The Ringer NFL Show - Biggest Three Games of the Week, Early-Season Injuries, and the 2019 Rams With Aaron Donald | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

We highlight some of the key injuries from Week 1, workshop some hot takes (5:20), and preview the top matchups in Week 2. Then, we talk about Jon Gruden’s hot start and the Chargers' offensive game plan, and preview 'Thursday Night Football' (27:40). Then the guys chat with Aaron Donald of the Los Angeles Rams about utilizing his size, his team's Super Bowl defeat, Sean McVay’s brilliance, and more (52:45). Hosts: Robert Mays, Kevin Clark Guest: Aaron Donald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of the Ringar NFL show is brought to you by CBS Sports HQ. If you follow the pod, you know we love analysis and information. We don't yell at each other. We don't throw out hot takes. We don't be the same topics into the ground. That's how CBS Sports HQ does things too. It's a sports network that streams live 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they're focused on bringing you the latest news, highlights, stats, game previews,

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on your Apple TV, Roku, or Fire TV. It couldn't be easier. So download the CBS Sports app and watch CBS Sports H.Q. Today's episode is also brought to you by 20 Century Fox's new film, Ad Astra. Brad Pitt stars as Roy McBride, an astronaut who travels to the Outer Edge of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence

and our place in the cosmos. Add Astra. In theater, September 20th, the fate of humanity depends on one man. James Gray, you should definitely see this movie. If you haven't seen his other ones, you are certainly missing out. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Robert Mays, joined as always by Kevin. Clark, Kevin, how you doing, buddy?

First record season Thursday. Yeah. How are you feeling? I'm excited. I feel good because I love preparing for this show because it involves a lot of going back and rewatching games and learning some stuff that I didn't see the first time, all that. So I'm excited to dig into it. We're going to do the same format as last year. We're going to start off with some headlines. We're going to get into Take Shop. We're going to do the biggest three games of the week. We're going to talk about- We also have the best player in football on the show today. We also have the best player in football on the show today. We will be joined later by Aaron Donald for a wide-ranging interview that lasted, I don't know, 10 minutes, but it was. It was wide ranging. It was wide ranging. He's the best player in the NFL, so it's good to get him on the show. We'll have that coming up at the end. Before that, though, you got headlines.

The biggest games of the week, take shop. I will geek out. Kevin will give his sneaky truth. And then we will pick our Thursday night winner and talk about that game very briefly. So before we get into all of that, let's start with the biggest headline in the NFL right now. And that is the Antonio Brown rape allegations that came out earlier this week. Here is what we know so far. there was a civil suit filed in Florida by Brown's ex-trainer, Brittany Taylor.

It alleges that during multiple incidents, in 2017 and 18, that Brown sexually assaulted her and also sent menacing text messages after the fact that really kind of seemed to illuminate what might have happened if those sex messages did happen. So that's where we're at right now. He has not been suspended. He is currently playing for the Patriots. It seems like the commissioner's exempt list is a possibility. it's been in other cases in the past that have been a little bit unsettled at that point. So we really don't know what else to say at this current juncture. He is slated to play.

And until Patriots put out a statement earlier this week saying the NFL will conduct an investigation. So Kevin, I don't know if you want to say anything else about this, but it seems like that's where we're at right now. And I'm not sure what else there is to kind of get into right now before anything else happens. The commissioner's exempt list is an interesting situation here because in the past, those have been criminal investigations or pending charges. You know, I think that everyone learned about the commissioner exemplist when it was first really used, which was in 2014 when you had a string of league-wide domestic violence incidents. That would be Ray Rice and then Greg Hardy, Ray McDonald was involved there. Adrian Peterson at one point.

Adrian Peterson later on. Adrian Pearson later on. And so this is separate from that because it's a civil lawsuit. Because, I mean, this is a player who joined his new team, you know, on Monday and this news came on Tuesday. It is a very, very strange situation from a football standpoint because it's just he practiced on Wednesday. We didn't know if he was going to practice. We don't know if he's going to play on Sunday or even if he, you know, even. regardless of this stuff, it would have been a strange process to get him ready for Sunday.

So what happens on Sunday? I don't think we're going to know anything before actives or inactives come out on Sunday. Do you agree? Yeah, I feel like we're going to have to wait for any more clarity on the situation on a lot of different levels. I do not. I truly do not know what the Patriots will do. And I don't think there's any use in speculating exactly where they're going to come from. because we've seen them, this is a completely different situation from anything they've been involved in from a getting ready for Sunday type of aspect.

Yeah. Again, there's not a lot that we can kind of untangle right now. And we'll know more as it goes forward. We'll talk about it more as more information comes out. As we see what the Patriots do, I'm sure we will address it on Sunday, you know, depending on whether he plays or not. But until then, we're going to get to some of the other news of the week. A lot of it is injury related, Kevin. you know, we had several kind of bigger name injuries that happened during week one. We can start with Malik Jackson, you know, a pretty high profile addition for the Eagles in the off season after he was cut by the Jaguars. His Liz Frank injury will put him out for maybe the entire season, most likely the entire season. He's on IR. He's on IR and it's unlikely he'll return with that sort of injury. So you're looking at kind of a dicey scenario with Philadelphia now because even though they have depth at that spot, you know, Timmy Jernigan slots in, it's totally.

understandable. They signed Akeem Spence on the 19th to, what day is it right now? The 12th. So, I mean, it was August 19th. They signed him at some point after he was released by Miami. So, you know, they have depth at that spot. But one of the issues for Philly coming into this season was they didn't have much depth at their defensive end positions, which was kind of counterintuitive when you consider how the team was built in recent years. They were really relying on this interior pass rush in a way they haven't before. And even though Brandon Graham and Derek Barnett were both excellent on Sunday, you still kind of wonder if one of those guys goes down

and this interior pass rushes and what we thought, what's going to happen to this defense? Yeah, I mean, the thing I look at it from the Eagles perspective is we sat on this podcast a week ago, they had the deepest roster in the NFL. The reason you get a deep roster is because you get guys like Malik Jackson for $10 million a year. You get those sort of luxury items

that other teams don't have. When you start losing those guys, you get closer and closer and closer to be. just another roster. And so, look, I think they looked pretty good, certainly in the second half against the Redskins, but I think that there's, I think the Malik Jackson injury is a real worry going forward.

