The Ringer NFL Show - Eberflus Outcoached Belichick, the Bengals Offense Has Figured It Out, the Chargers Are Depressing. and More Big Takeaways From Week 7 | Extra Point Taken

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Ben and Sheil get together to share their reactions to the Bears' shocking win over the Patriots on 'Monday Night Football.' Ben then explains why we should put an asterisk on all the talk about the Cincinnati Bengals' suddenly refocused offensive scheme (10:38). Next, Sheil names the NFL teams that should be calling the Patriots about Mac Jones while Ben tries to fix the Colts with a mobile quarterback (20:43). They end the pod by exposing the Chargers' and Falcons' anemic output and delivering the weekly extra point (42:01). Hosts: Ben Solak and Sheil Kapadia Production Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopal Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The time has come to get ready for the 2022 World Cup. And what better way to prepare than by revisiting the World Cup's most amazing goals? I'm Brian Phillips. I'm making a podcast about the history of the men's World Cup, told through the stories of 22 iconic goals. The show's called 22 Goals. It's out now on the Ringer Podcast Network, and we're having so much fun. Welcome to Extra Point. Taken, I'm Sheila Kapari. As always, joined by Ben Solac after Monday night football where we got a stunner,

at least in my opinion, I was stunned. The Bears stunned the Patriots 33 to 14 in a week where it felt like all these favorites just went down. This was the last one. We're going to talk about that game. You know the format. It's simple. We alternate takes, three takes apiece. I've got the extra point today.

Benjamin So, like, how are we feeling with, what was it? Week 7 wrapped up. Justin Fields is good. We never doubted once. Never, never shook. Not even for a little bit. Was I like, he's clearly bad? I was never on the record saying he's being David Card. It never happened.

Justin Fields. I will, I will, I will remember this game forever. He looked so good. It was so important to me. All right. Let's get to it. I'm starting us off with my, I mean, I like it. You just started it off with Jake Day.

Let's talk about Monday night football. My first take, it's not about Justin Fields. My take from this game is Matt Eberfluse and the Bears completely out-coached Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots. This was not something I expected to say on the Monday night show, Benjamin Solicke. I didn't think this was going to be my first take after that game. But I don't know how you come to any other conclusion. Watching this, the Bears come out. out. They score on seven of their first nine drives, five straight possessions at one point.

They had 24 first downs, a season high. They did the thing everyone has been asking them to do for two years now. Use Justin Fields in the designed run game. Zone Reed, Fuby sweeps. I don't have QB. We saw QB draw tonight, all these things we wanted to see from Justin Fields. They used his legs. The Patriots were not ready for this. And I guess nor should they have been because the Bears have been pretty stubborn about not integrating that into their game plan. They weren't able to adjust. The Bears run 45 times in this game for 243 yards. So that's one side of the fall.

Then the other side of the ball, Bill Belichick, this decision, this wrinkle, start Mac Jones, then go to Bailey Zappi, completely backfires. Their offense was a complete disaster. You know, you had those couple drives in the second quarter where Bailey Zappi, Happy makes a couple plays downfield or I guess more appropriately, his players made a couple plays downfield. Jacoby Myers and Devante Parker. And you thought, okay, this might just turn into the blowout for the Patriots that we expected.

That's not what happened at all. I mean, they scored on those back-to-back possessions. And that was it. The final five possessions for the Patriots, three turnovers and two punts. And so in a game where many, I'll be honest, I thought this was going to be a blowout. I had the Patriots covering seven and a half. I think it went to eight and a half by the time kickoff came around. I mean, anytime you win a game outright, when you're an eight and a half point underdog

and you're on the road and Bill Belichick's on the other sideline, and there's not a huge injury or anything like that during the game. Coaching is a huge factor. So listen, I don't know what to make of this Bears team. I haven't been that bullish on them. This game is not really changing my opinion, but I haven't really had a strong opinion on Iberfluth this season. He's just kind of been there.

They have sort of this forgotten coaching staff. It feels like. And so if you're a Bears fan, you can say, hey, at least he's capable of putting together a game plan like that where we're taking the ball away. We're adding some wrinkles on offense. We're going on the road and we're winning. And conversely, if you're a Patriots fan, you're going, how does this type of letdown game happen with Bill Belichick at this point in his career with a team that plays like 10 rookies? How do they have this kind of let down game in this spot? So that is my first take for extra point taken.

What do you think? Yeah, I've long been critical of Matt Iberfluse for the schemes that he elects to run. Iber flus and when he was the defensive coordinator in Indianapolis, tend to just be like, we play cover two and we try to play it much better than you sort of a coordinator. He started doing some more cover three during his last season there and he's done more cover three. In his time with the Bears, we saw that three cloud rotation on the Joaquin Brisker pick, right? I'm like, all right, messing around with zone coverage. Nice.

It's a sign of a good DC. But in general, he just kind of like plays zone rushes with four. And the reason for that is he's a very culture and effort-oriented coach. And so we're going to play simple stuff really, really, really well. And my issue with that has always been like, is a juice worth the squeeze? Is it worth this much time, this much effort, bringing in guys that fit your culture, expunging the guys who don't? We have to remember this team was like fighting Roquan Smith to maybe be forcing a trade, like Robert Quinn trying to get out of Chicago. Like, you know, it's a tough process.

It requires Ribbon Off some Band-Aids. is it worth all that to be like really good at cover two? Is that where you want to be as a team? Though I always like to emphasize, that's like a summer conversation. That's like an ownership conversation. That's like the sort of thing you talk about in theory, like should you have hired that guy versus this guy?

Once you get to Sundays in the fall, Iber Flos is a good coach. Irrfluz teaches guys well. Iber Flus gets guys amped up for games. He motivates guys well. They understand their assignments. It's like, okay, I don't know if this is the avenue you want to go down to build a winning team.

But once you're there, like Iberflu's coaches him well. The guy that's a surprise. to me is Luke Getsy, who's the offensive coordinator there, who I think he came from Green Bay, and I think in week one, the bears came out and were like trying to run the tenants of the offense. They previously ran in Green Bay that would make sense for Justin Fields. There was a clear effort in week one to be like, let's run the Green Bay stuff with the Justin Fields version, right? We'll do the stuff that helps Fields. And they pretty quickly figured out that wasn't going to work. And then every single week, they've something got a little bit closer and a little bit closer and they

kind of try something different and they put this guy out in the field and they use this player in a different way and they get Beelis Jones back and now Dante Pet is taking a lot of snaps. And it's just been a slow winnowing process by a young offensive coordinator figuring out every week. Let's make sure we're a little bit closer to what works for this guy. And development's never linear, right? Like they've been getting closer week in week out, but they only scored seven against the commanders. Execution is hard. They don't have great personnel. This sort of game is a flash, right? They're going to get the Cowboys next week, Dolphins in two weeks. Not going to be. I go score 33 points again against those defenses, I think.

