The Ringer NFL Show - Bills Make a Statement on Opening Night

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Nora, Ben, and Steven discuss the Bills' dominant 31-10 win over the Rams. They discuss Josh Allen’s impressive performance, the Rams defense, Matthew Stafford’s arm, and more. Hosts: Nora Princiotti Ben Solak, and Steven Ruiz Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Nora Pinciotti. Football is back. So are we. It is the opening night of the 2022 NFL season. We just watched the Bills beat the Rams, 31 to 10. They turned it over four times. Still won by three scores.

And I feel like I've won by three scores because I have Benjamin Solac and Stephen Ruiz with me. Benjamin, how you doing? As a man who picked the Bills preseason to win the Super Bowl, Bowl. I feel comfortable calling the season at this time. I don't need to see anything else. Feeling great about my preseason picks. Let got it, baby. We're doing good. Good to see you. See you again next year. Let's go. Stephen, did you pick the bills to win the Super Bowl? I did not. And I regret that. They look like the best team that they look like the best team that's ever played football. Like they spotted the Rams a couple of plays like the interceptions in the first half. And it didn't matter.

Didn't matter. Didn't, game never felt close. And the interceptions weren't even bad. Right. Like you can't even. All right. So let's talk about this Bill's offense first. Josh Allen's like out there running quick game except when he's thrown in deep bombs to Gabe Davis and and Stefan Diggs.

He's getting Chris Collinsworth to make Tom Brady comparisons. Ben, what did you think was working? I got a text from my mom immediately about that. Chris Collinsworth's bringing up Tom Brady already. It's like, yeah, mom, here we go. mom's a jet fan. That's like a good, you got to feed the mom something. And if you throw in a Brady comparison, you kind of know where that,

you know, I don't mean to impugn your mom's football knowledge. Your mom could be very well, well versed. My mom is a Jets fan. She just hates Tom Brady. That's what she knows. Got it. That's home base for her. And she knows that Chris Collinsworth likes Tom Brady.

That's the two facts that she's got. It's a really good place to start. But okay, so Ben, tell me, tell me what you think was working so well. for the bills on off offense where like two out of their last three games they haven't punted. Yeah. So it turns out like, you know, we can we can disparage quick game passing. We can disparage like underneath throws and like dink and dunk offense. And I think appropriately so.

Like you have to be perfect. Yeah, like on 10 plus plays, 12 plus plays for drive in order to score. Like we saw that where Josh Allen had 10 straight completions, then he threw a pick. And it's because you have one little error on one out of 11 plays. But it turns out when you're going really method. down the field, you need 11 plays to score. So we can disparage quick game offense. But it turns out when you have a quarterback with this much zip, this much explosiveness on the ball, and receivers who are this comfortable in terms of the timing, that one, Stefan Dakes third down conversion, where it was

just, I'm going to throw it at your back shoulder. And right when you turn, it would be there. And Jalen Ramsey will be within three inches, but it won't matter because we are so precise on our timing, on our location, the balls there so fast that we can just take this whenever we want it. that was really, really cool to see. The reality of a very effective quick game, a very effective quick game, Bill's offense. They're also getting to run the ball a little bit. They're putting a fullback in the backfield.

They're running a little toss play. A Bill's offense that can do stuff in the zero to eight yard range is an important development to see because then it gets you to 50-yard Gabriel Davis following because there's no post safety, right? Like two years ago, nobody, was ever getting rid of the post safety, the deep middle safety against the bills. There was just no reason to.

Like, you just stuck that guy back there to police that area of the field to make throwing downfield harder. All of a sudden, the Rams or Rahim Morris felt like that to get rid of the guy. And the second they did, Josh Allen said, okay, we're keeping the back in the block. I'm stepping up in the pocket. And I'm just airing this thing out. I'm telling Gabe Davis to go find it. He does explosive play.

And all of a sudden, this thing's busted open. So a balanced offense from the bill is not necessarily like run pass wise, but in terms of distribution-wise, they're using the entirety of the field. we saw them using Josh Allen as a running threat. This is what the final form of the bill's offense was always supposed to look like. Yeah, I want to be clear here. We can disparage quick game offenses in a lot of situations. I'm not here to disparage this with the bills because this is the type of thing where we've questioned.

