The Ringer NFL Show - Is Something Wrong With Baltimore? Plus: The Underrated Bills, the Dangerous Dolphins, and More Week 9 Trends.

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

We break down the Bills' unexpected blowout over the Seahawks and the Ravens' disappointing first half of the season (1:00), try to explain why the Chargers keep losing (18:00) and why the Dolphins should be taken seriously (28:00), discuss which NFC team you should trust the most, and preview (43:00) 'Thursday Night Football' (46:00). Hosts: Chris Vernon and Warren Sharp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's episode of The Ringer NFL show, we talk about the bills blowout against Seattle, whether or not we could trust Lamar Jackson and the Ravens and the unluckiest team in the NFL, the Los Angeles Chargers. We're also going to get to the Tua experience and a lot more. Stick around. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Chris Vernon. And joining me as he does every Wednesday is Warren Sharp.

Hey, Warren. What is up, Chris? All right. So we got a lot of stuff to get to this week. Let's start with one of the huge games. between two teams with very good records. The Bills and the Seattle Seahawks. The Bills got a huge win.

Josh Allen was absolutely awesome in this game. But I was left wondering, was that more in your mind about the Bills' offense, or was that more about the Seattle dreadful defense? As most things are, it's a combination of both. But what was most interesting are some of the comments that I heard after the game from, Pete Carroll, where Pete Carroll said that they had a pretty good game plan to deal with the

Bills run game. And they were surprised that the Bills weren't running the football. And I always think that's funny because I've heard that type of thing before this season where a coach, a defensive guy thought that he was going to stop the run and the team just decided not to run. And it's always funny when you build your game plan to like stop the run, especially on a team like the Bills. I can understand a little bit why Pete Carroll said that if I'm not going to totally rip on what they were doing. Because the last game out before this one, what they were game planning was off of tape from the New England Patriots Buffalo Bills game. And in that game, Buffalo ran on 68% of their early downs to the first three quarters. So I guess Seattle's thinking, okay, these guys are just going to run the football.

However, if you look at what Buffalo did, and I think, I don't know if we got to it on our show last Wednesday, Chris or if it was me in house on Friday. But I was cautioning people about reading too much into the quote unquote decline of the Bill's offense and how they put up 16 and 17 and 18 points in three consecutive weeks and didn't look that great. And I was telling people about all these extenuating circumstances that were happening during those games. And one of those extenuating circumstances was weather.

There was wind in two of the games. There was rain in three of the games. and clearly that's going to play a role. And we saw a great intelligent game plan by Brian Daebel against the Patriots to run the ball a ton because New England can be had on the ground a little bit. And it's windy, it's rainy. Let's go after him on the ground. This game, Daibald, was just like, screw this.

I'm looking at the secondary. They've got losses along the secondary. I know you've got a couple of new guys on the team that haven't been there for a little while, right? Carlos Dunlap is brand new. Jamal Adams hasn't been there for a while, but they're sticking Jamal Adams in the box. They're trying to blitz with him, confused people. Dayball is just getting the ball, letting it rip.

And 20 of the first 22 plays of the game were passes. On early downs in the first half, Buffalo had 27 passes and only two rushes. And their passes were averaging 9.6 yards per attempt with a 70% success rate. So the bottom line here is it was a little bit of a fault of the Seahawks defense for thinking, that Buffalo was just going to run the ball a lot and like, let's game plan to stop the run. But it was a lot of the intelligence of Brian Dayball to attack these guys. And anytime you're an offense coordinator, you're a play caller, you're coming up with the game plan for the week, you can think that you've got a great game plan. You have to have an adequate quarterback

to execute it. But what you need is just precision and execution for that offense. Like everybody's got to do their job, so to speak. And what I saw in this game was a great, game plan by Brian Dayball entering the game a great job of play calling because those things are two different things people seem to think play calling and game playing is the same thing they're totally different you got to be able to call the right plays of the right situation and then a brilliant job of executing starts with the quarterback in echoes throughout the receiving core so I was that was such a fun game to watch chris I really enjoyed that one but in fairness warren the Seattle defense I know that you might have said they're prepared I

It hasn't really mattered what they have been prepared to do or what their game playing has been. Everybody has scored on them. You know, they had the somewhat impressive, at least first two, three quarters against the 49ers, but the 49ers were an absolute shell of themselves, right? The last time, two weeks ago that we saw them in a big game, they were eviscerated by Arizona. And that's been a bit of a story all year. You even go back to, you know, when this season first started. They made the Patriots offense

looked like it could do something at the beginning of this year. Right? They gave up 31 to the Cowboys in that game. They gave up 23 in their game at the Dolphins, 26. By the way, the Dolphins should have had more in that game.