So development's not linear, but they're, they're circling kind of where home base is going to end up being for Justin Fields in this offense. And that's why I say Fields is good. It's because when you build it correctly around him at Matt Nagy, you're going to get games like this. You're also going to get games like the commander's game. Seven points, terrible in the red zone,

but you're going to get games like this. And it's going to help him develop. And then hopefully you start to get these games more and more frequently. Yeah, I would say slow down a little bit in terms of putting too much, the stock into Justin Fields is, you know, has turned a corner or the offense has turned a corner or Justin Fields is good. I mean, my big takeaway from their offense is, yeah, is just you use him in the run game, like lean on it. I don't know if you need to watch Jalen Hurd and Eagles film. I mean, that's the type of stuff that they should be doing. They don't have the same offensive

line. It's not going to look as good every week. But you saw it in this game. I mean, this Patriots defense had shut down a couple very good rushing attacks. And sure, you caught them by surprise, but that like has to be part of what you do. I mean, their passing game still is very disjointed and they're still, you know, turnovers on the table and recovering fumbles and some of those bounces that went their way. They're going to have issues up front with their offensive blind. To me, that was the big thing. He ran 14 times for 82 yards.

I don't know how many of those were kind of in the design run game or the option run game. I know it was at least nine because I saw that stat pop up with next gen stats. He had nine design runs, which was the most. he's ever had as a Chicago Bears. That's got to be part of it. By the end of the seat, you know, I still, other than that, don't know that I share the optimism

that you share from this one game. My opinion would be this. Don't borrow from the Eagles because you're not going to get from your spread game, right? The Eagles are a spread team. AJ Brown, Devonte Smith, spread these guys out. You're not going to get enough from that

from the current personnel group that you have. The team that it looks like they're borrowing from, in my opinion, I think it's to their benefit is the giants because the giants are way more condensed. And the bears don't have as many tight ends to do what the giants have done, but they get the formations tight. They bring Equanimity of St. Brown into the line of scrimmage. They bring Darnell Mooney in towards the center of the formation.

And then you run your sprint out and your rollout series off of that the way the giants do with Daniel Jones. That to me makes a lot of sense for fields in terms of how he runs and how he sees the field, as opposed to Hertz for like ball out, ball out, ball out. Like Hertz is a very, very low time to throw player right now. Fields and Daniel Jones, along with Marcus Mariotta, who again, similar is sort of an offense. Those guys are leading the league right now. They're the top of three in time to throw. That's the sort of, I think, build you want to have more heavy play action, more go condensed to get down the field.

When they started doing that and then you can go empty from it and you can, you know, kind of like rest of your formations. That Vikings game, second half, field starts throwing the football. Yeah, looks good. The Washington game. We're not as good throwing the football. Running game. Awesome. and now you get in this game,

I think a combination of both. To me, that there's enough going back the last couple of weeks where to me, I think this offense is certainly not like, oh, it's now one of the league's best,

but it's not to me the liability it was. They're like 23rd right now in EPA per dropback, which like doesn't sound good, but through three weeks, they were like zero. They were like 39th. They were like college ranked

EPA for drop back. They're figuring it out. Gotta believe, Sheal. They did a good job of moving the pocket early on. Yeah, they had a couple designs there that moved him outside the pocket and he made a couple nice throws there. All right, what is your first take?

I feel like I didn't say first take and it feels like we're infringing on a television show. So I don't know how else to determine. I want to do a show called Second Take that goes after First Take on ESPN and it's just like me and you discussing the exact same things they discuss in an extremely sober way where we're like trying to meet in the middle. Let's have a nuanced discussion. I think it would be great programming. I don't think that's going to do ratings.

I think it would be hilarious. All right. What do you got? The Bengals have figured it out on offense. Asterisk is the official take. We'll get to the asterisk, the footnote at the bottom, as you were supposed to do with asterisks. Cincinnati comes under heavy fire over the course of the first five or so weeks of the

season. Myself among them, I wrote, I want to say after week four, a piece about how the Bengals' offense was siloed. And we talk about this siloed offense as, a remnant of where Zach Taylor, the head coach, came from. He came from a Sean McVeigh team that put their quarterback on her center. They ran outside zone and they were in play action off of the outside zone. He arrives in Cincinnati.

They draft Joe Burrow. They spent some time figuring out the same way that the bears are with fields, what this young guy does and doesn't do well at the NFL level. And they discover that, hey, we got him. We drafted Jamar Chase. We got T. Higgins. He's really good. And Joe's so good and empty.

He's so good to kind of seen the field from shotgun, picking a spot, and going after it. that we're going to live in this shotgun spread world. And all of a sudden, the Bengals' offense became split. In their passing game, they were shotgun, empty, spread, quick game. And in their running game, they were under center, condensed sets, heavier formations, a wide zone. And there was no connecting piece.

They didn't have a very good undercenter play action passing game off of that. There was no connection from the running game to the passing game. This made them really, really predictable. Through the first two weeks of the season, and they saw more cover two than any other team in the league, and they couldn't beat it because teams played cover two when they were in their past sets. And then when they were in their run sets, they just got into loaded boxes and they always knew what was coming.

Over the last two weeks, they scored 30 points against the New Orleans Saints, and they scored 35 points against the Atlanta Falcons, most notably with Joe Burrow scoring, or, excuse me, totaling 344 passing yards and three touchdowns, averaging 0.9 EPA dropback in the first half. Very, very healthy day. they've jacked up their pass rate 68.2% this week, which is the seventh highest in the league.

And because they've jacked it up, they're pretty much just playing out of shotgun. 89% of the time against Atlanta, they were in shotgun. Now when they run the football, they run the football out of shotgun with RPO's. They'll go to empty and they'll bring Joe Mixin into the backfield with motion, or they'll start with Joe Mixing in the backfield and four wide, and just run shotgun RPO stuff. It works way better than anything what they were doing with it, with, center and it's indicative of a good evolution, a good change from Zach Taylor, something that he

had not yet proven he was capable of. This from Mike Renner, PFF, Undercenter Bengals EPA per play this season, negative 0.22, 31st in the league, shotgun EPA, 0.153, fourth in the league. This is now officially, clearly 100% a shotgun team. It's pretty much all they do. They were under center of very, very specific situations where they're clearly going to run it, clearly going to sneak, something like that. And then they find more success in the passing. game. They're way more pass-happy, and they really only run on RPO looks into light boxes. Asterisk. Defense is going to catch up to this too.

So good. We figured we got back to what we were doing well last year. We're throwing the ball out of the gun. We're throwing down the field. We're running RPO's and Joe makes in the light boxes that it feels a lot better. There's a reason why, like, this is what the Chiefs looked like two years ago. And then, you know what the Chiefs did? Overhauled the offensive line and started trying to find a way to run the football a little bit more.

