The Ringer NFL Show - Bye Bill O'Brien, Stephon Gilmore and the NFL's Rising COVID-19 Problem, and the Chicago Bears' Offensive Struggles | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Warren Sharp and Chris Vernon offer their thoughts on the Texans’ firing of Bill O’Brien and the NFL’s rising COVID-19 problem (11:00). They also discuss the Chicago Bears’ offensive struggles and their starting quarterback race (26:22), decide whether the Cleveland Browns are legit (53:00), and more. Hosts: Warren Sharp and Chris Vernon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Ringer NFL show, we're going to be talking about Bill O'Brien getting fired at Houston. We are going to be talking about the big Stefan Gilmore News and everything that has taken place so far in the NFL and what we need to look forward to in week five. We'll do it after these words. Today's episode of the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer podcast network is brought to you by State Farm. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate. That's like drafting a player that becomes an all pro, the real deal. State Farm agents provide personalized service so you can customize your insurance to fit your needs. Like a GM putting together their very own roster, you need a team that supports you, and State Farm's got a great one.

In addition to agents, the award-winning mobile app helps manage coverage, pay bills, file claims, and more. With a great price and even greater service, State Farm goes from strength to strength. choose insurance that always brings its A game. When you want the real deal, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Welcome to The Ringer NFL show. I'm Chris Vernon. Join him as he does every Wednesday is Warren Sharp. Hey, Warren.

What is up, Vernon? Well, after we've gotten done with four weeks of the NFL season, we have a ton of big, big news to get to. So let's start off with a coaching change that took place after the events of the weekend. Bill O'Brien is out. at the Houston Texans, and it is not just a coach being out. He was management also. Bill O'Brien, until this year, where they're 0 and 4, only had one losing season, which is pretty impressive, though his overall record ends with the Texans. 52 and 48, he was 2 and 4 in playoff

games, but they've started off the season 0.4. You and I chronicled as this season began that their schedule was absolute murder to start off with the Chiefs and the Ravens and the Steelers, but they weren't able to get a week four win either against the team that they were favored against. And so what did you think? When you saw the news come down, were you utterly unsurprised? And where do you think the Texans go from here? Well, look, anytime you have a coach being fired after four weeks into the season, I think it is pretty early in the season.

But at the same time, it's a long time coming for Bill O'Brien, which also is somewhat ironic because he's had a winning record in so many seasons, as you've mentioned, taking his team to the postseason. But here's where I stand on Bill O'Brien from a couple of different perspectives. Number one, Bill O'Brien, the GM, obviously the more he got in charge and got his fingers into this team, the worst the situation has become. I do not feel like he was a very good GM or a guy managing the salary cap, the personnel, some of his aggressiveness in roster decisions and bringing on players and overpaying for guys that don't have a lot of positional values, such as the running back position, definitely is catastrophic long term for the health of this team, not to mention the current season. So salary cap issues from that perspective.

From the perspective of just functioning as an offense, because he was the offensive coach. He was the play caller. He was viewed as a QB guru. Let's start most recently and then work backwards. This past season, he decided, and some coaches do this. Some head coaches who were calling plays do this. We're seeing it happen in Atlanta as well. They give up some of their play calling duty in order to try to save their job. And that almost never works out well. So he gives up some of his play calling duty to his offense coordinator. The offensive coordinator and the offense in general looks terrible. So after three weeks, he decides to reclaim some of that play calling duty to take more responsibility himself. And then the offense looked terrible in week

three, week four as well. They didn't look good. Deshaun Watson did not come out the gates hot. He didn't come out the gates looking strong. And that was the main thing that Bill O'Brien said in the press conferences, if for those who, who are paying close attention because as we're betting on these games, we care about what the coaches are saying, especially when they're reclaiming play calling duty. He wanted to get Deshaun Watson off to a faster start. He wanted to incorporate more things that Deshaun was comfortable with from a play calling perspective. He wanted to get him moving outside the pocket a little bit more. He wanted to start a little bit faster into games. And virtually none of that happened in the

week four game. Sean looked terrible to start the game, did not look comfortable. The offense struggled. So all these things he was trying to fix didn't work out. But my bigger concern, Chris, is just like this guy, as he was calling plays, the one thing that I'm going to take most away from him is from his tenure down in Houston. Because I thought the prior GM, Rick Smith, actually did a good job. So I didn't think Bill O'Brien should have come in, forced Rick out of a job and taken over there. But in the game's first three quarters, so quarters one to three, no team ran more often on first and 10 than Bill O'Brien's Houston Texans. That to me is the single biggest thing that I'm going to take away from what he did. I have lots of other criticisms of his play calling.

I have lots of other criticisms about what he did as a GM. But how in this day and age, especially with Deshaun Watson as your quarterback for several seasons, can you have the single highest run rate on first and 10 plays through the game's first three quarters? Absolutely terrible. And it's like he had Arian Foster for the last 10 years instead of 10 years ago. Exactly. Exactly. And the other thing, too, if you want to talk sports betting here for a second, Bill O'Brien was the biggest sports betting bully that there was in the NFL. And let me explain what that means. When they were favored in games, they had an extremely high win-loss record,

I think the fourth highest in the NFL. And they covered at a very high percentage. And this is not going to sound high, but like 57% was what his cover rate was when he was favored. That's, doesn't sound high, but that actually is for teams that are favored, one of the highest in the NFL. When he was an underdog, however, he only covered 30% of his games. They had a terrible win-loss record. He was one of the worst in the NFL from a cover rate from a win-loss rate as an underdog. So, you know, these are things like if a team has winning records and they're generally a good team on the field, their on-field product is generally solid, then they should be able to do better when they're underdogs. What this speaks to me more than anything is the fact that

playing in the AFC South for so many years, they've played a relatively easy schedule. So when they step up in class and have to play stronger opponents, they end up getting waxed, they lose, they fail to exceed expectations. That's what we need an underdog to do. We need a team that's not expected to win games to exceed expectations and pull some of these games out, whether you're covering them but losing or whether, hopefully, in the case of a football team and the owner, you're winning these games. You're being able to ups and set some opponents. And he was not able to do that whatsoever, one of the worst in the NFL. Let me ask you one other quick thing about Bill O'Brien. And this is about the combination of