We talked about the conservative nature kicking all those field goals. And there's no doubt everything you're saying is accurate. The Seahawks defense is going through the worst part of their schedule right now because they had the part that was before the buy, and during that part, they did not play an offense that ranked in the top half of the NFL. The best offense they played was the

Minnesota Vikings who ranked 16th right now. So up until that point, they played basically below average to below average offenses. They come out of their buy. They have to take on just nonstop top 10 offenses, more or less, starting with Arizona, week seven, San Francisco, week eight, Buffalo, week nine. Next week is the Rams, week 10, and then the Cardinals again in week 11. Now, the only reason that San Francisco only scored 27 is because half their team was injured

and the offense was using the backup quarterback, etc., etc. So that doesn't really count, but you're giving up boatloads of points against the Cardinals, like any good offense that you're playing. You mentioned the bad ones at the beginning of the year. Now you're playing good ones. They're racking it up on you. You're going to go into a stretch. Fortunately,

if you look ahead in Seattle's schedule where once you play the Cardinals, in week 11, you have to tangle with the Eagles in week 12. And the Eagles, I don't really yet know where they're going to be. I do think this week they get back on track offensively. They're getting a lot of guys back out of the buy. And I think they're going to start to look a little bit better, but that remains to be seen. But then you've got games against the Giants, the Jets, and Washington.

You should have a lot of success as a defense against those teams, which are all bottom five offenses. So if Seattle still hasn't figured it out, you're setting up a trapboard because we're going to, well, then we're going to start to believe that their defense is a little better. And then they'll get to the playoffs and have to play somebody good that's going to be able to hang 35 on them. Well, we're still not even convinced that even against the Jets and the Giants in Washington that they're actually going to be good because that's fair. The worst defenses at the beginning, we're still putting up points. So if we still see terrible production against even those offenses, I mean, you can forget about it. You don't have to have a great defense in order to win, but you can't have.

have the defense that they're rolling out there. You can't be allowing those types of things. And it's, you know, my how the mighty have fallen with them, go from the Legion of Boom to what they're trotting out on the field, even though they still got some players there. I have a feeling they're going to get it back together a little bit, though. I can't imagine that they continue the rest of the season looking as bad as they do. But we'll see. Speaking of looking bad, though they are, they got the win on Sunday did the Baltimore Ravens against the Indianapolis Colts. But that I mean, that game, it's just not a good football game at all. And the Ravens were one of those teams.

And obviously Lamar won the MVP last year that they were like, yo, you would see like something happening on Red Zone and then you would like go out of your way to flip them on. Because Lamar was electric. They're putting up points. They're running all over people last year. and just looked like a juggernaut for a lot of those weeks. They would just beat the hell out of people. And this year, it's just like everything seems like a frigging struggle.

What the hell happened there? So there's a number of things at play. And the one thing that I haven't heard discussed enough is the one thing that I want to share here in detail because we could talk about a lot of the elements of the offense. And I will say in that first half, credit to Greg Roman and Ravens, because they made some halftime adjustments. Nothing was working in the first half. I mean, that first half was all Indianapolis.

Then you get the strip fumble, return that for a touchdown. You have Philip Rivers with the zombie grab from the grave. Like he's like laying on his back. He tries to like reach through the grass up to the sky to grab the ankles of the defender and he couldn't get him. And that was just one of the funniest plays I saw. I immediately tweeted out the video of it.

Once I saw it, I reported it because that was just ridiculous. But the main thing that is really interesting to me is we look at Lamar and the narrative this season is he's not playing well. He's playing much worse than he did last season. What is going on with Lamar Jackson? And he hasn't been playing as well. And that's a fact. But listen to this.

In the first half of games on first down, when he actually passes the ball in the most optimal situation to pass, which is first down, you know what he's doing? he's putting up 9.2 yards per attempt, 60% success, and plus 0.30 EPA per pass attempt. No other team is averaging a higher EPA per attempt on first down passes in the first half than Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens. But the issue is that he only has 47 pass attempts. And the issue is that Baltimore is the most run heavy team on first down. in the NFL. And the issue is that those runs are only averaging 3.9 yards per carry with a 45% success rate and minus 0.03 EPA per carry. These are much worse than what they put up last year.

And I'll talk about that momentarily. But just 33% of Lamar's pass attempts are coming on first down. Now, Rich Rebar, the great fantasy analyst up at Sharper, football analysis. He was telling me that Baltimore, so if you look at just that game last week, in the game against the Colts, Baltimore ran the ball on first downs 17 times, and those runs average just 2.5 yards per carry. They passed the ball only 10 times, and those passes average 8.1 yards per pass attempt with a 70% success rate. Right now, they are passing less on first down than they did in 2019, even though Lamar is averaging much more efficiency on these pass attempts. I'm giving you numbers.

I'm saying he's plus. 3 EPA. I'm telling you that he's averaging 9.2 yards per attempt. Last year in 2019, when he was the unlimited, Mr. Unlimited MVP, he won unanimously all the MVP votes on first downs in the first half. He averaged 6.9 yards per attempt plus 0.06 EPA. 52% success rate. Across the board, he is way better. What's happening is they're passing the ball less on first down, running it more, and these first down runs. Last year, they averaged six yards of carry and 60% success. This year, 3.6 yards of carry and 47% success. If you look across the

whole game, all four quarters. So they're getting less on these first downs, yet they're running more. But why is that? Is that because of the offensive line isn't as good? Is that because of running back regression? Like, why were they so, because I understand, because it's not different coaches. So it's kind of like you're still chopping wood here. You're still going, this is our bread and butter. This is what we are as a team. And we did this with great success. That's what we need to do is to have, is to have that great success. But obviously, we're now, you know, we're getting eight, nine weeks into the season, eight, nine games in. And if you're, if those are the numbers, it's obviously not cracking like it was last year.