Put two tight ends on the field, right? Look at the Chiefs right now. All Noah Gray and Travis Kelsey. Because if you just lived gun spread RPO bills last year. Great example as well. Eventually, teams still find a way to put a blanket on your passing game and say, hey, you have to be able to run the football. So the problem is not solved.

It's solved. It's accounted for for now. We're taking antibiotics. We don't feel the pain as much as we did. We don't feel the irritation as much as we did. It ain't gone. Treatment has started, but we're on a road here. So Cincinnati's passing offense is better.

And I think their offense is going to be better writ large. The longer they stay in shotgun, the shotgun RPO game working, get the running game working. It's going to be good for a while. This is not the final form. And it's important that Cincinnati understands that and tries to stay on the forefront of this

by still looking into how can we get our under-center play action game working a little bit better, looking into what personnel additions we can make to make the running game more diverse in shotguns. It's hard to have a different. shock and running game. There's more work to be done here to fully exercise this demon. I very much like how you said.

And I have other things, but anti-fiotic. And I know. I have no idea why I pronounced it like that. It's just completely incorrect. I like that. I might start stealing that. All right.

I see, I'm struggling with how to respond here because I feel like I am probably higher. I don't feel like I'm higher on Joe Barrow than probably most of the ringer staff. Just as an individual quarterback, I feel like in the preseason, We all had great discussions. Other Bengals can be good, not going to be good. And I basically always came down to, I believe in Burrow.

I think he's awesome. I believe in Chase. I think he's awesome if they do nothing, but just throw go balls and back shoulders to Chase. I think they're going to have a good offense. I watched this game against the Falcon and just thought Joe Burrow is incredible. I did not watch the game and think they figured out a second version of themselves that's going to have lasting power against very good defenses. I mean, now, I could be wrong about that, but that's just how I felt about it watching.

I looked at the Falcons personnel. They were starting a corner named Cornell Armstrong on Jamar Chase, who was released on August 24th and re-signed to the practice squad on October 3rd. Casey Hayward was not there in this game. AJ Terrell left the game in the first. They were without two other cornerbacks. I mean, we're really talking about back. And then I watched the throws.

and certainly they had some, you know, great staple concepts that they've had. You know, Nate Tice was tweeting about the 9-89 that they use with the two go-balls. Nate's always tween about 9-89. That's all right-n-9-9. Yes, the two go-balls on the outside and then the vendor in the middle of the field, which they scored a couple touchdowns on. But I'm looking at these back shoulder throws and going, oh, that is beautiful between furrow and chase.

I'm looking at that go-ball down the right sideline where he fifth just drops it in the bucket before the safety can get over there. And so I looked at it and I looked at it as I viewed this Bengals offense for the last two years. Joe Burrow is really freaking good. If you can give him time, he's very accurate. He knows where to go with the football. He wants to push the ball downfield whenever possible.

He trusts his receivers. Jamar Chase is very good. He is very hard to cover one on one. If it's single high, just take your shots on the outside. And so those were the things that I saw here. Now, I'm not disputing. you know, what you said with some, with the scheme adjustments and maybe what they're doing that's different from earlier in the season. I am disputing that I think they found any type of solution

that like I here, here's how I'll frame it that I think will be more clear. I think we'll be having another discussion on extra point taken at some point in the next six to eight weeks where you're coming on here saying the Bengals are killing me because of X, Y, and Z. Yes, I know. I very much agree with that. That's the point of the asterisk. It's like, I, I've seen a lot of people be like, Guys, the Bengals have solved the problem. They're just in shotgun now. And to that, I respond, if that were the solution, that would have been figured out a while ago.

That's not, that, that's a good way to be. That's a good patch, the one week solve. Okay, we've been trying to run under center. It's not working. We're not really going to call the under center run part of the playbook. We're going to call the shotgun run part of the playbook. Nice. That has a limit.

Well, it's very, very, very hard to be a team that primarily, that primarily runs out of the gun. If you look in the NFL right now, there's about two and a half of them. Arizona, Philadelphia, Baltimore. You can also maybe kind of put the Giants on there a little bit, though they've kind of been changing what they've been doing recently. What is the unifying factor on those teams, mobile quarterbacks,

very hard run the gun if you're not going to use your quarterback in the running game. It would be a predominant gun run team. So, no, I very much agree. We're going to be back on extra point either talking about they're pissing me off or Zach Taylor's done a really nice job. catching the second thing. I just think that it is important to know relative to like, I agree with you.

Burroughs is a very, very good quarterback. These games in the beginning of the year were not good. The Pittsburgh game was bad. The Dallas game was bad. The Baltimore game was bad. There are quarterbacks who even when put in really bad schematic places regularly overcome that. I think Burrow is pushing that tier, but he's not in it yet.

I think some people wanted a place in there. I don't think he's there yet. You're seeing fewer, who would you put on that list, though, at this point? Mahomes and Allen? Is there like your third guy? No, I put Mahomes, Alan and Lamar. I would put Lamar there because Lamar is, as always to me, singular. Lamar is nobody ever fully really stops Lamar.

So that's right, but I agree. And this brings me back to like one of my lifelong extra points, one of my most, this would be my extra point until I die. There are at any time two to three elite quarterbacks. You may not pick more. it's the word is elite. Elite means the top 10% max. There's 32 starting quarterbacks.

You don't get more than three elite quarterbacks. So when you're like, oh, there's not that many left. I'm like, no, there's the exact correct number left. And we all would throwing words around Herbert and Aaron Rogers that we don't really mean

because elite means elite. But anyway, good sign from Cincinnati. More work to be done. All right. My next one's ridiculous. Are you ready for this? I decided to get a little silly this week.

You might, yeah, I'm a little, a little punchy, I guess you could say, this evening. Well, I was just watching how the Patriots game unfolded. This is actually another Monday night football one. The following teams should at least call Bill about Mac Jones tomorrow. Just call. Hey, Bill, how you doing?

How you doing? I know last night wasn't great for you. Have you had your coffee? Yeah, you're in the film. You're on to the Jets, right? You're in a better mood now. Okay. I thought you can call me back later.

Okay. Listen, this is. partially in jest, but also if I'm a GM of one of these teams, I think I might actually call and just get a feeling. All right, here are the teams. The New York Jets, the Indianapolis Colts. Yes. The New Orleans Saints.