GM head coaching job. I know you don't keep up with the NBA, but we just saw Doc Rivers lose his job with the clippers. And he was a guy that at once was installed to run the team, be the GM, and be the head coach. We saw it with Tom Tibido in Minnesota. It seems like we saw it with Stan Van Gundy. Teams hire these guys to be GMs and coaches. And what we learn more often than not is that it is two different skill sets. Building a team and coaching a team are two different skill sets. And yes, it has worked out in the past Mike Holmgren years ago.

I recall in Seattle, Jimmy Johnson famously in Dallas. But do you think that Bill O'Brien is, I mean, history always repeats itself, so we'll probably see it again. when somebody really wants to be hired, they want ultimate power. But do you think now this is another example of mistakes made when you decide, okay, we will allow this coach to build his roster also? Yes, absolutely. I think in very few cases, should a guy be able to put so many fingerprints on a roster?

I really like the vision of power and the thought process behind having different guys responsible for their different things and working collectively as a unit with a singular goal and mindset, understanding what wins in today's NFL, but having separate duties because it's too difficult for one guy to take on that many duties for a team, especially trying to make moves in season. They end up getting a little bit too greedy. They end up thinking that they know what the offense needs, let's say, and so he's going after these certain pieces, and that's really not what this team actually needs. And they're neglecting perhaps the other side of the ball and their defense has been terrible. Ironically, they're promoting, you know, Romeo

Cornell from the defensive staff. That's been a terrible defense for several years now. So they're just filling that vacancy with somebody who isn't necessarily like the best candidate to lead the team from that perspective. But in terms of Bill O'Brien, like, I don't think he should ever have another job where he is head coach slash GM. Now, I think maybe he goes back to college. I don't know exactly what he does. And again, we've said this many times before. We're not critical of the people themselves were critical of the jobs that they do. And so it's safe to lop and heap a lot of this criticism upon him because he has not done a very good job at what he's been responsible for. But I absolutely, I mean, I even think that it is supremely difficult just to be a head coach

that also calls offensive plays. Very few people are actually able to do that and do that well, understanding and having worked for some guys who break down the offensive side of the ball and working with play calls and figuring out strategies to win on offense, that is a very difficult job to do and to do well and to do it week in and week out at a supremely excellent level, let alone all the other responsibilities that a head coach has and all the other hats that he must wear. So, I mean, more power to those guys who are able to do those things well and call offensive plays and coach a team. But how are you going to manage the whole roster as well and be in charge of that. It's, it was set up to fail from the beginning, but certainly you're giving

too much power to a guy who doesn't deserve it in Bill O'Brien. All right. Let's move on to the huge story of the day. And that is the reigning defensive player of the year, Stefan Gilmore. It is reported that he has tested positive for COVID-19. Now, we know the Patriots just played the Chiefs in a massive game on a national stage. Cam Newton, their star quarterback, was out because of COVID-19. The game, was played anyway. We're now seeing these pitcher surface of Gilmore and Mahomes talking after the game, which freaks everybody out. What do you make of this story?

What do you make of the way the NFL has handled this? Because they've now opened themselves up to real criticism for them playing that game. And obviously, if there becomes a big spread between these two teams, though it is already reported that the Chief's tests all came back negative this morning. That doesn't necessarily mean they're out of the woods by any means, as we're learning with the other team, the Tennessee Titans, which we still don't know if they're going to be able to play. So so far, we've got the Patriots.

We've got the Titans. Titans didn't play. Patriots did. And now we've got this Gilmore news. And we're just bracing for more bad news, which hopefully does not come down the pike. What do you make about the NFL's handling all this? Okay. So I'm going to go on a little bit of a diatribe here.

and it's out of love that I'm doing this because I absolutely love the NFL. I absolutely love analyzing and watching the NFL I have for decades. And I have a big problem with this. And let's forget what your preconceived notions are on wearing masks or how deadly this virus is or how dangerous this virus is. In my opinion, all that is totally irrelevant. The only thing that matters right now is what the NFL's stance is as it relates to this virus. And it's very clear that if you test positive, you have to go into this isolation period.

And if you have symptoms, you're out for an extended period of time. That's all that really matters here. It doesn't matter what we think of the virus. It matters what the NFL's policy is. But what we do know about this virus, is the fact that it is very contagious, number one, and it has an incubation period number two. And so if you realize that those two things are fact-based, then it was irresponsible to allow the New England Patriots to play this game against the Kansas City Chiefs.

There's no other way to phrase it, in my opinion. You have news coming out this morning, not only that Stefan Gilmore obviously has tested positive now. But the fact that, according to a report, quote, Gilmore may not be terribly surprised to learn that he tested positive. Gilmore was in close contact with Newton in the days leading up to his positive test. So, you know, if that is true, this is reported, you know, reportedly. But if that is true, I think that we are doing the wrong thing with how we're trying to identify these. potential cases, and taking the steps necessary to complete the season. I don't care how long the season takes. I just want to see it played in full. The NFL does have a big advantage here because

Team A is only interacting with one other team in the span of 13 days, right? Like you go from a Monday game, from a Sunday game, and the Patriots case, obviously it was a Monday, but you go from a Sunday game to the following game, which is next Sunday, and then you have another six days before you play another team. So you have this window. It's not like the NBA where you're, you know, when they were leading up to it. Obviously, they were in a bubble, but you're playing a team every other day and it's a different team and those types of things. Or hockey does stuff like that. You know, I know baseball plays in series and you're playing the same team for a few different games. But in this case, with football, you have so many days apart. We need to be able to do a better job of figuring these

things out and it's clear with the Titans how this thing can spread and can take a little while to develop. And so I think the NFL, I don't know if hitting the pause button right now and taking a break to figure out what the policies are, if this is like the reset time period, or we just need to reanalyze the policies here for how players that have been exposed to this can then replay games. mean, just because they aren't testing positive does not mean they couldn't be contagious with this thing. That couldn't be inside of them right now at that point in time, which is clearly what was going on with Gilmore. So hopefully nobody can't...