Exactly. Okay, they've got the fireworks, but can they put together 10, 11 plays in a row? And now, okay, if Isaiah McKenzie is going to catch a ball and then let go of it, maybe that 11th play has a mistake. That's always going to happen. and you're never going to see an offense that's going to be perfect literally 100% of the time. But if the bills, not only just because operating this way and doing it well means they can be efficient and consistent and not just be those fireworks, but also because the zip that

Josh Allen can put on a football gives them such an advantage when he's making those little, you know, eight-yard laser throws. Like, this is scary. And the release is so fast, too. Like a lot of times when you see that velocity, you think like the windup's going to be really big and like the lower body's got to get involved. That's all just like three quarters release. Like extremely fast.

And so it goes from Allen landing on his back foot, not declaring he's going to throw the ball to the ball's there. And that's really, really hard to stop defensively. You got to be able to like press everyone, which the bills are like going empty with James and Crowder and Isaiah McKinsey and Gabriel Davis and Stefan Dix and Dawson talks on the bat's tough. That's a really hard ask. You want to get everybody up on a line of scrimmage. So it's a cool thing to see when the office works like that. And tonight it wasn't like first read stuff. It wasn't like, oh, my first reads open. I'm just going to throw it to him.

Like his eyes were moving all over the field and he was finding guys. And then that quick release helps make up for him getting stalled by his first read not being open. It was amazing. Like, Collinsworth dropped the Brady comparison and I wasn't hating it. Like it fit tonight. It's the kind of thing that makes you go like, oh, oh. Are people going to kind of dunk on him for this? But like you said, he's getting into the progression. He's getting from his first read to his second read and maybe beyond still 2.47 second time to throw. Like, that is zippy. And we saw Aaron Donald, like we all knew what was going to happen.

Aaron Donald won a bunch tonight. But if you can do that, that's your best path towards making that not be a huge deal. on the other side of things, Matthew Stafford, I'm going to start with, Matthew Stafford seemed pretty significantly affected by pressure. He got sacked seven times. I think that's the most he's ever been sacked

as a member of the Los Angeles Rams. It seemed pretty clear to me that that interior offensive line, especially was having a tough time. Stephen, what did you think of what you saw out of this Rams offense, also given the fact that there are maybe some health concerns or not concerns that we can get to with Stafford.

But I want to just talk about it as a whole first so that we don't just completely delve into speculation about Feduccini elbow. Yeah, I would caution against overreacting to a Thursday night opener. The problem here from the Rams perspective is they were bad in all the way. we feared they might be bad. Like beyond even Stafford's elbow. The offensive line was just bullied all night. And that was a problem.

They couldn't really run the ball. And if you're going to rely on Stafford to be the dropback guy, the guy that throws 600 times, the elbow becomes a bigger concern then. And then defensively, like Bobby Wagner, who, that was rough. That was rough. And like if you watched this film last year,

it was rough last year. So I'm not surprised. They don't have the cornerback. depth to play tight man coverage, which you have to do in this league. And I mean, it, that wastes Jalen Ramsey to me. Having Jalen Ramsey play quarters all day long, like, you're not getting the most out of Jalen Ramsey there. And the Rams really have no other choice because they just don't have the dudes behind him to play man coverage. So then you get that, you get to third and long. And now all of a sudden you have to blitz to get pressure on the

quarterback because if you play zone, he's going to have too much time to pick it apart. And then now you get those deep passes like So lack alluded to earlier. It's going to be. It's going to tough for the Rams, man. I picked them to make the wild card and I felt like that was me selling some ram stock. I wish I would have sold more. I wish I would have sold more. Steven Starsworth, I don't want to

overactive Thursday night preseason opener. They forced my hand. I wish I had sold more ram stock. They forced my hand. Like I said, I went into this game thinking, oh, like, I don't think either team is going to prove much. Now I'm like, the bills are the best team ever and the Rams suck. Ben, what

do you think about what you saw from the Rams defense. Oh, buddy. Stars and Scrubs was fun for a while there, wasn't it? And then it turns out after you drafted David Long in the third round, put David Long out on the field and discovered David Long wasn't the corner you wanted him to be when you drafted him, you still got to put David Long out on the field, right? Like they have Dary and Kendrick, they like a lot as a rookie, but he's not healthy yet.