Ready for this one? The San Francisco 49ers. I knew that one's coming. That one's always coming. Everybody's making that joke. And the last one, the last one was kind of hard. I went with the Tennessee Titans. Now let me give you the quick case for each of the,

these five teeth. Jets. Zach Wilson has been one of the worst starters in the NFL this year. I'm sorry. I'm not doing this to poke at you, Jets fans. I hope you're enjoying this season. You deserve to enjoy this season. The team. I shared tweets. I shared texts from my mom talking about how she's worried about the Jets. I loved that. Yes. And then Jets fans were like, wow, are you really making jokes about injuries right now and saying Zach Wilson's bad? I'm like, no, I'm talking to my mom who I roots for the Jets and posting images. Jets fans are so, so sensitive about Zach Wilson right now that it's extremely

clear that they know but are not saying what all of us know and are saying. Yeah, they're five and two. The defense is seventh in EPA per drive. They have, I think I just said this last week, right? We're talking about the Jets maybe as a potential offseason candidate to land a quarterback. I like the scheme. I like the play calling from Michael LeFleur. I like the supporting cast, although you lose Verrett Tucker and Breece Hall. Those are obviously going to hurt. But Mac Jones is signed through 20, 24 for under $3 million per year. I mean, this is a bargain-type quarterback who would, right now, in my opinion, absolutely be an upgrade over Zach Wilson at this moment in time. So if you're like, hey, when's the last time we were five and two? Let's go win right now.

Maybe you make a call. All right, the Colts. This one's pretty obvious, although I think we're going to talk more about the Colts later. If I'm not mistaken. I'm moving the Colts up now. So they give you part of my response. Okay. So they're three, three, and one, if the plan is to tank, that's fine. Don't call Bill Belichick. If the plan's not to tank, then he gives you a competent starter again for another couple of years, not expensive. The Saints, you're two and five, but guess what? You don't have your first pick. You don't have your first own pick this year. So tanking is not going to do you any good. Like, you might as well try to win some games and your quarterbacks are not very good. You believe in the rest of your

roster, even if you're sort of delusional with that. You can get an inexpensive quarterback for the next two years. The 49ers. We know Kyle Shanahan had wanted, I shouldn't say no. I strongly believe that Kyle Shanahan wanted to draft Mack Jones in the first place, got talked out of it, got convinced.

I don't agree with that take, by the way. We've never had this conversation, but I do not think that Kyle wanted Mac and got talked out of it. I will accept Kyle wanted Mac and talked himself into Lance. Yes, yes. It was his call. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think other people made the call for Lance over Kyle. I think Kyle, like, made the trade going, okay, I'll take Mac here at three. And then sat down, really evaluated the quarterbacks and said, no, I'm taking this Lance kid. Maybe. I don't know. It's hard. It's hard to know. Kyle has too much sway there for, just forgive me. I don't think John Lynch picks Tray Lance. I'll put it to you that way. No, but no, it is on Kyle Shanahan. There's no doubt about it. He's the one who hired John Lynch. every final decision out of that building is Kyle Shanahan. But yeah, I mean, I guess it's a little bit semantic.

It could be, hey, other people who we trust said, hey, look at this. We could do this. And he said, yeah, you're right. I feel that. I'm not saying that he went in the direction that somebody else wanted to go in. But if you're in the 49ers, he says he better than Jimmy G, probably. If nothing else, you know, you have two options this year when you feel like you have a Super Bowl team.

You have an option next year. If Trey Lance doesn't come back healthy and you're giving up all your picks anyway, might as well go ahead and do it. And then the Titans, Ryan Tanhill, no guaranteed money on his deal after this year. You can keep him next year for $27 million. Or you can have Mack Jones for under $3 million and say, all right, we got Mac Jones. We got Malik Willis. Let's see what the next version of the Tennessee Titans look like.

All right. Do any of those intrigue you? Are you bored? What is your reaction to the five teams that I laid out? That should at least call. Just check it on Bill, you know? Colts, I'm going to talk about. Jets, it would be an improvement.

Niners, I don't think he's better that much, enough better than Jimmy for that one to matter. Titans would surprise me. I think Malik is, I think you're not pot committed on Malik, certainly, but like you, that's your plan, but you want that to kind of be the guy who brings you along.

You've decided to go for a brand of football that incorporates his athletic toolkit. To go for Mac is to just completely change your paradigm of how you're going to run your offense. There's such polar opposite in terms of how they play. are, but I think one mistake people always make is overrating. When didn't leak bullets get taken? Third round.

When quarterbacks get taken in the third round, they are almost never the answer or pot committed or teams almost never say, this is our guy. Let's build around him. Like the times that that happened are so rare that the quarterback almost has to surprise them and take the job, you know, take the bull by the horns like a Russell Wilson or a Dak Prescott. When that doesn't happen, it's sort of like, all right, you know, we've got this guy.

we'll see what happens. But you could be right. Anyway, we don't need a long Titans quarterback competition. Who is the fifth team? I can't recall.

The Saints? Nah, I think you're good with Dalton, Dalton and James. I'm fine with. I mean, like, like,

if it's your, I guess, right, the no first round pick, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, no,

Saints are saying, yeah, yeah, I'm there on Saints. I forgot just how bleak the Saints' future outlook was. Surprise, there's no Washington in there. I would put Washington in there for sure.

Yeah, they probably should be in there. You're right. Who's the quarterback of the future in Washington right now? Who's the coach? Who's the owner? Where are they playing? Do they have a team? I mean, I have a lot of questions about them.

I generally just put them on the ignore list because they're so relevant. But you're probably right that I should have had been in that. Troy Aikman said to Scott Van Pellar after the game that his expectation is not just that Mac starts the next game, but Mac's their guy. Like he was big on like, they really like Mac. And it's like, are you, did you watch a game, Troy? Do you see how that went down? Are we sure?

How good was the halftime report? Poor Lisa Salters, Belichick tells Lisa Saltors that, oh, that was the plan all along to rotate them both in. So Back Jones will play in the second half. Yeah, you know, makes it feel like, yeah, that's obvious. He just never comes in there. By the way. You've never seen a head coach do this. You've never seen him rotate his top 16 pick with a fourth round rookie.

You'd have this while calling drastically different plays for both players. You've never seen this? This is not familiar to you? I thought Mack looked spry, by the way. If nothing else, he had a couple of. scrambles, he looks as quick as I've like ever seen him look. So coming off the ankle injury, we'll see how they

handle that. Mack is one of the highest scramble rate quarterbacks in the league under pressure right now. He's like top five in terms of how often he scrambles when he's pressured, which actually is part of my second point, which is that Colts quarterback situation we were talking about. Last clarification. That was said mostly in Jess.

I don't think anyone's calling this week. But hey, if Zappi plays the rest of the season, then this is a conversation certainly at the end of the season. Yeah, I definitely think teams they're calling. They may not be calling Bill, but they're calling somebody to be like, hey,

what, who? What's going to happen? Because, yeah, you ask in case. You check on everything. You try to move from Mac if the pages are going to delude themselves into three and a half games of Bailey Zappy

convincing them to move off of the guy. You're like, I don't think they will, but you absolutely call and do the work. They're playing Billy Zappian on prime time. You got to. You can't even not. Okay,

go ahead. Colts. The take doesn't feel spicy, but it is. Sam Ellinger is going to be better for the Colts than Matt Ryan was. Matt Ryan played well. Matt Ryan was an accurate passer. Matt Ryan was taking shots on the chin and was distributing the ball.