You think about this, Warren, they're in a friggin locker room. Right. I mean, like, I mean, you can't get a more confined area to put 53 massive men. You know what I mean? They're in a visiting locker room, no less. Right? So it's not even like their huge plush one. They're They're in a visiting locker room and this guy is a major player on that team. There's no telling how many people are exposed to this just from him having it, much less all the team personnel and everybody else that's on a plane, right? Absolutely. And I even read here that he flew on a separate plane.

He, that led his close contact with Cam Newton led him to fly to Kansas City on a second plane with about 20 other people who had close contact with Newton. So you can't have a situation. Did they put those people in a different locker room? Well, exactly. They had close contact with him. Now they're reintroducing these people back into the general population of the team just because he tested negative the morning of the game, right?

Or the night before they played that game. We're finding out it's Wednesday morning. So if we do the math here, I think you take the tests and then generally speaking, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you find out that night. Like some of the tests, they come back that night. So he took the test on Sunday. They find out Sunday night that he doesn't have it. I am guessing he took another test on Monday, but I don't know that they would have found

out the results of that test prior to Monday night. But at that point in time, he did not have it. So he was cleared, he was not testing positive. Let's say it wasn't that he didn't have it. He wasn't testing positive. So he was able to play in that game. But the sample that came back Tuesday night, okay, which would have been taken on Tuesday morning, showed up as being positive, which is why this morning we're hearing this news break.

So he plays Patrick Mahomes and is talking to Patrick Mahomes. And then he gets tested Tuesday morning back in New England. And that's the test that ultimately shows up as being positive. So this thing clearly has an incubation period. You clearly can spread it before you have symptoms. Sometimes you have symptoms you don't even know that you have it and you're testing positive. So I'm not trying to like throw the whole cabosh and douse this fire of the NFL season out.

I'm just saying we have to think a little, be a little bit more forward thinking about the potentials for spreading this thing and how we can change the protocols to avoid having a situation where it spreads too much. But let's not forget also one other thing. We can't just go out and criticize and say, well, oh, my God, the Patriots definitely infected the chiefs. And so this is why the chiefs are testing positive. I hope none of the chiefs test positive.

But we know that the quarterback who was on their practice squad, who was simulating what Cam Newton was doing in the week leading up to this game also tested positive. So who knows who he might be ultimately have spread this to that then some guys on the chiefs end up testing positive. So we can't necessarily definitively say. It was from the Patriots why any chiefs may in the future test positive here. But, I mean, I'd love to be talking about something more uplifting and exciting because there's so many things to discuss in the NFL right now.

Hopefully we can change gears. But it is important for the league to, I think, in my opinion, modify their protocols a little bit so that we can play this entire season, no matter how long it takes to get there. Because the one thing is clear, if you're listening to the ring or NFL show, you like football, potentially you love football and I do as well and I know you do too Chris and there's nothing more that we want to see

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In Iowa, call 1-800 bets off. Let's talk about some actual football. Washington has made the change away from Dway from Dwayne Haskins this week. What did you see from Dwayne Haskins? And do you think that this is the right move, fair move? Is this move warranted? I think it is warranted. Look, there was no loyalty to Dwayneux.

Wayne Haskins by the guys that are coaching this team right now. Ron Rivera, Scott Turner, they didn't draft Dwayne Haskins. It was the previous regime. The problem for them, obviously, they wanted Dwayne Haskins to work out. And who knows, maybe he'll fix some of his issues over the next several weeks and get back on track and maybe he'll be thrust into a game due to injury or some other situation and will end up playing better. But I have absolutely heard the whisperings that Dwayne Haskins was very close to being yanked. And it was so serious and so close that we actually bet on a number of Dwayne Haskins under props in last week's game simply from the fact that we believe that there was a very

good chance Dwayne Haskins got pulled at halftime or at some other point during the course of this game. right so let's tie this into sports betting momentarily we we are betting against dwayne haskins playing the entire game and the only way you can pretty much do that is to bet under on a lot of his props so we're seeing you know under pass attempts under pass completions thrown under yards unlike all these different variety of props that you can bet on a quarterback um what ends up happening though in this game so they're losing 14 to nothing his first four drives of the game were punt It wasn't an interception. It wasn't his fault. They turned it over. But nevertheless, a punt, a

turnover, a punt, and a misfield goal. Right. So they have zero points on the board. However, right before the half, they drive 75 yards against somewhat of a prevent defense and score a touchdown. And as a result of that drive, in my opinion, Dwayne Haskins is allowed to play out the rest of the game. Had he not, this is just conjecture, but had he not on 75 yards scored a touchdown, I do believe that they probably would have made a change during the course of that second half if he was absolutely looking horrendous. But I think the issue would be why they would make this move now is because they are not getting the response from Haskins to coaching.

They're asking him to do certain things, to improve certain things, to make these types of reads, to make these progressions, to process things at this type of speed. and he is not doing it. He's not making the changes from week to week what the coaches want him to do. That is why you end up making the move. It's not because, wow, this guy isn't quite as talented as we thought and maybe we can coach him up. The coaching it up was not working.