Yeah, especially because it seems like there was some question marks in the secondary, especially early in the game. The Redskins had some shot, like real shot plays that were available to them. LeClorne scored on the first one, and then he had another one that probably could have been another touchdown if Keenham didn't miss it. So with a secondary being unsettled,

and now the depth being somewhat of a concern on the inside. It's something to monitor going forward. I think they'll be okay, you know, one or two more injuries and things start to get pretty problematic. All right, Tyreek Hill set to be out four to six weeks with a clavicle injury. We talked a little bit about it on Sunday. He was forced to go to the hospital just because it was kind of a unique injury. Again, I think both of us feel like they're going to be okay. You slot Hardman in there with the way that Watkins looked. I just feel like this is a team that was set up to lose a guy on offense, I mean, even if it's a guy that really takes the top off the defense, because they have

so much speed elsewhere. Yeah. We'll see how long the injury is. It was obviously extremely extended to any circumstances as far as him having to stay overnight in the hospital. Again, this goes back to what something that Brett Beach told me last month. I said, mentioned this on Sunday's podcast, mentioned it again. There are not a lot of quarterbacks who can take advantage of four three speed.

Patrick Mahomes is one of those guys. You can throw the ball 80 yards in the air. He can do this stuff. So you plug in hard. in the short term, things can still happen with him. This is not a reason to panic, and I think that the offense will be fine without him.

I agree. And fine, I mean, when I may say fine, I mean fine. I don't think they're going to score, you know, I think that he will, Hill's injury will hurt, but they're not going to start scoring, they're going to become the Bears. When you look at their chief's offense,

you think of Hill as this speed element that takes the top off and kind of changes the geometry of how the rest of the defense works, right? It's similar to having a great three-point shooter. I've made that analogy many times. The difference, though, is that Hill has that Steph Curry element to him where he does the things a small guy doesn't normally do on top of changing that geometry. He's an excellent jump ball contested catch receiver.

So even if you have a guy that can shape the defense how you want with the speed, you still aren't going to have those shot plays available to the same degree because I don't think Nicole Hardman is a type of player that can make the contested catches that Tyree Kill has in the past. How many players on the Chiefs are we going to compare to Steph Curry? I only compare one to Steph Curry. That's always the analogy I make. No, but I think the most, I meant we, the broader we, which is everyone, including

myself, compares Patrick Mahomes to Steph Curry. Oh, that's interesting. Are we going to do it? Because I always think about speed and shooting is very similar. So that's the comparison that I've always made. Sure. I'm going to compare Chris Jones and Steph Curry. All right.

Let's stay in that division with a team that, Jesus. Christ, man. The Chargers are fucking cursed. I mean, I just can't, I made the joke yesterday. It's like 20 years from now, Philip Rivers is still going to be the starting quarterback and every single guy on that team is just going to be crumbling in front of him. I said, Henry, remember when I didn't know if Antonio Gates was on the Chargers and then just said, just give it a minute? Yeah, he'll be there. Yeah, in 20 years, Rivers is going to be the quarterback and Antonio Gates is going to trot out of retirement in week three. It's just nuts. So here we are, again, Hunter Henry has a broken leg and he will be out indefinitely. He's on IR. He may not be back

this season. So we're talking two years in a row where the starting tight end that was going to be a huge part of their passing offense is gone by the second week of the year. Last year is in the preseason, now it's after week one. I mean, this team cannot catch a break. I mean, it's just nuts. It upsets me from Hunter Henry standpoint. For sure. Me too. I feel bad for the guy. It reminds me of Tyler I mean, it's just such a terrible thing to have to deal with every single year when you have these fluke injuries. I'm with you. This is his fourth season. He had, he played 15 games and 14 games and now he's going to play zero and one games. And it's unfortunate because I think he could have been such a dynamic player in this particular version of the Chargers. And, you know,

now all of a sudden, don't have Melvin Gordon. As you said, you know, the injury bug has been just incredible this year, Darwin James. It is, at this point, I'm, I'm, I'm, very, very, very close to cancel in the Chargers. I thought they looked really good on Sunday. I just, I forget how well coached they are offensively. Absolutely. And I think Philip Rivers is a great, great, great quarterback. I think he's an elite quarterback.

But at some point, you just don't have a roster. Yeah, it's, yeah, there's a point of no return. And I think that with the offensive line, we're very close to it. And if you start losing a couple weapons, then, yeah, man, it gets real dicey really quick. Okay. Again, staying in the AFC West, Jonathan Abram. is going to IR with a shoulder injury. That defense looked pretty darn good

against the Broncos for stretches of last week. And this is a problem because I don't know what they're going to do. It seems like safety is a deep spot for them because they had Abram, Joyner, and Carl Joseph. But Marcus Joyner is their slot cornerback. So how does this work then?

Do you move Joyner to free safety when you're in nickel situations and you move like Daryl Worley inside and had Trayvon Mullen the rookie come in on the outside, he struggled when Garyon Conley wasn't playing last week. So I don't know what the answer is here. And we talked about this all offseason that having a deep flexible secondary

is the number one element of any defense at this point. And they just lost a huge piece in that. Yep. I mean, the flexible secondary thing, it's really interesting to me. I asked Dan Quinn in the preseason what defense is due to catch up with offenses. He says, you know what they do?

everything, there's so much at the line now on offense that you basically need to be as adaptable pre-snap as they are. And that's kind of what fascinating to me is now is just the cat and mouse game to sort of figure out how to do that. And having, as you said, a deep and flexible secondary is a huge, huge step towards that. So huge loss for the Raiders, I think that, you know, coming off that win, which we'll get to in a few minutes about the Raiders. But yeah, It's a tough one. I just don't, I think that the Raiders Young Corps, I'm idly intrigued to see what they look like, and this hurts.

Yeah, you'd like to see that defense healthy because this is the best part of their defense is what they have on the back end. I think the past rest still has questions. I think there's still questions at linebacker, even with Perfect playing well last week. So this hurts. I mean, this is a blow to them for sure. Let's get to one last bit of semi-late breaking news here. The Jets quarterback is apparently a 14-year-old junior high student who was making out with someone at a party. This is unbelievable. Sam Darnold has mono and he will miss multiple weeks.