It wasn't great. It wasn't enough to elevate the team as it was given to him with no yards after catch, pass catchers. They kind of got in Paris Campbell integrated, but still Paris Campbell is largely more theory than he has practiced right now. Like Michael Pittman on stick ratch. So it's not enough to elevate when that Ryan's giving you at this point his career. Alec Pierce jump balls, Moe-A-Cox jump balls in the red zone,

Jolani Woods of the back pylon. Like, it was a bad receiving room, which did not get any coverage in the summer, but it's not a good receiving room and a really bad offensive line. I disagree. It got plenty of coverage on the Ringer NFL feed. I remember I had multiple conversations about what are they doing.

Okay, no, no. Internally, it didn't get enough coverage. I should have specified. Everybody but us was blind to it. We knew exactly what we were talking about. Because the reason I bring it up, is because I was talking about it in the summer. I wanted to be re-emphasized.

It's a little quick little pat on the back there. Port wide receiver room and then the offensive line deteriorated. I think about as bad as could have been expected coming into the summer. I think nobody had them being that bad. The Matt Pryor thing was weird, but like this is really rough. And so I think Ryan played pretty well in a vacuum. It's just this sort of player can't survive and elevate the context into which he was placed. So Ben,

2021 sixth round picks Sam Ellinger is going to elevate. Well, not necessarily. What Ellinger gives you is a quarterback who can scramble. And we are seeing over the league right now, when you go and you look at some offenses who have been surprisingly good, Philadelphia coming in over expectation, giants coming in over expectation. You can even to a degree put the Falcons here,

though we're going to talk about the Falcons from my third take. You're seeing teams with extremely high scramble rates. And when you go and you look back at how EPA per dropback gets parceled out by the results of the dropback, we generally know dropbacks are good, right? It is better to pass the football than run the football by EPA. But when you look over the course the last few years, like this season, the average EPA per pass attempt is 0.211. So anytime there's not a sack, not a throwaway, not a spike, not a kneel, not a scramble, but an actual throw. 0.21-EPA per pass attempt. Scrambles at 0.502, more than double.

And that's been the case over the last few years. The scramble numbers have been slowly rising, the pass-attempt numbers have been slowly falling, and scramble has generally been twice as values of past attempts by EPA per dropback. Scambles are really valuable plays, plays that we underrate for their value. There's a little bit of noise in there

because scrambles tend to come on third down, and you need seven yards, you get eight yards. It's really great for EPA because you get a first down. But even on early downs, scrambles are still more valuable than pass steps. Critically for the Colts, not only are scrambles a high EPA per play event, not only is having a mobile quarterback who can take a passing play, defense has dropped back, they're expecting pass, their eyes are on the receivers, they're in their past responsibilities, and all of a sudden, boom,

someone's running the football, and that someone is more mobile than he's been in years past, he's more physical than he's been a year past, we just have better running quarterbacks. not only are scrambles just valuable, period, but scrambles help to eliminate sacks. And sacks are the most negative play that you can take on a football field as a quarterback, not called an interception. It's actually closer than you'd think

between sacks and interceptions. But a touchdown is three times less likely on a drive with a sack than a drive without a sack. Sacks are drive-enders, man. They force punts. They force turnovers. It is very hard to overcome his sack. And Matt Ryan was taking sacks

at a clip over 20% of his pressures this year because he's immobile. He can't, he's 38. And he's Matt. Like when Matt was 28, Matt wasn't making guys miss sacks. Matt was not moving around in the pocket. With the quality of this Colts line and the immobility of Matt Ryan,

the Colts were giving up a ton of pressures and converting a ton of those pressures into sacks. And if and when Matt Ryan could anticipate the pressure and respond to it, it was quickthroat Aime Heinz, quick throw to Michael Pittman, quick throw to Moe Alley Cox. It was not going to be a high value play. Ellinger has the potential given

his running ability. This guy was like a, you know, four-year starter at Texas, 3,000-odd receiving yards over his time there with the Longhorns. He has the ability to turn the pressures instead of into sacks, into scrambles. And that singular event is why we're seeing so many more mobile quarterbacks be as successful and as valuable as we've seen them be over the last five years.

It's not just like the Kyler's and the Lamar's, because Kyler and Lamar's scramble rates are like above average, but not crazy. It's the Josh Allen's, who averages over one EPA per scramble. Like, 1.2 EPA per play when he scrambles. Ludacrously high number. It's Patrick Mahomes,

who is a better EPA per scramble and EPA per pass attempt. Patrick Mahomes, he's the best quarterback in the league. It's the Daniel Joneses and the Jalen Hertz. It's everybody from the first tier of quarterbacks down to the second tier of quarterbacks, down to your Justin Field year Marcus Mariotas.

Guys who, if they were just forced to throw the football, could not be starters in the league right now. But because they have the scrambling ability are able to put together offense that have produced. If you can scramble in the NFL right now, you have the biggest cog. You're the biggest key to get in some functional offense

out of some really nasty, tricky spots. And that's what Sam Eldger is going to bring to the Colts. It's going to raise the floor of this team because it's going to eliminate some of the sacks, eliminate some of the second and 19s, turn them into second and fives. And that's how desperate the Colts are right now. That's what they need.

I want to respond to a lot of those things. But first, I need a quick clarification. So right now with Matt Rock, the Colts are 30th in EPA per drive offensively. So I just need you when you say they're going to be better with Ellinger. Just give me a range. I'm not telling you you got to get to, you know, hit the exact number.

Are we talking they're going to be in the 20 to 24 range? Are we talking about higher than that? How much is the age of the door? We're talking, we're talking 20 to 24. But we're talking, again, it's going to be peaks and valleys because it's like a sixth round rookie who start in or six around second year player who start in and doesn't have an NFL caliber arm in my opinion. And it's less about like, I think Jim Ursae thinks Elenger's going to develop into a star.

And I think Jim Ursa is wrong. I think I am going to learn a lot about just how much legs matter in a quarterback like Elinger. And that's what I'm really excited to watch. I agree with you with the scrambling. It has become especially clear this year it feels like where it's just a problem solver. It's a, I don't get out of jail freak. Is this like, do people still play Monopoly?

I have no idea where that's even coming from. but it can get you out of jams. Now, I think there's some noise in some of those numbers because, like, you almost have to add scrambles plus sacks. Like, you know, like last year, Justin Fields was probably a very good scrambler still, but he was taking sacks at the highest rate of any player. Justin Fields right now, pre-Mondon-Nine football,

scrambles on one out of every five dropbacks and takes a sack on one out of every six dropbacks. So both are league-leading numbers. Daniel Jones is second in scrambles and third in sacks. Marcus Marriota is fourth in scrambles and second in sacks. So those are three guys right now for like, we hold on to the football a long time. Yes,

we're going to try to scramble. If we don't make it great, if we don't make it, we're going to take a sacks. And it's very funny. This is not a Daniel Jones take. It's not supposed to be. But so all those guys are super high on sack rate and scramble rate.