There was no ability to coach him up in their opinion. And so they thought he just needs time to develop. He needs to process the game at a faster speed. He needs to make his reads a little quicker. Let's give him the time that he needs on the bench and make. Maybe we'll see if he ends up getting any more time later on in the season. What about Kyle Allen? I mean, Kyle Allen obviously came from Carolina with these guys.

They have familiarity with him. They've won some games with him. And they've, I'm not going to say he's a savior by any stretch of the imagination. But he could probably operate the offense no worse than Dwayne Haskins right now. Is he as talented as Dwayne Haskins was, a talented as a, as a past, when Dwayne is showcasing those glimpses of actually doing what he's supposed to be doing and hitting those passes. No, Kyle does not have the level of talent that Dwayne Haskins does when both are playing at their peak potential. But does Kyle understand what the coaches want

him to do on certain plays and the reads to make a little bit better than Dwayne? That is my guess in this situation. And as a result, I think that this is a lateral move at worst. I think that this offense could see a slight uptick. I don't believe Kyle Allen is the long-term answer, but I haven't seen, and I do think, I guess I could say this, I've seen enough to be able to theorize that, but we'll see how he works in this offense with this team and the rest of the people around him. I think Washington is absolutely in the quarterback market in the 2021 draft. Let's talk about another team that had already made a quarterback change. It was actually a great week, I think, probably for Mitch

Trubisky, because the Bears' offense with Nick Fawes did not look great at all. And why was that? And what does it mean for the future of Nick Foles at quarterback? Are we going to do the, okay, now we gave the gig to Foles.

He loses a couple games and we're right back to Mitch Trubisky. What did you make of? And I think it's so funny, Warren, it's like, I keep reading all this stuff about how awesome Nick Falls is as a replacement or when you put him in versus when he starts. And it is like this stark contrast.

Was it opponent base last week? You know, the Bloom came off the rose pretty quick on the Falls experience after he came in and led them to victory. Then they started him the next week and they look like crap. No, they did. And look, I think some of this has to do with coaching. and I spend a lot of time watching tendencies of various different coaches of play callers, particularly on the offensive side of the ball, and analyzing kind of what they're doing. And I came away very frustrated.

Obviously, Nick Foles did not have a good game and did not play very well. But look at some of these statistics here in the first half of the game against the Chicago Bears. Sorry, against the Indianapolis Colts. So from this Bears offense, they basically on early downs in the first half, have a near 50-50 split of play call. If they called one more rush attempt instead of a pass, they would have been dead on 50-50. So we're talking about an even split as close to even as possible without being even. And when they pass the ball, they average 8.9 yards per attempt. When they ran the ball, 1.5 yards per carry. When they passed the ball, a 67% success rate.

When they ran the ball, a 20% success rate. When they pass the ball, plus 0.34 EP.3.E. PA when they ran the ball minus 0.38 EPA. Now, that 1.5 yards per carry on first half rushes on early downs, the worst of any team in the NFL last week. You're talking about a team that clearly has a stark contrast between what they're able to do when they're passing the ball versus running the ball. Nick Foll significantly increased the ceiling of some of these pass plays because all those rates, the EPA, the yards per attempt, the success. rate were better than what they were doing the first three weeks when they were passing the ball in that situation. And the rushing was worse across the board as well, whether it was the EPA, the yards per

carry, or the success rate than what they did the first three weeks. That is a result of the fact that you're playing a very stingy and difficult run defense with the Forest Bukter now there for the Colts and this team is better against the run than most of the other opponents that the bears have faced. So you can't just go out there and the bears previously in those first three weeks on early downs in the first half were a 50-50 split with play calls. So you can't just take the same kind of play calling philosophy and strategy from the first three weeks with Mitch Trubisky and just shove it ahead to week four when you're playing a much better run defense and you have a quarterback now that is better capable of throwing the football down the field. And as a result of these struggles on early downs in

the first half, you're being forced into more third downs with longer distance to go. And I don't care what quarterback you are across the board, even if you're Patrick Mahomes, those are more difficult situations to have success on. The defense knows you're passing and you have further to go to gain that first down. So you might be able to have Patrick Mahomes convert at a reasonable rate in some of those situations. But that's not going to be as strong of a rate long term as if he was in a better situation on third down, a third a short, third a medium, where you could do a more complex variety of things that the defense isn't going to know exactly what to expect.

The other thing that disappointed me, Chris, from a coaching perspective with the first game of Nick Foles, was this ridiculous tempo that the Chicago Bears utilized in that first half of the game. They literally operated at the slowest pace of any team in the NFL. they averaged over 33 seconds per snap in the first half of that game. There was zero way to get Nick Foles into rhythm here by just slowly getting to the line of scrimmage and doing the same things over and over and over and over and over again. That's just the coaches need to see the issues.

First of all, you need to predict things better from a game planning perspective. That goes into your game preparation for that week. types of things that you're going to call. It also means that you have to incorporate better backup plans as you lead into the game with different variants based upon this opponent that you're facing. Well, if this isn't going to work, then we've got to switch to this other strategy and we've already planned out that strategy we're going to shift to. And we're going to do that pretty quickly in the game because we know if we get behind, it's very unlikely we're going to rally to win games. I know they were able to do that against the Atlanta Falcons the prior week.

but for the most part, we know that teams with the lead at halftime win 80% of the game. So you got to figure out how we're going to make whatever changes we need to make quickly if something's not working so that we can lead at halftime. And they did not do that. They continued this slow, methodical, boring pace where Nick Foles was in no rhythm. They never decided, well, you know what, this isn't working out right now. Let's just go up-tempo real quick for a drive or two and see what happens. Like, be experimental, try some things out.

if you're not forecasting this ahead of time that you might want to do that, try to do it like spur of the moment in the heat of battle. And you need to be able to watch the fact that these runs aren't being successful, so stop calling them at a 50-50 clip. Like, let's shift a little bit more to the passes. So look, Nick Foles, he may not be like this savior for the Chicago Bears, but this coaching needs to improve very quickly or will never see the ceiling that Nick Foles might be able to bring to this offense. I'll tell you this, Warren, if I'm Nick Falls agent, I'm clipping out that entire tire drive.

