The Ringer NFL Show - Justin Herbert Is Amazingly Boring, Plus Big Preseason Take Redos | Extra Point Taken

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Sheil and Ben get together to share their reactions to the Chargers' convincing win over the Jets on ‘MNF.’ They then go through some of their preseason takes and make some corrections, starting with some premature ones they had about the Ravens (14:50) and the NFC South (25:04). Next, Ben rethinks his early position on C.J. Stroud, and Sheil holds out just a little more hope for the Packers in a bleak NFC landscape (33:04). They end the pod by showing some love to the impressive Cleveland Browns defense and taking a look at some of their top coaches so far this season (50:09). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia and Ben Solak Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Social: Kiera Givens and Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ringer gambling feat is your one-stop shop for all things betting throughout the NFL season. From week one all the way through Super Bowl 58 in Las Vegas, we have you covered every which way. We've got our favorite futures. We've got props. We'll discuss the lines. And, of course, we'll throw in a few parlase. That's a given. So whether you're a sharp or square better, we'll be breaking it down in terms.

Hopefully everybody can understand. We'll try to win some money along the way. and be sure to subscribe to the ring of gambling feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Extra Point Take and Cheal Capati here joined by Ben Solac. Following Monday night football, Chargers beat the Jets, 276, an absolute snoozer. The type of game that if you're on the couch, if you're on the recliner, as we say in the Capadia household, you just rest your eyes a little bit. You know, you're not to rest your eyes.

You're not sleeping. You're just resting your eyes a little bit. You're not nap and you're not sleeping. Just resting your eyes a little bit. whatever happens after that happens. It was that type of game. We'll talk about that game a little bit. And then we're switching it up a little bit. You know, it's the halfway point. So that makes fun of me because I like doing stuff at the halfway point at the one third point. And so we said, what could we do? And we say, you know what? Let's do a little theme week. Let's take three takes we had in the preseason. Before the season, we went on the record on this podcast. And let's

offer redos. Okay. So this will be a nice way to look at what stood out to us from the first half season, what we want to change if we could, look ahead to the second half of the season, a little reset, if you will, at the halfway point. Benjamin Solac, how are you feeling about this exercise? I'm excited. I don't, I make fun of you for a lot of things. I don't make funny much with the halfway. I love a halfway. I love a milestone. Okay. Yeah, I don't mind it. After four weeks, after nine weeks, to see this on pace, I'm all about the milestones. I don't want you to conflate just things I observe about you, like you like milestones, which are things I actually make fun of you for, which are great in number, but are a separate

category entirely. Okay. Next time I will ask for clarification. I couldn't tell by your tone whenever you said that. That's on me. All right, let's get started. Let's talk about this game quickly. You're on the hook for Monday night football. I'm sorry. I probably should have taken this one from you. You did back to back at one point. I probably should have done back to back. But this one's on you. What is your, I have no idea what your take is going to be. What is your take from this game, 276 chargers? I'm very proud of my take on this game. Okay. The most frustrating thing about this game is that I could have done this. I could have not watched this game at all.

I could have watched 0% of it and done these takes on November 7th, 2022 and still been completely accurate. These teams are right where they were a year ago. Oh, I mean, come on. The Jets. What a great defensive season we're wasting here by messing around with Zach Wilson.

What a tremendous defensive season. Well built, well constructed, great work by the front office, great work by the coaching staff. And we're just going to toss it away because we're continuing to invest in a young quarterback. who we should have moved off of. Now, obviously, they did move off of him

between 2022 and 2023, but Aaron Rogers got hurt in week one, all right? This is not Kurt Cousins, where they got, you know, things dropped on them, and they had two days before the deadline, and they moved quick for Josh Dobbs. This is not, you know, Falcons with Desilin Ridder.

We're going to figure him out, but we got Taylor Heineke in the building, and now we're going to play Heineke for a couple weeks before the buy and figure it out. They had a long time this season to say, all right, we kept Zach Wilson's our QB2. We brought in Aaron Rogers' best friend, Tim Boyle, is QB3.

We didn't take backup quarterback seriously. We had our chips in the pot on Rogers. He's hurt. That sucks, but we can address this in week four and week five. We have seen enough of Zach Wilson to know we should get a different quarterback in the building. But they didn't. They should have gotten a different quarterback in the building for 2022. They didn't do it for 2023 when they were stuck with Zach Wilson.

Robert Sala continues to stand up there and tell us he's playing fine as if we can't watch football. And you repeat what you so. Can't play. And they've got a right tackle issue and they've had a little bit of wide receiver carousel. But the quarterback is defunct. You cannot operate a full real offense. was Zach Wilson back there. And it's not just like you're doing it on a real bad team

that's going to get the first overall pick. No, you're going to finish out 500 because this defense is sick. It's heavy metal, man. It rocks my socks off. They're not great by like, they're actually quite good by a lot of metrics. They'd be so much better if they didn't have to deal with the field position

and the turnovers and all that stuff. This defense looks to me like it should be the best defense in the league. On the eye test, it might be the best defense in the league. And they're wasting it. The Chargers. Oh, the right side of the line sucks for the fourth season in a row. we don't have talent at the wide receiver position. Keenan Allen's a year older,

Mike Williams has heard again. Who could have seen any of these problems coming? They're even like trying to do better stuff, Joe Lombardi to Kellynne Moore, but they still end up being in short routes and low A dot and quick throw and Justin Herbert's getting sacked world because personnel-wise,

they're not capable of sustaining a high-octane offense. They don't have the juice. And they try to get the juice. Same way to just try to make the change from 2022 to 2023, drafted Quinn Johnson in the first round, brought in Darius Davis. Okay, maybe get a little bit more explosiveness.

They didn't work. And you're just sitting here watching the exact same problems on offense. And then defensively, whatever. The charge are where the charge are at this point. They play too high. They lose the running game. Today they were fine at four sacks, three force fumbles. Like, today was great.

But it's so frustrating to, I was sitting down. I was like, what do I want my take to be? Do I want to be about the Jets wasting this defense? I wanted to be about Zach Wilson's career, about the charge's offense of weaponry issues? Then I was like, wait, shoot. This is the exact same conversation. I've been having with myself for years, and that drives me nothing.