So what's a difference? To you, why? Why are they not as successful running the ball early? Part of the reason is because Lamar hasn't been as healthy. He's been dinged up a little bit, and so he wasn't running it quite as much. Part of the reason is teams are playing the run a little bit more, which is enabling the passes to be more efficient.

But in those cases, if you're the offense coordinator and you're looking at this, I think that it legitimately is, Baltimore's best interest, especially when the run game is not as productive. Now, it's hard to just write everything off one game with the Colts. That's why I'm looking at all nine weeks of the season, because the Colts have a great run-dee. And guess what? The week before against the Steelers, they had one of the best run-dies in the NFL, and the Baltimore Raven still put up a ton of yards on the ground on those guys.

It's not that Baltimore can't run the ball. And I think these two games have us thinking a little bit more negatively about the rushing attack, then maybe we otherwise should. And yes, you're right, the offensive line injuries have caused problems. And I think over the second half of the schedule, when you finally get games like against the Patriots crappy defense and the Titans and the Cowboys, rather, and the Browns, throw the Giants in there, throw the freaking Jaguars in there, throw the Bengals in there. That's what this team's dealing with. They have the number one easiest schedule the rest of the way. Okay. So they're going to be more productive on the ground. But what I'm thinking,

is that if you let Lamar pass the ball a little bit more on some of these first downs, this is what you need to start developing and fostering and nurturing so that when you get into the playoffs and you're playing another really competent offense, you're not shell-shocked when you're trailing at some point in the game. When you're down by 10 points and you're like, oh, crap, we're not prepared. Now we have to pass the ball more on first down. We haven't been doing that much this year. And so now it's a big change for us.

This is the reason why the chiefs are so good and never get scared anytime they're down. Oh, we got to drop back on first and second down and pass the ball. Boom, that's what we do anyways. We do that 16 weeks out of the season. So that's no change for us. This is like waking up and rolling out of bed. And I understand the stats, Warren. I guess my devil's advocate would be, yeah, team sit there and say, fine, make this guy beat us passing.

If that's when it's going to be, yeah, okay, he's averaging nine-point, nine yards on first down, whatever. But we're going to make this guy beat us passing. I had somebody bring this up to me the other day. You know, Greg Roman, once upon a time, he made Colin Kaepernick look like the best quarterback that has ever walked to the planet. And it was very last year, Lamar-esque, right? Like he was rushing for 200 yards in playoff games. and he was just an unstoppable force of nature, that year under Roman.

And then the league said, no, you don't get to do this anymore. Your team's not a running team anymore. That's not what you're going to do against us. And you're going to have to beat us accurately passing the ball all over the field. We're going to make you play left-handed, right, as it were. Well, in this case, and they are trying to do that to the Ravens, and in this case, Lamar is doing very well.

he's doing better than he did last year and he had a great season passing the ball last year. So it's getting lost in everything because he's nowhere near as efficient on third downs as he was last year on third downs and converting those passes into first down. They're gaining fewer yards on run plays on first down. So all of the third down and second down situations he's in, he has to throw the ball further down the field because they're not gaining as many yards on first down. So you're right. The defenses definitely have made adjustments and they're slow in this offense. down a little bit. I just think that over this last half of this schedule, the Ravens' offense is going to look better. People are going to stop getting, oh, what is going on here?

Could they drop the, you know, they drop the game against the Steelers. Then their offense doesn't look good for a half against the Colts. I think this offense is going to look better, but I still would like to see them raise that first down pass rate for Lamar, give him that confidence. He's playing well on those downs. Continue to nurture that because you're going to need it down the road. You're going to need it in the playoffs. Well, you were first on him. You are still, all right, just for the record, you are still a big Lamar believer. You think this is going to get fixed?

I think the offense is going to look better to the second half. I have no doubt about it. Okay. How does this keep happening to the Chargers, Warren? I mean, it's not even like, it's not even like the last couple of minutes. It's the last freaking play of the game. It happens. It happened.

I was watching the game two weeks. ago when Drew Locke, they get the pass interference in the end zone, then they get the extra play, and they win on the last play of the game. Then this week, I was watching Cowboys Steelers. I'm keeping up with it. And on the app, it flashes that there's four seconds left or whatever it was from the four yard line. So they're going to have one play to score. And then it flashes up. They scored. They win. They win by one point. And then obviously I went and checked and that had been called off. And so utter heartbreak again, I mean, for these, for these games to come down to one play. And it was already bad enough before where it comes down to like a kick or it comes down to. But these are, this is two weeks in a row with touchdowns in the end zone, one against them and one that they got that ended up being called off.

I know you went off kind of on the Anthony Lynn stuff last week. What do we make of this week and them again narrowly losing? They are so close to having a good record. And Justin Herbert being like the leading jersey sale in all of football. Okay. So, I mean, I could spend 30 minutes ripping the chargers if we wanted to turn that this podcast into that. because I was so complimentary of this team boosting them up and pumping them up after the two weeks out of the buy with how they were passing them all on early downs and they gave the keys to the

car to Justin Herbert and entrusted this offense to him and everything was going well. And of course, they still have these issues. But here's the fact. This is the simple fact. And this is why I'm getting a little frustrated, Chris. And it's, you know, a tiger can't change his stripes. Whatever the saying is, I think that's the saying, but a tiger can't change his stripes. And if you are a conservative coach, like Anthony Lynn is at his core, he is a running back's coach at his core.