And so they bring Troy Hill back. Like Troy Hill wasn't even that good with the Browns. And so they get him back in the building. And then, okay, Darius Williams went. paid by the Jaguars, so we got to put David Long and Troy Hill out here. It's not pretty, right? Pass rush. We paid Leonard Floyd. We liked Leonard Floyd. He was very good for our system, everything like that, but we traded for Vaughn last year, and we knew that we weren't necessarily going to be able to extend Vaughn because we had a bunch of money into other guys. And so

it's just in Holland's time. Hollins was like a sixth round pick of the Broncos or something. You know what I mean? Like the number of snaps that have to go to guys that simply aren't players. They are starting caliber players. They are functional players. They're good role players. They're not impact players. It's worrisome. Because, yeah, eventually you start to get to the point where you can figure out enough ways to get around Donald and Ramsey. Because we shouldn't say that, like, Ramsey and Donald were nullified. They weren't. Donald had that, like, unbelievable sack, like very quick rush. He was constantly winning one-on-ones. It's just, we can get rid of the ball quickly enough. And you have to be, like, Steven's talking about, in off coverage. You have

to be playing zones, and I feel like I can pick that apart if I'm a good passing game. I think the Rams defense will be okay. I think that last year, third down, Rahim was one of the best at dialing up pressure packages that we saw. While that is a little bit of like a regression-y sort of a stat, I think he can get back there because once you get into the meat of the season, you start to get tendency on protections and everything like that. And it becomes easier to kind of build that stuff out and will be the game plan.

but the other things they have to do in order to get to those pressure packages is get Bobby off the field and put Ernest on the field. Ernest Jones is a really good blitzer from a linebacker position. You don't want to be blitzing your linebacker. You rather leave them in coverage. And that's kind of like why you got Bobby. But you ain't got 2017 Bobby. You got 22 Bobby.

And that's a different cap. I just wonder how much that's, I think that's going to be a really interesting thing to watch. Just because, look, they have this really solidified team building philosophy, right? where you don't extend yourself at the linebacker position. But they were sort of willing to break the rule for Bobby Wagner. One, because you have a GM who has a long history with this player, feels like he missed on him when he was coming out of college,

has like a big old football crush on the guy. And I totally get it. Like vintage Bobby Wagner freaking rules. But it just always makes me a little like when guys start sort of violating. their principles for players that they really like for a specific reason. And then you start putting together kind of how the offseason went down where they think they're going to get Vaughn back. Then it doesn't happen.

And so they're looking for like, okay, where we're losing some impact. We're losing an impact guy here. Like how do we then piece it together? And like Jordan Roderick's done really, really good reporting on this. Part of how they thought about pivoting was, well, what if we just use that money on offense, we'll go get Alan Robinson. Not that that matter tonight. But when they're starting to piece together, okay, where does the pressure come from? It sounded like from the offseason, they were expecting some of that to be from the inside linebacker position. And that's something

that if you just look at tonight, didn't look awesome. If you're expecting that, and like I kind of get why, because they want to get into these fronts that like look down, look like five down fronts because there's five bodies up with the line but one of those guys is a linebacker he's standing up in the B gap right like it's it's what you might call it like a diamond front and similar to like the double mug front that like Mike Zimmer used for so much time but think about linebacker standing up in interior gaps they did this a ton in the playoffs especially against the bengals with ernest jones and ernest was very good at this this ain't bobby's game right and see if you're going to live that way live that way but you have to understand that as much as you might like bobby as

much as you want Bobby to be a captain, you want him to kind of bring the knowledge to the team. On third and six, when you've given up six of seven third downs, which is where the Rams were at one point tonight, you got to get Ernest Jones on the field. And I did not expect to be this much of an Ernest Jones stand, but like if you want to live in this world, that's the sort of dude that you need on the field. And I think like one of the quiet subplots is how much the safety position has regressed for this team over the last couple of years since 2020 when they were the number one defense. I think that was like having Johnny Johnson be the green dot guy,

