a lot of this game on replay. He had some dimes to feel. You're right, though. Well, Aaron Rogers won was unbelievable.

He was Aaron Rogers again. They couldn't sniff him, but he was moving all over the plate. He was out of the pocket. And he was making throw after throw after throw. He torched Minnesota secondary. And when you look at what he did, I know it's the Packers, you really got to be concerned with what Minnesota has in the secondary. I'm big-time concerns.

They started to have them late last year, even with Xavier Rhodes. Yeah, who played poorly. And a lot of women coverage with things they were doing between Harrison Smith, and remember how many times Harrison Smith was back at Xavier Rhodes. Well, they were doing the same thing against Green Bay in week one. And so for Minnesota, I think I picked Minnesota the Super Bowl. I'm immediately amending that pick. Yeah, I mean.

They're secondary. Not good. I knew they were going to have issues at corner because they've got young players and the older players like Hughes and Holton Hill aren't very good. Their safeties are okay. But without DeNeil Hunter, one of the things that saved them last year was their dominant pass rush. They had a great pass rush and Hunter's out for the first three games.

But do you know that? And this is what I saw this morning because, you know, I'm sitting there watching the Skins game and, you know, paying attention to all the scores as they're popping up. I did not realize until I looked at this. Minnesota in the first half ran 15 offensive snaps before their final three-play drive, which gave them 18, which they were attempting to run the clock out. And then there was a big run that they then got aggressive and ran one more play and they kicked a field goal. 18 snaps. So you're on pace for 36. Meantime, The Packers, during that same stretch, ran 48 snaps offensively in the first half.

That's really hard to do. You know what the end time of possession was? What? 41-16 to 1844. Yeah. To even be that close in that game, and it wasn't ever really close. I mean, every time, the Packers just kept scoring. This game was over after the second quarter.

Maybe the most impressive team of the day was Seattle. Russell Wilson was 31 of 35. Oh my God. For 322 yards, four touchdowns, no picks. That's ridiculous. 31 of 35. Metcalf picked up where he left off Big Day, and they destroyed Atlanta. And I think that NFC West is just going to be fascinating all year long.

Now Seattle's not going to have a home field advantage. You're not going to have that 12th man thing they got going out there. But, man, they're good, and they're a veteran team. I think Seattle really is going to be a very difficult team to deal with this year. That quarterback may be in the prime of his career right now, what, year nine for him? He was so special in that game. He was so good. It's just he's become so much fun to watch play, how fast he operates,

and how he's really gotten such a feel for the game. He's become what Sean McVeigh would call an extension of the offensive coordinator. Yeah. He's in control. It was also a game that Matt Ryan threw for 450. Yeah, but they were down the whole game. I mean, Julio Jones at Honor 50, Ridley at 130, Gage at 114. They have Hayden Hurst, they, Irv Smith.

I think Atlanta could be good. It's just a defense because it's been a problem for a while, which is weird because it's Dan Quinn to think about that, which was the first coordinator when the Seahawks became great. Joe Burroughs debut, 23-36-193 yards in interception. It was a bad interception, but then, and that was when they were in decent shape, down 1613 driving, but they got the ball back, and he got him into field-goal range.

He actually threw a touchdown past AJ Green, but they called offensive pass interference. And then this kicker, bullet comes out and shanks a 31-yarder and then starts running off holding this calf. Like he pulled a calf muscle. I saw that. Yeah, that would do the exact same thing. Oh, man. That is, that's the old, you know, you miss a breakaway layup. And you're like, oh, my God, I turned my ankle going up.

It was. That was my lock of the week. Yeah, well, you pushed. At least. And I pushed, and I'm not going to lie, when he missed a kick, I thought, well, at least I pushed, because who the hell knows what would happen if they went over time? It looked like with the Bengals, it would have momentum. Yeah.