He likes to run the football. He's less aggressive. He's a little bit more conservative in general. And this is what we are seeing in the games. And what I went off at is end of half, end of game clock management is atrocious. Atrocious. This is a team that at the end of the first half was the most egregious clock management that I have seen watching the NFL. They have three timeouts and they're trying to, they start with the ball.

They start with the ball on the Oakland 38 yard line with three. timeouts. They don't use a single, a single timeout. They get down to, I believe it's the 27-yard line, the 27-yard line of the Oka Raiders. So they got one first down. They got one first down. They moved the ball from the, what did I say, the 38 to the 27. They moved the ball 11 yards and their last snap before they scored a touchdown was with 26 seconds left on the clock. And they started the ball, they started here, okay, with more than two minutes left in the clock. They had a first and 10 run play that gained a yard. And that was with two minutes and 28 seconds left. They moved the ball 11 yards in that amount of time. They didn't burn a single time out. They snapped that ball with 26

seconds left. Now, a lot of the idiots out there on Twitter want to say, well, they scored a touchdown. So it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you waste the clock and you score. That's exactly what you want to do. And I'm thinking, you numbscoles. They score a touchdown with 26 seconds. They score a touchdown. 26 seconds left is when they snap the ball.

They get a 27-yard touchdown pass because the Raiders completely botched a coverage. And Keenan Allen is wide open. And so Justin Herbert is able to complete that pass. The goal of any two-minute drill is, as follows. There's one priority that's of utmost importance. Score a touchdown. Unless we're talking about when you're at that last second thing and you should just kneel like we talked about it before and just kick a field goal, if we're talking about any other situation where you're trailing by more than three points, the goal is to score a damn touchdown. Secondarily,

it's to prevent the other team from having time to go back and score themselves. But your first priority is to score. You can't score unless you're gaining yards. If you're letting the clock run down and you're not gaining yards, you can't score. So that was horrendous. I posted the whole video up on Twitter. Then we look at the end of game situation. They're actually using their timeouts here. They had three timeouts. They used them all. So that's fine. But in this case, it's the simple play calling. Five of their first six plays that they're going and they start at their own 45 yard line. and they got to score a touchdown. As you mentioned, they're down by five points.

They have to score a touchdown. They let 28 seconds tick off the clock before they call a timeout ahead of a fourth and one play. When they have three timeouts in the bag, five of their six plays were to the middle of the field as opposed to the sideline. They get out of bounds on only one of their first seven plays before they take those two end zone shots. And the point here is again, like the idiots on Twitter are going to say, well, you had two shots at the end zone. So that's not the end of the world. It's a pretty good drive. And I'm thinking to myself, wouldn't you like to have six shots at the end zone?

You know, like, why are you saying that that's a victory, that you got two shots? You lost the game and you lost it because you weren't intelligent with your play calls to move the ball down into scoring position. So this team, and that's just half of it. I mean, that's just like two situations where, number one, you're not using your timeouts or being intelligent with your play calling. You're calling draw plays on first and 10 in a two-minute drill. The next one, you are calling timeouts, but your play calls themselves are horrendous at the end of the game. But the biggest stat, Chris, that I want to just throw up there, I know that we're not

going to get into detail on how they reverted back to the run, 56% runs on early downs instead of being 64% pass like they were the prior two weeks. That's to the side. Listen to this on the season. In the second half of games, with a lead of one to ten points, the Chargers, who have won only two games out of eight so far this year, have called 37 plays on first down. They've had 37 first downs with a lead in the second half of between one and ten points.

Of those 37 plays, 28 are first down runs. 28. There are only three teams in the entire NFL who have called more than 28 runs in the second half leading one to 10 points. The undefeated Pittsburgh Steelers, the six and two Seattle Seahawks, and the five and three Raiders. The chargers are two and six. You don't have a winning team. You know what those run plays are averaging? Two point nine yards per carry, a 32% success rate. those are some of the worst numbers in the NFL, but this is what you're doing at this ridiculously high rate on these first rounds. This is why you're not winning.

You can have Justin Herbert, and he could be a freak and a stud and a great draft pick and all that stuff. But if you don't know how to call plays with the lead, and you don't know how to manage your timeouts, and you don't know how to drive the ball down to score points late, and you don't know how to call plays to get to the sideline, and you're scared to let your quarterback throw the ball, and you're relying too much urgent running backs

that aren't being productive, you are not going to win games. And your offensive players and your defensive players can only do so much. And so it just infuriates me when I see something that should be easy because this is not rocket science.

This isn't reading the tea leaves or using a Ouija board to come up with these great strategies. Well, on this one type of down, we could run this type of play because of this coverage and I saw this in some film study and oh my God, I think this is going to work.

Maybe it's going to be great. This is the basic level stuff that these guys are screwing up, and that's what makes it so frustrating to me. How do you really feel, Warren? I'm glad now that I got that out of my system. That's how I feel. You didn't have the Chargers out as a play or something. No, no.