It just drives me up a tree. That's how I feel about that. I think it's a good angle. It was a hard game to have an angle on. I think you came in hot, and that's a great angle to have on this year, because you're absolutely right. I mean, the Jets, I feel like the Jets, you know, that injury happened in week one to Error Rogers. We are now entering week 10.

They had over two months to make a decision on whether they were going to make a move or not, figure something out, provide some type of upgrade. Again, we all know about the issues. By the way, all those issues about a quarterback coming in, you know, halfway through the season, how hard it is? I'm just saying, we all watch Josh Dobbs in Minnesota. I mean, they're just drawing it on a napkin and saying, you know, here we go. This guy's running the under. This guy's running the corner, throw it there. They figured out. So they had time. They don't really, you know, they're four and four, whatever. I'm with you. The frustrating part is they have so many players who I really like watching playing football, Brise Hall, Garrett Wilson.

Sauce Gardner, Quinn and Williams, Quincy Williams, C.J. I mean, I could go on and on. They have a lot of talented players. Those guys play hard. They're fun to watch. Guess what? You're not, we're not going to take you seriously if your plan was just Aaron Rogers got injured. We're playing with Zach Wilson the rest of the season. There's no reason for us to even discuss you any further when there's a great individual performance here and there. When there's a reason to discuss you, we will discuss you. But other than that, you're an irrelevant team. You're going to be an irrelevant team. See you in 2024. You know, if you make some type of run, again, we'll revisit it. But you're sticking with Zach Wilson as your quarterback. That's

how I feel about it. My take on the Chargers, Ben, watching this, and I wonder, you know, you mentioned all the issues around the quarterback, and the quarterback is a hot button topic. I have been a Justin Herbert truther, really, since probably his first, second game in the NFL. When did the experience of watching Justin Herbert become this boring? I mean, that's all I could think of was watching this game. And again, I know it's not all on him and you can run through the other stuff. But watching that game, like when Justin Herbert came into the league and Tyrod Taylor had the thing and he just had to come in and play, I mean, it was a revelation. I was ready to if we had this podcast at that time, I would have been firing off the wildest takes about.

I would trade X, Y, and Z for Justin Herbert. This guy's incredible. And it wasn't just that season. It's happened through. And then I watch a game like this. And I'm going, this was one of the five most boring quarterback experiences I had this weekend, 16 for 30 for 136, 4.5 yards per 10th. And it's like, what has happened? And I know he's got the finger injury. And you mentioned the right side of the offensive line and lack of speed. But I just like, I'm not excited to watch him play football right now. And it's not just this game. And I know he's had great games this season. And there have been some fun moments this season for the most part when I'm, I look at the first half of the season, I'm like, this is no longer like one of the five most enjoyable quarterbacks to watch in the NFL. And that kind of made me sad also. So again, they won the game. I know there's like a million metrics that would say, no, no, no, Herbert's playing well. The offense is doing well, all those things. I'm not saying any of those are wrong. I'm talking

about my experience as a viewer when I watch a player play football. That, that, like, if it were my take, I think that would have been my take if I had to do this game because that was just the feeling I couldn't shake sitting there on the couch today. Yeah. So it, like, I, I, The last couple of games have just been extremely low A-DOT for Herbert. Like, he averaged 5.3 area yards per attempt in this game. Previously, when they played, was it Monday Night Football? They had the Bears? No, it must have been Sunday Night Football.

You can't do Monday Football back, can you? Anyway, they played Friday against the Bears. And they, Herbert was 4.3 area yards per attempts. Now, in that game, it was excellent. It was exactly what you wanted to do against the Bears. He had like nine incompletions, and they just shredded them going up and down the field. Before that, like, he was a pretty high Ad-Dot quarterback. and they were throwing the ball more aggressively.

The Mike Williams injury, it matters so much to the scene. That's a $20 million wide receiver who they've built their deep passing game around, and they lose him, which, like, they should have been better prepared to lose him because Williams gets banged up quite a bit. But so that affects the passing offense a little bit. I do think that there's been some, like, turtling in the sense that that Herbert's always been so good as, like, a processor and, like, getting rid of the ball quickly and getting rid of it underneath and getting to his checkdown.

He's always been, like, one of his superpowers such that he's kind of, comfortable doing that. You walk out to start the season. You have some games you're really pushing the ball down the field. Raiders, right? Titans. He's chucking it down the field. They're aggressive. They're shooting. And when things start to not work a little bit, you go down, your two and four, and office is not working so

great, you kind of reassess, go back to basics. And I think Herbert has accordingly turtled a little bit. So I'm not too worried about it. I think that they're going to get a different looking defense, like one that's not the bears that's given up everything or the jets who are just triggering on everything and the pass rush is crazy. I think you're going to see a better game.

And then you're to see Herbert throw the ball more downfield, more fireworks, more excitement. With that said, this stretch of Herbert play lasts like four or five weeks. So Worst she's looked like three years. I agree. And I think it's okay to say that from two people who really like the guy and still believe in the guy. I feel like sometimes with certain people you're like afraid to say that because then you put in this, get put in this corner of like, you know, the wild hot takes on Herbert. But I'm glad you said that because that's excited.

I do feel like that. Absolutely 100%. Yeah. Worse you play it in the last few years. And the reason why that's tough to talk about is because people are always like, oh, you think Justin Herbert's good. I do, I think he's incredible.

I don't think he's good every play because no one's good every play. I think in the aggregate, he's good. I don't think he's good every game because nobody's good every game. I think the aggregate is good. That's all, whenever it's like, all, whenever it's like,

Ben's a Desmond Ritter-truther. I doesn't mean I think Ritter has like 45 good plays a game. I think he has largely good players because good plays are good enough, right? So when we have like moments like where these Herbert stretches, you as like a Herbert guy, I'm a Herbert guy, you're a Herber guy.