I mean, that was unbelievable. Unbelievable. It ain't his fault. So, no, that is what I take away from it, though. Like, they made so many mistakes. Whether it was play calling, pace a game, whatever, how can we know if this was the better option, truly, with Foles? Even though all the attention goes on him,

you kind of break it down in a way that explains, Like, how could you know if Nick Foles is the best option here? We know Nick Foles is a better quarterback than Mitch Trubisky. Come on. We've seen Nick Foles be in a great situation, and we saw him perform. I mean, this same guy outplayed Tom Brady in a frigging Super Bowl, for God's sakes. We know that if you set him up correctly, Nick Foles is good enough to win games, including the biggest games.

So it stands to reason. It's probably not Nick Foll's fault that the Bears' offense looked the way it did, as much as we do want to put it all on the quarterback no matter. Yeah, and I think, look, he needs to play better, and there's some throws that look terrible. And so I'm not absolving him of any blame here. He did not look great either. But when you're in these obvious passing situations and you're being set up to fail by some of this play calling, I think that that is going to cause problems. and just big picture holistically about the Bears quarterback situation, I can tell you this.

The Chicago Bears were hoping that Nick Foles was going to be their starter. They did not come in and bring him in in the offseason and pay money to get him there because they were expecting Mitchell Trabisky to be the better option, a quarterback, and Nick Foles was just going to be a super ridiculously expensive backup, and we were going to just ride Mitchell Trabisky all the way through. They saw Mitchell Trabisky enough to know he's probably not our long-term. answer, let's get Nick Foles in here. And I can, I'm thinking that there's no doubt if Nick Foles has a regular offseason with the access to the team and the coaching and the personnel and a full

preseason, that Nick Foles is probably the starter in week one, as opposed to what ends up happening here. I realize it's easier to move to Nick Foles as opposed to start him week one and then see him struggle and then go back to Trabiski. I realize that that would have been very difficult to do. but I think that Nick Foles is the better option at quarterback, and he would have beat out Mitchell Trabisky in a full normal offseason. All right. Let's get to one of the very interesting things that happened in week four, which was you had this West Coast team playing an East Coast game,

which was Seattle versus the Dolphins. You see this huge line move in the Dolphins direction, and they played the Seahawks tougher than a lot of people thought, but ended up losing. What does it say about the Dolphins? What does it say about Seattle that they can play what appeared to be an off game and they can still win fairly convincing against Miami? And when am I going to get to see the Tua man? I want to see Tua in there.

I was so depressed when that story came out that they were starting Fitzpatrick again. Like, what's the point? Let's get Tua some reps. I want to watch him. Well, I don't know exactly talking about Tua. I don't know, you know, he might be healthy enough to be doing everything. but I don't know if his body internally is fully healed. And they obviously drafted him where they did because he's their long-term future at

quarterback. And so you want to make sure, I think, go out of your way to make sure this is a long-term plan with him at quarterback that he is all the way there. So those guys would have far better of an estimation as to whether he's ready for that or not. What I read, though, it sounded like he was available that it was a choice that they were making. He is available, but they are choosing to start Fitzpatrick. And you got to wonder, look, Burrow looks like an awesome pick. Herbert looks like an awesome pick. Like, they better have been

right about Tua, you know what I mean, because what they gave up and where they are. And so they might want to just bide their time and make sure, because Lord knows, if you're Miami, you're watching highlights just like everybody else. I'm like, geez, Louise, look at these two other kids that got drafted in quarterback. They look pretty good immediately. No, they did. They're They've been very impressive, I think, especially Herbert dealing with the past rush and the blitz and throwing the ball over the top and attacking aggressively and being on target with some of those deep throws. I was supremely excited to watch what he did.

I was very surprised to see him have that level of success against the Bucks last week on the road playing without multiple offensive linemen starters and playing without Mike Williams, your number one deep threat down there. But dialing it back to- I got us off track. Yeah, that's good. I mean, it's fun to talk about rookie quarterbacks and what they're doing. So I have no problem with that.

But getting back to the dolphins here, my issue with them was something that we discussed with House on the Friday show after the Miami Dolphins beat the Jacksonville Jaguars. And this is Grandpa Galey. Grandpa Chan Galey, their play caller, we nicknamed him Grandpa Galey. Because this guy gets so conservative in the... these games, and that's what actually cost the dolphins in this game. Now, if you just look at red zone stats, you'll see that they didn't get into the red zone nearly as often, but they had five full field drives where they started at or inside their own 25 yard line, and they walked away,

and they drove the ball all the way down to the Seattle 11, 11, 23, 25, and 27, full. So, field drives and they walked away with field goals on every single one of those five drives. That absolutely cannot happen if you're going to upset Russell Wilson's Seahawks. The way that Seattle is playing right now, the aggression that they are showing on offense, their willingness to go for it on fourth down, their willingness to throw the ball down the field, these are things that most teams are not doing. And you cannot strategize and play this team with a conservative mindset because you're setting yourself up to fail, you are behind the eight ball when you do something like that against a team that is willing to take those other risks that is willing to not punt,

that doesn't want to kick field goals that wants to score touchdowns. All of those factors go into play here, not to mention that Russell Wilson is way better than Ryan Fitzpatrick and that the Seattle Seahawks have better receivers than do the Miami Dolphins and all these other factors that they're just a better team overall. Warren, it's the craziest thing too. Like, every time I see somebody talking about Chan Gaylee, it trips me out because, you know, as a cowboy, that guy was the frigging Cowboys coach in 1998. And then, hey, and then he left.