the play caller was a big deal. And now you kind of have this weird, awkward, like you have these linebackers. You have Ernest Jones and you have Bobby Wagner. And you play these fronts where you only have one linebacker on the field and you have to pick which one gets the green dot. I think that kind of complicates the issue a little bit. If you want to have Bobby out there wearing the green dot,

he has to be out there more often than Joe. So I think there's like another layer to it beyond just their skill. on the field. Yeah, I think that's huge because he didn't come off the field. I mean, he played 100% of those naps. And when he got there, it was within the first media availability where people were talking about, yeah, well, he's going to wear the green dot and, you know, all that experience. But then you got to line up against the other guys and it has some other implications on

the field that you can't necessarily just make up for with experience and savvy. Okay, I made us be responsible about it earlier. Earlier this afternoon, Ian Rapport's tweeting stuff about Matthew Stafford's, like, elbow tendinitis saying, okay, he had a six-month recovery from this injection, another procedure. Sort of a baseball injury. Clayton Kershaw recovered from the same thing. Don't worry, he's 100%.

I don't know about you guys. This made me nervous. I don't know if there were throws that Stafford made that made me think like, oh, his elbow looks fine, but just he didn't look great overall. Steven, did you see anything that made you question his health from how he played tonight? If you would have told me that that was Ryan Fitzpatrick playing in Stafford's jersey, I would have believed you. That's what he looked like.

And it wasn't just like. And the memes started at Arizona level Carson Palmer, which was like still. And now we're all the way down to like what era? Like Tampa era, Ryan Fitzpatrick? Yeah, yeah, Tampa era. But okay. Late Ryan Fitzpatrick. Clarify this for me.

Are we on like he's got noodles in his in his elbow tendons watch? Are we on just plain old washed watch? Are we on let's not overreact watch? Are we we don't really know it's it's impossible to tell based on how he threw the football. if it's just that wasn't a good performance versus there's something physically wrong here. I would say that his throwing motion looked weird at times. It didn't look like his normal throwing motion

that we've seen in the past, especially like on underneath passes. And he threw an out on third down. Like I think it was in the third quarter. And there was some air under it. That was like a two to one. Yeah, yeah. It was like a lot.

Like it didn't look right. It didn't look like Matthew Stafford. And then like with Matthew Stafford, you live with those mistakes that you get. We saw a lot of the mistakes tonight because he gives you that high-end play. And if the elbow isn't right, which it hasn't seemed to be right all off-season,

I don't know if you're going to get as much of those high-end plays. And that's going to be a problem. Ben, what do you think? Right. I think inconsistency, right, is the word there. We're like there were throws, staffer through with a lot of velocity, right? Like some of those flag routes, right?

Those deep outside cuts to Cooper Cup, we've dropped in the ball in there beautifully. his pick to cup was a throw that he sailed, right? Like he overthrew it. It was too fast, too high. And in part because he was trying to no look past it. And that to me is like as if not more concerning than like wherever the arm is at. I think like the arm is still not 100%.

I think it's inconsistent. But I think we saw enough in terms of like velocity and timing and placement. Like you can get by. Like whatever. You do need the guy with the deteriorating arm to accept that reality and work within it. and a thing about young gunsling and Matthew Stafford, baby, is that he is convinced that his body is always 100% oftentimes to his own physical detriment.

And guys in the locker room love that toughness. He's built a career in the NFL over a decade of that culture and that reputation, that leadership. So he is not going to want to be told or to act like his arm maybe isn't what it used to be. However, if tonight is any indication, his arm is not what it used to be. And you have to deal around that, right?

Like, if Stafford's arm is going to be inconsistent and he's also never, ever, ever going to move out of the pocket, right? Like, they do not have a, like, rollout play actioning. Like, what was very, very typical, very characteristic of the McVey offense in the golf era. They don't do that with Stafford, barely, right? I mean, like, you brought it up, Nora. Interior pressure was such an issue.