We're like afraid to be like, oh, he played poorly. No, he objectively did. I think overall over the course of the season, he's played well, and I think overall over the course of the season, when the season is done, we'll look back and say that he played well, right? Like, he had a good season. Like, his metrics looked good. The offense, like, was largely predicated on his abilities,

clearly very talented. But the last few weeks, like, Aikman brought it up on the incredible Keenan catch when Allen hit 10,000 career receiving yards. He's been missing vertical throws, especially to Keenan. And he absolutely has. Keenan runs like a 4-9 right now. Herbert's trying to lead him. It's not working. So they're like,

Herbert's been missing. They've had games that they should, like that Titans game that they had a chance when he missed some throws. Like, he's had bad games. Objectively, like this four or five game stretch right now, one of the worst of his career. Herbert's still really good, though.

I'm pretty confident in that. Yeah, we'll see with this charger. I mean, I still don't believe in this Chargers team. And also, one thing to keep an eye on, the Chargers' overall offensive metrics are going to look good, like EPA per drive, they're a top five offense in the NFL. I think that's a little misleading.

If you look at offensive success rate, they're down at 20th. And I was like, all right, well, why would that be? They don't produce any turnovers. I mean, they don't give the ball away. That's like their superpower. And that's like a date. This is like the giants last year. Like the chargers have the second lowest turnover rate in the NFL behind only the Texans.

And so they are sort of like a, you know, when you're not turning it over at all, the EPA and that stuff's always going to look good. And it's great to not turn the football over. But when that's your superpower, eventually some of the randomness is going to catch up to you. Even today, he had the fumble and they recover it. And so success rate, they're much more middle of the pack. So like the Kellynmore experience and it was supposed to unlock Herbert and what it looks like. And then you had the wrinkle of Mike Williams getting injured.

Like I'm still in the sort of juries out. Let's see what this looks like the rest of the way for the Chargers. Yeah, I will say, like, exactly. agree with you. Like the lack of turnover is a big deal. Herbert's 10th right now an explosive play rate, which it just doesn't feel like that at all among quarterbacks, but he is. They are, they're finding 20 plus yard

throws. A lot of it's like intermediate stuff that goes yards after the catch, but still like, they're producing explosives. That's going to jack your EPA up while keeping your success rate low. And then the other thing with low turnovers is, this is one of the things that Herbert's are really good at. Like, again, we talk about superpowers. Like, even if Herbert's not having the same season he typically has

in terms of like accuracy, he still has historically been really good at a interceptions. A lot of times when he has interceptions, it's like, threw into a tight window and the ball got tipped around sort of stuff. He tends to be very, very safe with the football. And he has remained so, which as the offense has been a little bit neuter these last few weeks,

avoiding turnover still helps you because it allows you to play that style of offense and avoiding those mistakes to kind of those longer and more laborious drives. So there's still like goodness baked into the fact that the Chargers are surviving on no turnovers. Like Herbert tends to be good there. Yeah, it's wild. They have the seventh most

completions of 20 plus yards in the NFL. And I watch them and I'm like, it doesn't feel like that. I don't know. I'm just telling you that sometimes I like to issue the, you know, the actual numbers and analysis and analytics. It's just like, this is how this team makes me feel. And that's how they make me feel. All right, that's Chargers Jets. Let's move on to the exercise. So again, here's what we're doing. We had these takes. We did a bunch of preseason pods. We went on the record. Here's what we think is going to happen this season. And now we're really. revisiting those. And it's like a genie came down and said, you're each allowed to have three redoes. You can go back, take those takes, redo them now at the halfway point of the season,

look ahead and fix them. What do you want to redo? So I'm going to lead us off here. So like, here's what I got. I left the Ravens out of the playoffs in my preseason prognostications. Not by a lot. I was like nine and eight. They just miss out. I feel very stupid about that right now. I think the Ravens might be the best team in the NFL. I would like a redo on that one. Here was my reasoning. Okay, so why did I leave the Ravens out? I've typically been pro Ravens in a lot of my analysis, really, for the last three, four,

five years. I didn't want to go chalk the same as last year. And I was like, who can I change that was in there last year that I don't want in there this year? Like, who has the biggest chance to not make the playoffs? And I picked that because I was like, you know what? This might be a transition year for the offense. You have a new offensive coordinator.

You have a new scheme. You have new wide receivers. I remember you and I specifically having the conversation before the season, I'm like, you know what? I think they're going to be good, but I think they might not be good until like mid-November. I think they're going to have bumps in the road the first half of the season. And I said they'd get there by mid-October.

And turns out they got there by mid-September. Yeah, they got there way sooner than I think most people would have anticipated. Their top five, top eight offensively, by pretty much whatever metric you want to look at. Lamar Jackson right now, completing seven. 91.5% of his passes. By the way, also on pace to rush for over 800 yards. Has a quarterback ever done both of those things?

No, the answer is no. In fact, a quarterback has never completed 70% of his passes and run for 500 yards, which he might do by his next game, you know, even if his season ended. So that was the main reason I had hesitancy with the Ravens. I thought if that offense doesn't click right away, you know what? It could be a little bit more of a bumpy ride. it has not been. The other one, and this one's still in the air, Ben, I want a Jackson to show he could be durable. You know, he's missed five games each of the past two seasons. I'm knocking

on wood. I do not want Lamar Jackson to get injured. I want him to be healthy because that is a very fun team to watch right now. But that's the other thing. He still has to show, and obviously that's not a fun one to talk about. But, man, overall, this is just such a complete team. What they have done defensively to the Lions and the Seahawks in two of the last three weeks, weeks, like eye-opener, absolutely. Seahawks had six first downs on Sunday. Pete Carroll has coached 237 games in Seattle. He has never had a, think of all those.

Even when the Seahawks were good, they would have those offensive games. We're like, oh, my gosh, this team sticks. Even those teams never had six first downs in a game. They had six first downs on Sunday. And so Ravens right now, they can win within structure on offense. They can win with Lamar Jackson being creative, which probably, later this week when we talk Ravens Browns, we'll get into that. He can just kind of put the team on his back for little stretches and say,

don't worry, I can create here. We can win that way. They can win with defense. We know they can win with special teams. They're well coached. They lead the NFL in point differential. They're first in DVOA with no real juggernaut in the NFL this year. And I don't think there's a real juggernaut in the NFL this year.