Fields and Mariotta lead the league one and two in area yards per attempt. Make sense, right? We hold on the ball for a long time. We run it a lot. We take a lot of sacks. When we throw it, we launch that thing. That's why we're holding it for so long. So let the routes get downfield.

Daniels wrote like 26th and areas per attempt. He holds it for like three and a half seconds and then checks down to the tight ends and it kills me. Yeah. Steamed up. I think that this Colts franchise is just out of answers. I think it's been a disaster. I think they've had plenty of time. I know the Andrew Luck retired thing.

That's going to set your franchise back. You've had how many off seasons now, three, four. off seasons to come up with the long-term answer at quarterback. You go from Brissette to Rivers to Wendt to Ryan to now Ellinger. I mean, come on, there's been drafts in there, there's been trades in there, there's been pre-agents in there. You haven't come up with any solutions. I think everybody has to bear responsibility. I think Frank Reich was obviously responsible for the Wents one or kind of stuck his neck out there. That didn't work out. Ballard, you know, he's the GM. Obviously, he's going to be responsible for the scouting, the draft process of it.

Ursa, if I'm a Colts fan, I'm going, what's going on here with, I mean, our owner is the reason, you know, they traded Wentz. And I think it was fine to trade Wents. They should have traded Wins. But he was obviously the one making that call. And then I think I saw Stephen Holder from ESPN say, you know, Reich and Ballard had a long meeting with Erse. And yet, you know, Stephen Holder's analysis was that, yeah, of course, Ursa has sway on who's going to be the started quarterback. It feels like a little bit too much sway. It almost feels like a fan saying, why don't this isn't working. Let's give the other guy a shot.

I don't know that he's going to lift their floor that much. I think they're such a flawed team. I think they have so many issues on the offensive line. I think they're at such a deficit for weapons when you look at them compared to these other offenses in the NFL. And now you're asking you're second year player. He seems like a great guy. Zach Kiefer wrote a tremendous story about,

I mean, a story about him. A lot of people should be and will be rooting for him, I am just highly, highly skeptical. I mean, the other thing with the sacks is, you know, Matt Ryan, I didn't think Matt Ryan was playing particularly well. Like I, the circumstances were terrible. But if I were like another team looking at a veteran quarterback, I would kind of be like, all right, I don't think we need to give Matt Ryan another shot. But there's going to be plays where Matt Ryan can process quickly. And Matt Ryan can see a blitz coming, pre-staffed. And Matt Ryan can get rid of the ball, whereas Ellinger's probably first move is going to be as it is with all.

you know, young quarterbacks who can move. All right, let me try to get out of this. And I don't know that necessarily, yeah, are there going to be some third downs and some fun plays? He picks up especially the first week. Yes, a month from now, do I think their offense is going to be better than it is now? I don't. I think they're going to have a bottom five offense regardless of who plays quarterback

the rest of the way. So we'll see. It'll be something different for them to watch. I just sort of feel like even their, I mean, the wins they've had have been such fraudulent wins, the win against the Chiefs was fraudulent, the win against the Jags, they need Alpiers on a last second go ball down the right sideline. This is not a good team. I don't need much. I've been trying to be guarded with a lot of stuff and remind myself, She'll, week seven, don't go overboard. That's a team I looked at every week going, this is not a good team.

This team stinks. And so maybe. As somebody who bet against them on the Chiefs game and against them on the Jaguars game, I also was telling myself late in night, they're bad. They have to do that. I'm positive. They're bad. Honestly, a part of me said, are they doing this to just go full in the tank? It could be like, we haven't had a long-term solution to quarterback. Let's just throw the rookie out there, see what happens. We're probably going to lose a lot of games, and we'll have a higher draft pick, and we can finally draft a quarterback, and what's a very good quarterback draft.

So we'll see if that's what ends up happening there. I like the Ursa point a lot, because this is such a clear example of how general managers behave. when they experience pressure from an owner, which is generally what we infer is happening behind the scenes given their in front of the scene's behavior, right? So often, like, general managers make moves and you're like, why did they make that move?

It makes no sense because they're trying to keep their jobs because there's a bigillionaire behind them that they have to try to keep happy, which means they have to win in three years, even though that's impossible. It means they have to do it with all these guys that the owner likes because their buddy told them that they're good guys,

which is impossible, yada, yada, yada. Just in Indianapolis, we get to see it in front of the scenes because Jim Ursa is who Jim Ursa is and because Chris Ballard is as patient and prodding and methodical and slow, lethargic and incremental and waiting and everything that Chris Ballard is, right? It puts Ersei's urgency, his frustration, right?

Luck happened in 2018, we have to recover. It puts it in the foreground where you can kind of see it. This happens on other team. So just usually it's buying closed doors. Yeah, I mean, Reich even said that we didn't keep our uphold our promise to Matt Ryan. I mean, does that sound like a coach who's like, yeah, let's change quarterback and that's going to solve my problems? All right. My last one, I probably shouldn't spend too much time on this.

But the chargers are the most depressing watch in the NFL right now. And I'm not just going to come in here and go on the whole Joe Lombardi thing. But if you didn't watch that game on Sunday, I mean, they're six point favorites. They lose by two touchdowns. It's the second time this year, Justin Herbert. has attempted more than 50 passes and averaged under six yards per attempt, more than 50 passes and under six yards per attempt. Two times for Justin Herbert so far this year.

The rest of the league that's happened three times this year. This, I remember when this guy came in as a rookie after the terrible Tyrod Taylor thing. And I go, oh my gosh, how did he not go first overall? This is the most fun quarterback in the NFL to watch. We have some new blooded quarterback. And now watching this version. of this Chargers offense that is totally mediocre, where the ball doesn't go anywhere,

where they're throwing to guys, let me see the names I have here, 18 targets to D'Andre Carter, Sony, Michelle, Jason Moore Jr., and Michael Bandi. 18 targets. Not a big Michael Bandy guy? Didn't catch the University of San Diego? You didn't catch those highlights?

missed him? Or San Diego State? I don't know. No, I missed them. No, no, not State. That's a real program. This man went to the University of San Diego. You know, Reed Senate?

That's Reed Senate hours right there, baby. That sounds fun, University of San Diego. They have a good time there. It's a beautiful campus. There you go. And I know they're injured. So don't kind of at Milliciel, they're injured. I know.

You know what? A lot of teams are injured. Okay? A lot of teams are injured and they adjust and they figure it out and they have depth on their roster and someone emerges who you hadn't heard up before or who was kind of fun in training camp. None of that is happening there. And then you look at it defensively.