I mean, I thought that the Bengals were pretty meh on offense. I thought they could have been better. They have too many weapons to not be better. The charge of a decent defense. Yeah. I think there was a stat on another here. Some more stats for you. It's the 12th quarterback in however many years.

to start as a rookie, and those rookies are 012 and 1. Sort of been 13. That's really amazing. I heard that stat. I did not. I would have never guessed that. I would have never guessed that. I would have thought somebody would have won, you know, at some point along the way.

Once? Yeah. I know. Burrough certainly had a shot. We'll finish up with a few final thoughts after this word from Liquid Ivy. This is the Athletics. Shield Capadia here to tell you. you about liquid IV. Nobody likes to feel dehydrated. Maybe you get a little bit of a headache,

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servings in response to COVID-19. Products are being donated to hospitals, first responders, food banks, veterans, and active military. Liquid IV is available nationwide at Costco and Target, or you can get 25% off when you go to Liquidiv.com and use code athletic at checkout. That's 25% off anything you order when you use promo code athletic at Liquidiv.com. Get better hydration today at Liquidiv.com promo code athletic. Overall, in watching football with no fans in the stands, I didn't see any of the Jacksonville game. for me cooley on Saturday it was unwatchable now there weren't any good college games either but it was really hard and there were fans in some of the stands in some of the college games yesterday watching the game here in the first half it really did feel different it felt different it didn't feel good watching it even the piped in sound which um you know it wasn't as loud as i thought

it would be, didn't make it feel like you were watching a normal game. Now, I thought the Tampa, New Orleans game sounded more like the real thing. But I did by the end of the night feel like, you know, thank God the NFL's back, and we had a full Sunday of games. And, you know, it was different for sure, but it wasn't so dramatically different that it became something that was hard to watch. I'll be very curious to see what people thought and what the ratings were Saturday was unwatchable for me without the SEC, without the Big Ten, without, you know, some big games, heavyweight games. You would have had Ohio State at Oregon on Saturday night. You would have had Texas LSU, you know, from Austin or from Baton Rouge on Saturday night. But overall, I mean,

yesterday felt like, I think by the end of the day, it felt like an NFL Sunday. I'm glad it's back. I mean, it's some semblance of normalcy. What did you think watching the games? I noticed it much more in the day games, and I never stopped thinking about it watching the Washington game. Although I did like it a little bit because you could hear everything. Yes, you could. You could. You could hear the quarterback's cadence. You can hear all the snap counts.

You can hear all the checks. For me, really trying to see what the quarterback's doing at the line of scrimmage. It made it easy to see that. I love to see that. But I don't think it's – I think it's going to be hard to continue that. I love the Chiefs model where you just had 12,000 fans. $16,000, yeah. $15,000 is what they ended up with.

Yesterday only one venue in Florida allowed that. I don't know what next week is. I guess we'll find out when we get there. Tonight, I know none in New York. I don't know. Actually, I can figure out what the Denver is thing because I kept this list of what the plan was. Denver will probably have some fans.

Denver is allowing none for the season open. opener, none. None. Arizona, Arizona is none for the first two games. So there you go. It's wild. If you can believe this or not, I watched a volleyball game,

a high school volleyball game last week. Why? Indoorse. We want to take our daughter and go do something. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. You took your daughter. I'm just saying, I'm just saying where I'm currently at. Yeah, Wyoming.

The gym was full. It's got to be a different world out there, right? Yeah, it's definitely a different world. And I mean, my daughter's in school, and it's something that they think about every day. I mean, for her in elementary school right now, they check temperature every day on the way in. When they set up lunch, they set up glass panes between every student on every table. Right. They all have glass panes in between their desks.

They wear masks. That's right. Hopefully this ends here, this year sometime. Yeah, please. It's been bad for sports. It's terrible for college football right now. I hate that there's not college football on. It's time to be done, COVID.

It is. All right. We're done for the day. All right. Cooley will be back with me on Wednesday. He will do, yes, the Cooley film breakdown. And what did you and I say to each other last week? We said, God, I hope they're competitive early.

I hope they win some games so people are actually interested in the team. We couldn't have asked for a better opener. Couldn't have asked for a better opening result. I'll talk to you on Wednesday. See you, Kevin. Back tomorrow with Tommy.