Dude, can we talk about how Twitter briefly became just a clearinghouse of people just saying I had mono once? Yeah, it was great. What was that? It was like two hours of people would be like, well, when I was 17, it's like, okay, we got it. Did you ever have mono? No. No, I never did either. It sounds terrible. I was lucky to escape my, uh, my adolescence without ever having to deal with it. Sam Donald, not so lucky. I mean, he's almost. an adolescent still. So, I mean, the jokes about how he might have gotten this are funny. But from the Jets perspective, this is brutal.

Well, he might be out to week five. Yes. So they're biased in week four. And it seems like from what Gase was saying that that's kind of the plan right now. And you bring in Trevor Simeon, but I mean, we're two weeks into the season, man, this season that was supposed to be sort of promising for the Jets. And this shit has already gone off the rails. I just being a Jets Metz and.

Knicks fan, like our boss, Sean Fennacy is. I just cannot even imagine that life. We got a lot of those around the ringer. Yeah, it's not what you want. I'm going to talk about the Jets a little bit in Take Shop, but this is, this is just as bad as it gets. Because the expectations for Darnold, especially around Jets fans, were so, so, so high. And reasonably so. Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest disconnect.

I had a lot of Jets fans just oddly mad at me over the off season. And I think the biggest disconnect is, with this. that fan base, there were two things that I disagreed with them on. It was just sort of, we weren't speaking the same language, and that's why I was sort of confused what their arguments were. But I got it after a while. It was that, A, they thought a lot of them thought Love Yon Bell was just an awesome signing, which there's a case he made for the money that they paid him that it was.

But, you know, we've, we're not going to do running back value again, but like, come on. Yeah, it was fine. It was fine. And they also, there was just this incredible sense of optimism that Darnel was going to get to the tippy top of the elite of quarterbacks. And I just, I thought that maybe, I mean, who knows, but not, not really. Like, I just didn't see that coming. But it's certainly not coming if you're out for three weeks with fucking mono.

And you're trying to figure out a new system and settle in your time. I just want to say, I've been trying. I don't really curse on this show. It's sparing. And I tried to certainly never do it. And this story just made me do it. And the Jets. The Jets.

I wish I had that level. of self-control. Unfortunately, I do not. All right, let's move on. We could talk about that for way too long. Let's get to take shop. The Jets are both. Both. Let's get to Take Shop. If you're unfamiliar with the segment, this is a take that we're working on. We're tinkering with it. We're not sure if it's all the way there yet, but it's in process. So, Kevin, why don't you kick us off this year? All right. It is a continuation of this Jets conversation. I want to read this tweet from Andy Vasquez, beat writer out there. So Sam Darno out and definitely with Mono. Levion Bell is getting an MRI on his shoulder.

He is out of practice. C.J. Mosley with a groin. Quinn and Williams with an ankle not practicing. And the Jets have already lost starters, Quincy Anoula and Avery Williamson for the season. It's week one and a half of the Jets. Is there a case to be made that this is, again, this is take shop. We're just throwing it out there and then we're going to workshop it.

is there a case to be made that this is just going to be the beginning of the end of Adam Gase's terrible tenure in New York? The reason I would say that that's possible is because they hire Joe Douglas and because now the power structure has changed since Adam Gase got there, it would not shock me if after a disaster season he were fired. I think that also, I will say this,

I think that this sort of injury bad luck, and I guess you call it injury bad luck with Sam Donald's mono, But certainly if Lev Bell has a shoulder, if Quina Williams and can't play, C.J. Mosley can't play, whatever. I do think there's a situation in which that helps him, especially with Darnold. Sure. Especially with Darnold because his whole thing was, let's fix Sam Darno, or not fix Sam Darno, but let's get him to the elite of quarterbacks. If he's sick for three weeks and then doesn't really regain the weight and isn't himself, maybe you give him a mulligan and bring him back another year and give him maybe higher expectations. I can see this going either way.

Yeah, I could see it going either way. I think that if they go two and 14, there is a lot of justification to get rid of him. And there's reasons to do it because one, like we said, the power structure has changed. And two, they're a team in this weird limbo where they're not very good, but they've spent all their money. I mean, they have $6 million in cap space after trading for Demarius Thomas. So it's not as if they're this rebuilding team that can have a lot of patience and whatever the results are. They're the Texans with more draft picks. They're the Texans with more draft picks and a way worse team.

Yeah. So, yeah, I don't. I'll be curious to see how it ends up working out. Oh, definitely a worst quarterback. DeShon Watson's one of the best quarterbacks in the league. Sam Dron was not that yet. I don't know why I said probably there. Yes, he's definitely a worst quarterback.

I think I was PTSD from that weekend where I got ratioed by Jets fans for saying they're going to waste Sam Darnold. It was so weird. I, if the Browns can't get it together this week, man, that they have serious problems. I mean, Miles Garrett was really good last week. I thought their pass rush was really good last week against a team that used a ton of max protect, things like that to kind of slow them down.

I feel like against that Jets offensive line who got kind of beat up by Buffalo last week, this could be a problem day for Trevor Simeon. Oh, this could be a problem day for Trevor Simeon. This is the one. This is the week where Trevor Simeon may not play well. I loved Roger Sherman's tweet earlier today about how. Trevor Simeon, Northwestern star Trevor Simeon, who had more touchdowns and interceptions in 75% of his college seasons.

You love to see it. Northwestern quarterbacks are just oddly just around a lot. It's great. Mike Kafka is going to be the new Andy Reid in five years. Oh, man. There's a couple of of them that have, like, bounced around for longer than you would have thought. All right.

Let's get to mine. After kind of observing the league over the last couple days and kind of taking stock of everything. I think that with the Cowboys offense, the way it looks right now, they might be the second best team in the NFC. Behind the Philadelphia Eagles. But behind the Eagles. I know the Saints played well. The Saints played very well on Monday. You know, they're dangerous. They're very complete. I was not impressed with the Rams. I don't think the Rams played very well against Carolina. I think they got several breaks in that game. Okay. I think they did as well. You think they played, they didn't play that well. I agree with you. They did not play that well.