Okay, thank you. Actually, I'll tell you that that's the game that I did take the over, that the market was moving against us, on the Friday show with House, I normally don't give out my stuff where we're crushing it this year, like 70% on totals. And that's one. I gave out.

I said, look, this line's still available. We took over 52 and a half. Normally these games closed much higher than we give them out. I'm shocked. People are betting this game under. I like the over. And, of course, it goes over. But I did not have anything on the charges until I had to be a teaser.

At least Anthony Lynn hits the overs, you know, give them that. Yeah. Well, this is a team. You can bet them in teasers, right? I teased them last week. I got them to plus eight on the teaser leg. So I obviously didn't want them to get blown out. And they weren't getting blown out.

But this is a great team. I mean, what they've got six losses. And those six losses, I believe are by one point, three points, three points, five points, five points and seven points. I mean, if you want to pick, you know, the charters to lose the game by one to seven points, chances you're like going to be a, you should be paying a heavy favorite price to do that. Well, I'm going to tell you this, not this week. because it leads in perfect because I'm going to be all over two a time.

I'm in, Warren. I am in. And I see that line sitting at two and a half right now. Chargers got to travel all the way across the country, right? I think this is in Miami. It's in Miami. It is a late kick, so it's not the 1 p.m. Eastern. It still is a travel spot.

That is a long-ass trip. And Tua, we talked about it last week. They didn't really need to do much because they were already kicking the Rams ass by the time, you know, the game started, Frank. I mean, it was like, you know, by the time it got to the third quarter, it wasn't exactly like they were, they had the reins pulled back. But we got the full two experience. The guy I loved watching at Alabama is the guy we got in the game up against

Kyler Murray, who is also insanely entertaining to watch. So what did you make of the two experience, which was obviously much better than the debut? and kind of what that means for the dolphins going forward. Yeah, totally unlike my vibe on this Chargers game that we're discussing where I was just so negative. That game brought me joy. I mean, there is nothing I like watching more in the NFL than great quarterbacks living up to their potential, right? I love watching young kids perform well. I mean, it just literally, there's no other word for it, but the simple word of joy.

And, you know, we talked about it on this show before. Treating Tua with this white gloves and not letting him throw the ball was problematic. And you can't do that. And I was worried, is Miami going to go out to Arizona with this white glove treatment and try to run the ball a lot in Arizona? How is that going to play out? I don't think you're going to score all these defensive touchdowns. They ended up getting one, actually.

But you're not going to keep this off. Keep the Arizona Cardinals offense down. You're going to have to let Tua throw the ball. Early down to the first half of their week eight game, his first game in the there, dolphins went 58% run. Those runs average only 2.8 yards per carers. Like, oh, my God, this is not how you do it. We're talking about the first half of the game. This isn't how you do it. Last week against Arizona, early downs, they moved from 58% run the week before down to 36% run. Way down. That's a 22% drop. They moved all the way up to 64% pass. And on those passes on early

downs in the first half, two average 9.3 yards per attempt with a 56% success rate. They were great. They used a great strategy. And that's why this game against Buffalo is going to be fascinating. When you say Arizona plays Buffalo, we won't dive into it right now. We'll talk more about it on the Friday show that's a tease ahead to the Friday show with House. But Arizona is bad against heavy sets. They are not good defending passes out of heavy sets. Miami, great strategy. They passed the ball on first downs, only five times from 11 personnel, 13 passes from these heavy sets. We're able to get a lot of production out of those passes. And they had a great game plan.

Tua played really well. He ran for first downs. And this is a team. Look, they're sitting at five and three. They've got, I want to say, the sixth, the easiest schedule or so. I haven't dug into the schedule analysis enough. at this point in my week on a Tuesday night. But we are in a really interesting spot

where the dolphins have a pretty easy road ahead that they can make some noise here. They feel like the kind of team too that could get into the playoffs and just be the team you don't want to see because their defense can really show up. They got some big-time playmakers on defense. And, you know, look, when it's third and eight,

you know, they've got one of those guys that could just take off and get you the first down and keep the chains moving. That was part of the fun. That was part of the fun, right? Watching those two quarterbacks being able to run the ball when a play breaks down. And that's why so many of these young quarterbacks, these guys that are getting drafted high, like, they're guys that have wheels. Even Joe Burrow, you know, surprisingly good wheels' ability to run the football.

And that's what you need in the NFL right now because it's this hidden edge. We know dropbacks are much. much more efficient than handing the ball off to your running back. But guess what? Sometimes the defense might win on a dropback and the guys are covered and your first read or two or pressure is coming. If you can then turn that play from a negative, which would be a sack and maybe ultimately would force a punt into a positive where you're running for a seven-yard gain, a six-yard

gain or even another first down on a pass play, one of the few past plays that doesn't end up working because guys aren't open or pressure is getting to you. I mean, I can't tell you how much that swings things. Well, do you wonder is the age of the of the statue, you know, for back of a better term? Is that gone? Because all these guys, even Herbert, he would be the closest, right? Like, you know Burrow can scoot. You see him.