He was the offensive coordinator with the Dolphins in 2000. That's 20 years ago. And then, you know, he has that time at Georgia Tech. And then he's at Kansas City. Then he shows back up. He's the head coach of the Bills for two years. then he shows backup and he's like an offensive coordinator for the Jets for a year. And that was 2016.

Four years later, he's the offensive coordinator for the dolphins. Like, it is bizarre. Yeah, I didn't really bizarre. I didn't really understand that coaching hire. And that's the kindest way I can put it. I didn't quite get it. And right now we're seeing. kind of the implications of that. I think they obviously viewed him as a guy who could

optimize some of the things that maybe Tua would be able to do and some of the blocking up front and some of the strategies. But this is not a coach who is ready for football in 2020. He's not a coach who's ready to do what is necessary in 2020 to keep up with the pack, so to speak. Things are trending in a more analytical direction. Now, than they ever have been before. Teams are optimizing some of their play calling and their decision making to try to do things that are more in line with what the data is actually showing that they should be doing. And you can't be walking in the reverse direction of that and expect to have success,

particularly when you don't have the most talented roster in the world and you're fighting these uphill battles. Well, but it's not always about young and old in that case. Warren, and I bring to you the Detroit Lions. Their head coach is very young, and yet, and some people liked them as a sleeper in that NFC North, and yet here they are, one and three, blown lead after blown lead. Matt Patricia, he's not 68 years old, so what's his excuse? Well, there is no excuse for Matt Patricia. I know that things have not gone well with him as the coach, but I'm going to point the finger too at an issue that I've seen in the NFL, and it's not so much the case with Dan Quinn. Dan Quinn's defense is just terrible. And I know Detroit has had some injuries, but this was actually a problem with Pete Carroll for several years, well, more than several, when he was with the Seattle Seahawks. It's been a problem for some defensive-minded head coaches that then have influence over the offensive game plan.

And I can't think of any other reason why the Detroit Lions are changing their strategy and philosophy in the second half of games, particularly those where they build up a first half lead, like they've done this season and like they did last season because I wrote about this in my book after evaluating the 2019 season when I looked at what Matthew Stafford was doing on first downs in the first half versus first downs in the second half and how substantially more conservative offense was getting and I wrote about it and I warned, forewarned in this case, that they have to get a more aggressive strategy on first downs in the second half of play because in the first half they're more pass heavy and they're attacking aggressively down the field and Stafford was balling out,

absolutely balling out. And he's been doing that so far this season. When they have played with a lead in the second half on first downs, they decide to go 75% run. Those runs after, average is three and a half yards per carry while their passes average 8.8 yards per attempt with an 83% success rate. Mind you, the only way that they've built these leads so they have the opportunity to call plays with a lead in the second half is by an aggressive passing first approach on first downs in the first half of games. So they're passing to build a lead. Then they decide we're just going to go conservative in the second half and run the ball. There's a massive split between efficiency when they pass versus run, yet they're voluntarily, nobody's forcing them.

They themselves are deciding, based upon play calls, to go 75% run. It's absolutely ridiculous. This is why they've blown these leads. They have blown a double-digit lead. Do you think that, I mean, it seems so simple. You even wrote about this, but as you mentioned, Warren, before the friggin' season, they've got to know, right? They have access to this.

understand the way they are calling games and yet they do it over and over again. And so what would if you were trying to come up with an excuse for it? Let me put you on the other side of this. If you were trying to come up with an excuse for it, they hear this and you say, look, like you're calling 75% runs on first down and the same thing happens every frigging week. Like what would what would a plausible excuse be? be that they are, that the defenses are then setting up in the second half to guard against that

pass. Therefore, we feel our best chance is, is running the ball. I mean, what would it be? Well, that's a good thought. But I think that we're given too much credit to the fact that they actually know this because I don't, you know, I, while I work for some teams and I communicate with some guys, I don't talk to the lions. And I don't know that they read my book. And I don't have confirmation that they are factoring this in into how they were going to change their strategies after last year heading into this year to actually do better this season. And I know a lot of guys were expecting them to be a better team this year. They have Matthew Stafford. They lost all these close one score games. They were a better team with Stafford. They obviously played a lot of the

season without them. It's going to be much better this year. But we see that, yes, they've had injuries on both sides of the ball. And Goladay hasn't played every single game this season. And their defense have had injuries. But when you have play calling like this, my only thought could be that this is driven by Matt Patricia and a desire to get a little bit more rest for his defense and settle in defensively and try to not make mistakes offensively. And this conservative philosophy that so many of these defensive coaches inject, I mean, I don't see if I'm an offense coordinator, why would I suddenly get conservative in the second half of games. We're not talking about like the final five minutes of a game here. We're talking about

right out the gates in the third quarter. So this is the reason why they're blowing all these leads. I mean, maybe they'll, maybe they'll read my book, but maybe they'll listen to this episode of the Ringer podcast. I don't know what they're going to do, but they've blown a 17 point lead, an 11 point lead, a 14 point lead. No other team has blown more double digit leads through four weeks in the NFL history. They're on a buy this week, but they've basically been taken a buy every single game after they build these double-digit leads so far this season. And I would like nothing more than to see them come out after the buy having listened to this episode and decide we're going to stay a little bit more aggressive when we have a lead in the third quarter of a game and see

where that gets us. I mean, God, if nothing else, just say, let's see where it gets us. I mean, like, what else could happen? What else could go wrong here? Like, what do we could do? Blow a lead? Exactly, exactly. All right, let me ask you about how bad the NFC East is, comparatively from other divisions and other years, because they are the butt of every single joke, 3, 12, and 1 as a division. Give me a little perspective here.