Like, they got a real shot at this thing with Lamar Jackson to make their deepest playoff run, to maybe get to the Super Bowl, to maybe win. in the Super Bowl. So I would like that one back. Jeannie, Solak, whoever is the person granting me this. I would like the Ravens in. Maybe you know what? That take about the Broncos sneaking into the playoffs. We'll just take that one back and plug the Ravens in there

because I had the Bronco sneaking in as a wild card before the season. So that's my first one. I have a Ravens one as well, which is a little bit, it's just like, you know, kind of a general look on on how I saw the AFC going. my one specific comment on Lamar is just to say I was like I was so big on Lamar

preseason I was big on Ravens AFC North futures preseason I have all this exposure to the Ravens to Lamar's passing overs over 3,300 yards over 25 passing touchdowns they keep blowing teams out by 30 he doesn't have to throw the ball

in the second half he's sitting out I'm on pace for the over but I should be miles ahead he's completing 70% of his passes it feels like 100 90 yards and sits on the bench. This is unreal.

I was so correct that I'm now in trouble. Anyway, not important. My take I framed as this. My preseason take was that the Dolphids of the team to watch in the AFC. Oh, the AFC is this three horse race, chiefs, bills, Bengals, they've defined the race over the last three seasons. But the dolphins, this is the team to watch. I said they're going to win the division.

They're going to win the conference. They can win the Super Bowl. This is the team that if everything comes together, they're going to be unstoppable. I should have picked the Ravens. I should have had the Ravens in that spot because you said at Best Shield, there's no juggernaut here, right? Another take that I have that I'd like to take back is when I made my Super Bowl prediction for our ringer piece, like we wrote out our predictions, I wrote that the Chiefs were going to win the Super Bowl,

and I wrote I'm going to pick the team with Patrick Holmes as this quarterback to win the Super Bowl for the foreseeable future. And while the Chiefs are still very much in the Super Bowl race, their favorites right now on Fandall, this is very much a non-juggernaut year in the AFC and like the Eagles feel juggernautty in the NFC against the AFC teams I don't think they feel that way, right? I think that this is a year where I think there's quite a large number of teams as we stand at the halfway point that have a legitimate shot of winning it and so I spoke with confidence that the chiefs would be head and shoulders above the rest.

I was wrong there and I said that if there's going to be a sleeper in this AFC, non-Bengals, non-Bills, non-Chiefs, it'd be the dolphins. and I should have said the Ravens. You talked a lot about the offense. Defensively, what in God's name is happening? Every week, I cannot get over this. I keep on expecting to watch them, and they actually have stars and they don't.

Because I still don't believe it's occurring. That Janavian Clowny and Kyle Van Noy are these team's primary pass rushers. That Brandon Stevens and Arthur Millett are two of their three starting corners. The Gino Stone just, like, played well enough, in Marcus Williams' absence to remain a starter and leads the leaking interceptions. Who's doing this? They have Roquan Smith.

They have Roquins Smith and Kyle Hamilton. Like two studs at middle linebacker and safety, which is not where there's supposed to be an edge and corner, right? That's what we thought we learned. That's how we thought defense worked. At past rusher and cornerback, that's you put your stars. They have stars at linebacker and safety.

And then otherwise, it's just takes a village, just everybody carrying their own weight. We have not seen a defense. be successful like this in a bit. Whereas they are not star-powered. They are scheme-powered and execution-powered, mistake-free football, match-up powered. And they feel immortal because, like,

the next man up is always good and is always ready. They are so unbelievably well-coached. The Ravens right now are allowing a touchdown drive. Sheel on 8.7% of their drives. On less than 9% of the drives that this team faces, they allow a touchdown. It is the second best number in the true media database. Do you know who's first?

The 2000 Ravens. You remember just one of the greatest defenses ever? You remember that just like the Ray Lewis Rod Woodson Ravens? Yeah, this team is apparently the same team. It's unreal what they're achieving defensively. As impressive as the Marr and Todd Bonkin and the offense have been 30 points against the Ravens, 30 points against the Seahawks jumping out to these big leads, even more impressive.

It is so hard to stop good offense in the NFL. And they held Ben Johnson and Shane Waldron, who like those two guys might be head coaches next year. They held them to less than 10 collective points over eight quarters. Unbelievable. Ravens are, I'm obsessed with them. I think they might be the best team in the league. They're so, so, so good.

Both those games I had, those were both in the one o'clock window. And I'm like, all right, it's my main game for one o'clock. And by the middle of the second quarter, I'm like, all right, I guess I'm done with, I'm done with this game. I mean, these aren't even close. Like, yeah, absolutely have just crushed. And those are two good teams. Like, I believe in both those teams, the Seahawks and the line specifically,

offensively. Those have been two very efficient teams. And you watch them and you don't go like, oh, shoot, well, if this and that, then it would have been 10 to seven. No, there's none of that. Nothing quirky. And whatever. No, like, Gino was like doing his best.

Like, the Seahawks were like, oh, sure. actually like getting some good stuff and they're just getting stuffed on third down, stuffed on a first down. Just just like it is just we're a little bit bigger. We're a little bit better. We're going to be that way for four quarters. It's unbelievable volleyball. The execution is off the charts with this Ravens defense.

Yeah. And your point was a good one about the entries. It's like, yeah, they have not had like all the luck go their way. They start the season without Marlon Humphrey. Marcus Williams goes down there and they're just finding ice over and over and over again. Again, I'm looking here to see they rank in terms of turnover EPA on defense. They rank 19. It's not a turnover-based thing.

I mean, they can create turnovers, but they're not reliant on turnovers. They're middle of the pack there. Like, they even get better luck there. So, all right, both of our first ones are on the Baltimore. I think they deserve, I think they deserved a big segment from us. The way they play, we were both looking forward to that game. And they just went out and we're like, you really don't need to watch this after halftime. the game is over 29 first downs to six first downs in that game.