Okay. They invest so much in this defense in the offseason. Khalil Mack, J.C. Jackson, Bryce Callahan, Sebastian Joseph Day, Austin Jackson. I'm probably missing somebody else there. That defense stinks. They're 24th in EPA per drive. I know they don't have FOSA. Again, don't come at me with the injuries. Everybody has injuries this time of year. And nothing looks easy for them on either side of the ball. And I thought Mark Sanchez actually had a great line during the game against the Seahawks where he said he's looking at the two sidelines, and he said the Chargers sideline looks like a morgue,

and the Seahawks sideline looks like a party. I mean, that Kenneth Walker run, Pete Carroll is jumping into the arms of one of their guards, and there's so much energy. I mean, does anything about, I like teams that play with joy. Does anything about this Chargers team say, we play with joy? Absolutely not. It feels like a freaking appointment at the dentist. Every possession they have, defensively, they're doing nothing. So I had a, more hope for this team. Even if they weren't good, I wanted it to be a specific brand of football. Like I was mentioning, that Justin Herbert was still going to be fun to watch. And I know he has the rib injury. And it was a team that he said, okay, you can get behind this team. I'm not wasting

my time here for three hours. I'm not even a Chargers fan. I can't imagine what it feels like to be a Chargers fan and watch this joyless group. But to me, they've just been the most depressing watch in the NFL. Maybe there's hope. I saw a tweet. Football Outsiders has them with one of the five to get schedules the rest of the way. Maybe there's hope, but I'm just bummed out. Yeah, they're going to go 10 and 7. Yeah. They're going to go 10 and 7 and they're going to make the playoffs and it's going to be

infuriated. Oh, I do not have faith in that. Okay. Maybe. Now, so the sideline note is an important note for two reasons. One, players know when their team should be better than they are. Players are not dumb. Players have been in the football league for a while.

They know how things go. So you get a lot of really talented guys on a side. sideline and then they go four and three and they're losing to Seattle Seahawks. They're going to know, like, we should be a lot better than we are. And like those are like, you know, coaches get up to the podium and they talk about execution. And players talk to get up to the podium and they talk about execution. And execution is always framed as a player issue. It's also a coach issue.

You as a coach got to execute your job. That's the job of a coach. I hate when coaches say that literally that if I had to give a one sentence description of coaching, it is get your players to execute. Right. but the coaches themselves have to execute. You have to like, you want the players like, all right, if you're in this position and you see this look makes you play this rep this way.

Yeah, well, you coach, if you're in this position, people are injured. And you see this look. You have a stark quarterback. Do this. You know, you also need to like read circumstances, understand the nature of football, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the Chargers coaching staff just continues to run their head into the same issues on offense and on defense.

The other reason specific to that defense that the side, Rheidelined vibes matter to me a lot. There's a little vibes reference because it's a ring or pod. You got to get those in. Shee-Hipal-Pottie told me. Defensively, Brandon Staley, play soft-boggling boxes. They're going to play, you know, college runs, and we're going to play from quarters, and we're going to try to make teams run on us, right?

Austin Echler on his podcast with Matt Harmon with Yahoo. Like, literally talked about how Staley talks about during the week. You know, we're going to make teams beat us with five-and-six-yard gains. There's a lot that that goes into that schematically. There's a lot that goes into that personnel-wise. But one of the things that things, that we talk about with that defensive style is that players

do not like being beaten on defense by 15 play, 80 yard, they constantly get to third and three and they constantly beat us with it drives. That sucks. It's so much easier to give up a Joe Burrow,

Jamar Chase, 60 yard touchdown and go, oh, well, if we, if he didn't fall over, if we got that tackle, then we would have stopped him and then we would, first and 10, we would have sacked him, second and 17, sack him again, third and 24, sack of a third, time. That's what would have happened. It's so much easier to explain away an explosive play,

right? Just like, they beat us. They got us on that one. You know, their guys super fast. And Mr. Tackler's on us. We come better. When you go and you execute the game plan and the response is the offense just chunk, not not chunk, just six yards, five yards, six yards, three yards, three yards, three yards, that sucks. It feels horrible. So if you're going to run this defense, you need to have guys who are, who have shed the, typical emotional understanding of the NFL player, the NFL defender of how it feels to face that sort of an offense. See, if you don't and they start losing through that, they're going to get pissed.

They're not going to want to keep playing this way. It doesn't feel good. And that doesn't get covered. It doesn't get put in scheme. I don't write articles about it and draw, draw X's knows about it, but that matters. And two last quick points about this. The most damning thing about that, what you said, that's their philosophy. And guess what?

They've given up four runs of 50 plus yards this season. So they're not even doing what they're setting out to do. Four runs of 50 plus yards in seven games. I will say, like in terms of my recollection of those runs, it's the James Robinson touchdown against the Jags, the Kenny Walker touchdown against the Seahawks. I can't remember the other two. But like the Robinson one and the Jags one,

they're in like, it's like a fourth and one on the Jags one. They're in like a stop the run sort of a defense. And when you're in those sort of stop the run defenses, if a play gets to the second level, it's gone. right? And so it's like they're in their typical defense and those ones are happening to them. There are different defenses. When they're in those different defenses, they're still soft. Their linebackers are bad. Their interior besides Sebastian Joseph Day is not good. Their edge setting without Joy Bowes is not good. But like it is not, they're not in their like typical philosophy on some of those plays.

And then the last thing is, again, with the injuries, I know they're banged up. They're down so many wide receivers. But that to me, it's like how many coaches in the NFL would go. Just give me Justin Herbert and I'll figure out the rest. I mean, look at what Brian Dayball is doing right now with Daniel Jones. Like look at some of these coaches who are finding a way to do more with last day. So that takes me back to like that Ryan Grigsden with, you know, thing he said with Andrew luck about, oh, you got to pay the quarterback. It gets hard, please.

That's a problem most teams would love to have. All right, what's your third one? All right. Three weeks ago, I stood here on extra point and I said that the Falcons needed to get serious about their quarterback situation. if they intended on winning any football games. The reason I said this is because they had a loss to Tampa Bay, 21 to 15.

Clearly not willing to pass the football with Marcus Mariotta. He's had two games over 200 passing yards so far this season, week one and week three. His most recent games, he's had 13 pass attempts, 14 pass attempts, 25 pass attempts, 19 pass attempts. It's week seven. They lost the Cincinnati Bengals, 35 to 17. they trailed starting 21 to nothing in the beginning of the second quarter.

They had 13 total pass attempts, 36% pass rate. They used their fourth overall pick on a tight end two years ago. They used the eighth overall pick on a wide receiver this past year. And they threw the ball 13 times with a quarterback that they themselves, this front office, this head coach, went and acquired in free agency. The take is this. deal. If the Atlanta Falcons want to be serious about winning football games, if this coaching staff that gets all the bluster anytime anybody suggests or anything

less than a playoff team, if this team, we're in a bad NFC South with the first weak, weakness ever presented by the Saints of the Bucks over the last five years of football, they want to be serious about winning football games. I don't care if he was drafted in the third round. Put the guy in, put Desmerer, put anybody in, put Felipe Frank. Listen, trade for Mac Jones. Get anybody in the building you're comfortable letting throw the football.