Stafford's pressure on 33% of his dropbacks, took seven sacks, bills in a blitz. once. Third game in the NGS era since 2016, with not a single blitz. Four men rushed the entire game. And they're constantly dialing on the pressure. You want to know how you stop that?

You get a couple tight ends on the line of scrimmage and you roll a son of a gun out. They can't do it with Matthew. So you can't roll him out and he can't do what he did with his arm like in the seven and one stretch start the season last year. This is not pretty. This is an ugly, difficult, tough offense. and he needs to find something like in the running game to save them, which is concerning given what we saw tonight,

needs to find something in terms of like contested catch ball winners down the field to save them, which in theory is Alan Robinson somewhere over here with his two targets. So yeah, there's a, um, Stafford's arm is less than 100%. But that could be okay. That could be fine if there was a more internal honesty, both for the player and for the organization. And I feel like neither of those things.

are there. I feel like we should give him the benefit of the doubt and like let him have the opportunity to adjust before we say like he can adjust. I think he's a smart quarterback and I do think he's been a gunslinger all his career. So it's going to be hard. It's going to take some time. But I could see him like transitioning into like a Dak Prescott type game and I think that would suit the Rams well. I agree with Solac though. Like it's not going to happen overnight because that's just not who he's been. No, extremely extremely much agree that like he deserves the opportunity to do it. It's just like reading the person, the individual, the way he behaves. I'm worried it's going to be like, don't worry, guys.

Shut of Torrtle. I can do this. And this is not to anybody's service anymore, Matthew. You know, like, this is not good for us. And there's the Ryan Fitzpatrick comparison because like, that's Ryan Fitzpatrick. The irrational confidence in his arm that he just doesn't have. I do think, look, I mean, there's, there are moments where you're feeling like, okay, don't let Andrew Whitworth leave the building.

Like somebody tackle him. in the bowels of the stadium and say, please, please come back. Short of that, I do think that the bill's defensive line, that group's just really deep. There's a lot of good players there. They're not going to face that every week. Now, when they play good teams, I think we would maybe, like,

Stafford is concerning. I watch that game and I feel right now more so than that. that worried about like, okay, have we sort of overlooked that the offensive line for this team might be their limiting factor on the season? Like, that's my biggest concern. Yeah, offensive. But I do think that the bill's defensive line, particularly von Miller, geez, deserves some recognition in being a well above average group.

The Rams will have some easier assignments on their schedule this season. I do agree that you're not going to think. many pass rushes as deep as the as the bills fast rush with that said if you're telling me that you're not great at left tackle which is joe no boom who obviously has about had a bunch of reps tackle but was a backup previously and you're also not great on the interior where you now you now have Coleman Shelton starting you wanted Logan Bruss to be that guy because Austin corporate is gone you also have like David Edwards and Brian Allen neither of whom are like to me like above average starters all I need is in opposing defense line to have one

one elite dude at one of the, not elite, one, one plus dude at one of the, at three of the four spots, right? Like, it's like, okay, Rob Haventstein's handling that edge. Great. As long as I have a guy who works at anywhere else, I have a matchup that I like, that starts to freak me out, right? This game was very reminiscent of the games that the Rams started to lose in the middle of the season last year. They played the Niners and they played the Titans. And in both games, the Niners rush, splits them, I want to say, on like, 9% of the dropbacks, the Titans blitz on like 12% of dropbacks, extremely low numbers.

Against the Titans, Stafford was 31 for 48, 294 yards, which is only 6 yards in attempt, two picks and five sacks. Against the Niners, 26 for 41, 5.9 yards per attempts,

two picks and two sacks. They lost those games. They scored 16 and 10 points, respectively. This game looked exactly like those games. So we're starting to figure out, like, all right, we just got to get a four-down rush that works.

This team ain't going to run on us. Let's just put our horses out there for four quarters and just try to, this guy's not going to move out of the pocket. it's starting to become a familiar problem for the Stafford era Rams. They don't have an answer to a team that can generate a four-man rush. And that's a lot of teams in the league. So a lot of teams in the division, too.