All right, let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll get to the next takes we want to redo. All right. We are back on extra point taken. I got to take my medicine for this one. I had the Carolina Panthers winning the NFC South. I don't know if anybody has watched the Carolina Panthers.

I don't know if anyone watched the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. I don't think they're going to win the NFC South. Listen, sometimes you take a big swig and you'll whip. badly. Like, you were talking about, you know, your pick for the Chiefs. So, like, for the content game, you don't want to be picking the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. No one's going to remember if you pick the, you need, you shouldn't pick. That's a good lesson. You know, you pick the Ravens. Then the Ravens win the Super Bowl. All of a sudden, they're putting out their hype video afterwards. And they're saying, oh, the only person who chose us was Benjamin

Solacca the Ringer. You know, it's about brand. You go, you go scroll through the MVP picks for the Ringer. You'll see a lot of Patrick Mahomes, a couple of Trevor Lawrence's, and then one Lamar Jackson. I got my ratings exposed. I had my ratings. in the piece. I was all right. You had Lamar there. All right, there you go. Good job. How do you? All right. So what was I trying to do with my panthers pick? Really, as, you know, as you wouldn't be surprised. I had to go, I had to fade the hips or falcons. You knew that was happening when I was picking my NFC South champ. There was no way I was picking the Falcons. And then it was like, Dennis Allen, do I really, do I really want to tie myself to Dennis Allen and

Derek Carr as favorites in the NFC South? And there was something inside of me. I think it was the right instinct that said, shield, don't do that. You did not want to pick Dennis Allen and Derek Carr to win the NFC. South. So then it came down to the Bucks or the Panthers. And I thought, you know what, maybe Bryce Young has an exceptional rookie season. Maybe Frank Reich does a good job there. Maybe our boy Giro Evro does more with less with the defense. It hasn't happened. We don't need to harp on the Panthers. Terrible pick. Embarrassing pick. It happens. The question now, though, So lack, is this is a redo exercise. So what am I going to redo? What do I redo here?

Who am I picking here? You got your Falcons? I could go with them. I think, you know, that's probably not going to happen. As the captain of the Falcons bow, I would not recommend getting on the bow. I'll stay here. Let's get a little check in.

Yeah, let's get a little check in. How are we feeling now? Okay, well, this is going with seven different potential takes. Obviously, the Falcons was one of them. Okay. I started on this pod two weeks. ago and I told you the Falcons, we're going to make the playoffs. And I said they have a great schedule and they control their destiny right now in the

South and it looks good. Well, lo and behold, they still have a great schedule. They control the destiny in the South because they play the Saints again. They have lost two games since. They benched Jesper at halftime. They've lost to Will Levis and Jaron Hall slash Josh Dobbs when he just got off the bus. It's just, it's the foibles of the team are embarrassing. Arthur Smith, like, he shaved his mustache at three, four,

45 a.m. last night. He's down in quarters. Because he's like, oh, it'll help us with the turnovers. Arthur, what's going to help you with the turnovers is running the football, okay, and not letting the quarterbacks start out, but then obviously Bijan fumbles it, so all right, it's on Bijan. This team has more turnovers

in opponent territory than any other team in the league, and it's just not close. Like, it's over the last like four weeks. I think the stretches. They are so bad executing in such easy spots. They are 30th in the league in touchdown percentage on goal to go plays.

This was a team that is just invested in like multiple fullbacks. It's so bad. And Bejohn Robinson has what one touch or something, right? In those goal to go situations? Oh, in those goal to go situations. Yeah. No. They like, so when Rare had the three interception game against Washington,

Bejohn did not run great routes and he made a few mistakes and they led to some, they led to picks. And since then, they've been. wheeling him back, and I feel like he might be dog-housed, and I just think that's hilarious. I think it's so sad and so pathetic and so hilarious. I guess I'm going to go down on the ship of the Falcons because of whatever.

I'm pot committed. Who cares at this point? Nothing is real. The story of the 2023 falcon. I mean, but again, like, what are the alternatives? Do you want to do Derek Carr and the Saints? I know. It's not good.

It's so bad. It's not good. Yeah. So, all right. So Panthers are out. Falcons are going to be out. I mean, yeah, the Falcons, like, not only the last two weeks, what you said, but Arthur Smith has become, I feel like just a, like a legit villain here.

I mean, with the way he's operating, I don't know what, we went over previously. People are probably tired of hearing us talk about the Falcons. But, man, they've spent, what, three top eight picks on skill position players the last three years. They've got three offensive linemen being paid over $15 million per year, and they're 24th in offensive DVOA sandwich between the commanders and the Patriots. I listened to our predict the top five offenses pod to kind of like refresh myself my preseason takes. And I didn't have the Falcons as the top 10 offense and you were like flabbergasted.

And if you go back and you listen to that segment, I was like, well, like I like I like them, but like if Redder hits, it gives me the hits, he's going to be like a mid quarterback and like they just have so much to come together with these young players. And like I'm doing a nice job of explaining why like I like the falcons. So I'm not going to get too far over my skis. and I'm just listening back to myself like, dude, if you would just send that line every time instead of letting shield bait you and getting over your skis,

you would have been fine, but no, I can't help myself. And here I am now, the Falcons guy. I love that you were studying in the film and you're like, I did a good job there. I was like, I had them outside of the top ten. I was like, I just think they're going to be good. You did.

I remember that. I remember. Good enough to be 500 to win the division. And then somehow, by September, it became like, Ben, these the Falcons are going to win 11 games. The offseason's too long, man. All right.

So you know what? I think I just have to redo it. I think I have to go with the Saints. I mean, I'm not going to go with the Bucks. I can't go with the Bucks. So I think it's going to be the Saints. The Saints have, I believe, the easiest remaining schedule in the NFL. I think the Falcons are second easiest in the NFL.

The Saints are half a game ahead of the Bucks. Oh, no, I'm sorry. The Falcons are four and five, one game back of the Saints and a half game ahead of the Bucks. Saints are not a great team. They're five and four. They have a plus 26 point differential. Like I said, easiest remaining schedule in the NFL. They're doing some nice stuff on defense, at least.