Herbert probably runs the least of the new ones that have got. Maybe Locke doesn't run all that much either. But he's not, he's certainly not a statue. But, I mean, you look at all these other guys, even Baker Mayfield, who I know a lot of people are out on, but Baker Mayfield, Lamar, Kyler, obviously you got Russell Wilson, but I'm talking. We can't put Baker in this category, though. You can't put Baker with Lamar and Russ and. No, no, no, no, no. I'm just saying he can get away from you, right?

Unlike when a pocket collapses, that's the end of the play for Brady and Rothesberger and Breeze. And, you know, yeah, like at one point, Ben, he was so big. he was just shedding guys like guys would land on him and he would just shed them and throw the ball he was never the guy to scoot or evade you but he could dip dodge duck dive whatever the you know the dodge ball stuff he could do that in the pocket and get rid of guys and then throw the ball down the field uh so his big body was beneficial from that respect but yes you're right like a lot of these guys now smaller guys can move and get around in the pocket and uh it was funny like what what i think earlier even this season. People were talking about,

Kyler might be too short. He's not doing well passing the ball, I think, like a week or two. Like, there's always going to be people who are going to say those types of things, but their ability to get out of pressure and gain positive yards is definitely a massive, a massive edge. And you're right, from the game planning perspective

that I think I see from the Miami Dolphins, if they can get into the playoffs, you know, that is where I think that they could be a little bit dangerous because I see a team that defensively could do something like the Tennessee Titans were able to do for one week against the Baltimore Ravens, right? Like a one week, great defensive game plan is exactly what they trotted out against the Rams. You know,

they were able to figure out a great defensive game plan to stymie these guys offensively. They could pull that out. I was a little surprised how bad those corners looked against Arizona last week and how they were getting burned by Christian Kirk deep and everything. But I do think one week, this is a team that could put enough offense out on the field with a great defensive game plan to cause anybody trouble in a one game season. That might have been a little pick your poison on the Kirk thing because they did do a pretty good job on Hopkins. Yeah, they did.

I mean, overall, look, overall, this is a very, a very, sound football team. They're building the right way, and they're exciting. And if it's going to come down to Tua, can Tua deliver or not? Because their run game, they don't have the backs, they don't have the horses there to really carry them. So it's going to be make sure our wide outs are healthy and make sure Tua is playing well. And then you never know because I think it could be fun.

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The Tennessee Red Line is 1-8009-9-9789, or visit 1-800-Gambler.net in West Virginia. That was going on in the afternoon, and that game gets done. Cowboy Steelers comes down, to the end. The Chargers game comes down to the end. I'm all amped up and I'm like, all hell. And we've got Buck Saints tonight. Brady Breeze. They're doing the whole intro, everything. Antonio Brown's going to be in action, right? So we're going to get to see him

for the first time, play for the bucks. And then this was just an ass kicking of epic proportions. What in the, explain this to me. What happened? with the saints and the bucks and the saints just burying them. How? What happened to the bucks? Well, I think this is a situation where you had an offensive lineman out. You had a left tackle who wasn't playing very well. And you have a situation where I probably, along with many others, overlooked the fact

that the saints dominated in the first game. because while it's Brady and he's doing these interceptions, his first game with the team. He's not really in the mix, and we've got to get him back in the mix. I remember talking about Lattimore, like, has just shut down Mike Evans, right? He just has had his number. And so maybe that's a part of it. Obviously, that screws up their offense. If Mike Evans isn't able to do big stuff.

And as it turns out, this is just a bad matchup for the bucks. I mean, if you look at the games last year, Sean Payton and their defense against this buck's offense, I mean, with Bruce Ariens there, the Saints have now won five games in a row against these guys. They've covered five spreads. And they're winning these games by not insignificant margins. I mean, we're talking 7.17 points, 11 points, 35 points, 14 points.

I mean, the Saints are doing really well against the Buccaneers with or without Brady right now. All right. So should I just not overreact to that and not be ultra down on the Bucks? Should I say, hey, I'm only altered down on the Bucks if they're having to play the Saints? Otherwise, I'm still in on the Bucks being able to be a fantastic team that could, you know, I mean, like, well, look, there's not a huge group of them. We just shit on Seattle's defense. And the Packers, like one week, it's like, oh, man, this is old Aaron Rogers and

Dante Adams is unstoppable. And then the next week, you're like, what the hell's wrong with the Packers? Like, all these teams have their flaws. And all these teams have given you reason to believe in them fully. I will tell you, even going into that game, I had just seen the Saints Bears game. And I was like, man, the Saints, what is up with them? Like this game stinks, right? Like they're barely, they're barely beating the frigging bears.

Like they're going to go win the NFC. And then you get done watching Sunday night and you're like, who the hell's beating that team? And so I don't, in fairness, they got Mike Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders back. And they look like a radically different team too with those guys in the mix. No, there's no doubt about it. And I think that this is not the type of team that you want to just say, oh, my God, they can't get it done now. this is not like i think the nfc is is going to be a fun playoff contest because you do have the saints and the bucks and the seahawks and the packers and those four are the the clear favorites what's

interesting to me a little bit when i'm when you're looking at the bucks i read something about tom brady you know what time he says his bedtime is now uh 830 the tb 12 method he says he says now for his health and whatever, he's going to bed at 8.30. You know what his record is this year in games that have started in the late, like the night games. I think they're 815 kicks or 820 kicks. He's played in three of them. He's lost two of them, once to the bears, once to the saints, they got their butt kicked, and they were losing to the giants entering the fourth quarter before they come from behind on Monday night in week eight and barely win that game ahead of playing in this Sunday night game.