But keep going on your point, then I'll get to mind. I think that the number one question I had about Dallas was whether they could really lock into a modern offense that unlocked every single person on their offense. And I think they have. When you look at their approach during

that game, it's as drastically different from what it was last year as you can possibly be. They used 25.8% more pre-snap motion than they did last season on that, like for the entire year. Dax's play action rate was 46.9%. That includes a lot of RPO's everything else, but on those plays, he was 14 of 15

for 13.8 yards per attempt. Inject that right into my bloodstream. This is the exact type of offense I love, and to see them use it with a lot of good players is awesome. I understand the Giants part of this, but I still feel like, to me, the approach was the most important thing, and I just think their roster is,

loaded. All right, tell me that they beat the Giants and it doesn't matter. No, I'm not going to tell you that because then my Lamar Jackson,

like thoughts are illegitimate. If you can beat an NFL team like that, you're good. Yeah. Again, I want to go back to what I said on Sunday. With the dolphins in particular, you had Minkafets,

Patrick there, Zavian Howard. They weren't an AAF team. Like, this is not, and the Giants are even better than that. I'm not saying the Giants are the 85 bears here,

but what I am saying is that their defense has NFL players and the ability to do that is good. I mean, the helplessness on offense or with the Giants is just like the quarterback position. Everything else is like NFL kind of replacement level or better. With the Cowboys, it's a few different things. It's the offense, which again, on every single level, the just even small stuff, not even crazy RPO play action motion stuff.

There was a play in the third quarter where they had like a third and seven and they had a bunch formation on the right and they released Cobb late from it and got a nice little man beating route on third and seven for a first down. They never used to do that stuff. They never used to use formation and alignment and receiver splits to their advantage. It's little tiny incremental improvements that are really nice to see. And when you combine that with align and the receiver talent that they seem to have right now with Gallup becoming the player that he is, when you look at teams that are set to regress. To me, the most important things to do if the roster is pretty stagnant and pretty

similar is improve yourself schematically, which they've done, and it's to get steps forward from your young players. For Gallup to look like he did, for Jordan Lewis to play as well as he did, stuff like that, I just think makes this team really frightening. Okay, so here was actually the point I was going to make. The Rams did not look as good as they had looked in last year's playoffs or whatever. but I want to address just week one in September in general. The Rams essentially do training camp with no preseason games.

They've kind of perfected the load management thing. I actually asked Aaron Donald about this later in the show. Not that we don't just have that live. I'm not suggesting we pre-recorded the Aaron Donald interview, but if we did, I did ask him about the load management stuff, something I talked to coaches all training camp about. But I think that it is really hard right now. And I know that I said this about the Patriots and the Patriots just paste to the Steelers.

It is really hard to figure out what elite teams are going to look like in midseason in September because of the way to this training camp and the preseason. I agree with you. The Cowboys look really freaking good. The Cowboys look like a playoff team. I think that Kellyn Moore, as we've talked about, I've had a journey with Kellyn Moore to the point that now in preseason I was pretty hyped about him. where as maybe I wasn't excited about the hire in general to begin with. But I think that there is some real promise there. I think that I agree with you.

They are, they have a chance to be in the elite of the NFL. But I'm withholding judgment on any and all sort of teams we've seen at the elite level in the past couple years until, you know, Halloween. Yeah, it's week one. And it's take shop. I mean, it's just, obviously there's some holes you can poke on this. But, I mean, it's at a certain point, you know, it's, The games all matter, and there's only 16 of them, and they looked phenomenal.

I'm not taking week one victory lapse here, but I will say that the Kellynmore higher and the Kellynmore plan and everything I thought about it coming in, I was pumped about, and it was exactly what I wanted to see. I mean, this dude is just doing Chris Peterson stuff with an NFL offense and with an NFL offense that has a ton of talent. So I'm excited about it moving forward. We'll see what happens with the Rams, the Saints, the entire kind of power structure in the NFC, but I feel like a weekend,

Dallas definitely deserves mention. Before we move on, let's take a quick break. Today's episode is brought to you by floor and decor. Don't miss out. Floor and decor is the only one-stop flooring shop that keeps general contractors, flooring specialists, and renovation experts ahead of the game.

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That's floor and decor.com. Have you ever had to miss a football game because you couldn't get somewhere to watch it? I know that happens to me all the time. You're kicking around on a Thursday night, you're trying to see friends, you have plans with family, and you just can't find a place to watch a game.

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just have sports either. You can also get 24-hour news from all the major outlets, over 100 exclusive music channels, and all your top podcasts, especially the Ringer NFL show and all of our other podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. For a limited time, go to tune in.com slash ringer NFL to get tune-in premium for 50% off. It's half off, guys. It's tunein.com slash ringer NFL. Take live sports,

music, news, and podcasts wherever you go with tuning. Let's get to our biggest three games of the week, and we will start with the NFC championship game rematch that will be

happening in Los Angeles. We talked about it a little bit, you know, just now. I think that the Rams had an uneven start. Coming in, I thought that they would be a different sort of team

when you think about their offensive approach. They used a ton of 10 personnel in that game. A lot of four receivers. I thought it'd be more too tight ends, but golf was shaky. He did not have a good game and missed a lot of throws. I thought McVeigh's game plan against Carolina and the second half especially was very good.

The types of play action stuff they were using everything else. A lot of screens to get chunk plays when it was like second and 20 to kind of chew into down and distant situations. In a lot of ways, they were the team that I thought. But again, I thought their offense looked rusty and they're playing a Saints defense that looked, you know, pretty darn good moments against the Texans and then pretty damn bad in others. Hey, I want to address this. Where do you come down on Saints fans just still being extremely mad about the NFC championship camp? I'm okay with it.

Yeah, me too. No, I'm okay with it too. Go ahead. Yeah. If you, I mean, if you're a game away from the Super Bowl and you have legitimate title aspirations and that's ripped from you for a reason that you can't control and is, you know, total bullshit to be frank, I can imagine being pissed off a year later. I also think it was insanely cool that they didn't watch a Super Bowl in mass and that

New Orleans was, which is by. the way, when you look at the ratings for both college and pro football, New Orleans, usually number one. It's the best football city in America for the NFL outside of Green Bay. Those are the two to me. They were the lowest. I actually would throw Cleveland in there. Cleveland's a good one.