I think the best unit probably of any of these NFC South teams is probably the Saints Defense, as I say that out loud. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, that's easily, right? Right. Okay. So Saints' defense is the best unit of any of the NFC South teams, and then I need the offense to be mediocre, which I don't know that it will be.

We'll see. How many wins does it take to win this division? The NFC stuff. Nine. Nine and eight. Yeah. Okay. So they're five and four.

Remember the Raiders made the playoffs two years ago? Like it was like that game against the Chargers where they tie, they both make it. Yes. And then they show up and like, we're going to get that exact same Derek Carr team in the playoffs again where they're just like so average and they somehow sneak in. And then they play a game and it's like kind of close and tight. And Derek Carr looks like he has decent production. Everybody's like, wow. And it's like, no, this was never real.

And we never should have treated it as real. But lo and behold, here it will come. Oh my gosh. I'm just realizing, Ben, the Saints play the Falcons in week 18. Did you know this? No, but for the division. It's going to be that exact Raiders Chargers scenario. And it's going to be Saints Falcons in week 18.

Winner goes to the postseason. All right. So there's my redo. I thought that was just a way to look at the NFC South where we're at. Who is going to win this freaking terrible division? I will redo it. I'm taking out the Panthers. I'm putting in the Saints reluctantly.

If there were a fifth team that I could choose there, I would go ahead and do that. But unfortunately, there are only four teams in the NFC South. All right, what do you have for your second one? Preseason, I thought Anthony Richardson was going to run away with offensive rookie of the year. I'd like to just quick copy paste CJ Stroud's name, just kind of white out and put his name right there

and all those takes and then keep it rolling. This cat's something. I know, again, like talk about things that we've talked about too much on this show. I came up here with C.J. Stroud like three weeks ago, and I was like, I'll do anything for the guy. That was before he had a 470-yard five touchdown performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, including a 40-second game-winning drive in which he just walked the team down the field, like a 13-year veteran. He is astonishing to watch. And again, like, it's the character of his play, it's the quality of it.

It's how he's succeeding where he looks so better and he looks so poised. He's so aggressive off of play action. He's so comfortable working with these receivers. It's just really a sight to stay. I know that Pooka and Kua's had like historical production, but I think that's going to kind of taper off Cooper Cubs back and Matthew Stafford injury, and I think that Stroud's going to run away with this.

So, okay, Stroudoff is a rookie of the year. But like to bring something actually new to the table here, she'll trade value rankings. Like, this is your thing, man. Like, you're the guy here. I know. CJ Stroud's the Xth most valuable contract in the league right now. It might be like fifth, sixth.

Yeah. So I had to update this after week six, I think it was. and he was together. And they're like, include the rookies on this. You know how I operate. I'm like, hey, it's only been six weeks. Are we sure we want to include the rookies? They're like, no, no, no, two of the rookies, we got to make it fresh here.

So I'm like, CJ Stroud, all right. I know he's my top rookie. How high am I putting him? I ended up putting him at 11th overall because I was like, Sheel, we've seen, like sometimes, listen, sometimes, and I do not think this is the case with C.J. Strout. but rookie seasons are not always predictive. You know, so it's like, you know, you have guys, and I agree with what you're saying.

How he's doing it is different than pretty much anyone we've seen to it. I mean, this is not a good situation. I was on the Texans under coming into the season because I'm like, look at this. Look who he's working with here. The rookie quarterback generally struggle. This isn't going to happen for him right away, even though I liked him as a prospect. And the way he's doing it has been astonishing. So I had him at 11th.

I think I would have to move him up. if I was doing it again here a few weeks later. I don't know. By the end of the season, the question is by the end of the season, where is he? All right. So the chiefs are not,

you know, Mahomes is going to be one. I still think, I still think Burrow and Allen are, you're putting them on. Untouchable. Untouchable. Lamar,

I would say you put up there as well. Yeah, I think if he keeps playing like this, you put Lamar there. And then you have that Hertz, Lawrence Herbert territory. I mean, whoosh.

He's in there. Yeah, Yeah, I think he's in there. It's where in that tier is he going to be? And again, you can say, come on, it's only going to be one season and a small sample. Yes, but the upside of having a guy play at that level on that rookie contract compared to $50 million per year. Imagine what teams would give up for that.

It's crazy. Now, and now, so this is exactly what I want to talk about here when we start to, like, frame this conversation. There is not a team in the league whose future stock I want to buy more aggressively. in the Houston Texans. The Texans are right now projected up the fourth most caps face entering next season, $75 million.

This is why Stroud is so valuable because a rookie contract quarterback. This is the effect that it has. You go and you look wide receiver room, right? I mean, they're throwing to Tankdale, Noah Brown, Nico Collins and Robert Woods. They don't have anybody on a big deal, right?

Like wide receivers, star wide receivers cost $20 million this year. They have four guys this offense is working with. No one costs more than $6 million this year. Robert Woods costs $9.7 next year. You can just restructure that move on him. Robert Woods, right? you have your young guys now.

Offensive line, right? You have the huge contract for Laramie Monsel, but he's paying you off on it. This offense is unbelievably cheap. And then defense, they have Domeco, right? Domeco, who's making a lot work with a little right now. Derek Stingley, Jeline Petrie, Will Anderson, they have some really impressive young talent.

This is the exact sort of team, the exact sort of team, with how well Stroud is playing in the respect he's earning in the league, and then with how well-renowned D'emiko is as a head coach, this is the exact sort of team that can go out, get big free agents at big price tags who want to play for them, and then have the ability to hit the ground running and build a competitive team quite quickly. Now, like, Jags are going to be good for a while.

Colts, like Anthony Richardson, they might be good. It's not the easiest division in the world. And the conference, holy smokes. The AFCs are a murderer's row. But the hitting on shroud like this moves your entire time frame up for your team by a year. And the Texans, like every game that they win like this, every big moment that they have, every huge strapped performance, just makes them stronger and stronger and stronger entering this upcoming off season to make a really good case to league free agents, to make a case to build super aggressively, to get a ton of talent in on the rookie deal.