Is it really as miserable as it appears to be with the NFC East in terms of quality of team? And when people are saying, hey, it's going to be a six-win team that ends up, you know, being their representative in the playoffs. How bad is it? Because I know you're always looking at opponents, et cetera, taking so many other things into context on this. Is this really one of the most miserable divisions we've ever seen? Well, you know, I don't know if I could say it's one of the most miserable we've ever seen. Certainly, we're looking at a team, sorry, a division that has done very poorly in terms of winning

games. Now, we know that the Cowboys and the Eagles are better than their record is indicating. They've been ravaged with injuries. For the Eagles case, it's primarily injuries and just the performance of the quarterback. Look, we saw him actually play better last week in week four out in San Francisco in primetime on Sunday night with none of his receivers. Like he was doing what he was doing back in the end of 2019 where he's playing with nobody this catching yards. Like nobody has 500 yards for him as a receiver. But he's still winning games and getting this team to the playoffs. And I remember on the show, you know, last week, we were asking, is Carson Wentz a bad quarterback? And I'm saying, give him time. Like, let's see what happens. Because I know that he's better than what he was playing

the first three weeks and he showed that. Is he still, is he playing perfect? Is he playing back to the level of caliber that he could be at? No, I still think he has room to improve some things. But when this team gets healthier on both sides of the ball, they are going to be a much better team. And I don't think that we're going to see this team as like this walkover joke of the NFL where they're 02 and 1 to start the season.

The Cowboys are a little bit different because I know. you're frustrated as a fan. I think this is a team that needs to just re-process some of their coaching decisions and get better production and health from their roster. Re-process. What a nice word. Vent for me, Chris. All right.

Emmanuel Ocho, who works for Fox, former linebacker. He tweeted something out that honestly sent me directly to my bathroom to vomit excessively for it. an hour straight. It said, Cowboys fans, your defense is terrible because your defensive coordinator shouldn't be an NFL defensive coordinator.

Mike Nolan hired Mike McCarthy in 05 as his offensive coordinator with the 49ers. Nolan hadn't been a defensive coordinator since 2014. In his last three seasons as the Falcons defensive coordinator, they ranked 24th, 27th, and last.

Look, what am I supposed to do here? Well, your defense wasn't, If there's any, if there's any, you know, silver lining, you're used to a bad defense because your defense wasn't really good last season. But I can't take a guy tweeting out, hey, here's who your coach is. He hadn't coached in six years. And the last three times he did coach, he sucked. I was like, oh, great. And I know you don't love hearing that, obviously.

but I will say that I also saw a clip from Daniel Jeremiah where he was showcasing that a lot of effort and plays taken off by some of the defenders on this team. And they themselves made some comments after the game about how it's unacceptable that we're playing this way with a lack of effort on that side of the football. And nobody can make you play harder than you, right? Like you just have to choose that I'm going to put good stuff on film. and I'm going to at least try hard as I'm playing this game as best I can on every single play. And they obviously weren't doing that so far this season. Will that alone be enough to offset the defensive scheme and compensate for the injuries? I have no idea.

We're going to find out if they actually start trying hard. But that's the first step that you can take here, along with this, what I call the reprocessing, of some of their scheme fits and getting Mike Nol. some comfort level with who these guys are and what they can do. Keep in mind, there was no ability to play preseason game. So you're trying to fit guys into different spots and give them responsibilities, but you don't know if they're going to be capable of doing that until you actually see them in a game. And that's harder to do on the defensive side of the ball than the offensive side of the ball, because defense is so much reactionary. And so you've got, okay, we're playing this team and they

might try to do these types of things like these reverses. And I don't know if this guy's going to be capable of aligning where I want them to and still make those plays. And I've had zero knowledge until I actually see what happens when he tries to do that. So I can guarantee you, like next week, they're going to do something a little bit differently with those guys where you're right. Mike Nolan should be gone. Okay. They need to make adjustments. Cowboys are always going to be the big story of their game no matter what because they are on TV every single week, a premier franchise. That being said, what if the Browns are really good? Is that possible?

I know that the Cowboys defense is disgraceful. I know that. Okay, let's get that out of the way. Are the Browns? Is it possible the Browns are really good? Yes, it is. I mean, I thought that the Browns were good. I was betting them over their wind stuff to start before the season even started.

Warren, I know Seattle is. I know the Browns are. I mean, I know Seattle is. I know the Rams are. That's who they played week one. The Falcons are dismal and that was a crazy comeback. and I know the common refrain, they could be 0 and 4. But it's not like they lost to rat teams.

You know what I'm saying? Like their losses are not ridiculous losses if we conclude that the Browns are actually good. Look, the Browns are good. They're not great. Their quarterback is not the guy that you could just strap everything onto his back and say, win me these games. But their system and how they're doing things and the talent overall, that they have there is good enough to win games, especially with the coaching that they're getting.

So I like the Browns. Let me just tell you this about your defense, okay? So far this season, by my metrics, you have played the second toughest schedule of opposing offenses that any team has played this year. And over the rest of the season, you are about to tie for the second, sorry, for the easiest schedule of opposing offenses the rest of the way. So your defense has played very tough offenses, and they're about to play offenses that struggle a lot more the rest of the season. So I think that there is a silver lining into what your defense is going to look like down the road here.

And I don't think you should give up hope or fire your defense coordinator right now. Like, if there was a better answer on the staff, I mean, they know the staff better than I do. I'm sure they might be thinking about him, but I don't know that the better answer is right there in the building. We'll see. I mean, look, Dan Quinn gave up play calling duties midseason last year and the defense got a lot better. So I'm hoping that they are open-minded and trying to think of creative ways to improve their coaching. Every team should be doing a lot of self-scouting every single week of the season. All right, let me ask you a spread question before we hit this Thursday night game.