I think Pittsburgh is probably in that conversation too. But I've always been blown away when I'm in New Orleans, all the different types of people who are just massive saints. Sure. I do think part of that is geography because their stadium is right downtown. Yeah. So you get to see a bunch of, when you go. to a different stadium and it's just like five miles outside the city center, you're not going to

see anybody but the fans who are in their jerseys. Whereas when you're in New Orleans, it is such an amazing thing because you can just go through the entire town and see all the people excited for the same game game. It's in my opinion, it's not even just like the game day and all that stuff. It's when I'm there for the week and I'm just out somewhere working or like grabbing a beer somewhere at the end of the day and just having conversations with people and just all the types of people who, from every industry, from just, it's interesting. It's a very interesting fan ecosystem that I think is really different than a lot of

places around America. The one thing I will say about Cleveland is, they are like that when the team is like one, one and 15. Sure. Which is, by the way, kind of often. There was a moment,

I don't know if I told the story, there was a moment in Cleveland when some of the national guys were like, is this training camp attendance normal? Because it was so full for Baker and Odell's first day this year. that, and the bronze guys were like, yeah, it's totally normal. Like when they were 2 and 14, there were still thousands of people watching the first day of training camp when it was basically just Joe Thomas. I think that's fair.

Yeah, the Browns fans are, and they've come out. They have stuck by a lot of shit. So I think they definitely deserve mention. I want to get you excited. I want to get you excited. All right. Have you seen the, the PFF grades or just the general play? Because I've seen both of the Saints offensive line.

It was awesome. I wanted to talk about that a little bit. Ryan Ramcheck was fantastic against Watt the other day. And I think that he's definitely going to be in the conversation with Swartz as the best pass blocking right tackle in the league by the time the season's over. I mean, he was phenomenal. He's definitely a sending player. He's going to be the highest paid right tackle in the league sometime soon whenever he gets extended. The thing that jumped out to me, though, that's not surprising.

What was surprising is how excellent they were communicating with a rookie center. They were passing off stunts and just, really able to handle everything thrown at them. And it's the exact opposite of what happened with the Bears who have a first year starting center. They had some issues up front. And I just think it's a testament to how well they're coached and to just how much talent they have up front.

And I think that this is a Rams pass rush that looked pretty decent at times against Carolina. Fowler had a decent game. Obviously, you're dealing with Donald. But if there's a line in the league that can deal with that right now, it's the Saints. Yeah, it was the first game in JJ Watts' career that he didn't have a sack or a quarterback hit. or a tackle.

That's impressive. I mean, it's, Bree's getting the ball out. I don't care how fast he's getting the ball out. That's impressive. That's impressive.

So, I'm excited to sort of, I'm going to turn into you this weekend and the inner play between the Rams defensive line and the Saints offensive line is really, really intriguing to me.

That's one of the things we asked to talk about Aaron Donald a little bit later is just, just to sack Breeze or to get pressure on Breeze is very hard. Obviously, his ability

to climb the pocket. He's, there's a reason that he's under six feet tall and has existed and been generally as healthy as he has been since he tore his Rotator Cup over a decade ago. So I cannot wait to see this sort of game within the game as far as that goes. You know, I think that the Rams offense is still work in progress to me. It goes a little bit back to what we talked about a couple of minutes ago with the preseason stuff. But, you know, I still like I still like the running situation. I still think that Malcolm Brown can kind of plug some holes at golf can't.

So I'm, I think. And Gurley was good last week. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He's on a pitch count. He's on a pitch count. But even though Sean McVease is not on a pitch count, he's on a pitch count. Their running game was good.

I think that the Saints probably win this game, though. Were you on that? I think it's going to be really close. I mean, the Rams at home, I feel like they absolutely could win this game. I think they're both really good teams. The Rams were underwhelming last week, but I definitely think that it's going to be close. Do you think the Saints are going to make the playoffs yet? I don't know.

I thought Carolina looked okay. We'll talk about that when we make our Thursday night pick, but Carolina got some bad breaks in that game. Two ridiculous fumbles inside their own territory. The Rams recovered all of their fumbles. I mean, just little tiny breaks one way or the other, and that game goes differently. I thought that Carolina's defense had some moments.

We'll talk about Cam. I think when we're talking about the Thursday night game, there's some concerns there. But I absolutely think Carolina is in the mix to win that division still. I mean, you lose an opener to the team that went to the Super Bowl last year from the NFC. That's not necessarily the worst thing in the world. Yeah, I agree. One other little matchup thing that I'm going to be watching during this game,

the best player on the field defensively for the Rams against Carolina was Corey Littleton. Yeah. He was awesome. And McCaffrey had a nice day as a receiver, but for the most part, that stuff was coming outside the numbers when he was lined up as a receiver, like as an actual receiver. There was an angle route they ran, I think, in the third quarter. that was designed to really take advantage of Littleton in space, and there was just nothing going.

Cam missed with the throw a little bit, but I still think he would have made the tackle without much yards after catch. So now he deals with Camaro, which is its own sort of special challenge, but if last week is any indication that he's really developed into an excellent coverage player, and he's going to be able to hold his own,

which is impressive because most guys cannot. I'm really excited about this game. Yeah, me too, man. It's going to be a really fun one. Another one that I'm very much looking forward to, Vikings Packers. Both defenses looked awesome last week. I had a really interesting conversation yesterday. I talked to David Bactiari for a little while for a story,

and we started talking about them settling into this new offense. And the way that Everson Griffin looked and the way that DeNeal Hunter looked against the Falcons, they're going to be something to deal with. And not only was Rogers in the same offense for a really long time, but Bacchari was too. And so were most of that offensive line, Balaga's, been there forever. And Bakhtiari had settled in so much to a certain type of offense where it's shotgun, it's three step, it's five step, and he can kind of understand exactly where Rogers is going

to be, what the timing is, how defenders are going to react to everything they do. And so along with Rogers figuring this offense out, the rest of those guys are too. And it's a very different sort of approach than they've had in the past. And you kind of have to retrain your mind. And he was great against the bears and he's going to be great all the time. but I thought that was a really interesting observation. Did the Sunday night game, seeing what you saw, I'm sorry,

the Thursday night game, excuse me, seeing what you saw from the Packers defense and knowing that eventually Aaron Rogers will figure it out on offense, did that change anything about the way you view them as maybe contenders or something bigger

than just the NFC North? It didn't because I was really excited about their defense coming into the season. Oh, so was I. That's why I picked them to win the division. Yeah, that's, wait, no, no, no, sorry. We'll pick them to make the playoffs

over the Bears. I picked them to win the division in large part because I thought the defense would be really good. And you were excited about the Zadarius Smith signing. I thought he was a good player. I just feel like that's the type of free agent move that can often backfire because a player steps into a different role than he's filled in the past. And it was encouraging to me to see Petton use him inside so often in nickel situations. They would put both the Smiths on the same side. And I love that.