They got to play the Niners twice. That's not really fun. They have the Falcons next and then the Cardinals. That's probably those are some maybe breaths of fresh air as far as that's concerned. But then they've got the 49ers on October 3rd. But that seems a little, you'll look at that right now and go, that seems a little ouchy. I would say just as concerning as the pass protection is their run blocking. Yeah.

This offensive line hasn't been very good at run blocking for a couple years now. And they had a, I think it was a 29% success rate tonight against a defense that was like sticking in nickel, playing too high all game, like rushing the passer with like spreading the defensive line out. These are the types of defense that have given Shaw McVeigh's run game problems in the past. It's usually been like stacking the line of skirmish, playing quarters, playing the same. safety's close to the line of scrimmage. And he couldn't run on this type of defense. Like how is he going to run against the 49ers front, which just bullied the Rams in all their matchups last year.

That's, this is a concern. This is, dude, this Bill's defensive. This is nuts, man. They didn't even have a corner this game. Like, I don't like, it's so easy to overreact. It's an island game. It's the first game of the season. But for the bills, it just never blitz and also just play nickel the whole game, right?

Because the Rams are like always on 11. So the bill's like, yeah, we're just going to put the same 11 players on the field, constantly. And then we're just going to drop into a bunch of zones. Beat us. That's scary, man. That without Gordavius White, that's bananas. That's why I was saying, like, I didn't want to overreact coming into this game.

And I, like, was telling myself, like, this game's not going to tell us anything about these teams. But, like, the way it transpired, like, it mattered. It transpired in the ways that mattered. It also, like, one of the things I was looking for was, okay, how much does this evolution of the bill's offense, how much do they use Josh Allen as a role? runner or how much do they try to, you know, save that for the moments when it really, really matters, try to get your running backs involved with the running game a little bit more

than they have been in the past. Devin Sinkletary looked really good. Josh Allen still had 10 carries for 56 yards. They're doing it in like both of the ways. Yeah, I feel like this time they're this year, they're just like, screw it. Let's just run Josh Allen from week one on. I feel like Ken Dorsey brought his experience over from the Panthers when they were like, all right, let's just use KM as a fullback near the goal line. And who cares if he can only play till he's 28? Like, long term maybe it's an issue but for this year it's going to be fun well they did it tonight yeah Ken Dorsey walked into the room first time first meeting as an OC he was like hey yeah you

know how you've been thinking about building around Josh Allen for the next 10 years only building around for the next three baby we are going to run them into the ground baby I think right I think like when they play the jets they'll just jump out to a 21 to nothing lead and then like who cares like they're not gonna they're going to protect their guy and whatever I do think that in the same way, you got to try to keep a bridle on Stafford of his injury. I do think that, like, Josh has got a little blood in his mouth now. You got to run, got to hit some guys. Football, football's the best.

You got to roll it back. A little stiff arm action tonight. Yeah, we, uh, not everybody's Nick Scott, baby. We ain't doing this. The Rams absolutely by quarter three. They were like, you're going to run? We're going to hit you. And everybody's going to do that if Alan gives them the opportunity.

So there was like a zone read keeper for like, it went for like two yards, but like Allen was perpendicular to the field and there was like a bills holding his leg, some guy holding his neck. Like, like, please Josh, don't do that. Don't do that. Josh Allen has like Josh Allen has been a very inconsistent player since he entered the league. I don't mean inconsistent.

I mean like how he has played has changed significantly year to year. One thing that has really stayed the same year over year, the man leads the league in seconds spent perpendicular to the field. always the league leader in that category. You gotta hire Cam as a coach and he's just the assistant quarterback's coach and it's just his job to tell Josh when he shouldn't have done something.

Like Josh comes trotting to the silent and Cam's like buddy and you give Cam big hat right? He's obviously wearing teen gear. We're like, let him wear the hat and like let him just like cam out and then Cam just grabs Josh Allen and he's like don't do that. He has to have the vibe of like an old withered wise man

just being like, he just like pulls up his shirt and points out. like a star and he's like, I got this doing that. He's got to be, don't do this. He's got to be walking around like a 1970s running back. Like Earl Campbell in a like getting honored at halftime with like a cane.