They do not be surprised if Ben and she are on the mics, August 2024, just being like, what is the ceiling for this Texans team? It might be through the roof. You know, it's a very interesting question with the building the past catchers around him because typically free agents, is not where you hit on that. You know, we, like, look at all the great wide receivers we've seen. It's been via trade. The, the Tyreek Hill, A.J. Brown, DeFonte Adams, Stefan Digg. Like, all these guys have been traded.

Not to say it's the only way to do it, but paying big and free agency for wide receivers. Generally, not all the time, generally has not been the way. The Texans did trade their first-round pick for Willie Anderson, who's a stud for short and is going to be a building piece for that defense. This is probably more of a march. conversation of like, if they still had that first round pick and could trade it for wide receiver X, would that have been better to maintain that flexibility? I got two words for you, Sheel.

T. Who's going there? Higgins. Okay. I like that. Bring them home. It's a good one. Bring them to me. T? All right. Anyway, the most important thing is this. I thought Anthony Richardson was going to be amazing. He looked great. Maybe it'd be in conversation for this. He got hurt. It's very, very sad. But CJ Stroudman, we are seeing a rookie quarterback performance that like is appointment, television, viewing, he should run away with this award.

And I wish preseason, I'd said that a little bit more, instead of getting suckered in on the Anthony Burgess and the athleticism. I got too excited about it. I love everything about Stroud. I mean, I love the person. I love the way the teammates are like the sideline shots and stuff. And I mean, that last drive is just like a legendary dream.

Like you can just see, again, we're getting ahead of ourselves, but you can just see eight. years down the road. Remember that drive he had as a rookie in week nine? That was incredible. I mean, that was just an incredible. The degree of difficulty on some of these throws, again, he does not have a great

supporting cast for all the, all the people who, you know, if you're of a certain fan base and there's people, your friends are saying, yeah, but our quarterback doesn't have X, Y, and Z. Like, well, look at who C.J. Shroud is doing this with. I mean, it's incredible. The touch, the accuracy. It was so wild because it's like the first half was kind of like, you know, it's like a standard solid first half, and then all of a sudden, the second half, just every time they get the football, he's firing on all cylinder. So yeah, he absolutely was a huge story in

week nine. Maybe like top five biggest story in the NFL this season is CJ Stroud. There's no doubt about it. I mean, to be this established this quickly and for us to be talking about how many quarterbacks would you not trade for CJ Stroud? And we're able to do that pretty quickly. Like it's anywhere between three and six or seven. And that's it, I think, in the entire NFL. I mean, that is something that I don't think anyone could have predicted coming into the season. All right. Take one more break.

We'll come back. And I need some help from Solac on this next one. All right. We are back on extra point taken. So here's the deal with my third one. I think I want to do a do-over on the Packers making the playoffs. When I sat down to prep for the show, I said, shield, that's got to be one. You've watched the Packers.

This Packers team isn't making the playoffs. Do your two-over. And then I looked at the other teams in the NFC. And I was like, who am I doing a do-over with for the Packers? And am I sure that I want to do a do-over for the Packers? So for those of you who didn't listen to the preseason shows, Solac and I had this exercise where we agreed. We said, you know what?

We're going to agree on one team that were both. This is going to be the team, the extra point-taking team. There's going to be a team with plus odds to make the playoffs. We ran through some. I think the Broncos were in there, the Steelers were in there. And then finally we settled on the Green Bay Packers. We said, you know what? They've generally been a pretty well-coached team.

Maybe Jordan Love can be average. It's not a great division. It's not a great conference. Maybe they win nine games and they get in. I think the reasoning was fine. Like, I don't have big regrets over that. I don't. My big regret, which this is my Packers preseason takeback that I wish I would

had, was you wanted to choose the Steelers the X point-taking team. And I vetoed that in favor of the Packers. I'm not even positive the Steelers are a better team right now than the Packers. Well, they should have accepted the wisdom that the Steelers can't legally go worse than 500 and thereby are going to be in the playoff race. Should have just known that the magic was going to ordain them a playoff team. Maybe. I have no idea.

I'm afraid to even have an opinion. I feel like every opinion I've had on the Steelers this year has been wrong. That might have been my only good one, the preseason one. So I picked the Packers to make the playoffs. Solac and I agreed. again, I want the do-over, but they're three and five. They beat the Rams on Sunday. That's like the most impressive win you've ever seen,

but the run game got going a little bit. Aaron Jones gets on the field. They win by a couple touchdowns there. Ben, football outsiders gives the Packers still a 26% chance to make the playoffs, which was higher than I was expecting when I went to their playoff odds page year. So they're not a great team, but if you look at their schedule, I think, in predictable,

the site that goes by the betting markets has them with the third easiest remaining schedule. And it's a weird remaining schedule

because their next four are not really easy, but I think if you look beyond that, I think they'll probably be favored in five of their remaining game. So here are my options here.

I need your wisdom to tell me what to do here. And if it tastes, she'll stick with the Packers, don't give up on them yet. I'm okay with that. My other options here, looking at the seven seed

in the NFC, And this is a good thing to look at as we look ahead to the final, the second half of the season here. I could pick two teams from the NFC South. No, we both know based on our previous conversation. I am not doing that. I'm not picking the Saints or the Falcons to be the 7th Cs. So throw that out. I could pick the Josh Dobbs led Vikings.

That could be fun for me. I don't know if I believe it. But that, listen, the Vikings, I think, might be like the most likable team in the NFL right now. I can't get enough of that. Are you with me? I can't get enough of that story. Incredible. walk away from every single Vikings game, more and more impressed with Kevin O'Connell's ability.

Just coach around it. Like, it's just, but the O'Connell and Brian Flores are just coaching around it. Yes. Just guys are dropping like flies and we don't have a lot of talent and we got a new guy in the building. And here's what we're going to do. O'Connell, O'Connell's, I think, like, O'Connell's quickly approaching got the goods territory for me. Like, I have like a rarefied, like, Hall of Fame upper cabinet of guys where I'm just like, dudes got it. Like, I know he's got it. I will always believe he's got it. O'Connell's approach in that spot where I'm like,

man, like, I put them down 28 against the Browns, I'd watch. Just to see, like, they might get back in this thing. Who knows?