I just think that that's a really good understanding of your personnel. And when you combine all the games they were running up front and how successful they were getting after the quarterback with the talent they have on the back end now, with Savage coming in as a rookie, Amos, obviously, Alexander being a budding superstar. I just think that they have the personnel and the coaching staff and the right game plans at this point to be a really dangerous defense. So we're going to see the Vikings have a much stouter challenge than they did in week one for sure. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that the Falcons defense was much of a challenge. No. I mean, they ran all over them. And I do not think that's going to happen with Did you see Zimmer's quote about like,

they were like, why did you run so much? He was like, well, we just wanted to keep running the clock. Like, I don't know. Like, we was going fine. You don't need to pass. It's his, that is his ideal game. If every game could go like that, he would want to do. I also think they just wanted to get the game over with

because they were winning by 28 points after. Understandable. I mean, they're not going to, they're going to throw up more than 10 times on Sunday. I can ensure you that. Yeah. Yeah. Jeez.

other the I also think this is again getting back to the kind of rookie center thing Bradbury was kind of a mess last week against Atlanta. Grady Jared had a big game now he's going up against like we said a Packers front that's confusing that plays a lot of games they use a ton of like

bare fronts covering everybody up I think that they could probably do the same thing against Minnesota because they wanted to run that they really want to run the ball I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a similar kind of three three five five man fronts and I think that's going to be another significant hurdle for a rookie center to get over.

Hey, do you think Mike Patton could be a head coach again? I think that he absolutely could. I agree with that. He was one of the people that I mentioned when kind of one of the side tragedies of the Brown's kind of decade in hell was that there were so many coaches who just cycled through there, or GMs in some cases, who just cycled through there and then their careers were ruined afterwards. And so Patton having to take a step back, go back to B.C., I think,

that he's rebuilding his resume. I think that defense will be really good. I don't think it'll happen in 2020, but a couple years from now. I think it's going to be a defensive battle. I honestly do. And, you know, the Packers obviously had a pretty hard time with the Bears.

It's not getting any easier. You know, this Vikings defense looked excellent against Atlanta. Anthony Harris was phenomenal. I'm curious to see if he can sustain that because if he can and Rhodes continues to look, you know, not quite like his 2017 version, but something closer to it than he was last year, watch out.

This group is really talented and really well coached. Are we not, we're not talking about the Bears at all of us this week? No. Why would we? Well, no, no, no.

So I need to run this report, the Chicago Tribune report passed you. Now, if you saw it this one. Okay. It was last night. Concerns about Mitch Trubisky's confidence in his ability to steady a rocking boat. Well, the listener needs to hear it.

I read it. And also, you need to hear it again. Thanks, bud. Concerns about Trubisky's confidence and his ability to steady a rocking boat are very real inside Hall. It's incredibly weird to say, but a week two road game against an ordinary opponent suddenly feels much heavier than it should. Next tweet, the current worry about Trubisky's headspace has created angst about what might happen if others begin to lose confidence in him.

Robert Mays, are you losing confidence, Mitch Chubisky? I wasn't sure if I wanted to make this public or admit it. I may, I've already been starting to consider what could happen in the offseason and what they may have to do. Why wasn't this your take shop? Because I wasn't quite I wasn't even quite ready to throw it out there yet. Like, all right. So we're doing double take shop.

I know we're doing the NFC North discussion right now. So give us this tape. I don't even know if I want to get into this right now. You've already gotten it. Craig is not taking this out. Craig's moving this to the top of the show. He's giving me a thumbs up right now. They're up against the cap next year, like way up against the cap.

He, his $9 million salary next year is guaranteed. So it becomes a little bit, you know, the wiggle room does not really exist if you want to try to move on from him. But they can free up a decent amount of cap space. You know, the cap's obviously going to go up. I think that they can probably get to $20 million fairly easily with cuts that are logical. If that's the case, who is possibly available? A guy like Ryan Tannahill, a guy like Case Keenum, a guy like Andy Dalton, would you consider those players an upgrade over Mitchell Chubeskyy? I would say the answer is yes.

Yeah. If he continues to play like this, this is all hypothetical. If he gets better, which I think he can be against worse defenses, as that offense kind of settles in, they were completely out of sorts last week. This is all an overreaction. But I definitely started to think about if you're on the timeline that you're on with this roster, and next year is pretty much the last year you can keep it together financially, do you owe it to yourself to make sure that you go get a quarterback that can sustain you as a contender? I started thinking about it for the first time. Again, I know it's premature,

but it definitely crossed my mind for the first time this week. The natural conclusion of this podcast in 2020 is Andy Dalton leading the Bears over Aaron Rogers and the NFC North. I would kill for Andy Dalton right now. The way that Andy Dalton played against Seattle last week, the way that he played for a long time last year, I would definitely love to see Andy Dalton

as the quarterback of the Bears versus what they have now. 100%. All right, let's get back to the games. All right. Our last game, a game that, you know, it doesn't have the same cachet as the other two do, but a game that we're very excited about. Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson, Cardinals Ravens, let's do this, man. So, I want to, Warren Sharp had some good numbers.

He usually does, friend of the pod. The Cardinals introduced the air raid and went four wide on 67% of offensive plays and went 76% pass from 10 personnel. Yeah. Now, let's be clear. The funny thing that the sharp goes on to detail is that the success rate on the past is actually not that high. No, but when they ran from it, they average 5.2 yards were carrying. It's almost as if running is more about how you set up a defense than it is about having these big hulking dominant offensive alignment all the time. Yep. And meanwhile, he also says here, Baltimore used a ton of 12 and 21 personnel, which basically means you know, running backs.

Saw that coming. Yeah, running backs and tight ends. And big people on the field. And so big people on the field. Big people. So this is, aside from just the quarterbacks, this is going to be sort of a creativity fest. And then you get into the fact that these two quarterbacks just unironically rule.

And I'm really excited for this hand. Really cool stylistic matchup. And when you consider just how far apart the offenses are. And yeah, I love the way that the Arizona offense look just in terms of approach. I know the efficiency and the execution wasn't there all game, but David Johnson lined up out wider in the slot on 15 snaps. Last season, he lined up out wider in the slot 16 times, the entire season.

It's awesome. It's just, again, the execution was not to the degree they wanted to for the first three quarters, but I do like the way they're going about this, and I'm excited to see it for the rest of the season. I think that they're going to be a fun, unique team, and I think that putting your best players in positions to succeed is the first step to being an efficient offense. And that's exactly what they're doing. Yeah, I'm in.