Like you'd be like, this is, I am the ghost of whatever, cautionary tale Josh Allen on the sideline. The ghost of Josh Allen's future. Yeah, that's, there it is.

All right. So Stephen, are you changing your Super Bowl pick? No, no. I'm sticking with the cheese. I want to see the cheese. Chiefs play first.

That was such a, that was such a Kevin Clark question. It was such a Kevin Clark hosting question. Horrible hated it. I don't know how to feel about that. We're going to have to end the podcast now. Okay. So if you're not changing your Super Bowl pick based on what we just watched, we can't be all nice to the bills.

Stephen, what is it just the fact that the Chiefs exist? Like what gets in their way? I want to see how this offense works when they're not playing a team that's just playing cover for all game long. just giving them everything underneath. I want to see them play a team that has the talent to get into their face, play press coverage, play man coverage all day long, and see how this offense looks and see if Josh Allen is still taking the underneath stuff.

But, like, I hold this up in comparison to last year's week one opener for the bills where the Steelers were like, Josh, we're going to give you the underneath stuff. Are you going to take it? And he didn't. And then this year, he's like, oh, I'm not only going to take it. Like, I'm just going to march down the field every drive doing it. So, like, I, my expectations for this team have been raised. I still am high on the chiefs.

But until I see the bills, like, just throttle the chiefs, I'm sticking with them. Yeah. And you want to see that against a different type of defense. Yes. I also just want to see him do it. Like, the bills last year were inconsistent on offense. Like, there was that stretch in the middle of the season where they were just scoring like six points because the Jags. Right.

So, like, cool. Glad you got up for week one. Glad you got up for the ex-super Bowl champs. Let's like, you know. Let's dominate. Let's do it for a month straight. Never drop a stupid game into AFC East, right, exactly. Let's let the AFC West eat themselves alive.

Let's go actually get the number one Z. Like, let's not be stupid here. Let's stay dialed in for 18 weeks. The other thing is, if I had grabbed both of you before this game kicked off and I said, hey, Cooper Cups going 13 catches, 128 yards and a touchdown, who wins the game? You both probably would have said Rams. They do need Trudevias wipe back. This whole, let's split time with the sixth round rookie and the first round rookie to

figure out which rookie we want to start on the outside is like, okay, cute, let's get Trey White back, let's pick one and let's actually develop this position because that not have, like, they stopped everything that the Rams did except for Cooper Cup and obviously beat the brakes off them, but you don't want to be in a position where the other team's wide receiver one is getting a 15 target game and kind of moving the sticks with impunity. That's never a good spot to be. It's also moderately interesting that the first round quarterback, Carrie alum, it hasn't like won that job. I 100% thought that was gas. I saw the training camps and they were like, yeah, like,

Eelam and Bradford were really tight competition. I was like, yeah, and Eelm's going to start week one because he was drafted with the 22nd overall pick or whatever it was. Start the Villanova kid, baby. All right, Sean McDermott. We believe in competition in this building. Here we go. I still want to see, I want to see Ken Dorsey fixed the offense if it like breaks in mid-season.

I want to see him adjusts to the adjustments before. I crown this before I crown him. Stephen, I really feel like you want, you have like a list of tests for Ken Dorsey. You just have a lot of like challenges. You want to see him, see him attacking. He still has to beat the run game coordinator allegations. One game doesn't do that. We've, we've had our first run game coordinator reference.

So that means it's time to end the podcast. It is such a delight to have football back. It is such a delight to be back potting with you guys. We'll be back again on Sunday. when we have a whole slate of week one games to react to. This has been very fun, guys. Thank you so much. This has been the Ringer NFL show.

We will be back on Sunday. Ben, Stephen, and Danny Hyfitts will be back on this feed tomorrow, Friday, previewing the entire rest of the week one slate. Thank you, as always, to Isaiah Blakely for production on this episode and to Arjuna Ram Gapal and Connor Nevins for additional production supervision. Thank you.