So, I mean, there are routines, and then there are routines that can hurt you. And this one is kind of interesting. I don't think he's done that throughout his whole career, nor do I even know that this is a fact. So somebody can fact check whether or not Brady said that. But that's something I saw floated out there that he goes to bed much earlier. And I heard his bedtime was 8.30. So if I'm wrong, I'm admitting that it could be a rumor. It'd be really funny if that was a joke.

It could be a joke and we're talking about it. Somebody making an old person joke, right? It could be. His bedtime is 8.30. I mean, geez, man, even old people. My grandma would watch Jay Leno's monologue. And that was like 1030. That was 10.30.

Right? 830 is pretty extreme. 830 is really extreme. I don't know. My kids don't even. Your kids, we both are youngest. or about six years old, I think. Oh, God, I would give my life for her to go to bed at 8.30.

Yeah, they're, that just isn't happening. I need to put her on the TB12 method, Warren. Tell her for her health benefits, and you mentioned how good of an athlete she is. I was reading this book. Yeah, I was reading this book, the TB12 method. He said, you've got to get a lot of sleep, Haley. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, look, I think it's going to be fascinating.

So number one, to answer your question, no, they are not done. don't sell all your Buccaneer stock. At the same time, this conference is wide open. And I think you can't sit here and write off the Seattle Seahawks just because they had a couple of losses. And you can't sit here and write off the Tampa Bay Buccaneers because they got blown out once. Because guess what?

There's a lot of good football going around in the NFL right now. But here's the problem, Warren. It's just impossible to be all in on any of them and feel great about it. Like, like to say, like, you know what, you, like, week one, you told us, go bet on the chiefs to win the Super Bowl. And like every week that passes, it's like, all right, like, because we're talking about the Ravens. We're talking about the Steelers, right? The Steelers, look, if the referees call the holdout of Ari Cooper, they might have lost to friggin' Garrett Gilbert, for God's sake. You're exactly right.

None of these teams, with the exception, with the exception of the Chiefs, if we're talking about the championship, none of these teams are like bulletproof. There's none of them, all of them, even the ones that are undefeated like the Steelers, I guess if you want to look at a glass half full, if we want to try to be optimistic after being so pessimistic on the charters, let's be optimistic. That's a game the Steelers usually lose. Let's be real clear. The Steelers, Mike Tomlin, I don't know what it is about him. He does such a great job in other situations, but they typically every single year find a team that is bad and play down to that level of competition and lose that game. So maybe it's a credit like, hey, they didn't actually lose the game.

They were able to get the win. And so maybe they're not as bad as what they are most years. And clearly they've got the best start I want to say in franchise history. But they are definitely not a team without its flaws. And I think any given day, nobody watched them and was like, oh, damn, I don't want to see them in the playoffs. Like you watch my homes and you're like, Jesus, what do you do with this guy? And this is why, Chris, for me, this season, the rest of the season is going to be awesome and the playoffs are going to be incredible. And here's why.

It's because you cannot in any game that will be played between these good teams against one another in the playoffs. Just trot out team A and trot out team B and expect to win that game. What it's going to come down to is strategizing and coaching and calling the right plays and figuring out the optimal way to beat the other team. what? Some of the games may not be close because of that strategy and because of certain matchups that you end up being able to take advantage of or exploit. And so for that reason, like on paper, it looks like a toss-up and it looks like you go out there and we're not sure what's going to happen. But that's why so much of this season, in my opinion, is going to come down more than seasons in the past is going to come down to coaching and game planning and play calling.

for me, that's what I love. Studying that, assisting some of these teams, like, this is my passion, and that's what's going to make it so fun the rest of the way. Last thing before we get out of here, because I'll be listening to you in House go through all the games on Friday. There will be one game before we hear from you again. And that is, it's actually a very big game within the division for the Tennessee Titans and the Indianapolis Colts. As we just mentioned, Indianapolis looked miserable offensively in that game against the Ravens. The Ravens looked pretty bad offensively too. But they have really had the Titans number over the years.

And the Titans, they got a win on Sunday, but they started off. And I think at the beginning of the season, people were much more impressed with the Titans than they have been recently. And now we have this game, lines really tight. on this game. What are your overwhelming thoughts when you think about the Thursday night game

we're going to see between the Colts and the Titans? Yeah, you're right. This is the biggest thing that comes to mind when I'm thinking about it is Pat McAfee going into your backyard to draft night and talking trash about you guys not being able to beat his squad.

Of course, you did win the last game that was played. Not me. Don't say me. I'm a Cowboys fan. All right. Well, yeah, we won't have to worry about claiming your victories this year then. But no, I know the Titans were able to get that win. Now, the game was tied heading into the

fourth quarter and then Tennessee puts up 14 unanswered in that fourth quarter. They didn't have Philip Rivers back then. But this is definitely a series that has gone the Colts way. And you just look at this squad of the Tennessee Titans. And I mean, I don't know. I said it once before. and then the Titans won a game the very next week, and people wanted to criticize, oh, I thought you said the Titans were overrated. Well, guess what? Like, I still think the Titans are a little bit overrated.