And by the way, if they're so bad that they just have to keep doing these crazy fourth quarter stuff, bring it on. I don't care if they win or lose. Just give me some fireworks. I'll be curious to see what their defense does against the Ravens, because it just seems like you're going to do everything you can to close off the middle of the field and not let them take those shots and kind of force them to run the ball. even if it's with more too deep safety than you want to play against this team,

I'll be very curious to see what the plan is from Vance Joseph and Arizona's defense. Because whatever the Dolphins did last week, it was not working. So you got to do something a little bit different. That's out there, actually. So, yeah, I mean, this game, again, not too, you know, two, it's not a great matchup in terms of like playoff implications, but it's definitely one of the games I'm most excited about watching. Yeah.

It might be like number two for me. I'd rather watch this game. I really like both the Packers and Vikings' football teams, but I kind of just want to see Lamar Jackson play. I'm with you, actually. I feel like this is going to be a more enjoyable game to me than Packers' Vikings is going to be. All right, let's keep them moving.

All right, Mays Geeks out, Kevin, sneaky truth. Let's get to your sneaky truth first. I'm going to hit everybody. I'm going to hit everybody with the John Gruden take that has, I don't think, truly ever been said in this iteration. Oh, man. I'm pumped. John Gruden is fine.

He's fine. He's not the worst coach in history of football. He's not going to save the Raiders. He's a pretty average head coach. And I think there's some problems there with that team. But in general, you saw it on Monday. They're capable of winning games that they should win. And I think that is sort of the lesson of John Gruden.

Remember, John Gruden is one of these guys. He launched the careers of basically everybody who is innovating offense at this point. And they learned it's sort of at the knee of him. And so I sort of, I think there's a case we made that at some point over this 10-year contract, John Gruden can maybe put one or two good teams together. It's not going to happen anytime soon. But overall, he's fine.

I thought Derek Carleck's really, really good at Monday. I mean, that's not a hot take of my main. He was fantastic in that game. and against a defense that still seems to be figuring it out in Denver, but a defense with some talent on it against a really good defensive play caller. We'll see what happens. I think that the Broncos offense is an absolute mess. I think that the Raiders still have tons of question marks about their defense,

but they played a lot better than I thought they would. I was surprised. I understand that he's fine thing, but he's making $10 million a year to run that organization. But that's the point. It's just like he's gotten, essentially, even though Mayak is there, he has full control of an organization. he got $100 million.

They have turned the entire organization over to basically his whims and ego. That's the problem. As a coach, he's fine. If he were a great coach, this would be more understandable. Only Belichick has more power at this point. That's the problem. As an entity standing on the sidelines, he is fine. I'll concede that.

That's fine. I'm willing to give that to you. All right. My first geeks out of the year is about, we talked about it a little bit in reference to the Saints game. But I am really, I have had such a good time going back and watching the games from last week, kind of studying and observing the Saints and Chargers passing offenses to their running backs.

I wrote about it a little bit today in terms of maybe Alvin Kamara being able to, you know, throw a punch in this running back debate battle that has not been thrown in terms of the value of running backs just because he's such a good receiver. And his receiving targets, it's beyond volume. they actually have value or other running back receptions or not. That's when he's used like from running back or from receiver alignments though, I think is a huge part of that. I'm so impressed with the way they throw hit to him out of the backfield, whether it's swing

passes, whether it's screens. And the chargers do the same kind of thing. They do such a good job of scheming their running backs into space out of the backfield in a way that other teams do not. You know, the chiefs have done this for years. But I feel like the Chargers and the Saints are kind of in, not the same. class as Andy Reid, but definitely in the class below in terms of creating positive plays where other teams don't normally find them. So when you're watching those games,

just when they show the all 22 replay of an big Alvin Kamari game, just look at how much space is created by the route distribution. And the same thing goes for the Chargers. They do such a good job of scheming ways to get those guys and tons of open grass. And I think it's a huge part of what makes them good. I'm with you. I, that's a, what a geeks out. I've been waiting for that geeks out for eight months. How does it feel to geek out? I mean, we did so much line play talk earlier in the show. I know. I feel like we had to go a different direction. Yeah, no, no, no. I kind of stole your bit with the Saints'

offensive line hype. Well, I want to make one more point. So when it comes to the Saints, or the Chargers especially, when you look at Melvin Gordon's receiving totals last year, I assume that his agent and the people that are kind of arguing for him to get paid are going to point to them and say, look at this. But when you watch what Austin Echler did last week and even what he did last year, it's such a testament to the design over the talent of the player. And I think that's the disconnect between a receiver like Kamara or McCaffrey and a receiver like Melvin Gordon or even Todd Gurley at times.

So I think that we have to, all receptions and all receiving totals are not created equal. And I think that's important to understand. No disagreement here. All right. Let's get to our quick pick for Thursday night football. The Panthers are a seven point favorite. I'm still picking Carolina. I think that Cam did not attempt to pass over 20 yards against the Rams.

We can start panicking about whether that's his shoulder, everything else. But remember we did the same thing with Luck last year and they ended up being fine? I think that's more about trying to get rid of the ball quickly against Donald than it is anything else. Robert, I had some bad news by Andrew Locke. It ended up being fine last year. The Colts offense was fine last year. That's what I mean. Yeah, I think the bucks are terrible.

I'm can't. I think the bucks are bad. I think the bucks are bad. I feel like Carolina's defense is going to be really good. I tweeted this earlier. Brian Burns should not wear 53. It's just a terrible number for a really cool player. The only worst one in the league right now is the fact that Marlon Humphrey wears 44 for the Ravens.

That's just unacceptable. What was your number? 53. But I was an offensive lineman. I was Brian Burns. This is strange. You brought up that Brian Burns wearing your number. and then you decided that you hate it.

You hate it. Okay, so it's a good number on you, but not Brian Burns. Yes, I am me. I am not Brian Burns. I am not a 6'5 athletic marvel. I mean, not with that attitude. Can I will myself to 6.55? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, it's fine. It's very silly. I wore 66 in football because it was the only number that reminded me of hockey, which is the sport I actually liked playing because of Mario Lemieux. Yeah, that's a good. That's a good reason.