So I read this fact the other day about over unders and how it's playing out so far through three, four weeks of the season. Now, typically with anything, whether it's against a spread, home road, we look up at the end and it's not a massive difference off of 50%. They usually all kind of even out. but there's going to have to be a lot of unders that hit on early games for this thing to even out because it has started off blazing. It is 28 and 7 the overs have hit in the noon games so far this season. Is there anything to that in your mind? And my second question is knowing that it does always kind of even out,

do I just start slamming early game undersnow because the lines are going to become inflated? Because it's 28 and 7. You almost never see that with any kind of variance in terms of win loss or one side hitting that much more often than the other. What do we make of this? Well, so a couple things. Number one, when we go and isolate out like just the noon games or just the Thursday night game, and things of that nature. I think you definitely increase the level of variance there,

and there's different patterns that you'll eventually be able to spot in any type of sample size of games. And so stripping those out, like, there's no rhyme or reason why the one o'clock games would go over more than a four o'clock game, right? Like, you could make logical reasons why maybe a Thursday night game would go over more because a shorter prep time for a defense to prepare for the offense or things of that nature. But you can't make logical reasons. to that are that are fact-based and sound to say why more 1 p.m. games are going over than 4 p.m.

games. So to me, that's just pure variance. And there's nothing, nothing further than that. I agree that it has been at a high rate. But to your bigger point and your broader point of, you know, maybe you just bang the unders because it's got to even out. The response to that is, we have seen adjustments made in the betting market this week to account for. that. And I'm going to talk a lot more about this on the Friday show. So if you're really interested in hearing how this is factoring in, then I highly encourage you tune into the Friday show with House. But certainly just big picture statement, what was the main theme of last week during the week? It was tons of people from all walks of life, whether you're just ESPN and you're talking

about things or your, you know, more local reporters or anything, the points are up, has been an all-time high. Why is the reason for that? And everybody's conjecturing and theorizing as to why the reason is a lot of them aren't entirely correct about that. But that's fine. Everybody is basically talking about the big thing that scoring is up. So what do the odds makers do this week? They're going to inflate the lines knowing that even, you know, mom and pop who want to place a bet on the game, I've read the newspaper and turn on the news and seeing the mainstream media talking about points being high and overs cashing. And so they're just going to start betting these.

And so, yes, absolutely looking to fade that at some point. Like, if you bet every, if you chose to bet every single game under the total, like, would you actually make money this week? Because you haven't in prior weeks. But would this be the week that you could make money? It's possible. I will say that based upon my modeling, books definitely have made a massive adjustment. from last week to this week.

All right. Last thing, what are you looking forward to most in Bucks Bears, which is the best Thursday night game we've had so far, for sure? Yeah, look, the Chicago Bears, they've played a lot of offenses that have struggled. I think every single one of the offenses that the Chicago Bears' defense has played has ranked 21st or worst with three of the four ranking bottom 10 in the NFL. Now they have to go and play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Now, I still don't know as of this point in time who actually is going to be available for them from a wide receiver perspective, you know, what the skill players that Tom Brady is going to have to access. I know that O.J. Howard tore his Achilles, I believe, in that last game. And so he's out for the season. But, you know, you've got other wide receivers that are there that are key contributors that aren't quite at 100%. And we also know that we saw Justin Herbert have some success going deep on these guys. and attacking them aggressively down the field. But what is the Chicago Bears mindset from a coaching perspective? So I think the biggest thing that you can look forward to in terms of my take on this game is if you're analyzing it, study what the Chicago Bears do on first downs in the first half. You can just, I mean, I do it when I'm watching these games. You can also look at statistics.

You can go to websites and look at like the play-by-play on your apps on your phone. and you can see what the total number of runs versus passes are. But if you want to chart it, you can just take a little notepad and wait for the bears to have a first down and tick off whether they ran or passed the ball and how many yards they get. And you can find out for yourself, is this team passing the ball more than 50% of the time? Because they barely did that last week and they haven't done it year to date.

But now they've got a quarterback who's more capable of doing that. And one thing that we know is that's a tip of it. Bay Buccaneers are very good with their run defense. They have the seventh best run defense in the NFL despite playing the fifth toughest schedule of opposing rushing offenses. This has been a run defense that has been very strong. Actually, I'm sorry, they have the second best schedule of run defense. They've been very good for years under Todd Bowles, the last couple years of having a strong run defense. And we know that the Chicago Bears run offense does rank bottom 10 in the NFL. So what I want to see out of the Bears offense is a more aggressive pass-first strategy on first downs in the first half to try

to keep this game close. I could tell you that this line opened with the Chicago Bears catching around five points at some spots when it reopened after the last week's games. And it is down to the Bears only catching three, three and a half points. So the early money is coming in on the Chicago Bears with their defense to try to help slow down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense. I did mention that the Chicago Bears have played very easy offenses to date. They've played the second easiest schedule of opposing offenses. So they do have a step up in class. But can they slow down the Bucks offense with Tom Brady?

And then conversely, when Chicago has the ball, will they choose to call plays a little bit more intelligently, particularly on first downs in the first half? All right. Buck's a soft spot in my heart because the very first show that we did, Warren, we talked about overreactions in week one. And we said, do not overreact to the loss. of the bucks do not overreact to the loss of the Colts. Neither team has lost since. So I love those

teams. Yeah, I do, I do too. I mean, look, I think that we have the opportunity, in my opinion, this season for more teams to turn things around than we have seen in the past, just with all the questions and the variance and the lack of productivity, you know, and the lack of offseason. So this year presents an opportunity that if you started off-port, poorly. I still think you can get things on track. If you optimize your coaching and your play calling and just your performance and effort in the Cowboys case, like teams can turn things around and we can't overrate one bad performance here. We got to look at the bigger picture. And that's why I think it's very important to see how these Bears coaches call this game.

Warring you the best. I'll be listening to you and House on Friday. Make sure you're listening to Kevin Clark and Company tomorrow on the Ringer NFL show. Thanks, Warren. All right, buddy. Take care. Thanks, everybody to listen to another episode of The Ringer NFL show. We will talk to you on Friday.