Come on. It's such a cool running game. It's such a waste. It's such a cool running game. If you just had a guy that you felt okay with running a play action pass on first and ten with, this would be one of the coolest, best offense in the league, period. I know this because every time Drake London and Kyle Pitts

get a target, it's good. It's not even like they're busting. They both look great. Come on. It's so dumb, man. It's knucklehead stuff. This is 2022. It's really cool that you have this running game. It's a huge competitive advantage because other teams don't know how to fit it. They don't know how to face this level of physicality. It's exactly what worked with you, Arthur Smith, 2019, 2020 with the Titans. The theory is there. But you trusted Tannahill to stand in the pocket and pull a trigger. You don't trust Marioita. Get serious and get a guy in the belly. I do not care who it is. I think it's really. or maybe you don't. Whatever. Get a quarterback and throw the football. They don't stop wasting the way that this looks because it could look so good. The NSC South is getable.

Be aggressive at the trade deadline. Do something in your biweek. I don't care. Get a quarterback into throw the ball. I don't think that he would trust either quarterback, whether it's Ritter or Mariotta, to throw the ball. I think Arthur Smith probably looks at this and goes, I have like a top 10 offense for the year with these pieces.

and you're telling me to change what I'm doing. And then maybe if you zoom out, people in the building are probably saying, you know, we didn't really want to win that many games. You know, we didn't think we're going to win that many games this year. Because DMPs spent an hour in August

berating reporters for suggesting they were anything worse than a playoff team. So get your messaging straight. Yeah. I don't think D&P's is making the 30,000 foot decisions for the bike. Yeah, I mean, you're right. I just, you know, I saw Arthur Smith said, I think this was from the athletic said, you know, if we had gotten a stop late, probably would have put Ritter in to hand the ball off.

People could have gotten excited about that. He said it kind of right. Drake London left the locker room without talking to reporters. Kyle Pitts has 16 catches for 178 yards on the season. I just don't know that he has a plan B with the quarterbacks he has now that he's going to do anything differently than he's doing. But we'll see. I understand. All right.

We're closing up here. My extra point taken. I think the 40, and you wrote about this for The Ringer, everyone check out Ben's column on the Ringer.com. I think the 49ers trade for Christian McCaffrey is both fun and reckless. Yes. And so this is where I come down on explaining why it's fun is easy. I mean, right?

I like watching good football players play together with a good offensive coach. You got Debo, you got kiddle, you got Iuk, you got McCaffrey. You got Kyle Shade Ann? Yes, let's watch what he does. This is going to be really fun, whether it's with Garoppolo this year, whether it's with Trey Lance next year. That sounds very fun to me. The other part of it, though, I really wonder about the 49ers process here.

I mean, if you read the coverage from like the beat writers in the Bay Area on this trade, a couple things seem clear. One is that they did not want to lose to the Rams on this Christian McCaffrey deal, which is not a good reason to make a trade. Okay, because they did not like losing out to the Rams on the Stafford deal, and they also seemed to admire the Rams F-D-Pix approach. But guess what? That approach worked for two reasons.

One is the Rams traded, well, really a few reasons, but they traded for players at premium positions. Quarterback, Matthew Stafford, quarterback, Jalen Ramsey, edge rusher, Von Miller. McCaffrey makes the 49ers harder to defend. I understand if you want to say, hey, he's not just a straight-up running back. I get that. But he's not, you know, like AJ,

Brown. You know what I mean? So it still is like the basis of what he is is a running back who can be used in different ways. That's one. Two, one of the secret to the ramp success is something that really cannot be replicated. And that's that they've had the most ridiculous injury luck, whether it's luck, whether there's training, sports science. I mean, you can lump all those things together. But they've stayed so healthy until this year for the last three or four years. You look at adjusted games lost or whatever. They're in the top five every year. Their debt hasn't been tested. So they've traded picks. They've drafted a lot of players in the middle and later rounds. They've built some depth that way. They've gotten great injury luck. The 49ers have

frequent terrible injury luck. And Christian McCaffrey, I hope he stays healthy. I do not want to see Christian McCaffrey get injured. But Christian McCaffrey played a total of 10 games in 2020 and 2021. And guess what? Running backs who get the ball a lot tend to get injured. It's really hard. I don't know how they do it. They take a beating. That's what happens. That's running back. That's why they don't invest a lot of resources into running back. And so I see those things. The upside certainly is exciting. If he stays healthy,

maybe we see the best version of him in this offense. It's a lot of fun. And they're really good. But to me, there's another version where this ends up being a horrible, wasteful use of resources. Because it's not only four draft picks, which it is four draft picks.

You already don't have a first. You're picking your comp picks in the third round are your first picks next year. So that's going to be around the hundredth pick in the draft. But by the way, it's also $12 million. You're paying him $12 million next year. $12 million can get you two competent offensive linemen. $12 million can get you one offensive lineman, one low-cost running back, one safety. You can use it in a number of ways. Instead, you're investing that in one player,

in one running back who, again, has had injury issues in the past. So I get the appeal, but at the end of the day, we all have to say yes or no. Would you have done the deal if you're in the chair, if you're on the, the phone, I would not have done this deal if I were in San Francisco 49ers. I love it. This era, the 2000, like the mid-2010s

to whenever Sean McVey retires, like 2024, that 10-year period will be defined when we look back on it in history as the era in which Kyle Shanhan and Sean McVeigh just hated each other. And it just became progressively more publicly apparent and aggressive.

Right? It just, that's what it. And there's like how it branched into their assistance. into those guys, into their defensive coaches, into those guys, and who got hired wear and yada, yada, whatever, and who beat who, and when did they beat them, and so on and so forth. I love the fact that the Niners were like, hey, Carolina, what's the Rams best offer?

Would you like that plus a fourth round pick? That is hilarious to make. Yeah, it's an extremely reckless move. It feels more reckless than the Stafford trade because of the position, right, and the positional value. But for the way that Kyle uses the running game, being able to move guys in and out of the backfield

that are running backs and past catchers and can take carries and go inside the tackles, outside of the tackles. That's so, so valuable. If you start comparing it to the Stafford Trade in terms of like, picks spent for health of player, years past his prime of player,

quality of play of player on bad teams, and how well will that translate to a good team? There are through lines that to me make it very much so like, I didn't get Matthew and I wanted Matthew last. year. So I'm going to go get Christian. And listen, if Pettingness wins the Super Bowl, that's a great storyline. I'm excited about it. I agree. All right.

It has been another successful episode of Extra Point Take. And thank you to everyone for listening. We will be back again next week. On this feed, you'll get the power rankers this week. You'll get the island with Nora Princeati. I will be back on Thursday.

Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing. Thank you to Ben Solac for joining me. Additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and our Juno Ram Gopal. We will talk to you soon.