They're not, they've got some flaws, and they're not as good as the record indicates. And I don't know, they got, look, they got a three-game stretch here that's really going to decide their season, in my opinion, because the last part of the season, you look at some of these squads, especially the defenses that they're going to play. They're playing like the Jags and the Texans and the lions down at the three of the last four opponents.

Here you've got, you played a tough defense last week in the Chicago Bears. You got the Colts twice and the Ravens. That's three games against top five defenses over the next three weeks. I want to see what Arthur Smith does here offensively because you can pass the ball a little bit on these Colts. And you can try to waste your time running the ball here. And I fear that what's going to happen is a lot of running early. It may not be that successful. The game's close then.

They start passing the ball. Do better. And then Derek Henry runs late and it looks better when it's all put together at the end of the day and you look at Derek Henry's final stats. But it could have made life easier on themselves if they didn't run the ball on first downs as often to start the game. But I think it's going to be a great. great game. I don't really have a call right now. It's a two point line right now. The Tennessee

Titans are favored by two. A total has come down. It open at 50 and a half is down to 48 and a half. So a little bit of under money's coming. What do you make of it, Chris? I think that it feels like one of those where because the Colts looks so bad against the Ravens, this is just what I'd say. They look so bad against the Ravens, this is like, is the total burn me gain when I do this. It's like Billup Rivers, you know, was washed up. The Colts stink. The Colts couldn't even,

you know, they couldn't do anything offensively. And so you just, every time you get so down on one of these teams and then you bet against them and you just get taken to the woodshed. Next thing you know, it's like, how are they, how are they doing this? Like, why?

Why are the Titans sucking tonight? Like, I just feel like if I, I, that's just my opinion as a degenerate. If I bet against the Colts, I'd get my ass kicked. And I feel like everybody in the free world is going to bet the Titans. Everybody. And that's usually, as you know, Warren, they don't have all those buildings and nice pools and with pretty girls outside of them serving you drinks because people win.

So if everybody's on the Titans, I think I probably should get on the Colts. That's my thought. The one thing I really want to see is what aside. from the play calling of Arthur Smith here and how he decides to attack the Colts is the Colts have played the easiest schedule of opponents in the entirety of the NFL. They have played the easiest schedule so far. And they have played not a single offense that ranks in the top 15. The Titans' offense will be the first offense that they will have played all season that ranks inside of the top 15. So while the Colts defense has looked great, they haven't faced anybody who's really

great. And that was the one thing that I was thinking about when I was studying the Colts and the Ravens game was, I remember betting on the over in the Browns game when they played the Browns. And I thought that the Browns were going to have some success offensively and they come out and put up 32 points. And then, although the Ravens didn't look great at all in the first half, they were able to do something offensively enough in that second half of the game. And Lamar was passing the ball. He did phenomenal. We just gave the numbers that top of the show. So now you got the Titans who actually have a good offense. They have a top 10 offense, the best offense that the Colts defense will have faced. Will the real Indianapolis Colts

defense please stand up? That's what we're going to see on Thursday night. I want to see the play calling from Arthur Smith. I want to see Philip Rivers. I know the receiving core hasn't been dynamic, but how will Frank Reich call plays? And I will note this. One of the reasons why I didn't love the Colts against the Ravens was because the Indianapolis Colts destroyed the Detroit Lions by throwing the ball to running backs. You remember, Naheem Hines had two touchdown catches with doing those little spinning backflip maneuvers in the end zone that was getting all the highlight reel stuff. Well, Baltimore was one of the best defenses in the NFL defending running back passes. So they were literally, I think, number one or number two, defending running back passes.

And now you've got the Tennessee Titans who I think rank like ninth or tenth in defending running back passes. So a far cry from the Detroit Lions who ranked dead last, sorry, number 31, defending running back passes. So should be fascinating. It's going to be a good Thursday night game. It definitely has better playoff implications in some of these that we've seen. Last thing before we get out of here, because I know you and House are going to be talking about all the games on Friday. When you're sitting around, you're doing all your work, getting ready for Sunday, Warren, do me a favor and flip on. And I think it's on 2.30 on Saturday. Find the Ohio State Maryland game.

Because I know you're not a college football guy, right? Ohio State's got Justin Fields, who he might be the next big thing, like the Kylers and the Tua's and whatever else. But Maryland has Baby Tua. You got to see him. I know about Baby Tua. Baby Tewa pulled it off against Penn State. And now they're catching like, I think they're like 28 point underdogs against Ohio

State. If that Joker does it back to back, oh, he's fun. He is fun. I know about Baby Tua. I know about Mike Loxley. I'll share something with you after we stop. We hit the end button here on Maryland. All right.

All right. Well, they got some players there. Lockerley's been a recruiter for a long, long time. That's for sure. Yeah, that'll be good. I will thank you for pointing that out to me because otherwise I wouldn't have been paying any attention at all to it. But I would definitely make sure I do that.

So that's going to do it for us. Remember, you can join Nora and the gang on this same. Ringer NFL show feed tomorrow.