I wore 10 in hockey. This is a true story. The reason I wore 53 is that I stepped into an offensive line that was, rival said it was the best offensive line in the country. We had four division one players and little, lo, me. And the only starter that was leaving, he was number 53. And I thought it would be like some weird psychological thing if nothing changed.

And I would wore the same number that he did. That was actually my reasoning. But I came to love it. What happened to the other four guys on your line? Two of them play. Two of them got drafted. Two of them got drafted, played in the league. Our right guard was cut on hard knocks a couple years ago with the Bengals.

Tough one of them was a four-year starter at Western Michigan at left tackle. And one of them played at Wisconsin Plathville for a while. So they all played college football. They all were pretty good at it. And then I did not. Do you think that I'm here with you? You were number 53? I think that's what it was.

They really locked in because they were comfortable. That was it. I was very stupid when I was 18, even dumber than I am now. I guess I was 17 at that point. Again, even dumber. At least I never got Mono, though. There we go. So bringing it all the way around.

All right, guys. Now we will get to the show or the part of the show that most of you probably care about. And that is Kevin and I chatting with Aaron Donald about all things Rams and all things NFL. Okay, we are joined now by perhaps the best player in the National Football League, Rams, defensive lineman, Aaron Donald. Aaron, thank you for joining us. I want to get started with what's different. this year because there's two main things I look at when it comes to you.

Number one, you had your first training camp since 2016. I thought that was interesting. And then obviously you have the sort of Super Bowl hangover. If you were to think about what's different both with you and with your team from this September to last September, what is the main difference? It's the old version of the wind. So I think anything I think we're stronger than what we was. I read a story the other day that said you woke up at first. 4.30 in the morning in high school to work out. What time do you wake up now, just so we're clear?

I was doing 4.30 no more. But, you know, you can wake up around 6 o'clock, 630. Okay, that's still pretty early. Yeah, no, I get that. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about your career, because one of the things I think is interesting is you were dinged for your size in an era where I think that we care about size less and less because of you. And then on the other side of the ball, you have quarterbacks getting smaller and smaller, whether that's Baker-Mayfield or now, Kyler-Murray.

Do you think that you kind of played a role in how teams view size and it not mattering as much, Aaron? I think you could say that. You know, you couldn't start at the team. I guess you can say... Aaron, it's Robert Mays. I wanted to ask you something. I was going back and watching pretty much every sack you had last year,

and it seems like... so often these days you're kind of jumping back inside after lining up as a three technique. And I know that Wade allows you guys to do stuff like that, but I'm curious about how you end up making that decision. Is that something that you typically know you're going to do before the snap even starts because of formation? Or do you kind of do that midstream in the moment? Sometimes you know, because you see a formation of something that you already knows what happened before the play happens. The fact that it seems like you're doing that a lot more often, do you feel like that's something that you're, doing as a reaction to how guys are playing you just because they're trying to account for your

speed so much that you feel like that's just something that you can kind of do as a counter? Is that something that, because I'm sure you've kind of had to learn the way that guys have dealt with you because I'm sure you see so many different answers to the stuff that you do? Is that one of the things you felt like you've been able to lean on a little bit more? Yeah, to know, throw you down or stop you from heaven. You take that all day, but, you know, a lot of things, it's all about what the things get me and what I'm stand and seek the guy in front of me. Hey, Aaron, you know, one of the obvious

sort of trends around the league now is everyone hiring from McVeigh-Tree, the joke now. Obviously, if you've met Sean McVeigh, you've become a head coach. I want to talk about the actual Sean McVeigh, though, because I think people overlook him as a well-rounded head coach as more than just an offensive system. If you were to tell somebody a Sean McVeigh story that maybe doesn't involve

his offensive system and just more about what kind of coach he is, what kind of communicator, he is. What kind of sticks out? Talking defense, and the can't just play with communicating. And we kind of, you know, and Coach McVey jump in and knew the old defensive team and broke it down and it's like, wow, you know, I never had a great coach, but never a coach that, you know, he's the officer-mind coach, but no defense is able to break down a whole defense team and understand what we're doing out there as a defense and making all the

calls, like if he's a defense of my coach. So it just shows the type of coach he is, you know, the math that he is. He's just one of those special guys, man, that they know it all that that always trying to find, well, better get his players like that, man. He can have a lot of success with a team and they're going to show him. After the Super Bowl last year, I'm sure that that room is just, you know, pretty despondent. Everyone's just in a terrible mood, everything else. What was he like? How did he kind of handle himself in the immediate aftermath after that game in the locker room with you guys? I don't be that close to being a world champion. I'm far short, you know, you know,

in the beach. You know, you kind of put it on his shoulders and say that's played than what we did. So he's not going, you know, point a finger. If he won't point the finger anyway,

he'll point out of his girlfriend and get himself better. Hey, Aaron, last one from me, and then we can talk about Pizza Hut. When I look at the schedule here, I see the Saints. And, you know, we talked about size early.

Drew Breeze is another guy who isn't prototypical size, but he gets the ball out so quickly. He has just an other world that connects with Michael Thomas. Is there something when you game plan for the Saints that's different because of that offense, because of

Alvin Kumar, because of the way Drew Breeze climbs the pocket, you might not be able to get the normal pressure you would against another quarterback? Yeah, when you can't try to find out of pressure on them. You can't let them be comfortable back there. It can make it a long day for you. You can do it all and he's one of the best quarterbacks ever played a game. So we play against a quarterback like that.

The main job you can is to try to bottom them, up the pressure on them, make them feel uncomfortable. make them fill on ease so, you know, people can get in this mode because once to do that, you can make it a long day for us. So for the defense and line is to make their job, you know, hail. Yeah. Aaron, tell us what you're doing with Pizza Hut.

So just to end up with Pizza Hut, you know, opportunity to join them. So Pizza Hut, at Hot and how there's not reward and just spend at Pizza Hut. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Aaron. Thanks a lot, Aaron. All right, that was great.

Thank you so much to Aaron Donald for joining us. We will be back on Sunday nights, our week to recap. Until then, please enjoy your weekend. Please enjoy the Thursday night game. We will talk to you guys soon. Thank you so much for listening to the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. Today's episode is brought to you by floor and decor. Floor and Decor is where the pros go for tile, wood, stone, and installation materials. But the best part about floor and decor is their pro services and loyalty reward program. From the dedicated pro hotline to the exclusive pro app, your floor and decor team is just a touch away.

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