They are an utter joy to watch. After last season, being so irritating because it was hard to talk about them because they were very evidently fraudulent.

This year, they're the exact opposite. We're just like, this seems a blast, man. I was thinking the same thing. Last year was just like, all right, everybody make fun of the Vikings

every week. They're winning these one-score games. We all know they're not that good, but their record's really good. And this year, like you said, it is so different. I mean, we always talk about coaching on the show, and I like coaches who understand what their job is. That looks like a coaching staff. They understand what their job is. The chips are down. Justa Jefferson's out. Kurt Cousins is out

for the season. We can either make excuses or we can try to figure out a way to make it work. And Josh Jobs just comes in. Their quarterback goes down. They find a way to win that game. Brian Flores. So like that defense is up to 10 in a defensive DV. VOA. If you just had to rank rosters, defensive rosters in the NFL, that would be what, 26th or something? I mean, it's bottom Yeah, like bottom 10 for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. I cannot emphasize like the play they've gotten out of Josh Mattelis, K.m. Bionham is playing outside of his mind. Like, I talked so down on this secondary. This would be another good one for me. All I did was make fun of the secondary. All I did was hop on pods,

be like, name every Viking's defensive back that you can. If he would name like two or three, Mattelis and Bynum have been like a, that's like a top 15 safety and a top 15 corner across the league this season. Huge, huge, huge wins for them. I had them when I did my defensive rankings. I definitely had them in the bottom eight. I can't remember where, but I had them very low. All right.

So I could go with the Josh Dobbs led Vikings as my do-over. The commanders, the box, the Rams, the Rams get a buy in week 10. Maybe Matthew Stafford comes that way. If you told me the Rams were going to be healthy, I would be tempted. but my goodness, he's got a thumb injury and he would have to come back in week 11. So those are my options. So the options are she'll stick with the Packers,

don't do a do-over, replace them with one of those teams you mentioned, maybe the Vikings, maybe the Rams. I don't think any of the other ones were that exciting. What should I do here? What is my move?

How do you advise me? Yeah, if we could go back in time and choose which team to pick, we should absolutely go back and take the Vikings. Think about the roller coaster we would have had just through the first eight weeks to be where we are now and be like,

there might be the sixth seat. Just Josh Jobs throwing game winners to Brandon Powell. We're 500, maybe. They'd be an extremely fun team. We wouldn't have cheese heads. We'd have Viking horns. That'd be fun. That'd be good as well. It'd be better for the headphones too. Great stadium. Yeah. Yeah, I like a Minneapolis.

Right. And we'd be probably also getting back into Vikings fan and good graces after last year, probably falling out of those good graces quite a bit. It would have been a good move. Vikings would be a, hilariously fun team to pick. Packers, I'm still, like, the Packers are a very interesting team to me to watch. I don't think they're going to make the playoffs. I don't have faith in them week over week, but they are easily the youngest and greenest, most mistake prone, most figuring

it out on the fly team I've seen in a bit. And that's fun to watch just for like the, like, the mad science experiment of it all. Like, every time the sideline cuts to the camera cuts to Matt floor on the sideline, I'm always like, okay, what's he going to do now? What does he look like? How is he doing? Because LaFleur just looks like he hates his job so much. And the way that he's defending Jordan Love and like the way that love is just dealing with these young receivers, like there's so much for the Packers that's fascinating, but it's a little bit more of like a grotesque fascination,

whereas the Vikings are like actually joyful. Vikings are five and four. Packers are three and five. I don't know. Should I not give up on the Packers yet? We shouldn't. But if you can go back. be more fun out of the Vikings. It would be more fun to have the Vikings. All right. So if I can

have my do-over, I would have done the Vikings, but Solac and I have to do an exercise for the ringer.com where we do our mid-season prediction. So maybe I just stick with the Packers. Because what you said is true. There is a case that the Packers are so young that some of these guys are bound to improve as they get more reps. And maybe it only, you know, who knows how many wins. One of these teams is going to make the playoffs as a wild card. Either the Saints or the Falcons, whoever doesn't make the, whoever doesn't win the division, the Vikings, the commanders, the Bucks, the Rams, or the Packers. One of those teams is making the playoffs in the NFC. It's hard to figure out which one it's going to be. So that was my last fun. Yeah, maybe I go back and do the do

over with the Vikings, but I think, you know what? I'm just going to stick with the Packers. It's our first extra point-taking team. I'm not going to turn my back on them quite yet. So there you go. We're going to have a fun time with those like six and eight Packers team there, like in December. It's got like a 14% chance still. We're just like, listen, if they win and then win and then win again, and if this, this, this is this is this. So that's always fun to do. At Pittsburgh, Chargers at home, at Detroit, Chiefs at home, their next floor. This could be over in a hurry.

And then after that, it's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, my third and final one, man, my co-host is good at this. I should have known the Browns are going to be a top five defense. He hopped on the pod. Everybody in August was talking about Browns are going to be.

be one of the top defenses. Browns are a sleeper great defense. Jim Schwartz is going to fix this in one year. And Miles Garrett's going to defensive player of the year. And I was like, man, like, the hype train is getting out of control. Sheal loves to sit on a hype train and you'll be like, no, no, no, no, no. I was the hype train. Who else was saying this?

That's what I'm saying. No, no, no. No, that's what I'm saying. We were at the stage where you love to do your thing where you're like, I'm going to release my defensive rankings. I haven't said anything about them all year. Here it comes. And at the time, people were getting hype by the Browns defense. And I was like, I don't buy this at all. And I was so positive. I was like, Sheel's going to come in here and sit right on this with me.

Big pessimists right down to the middle of the road. They're not going to get that good that quick. And then you came in with the top five, the Eagles is the top five defense. They are not that. I had the Patriots as a top five defense. They're like top 10, but not really like the unit I kind of thought they would be. And you had the Browns is the top five defense. And I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I was like, I don't think so at all. And it's funny because again, like going back and listening to some of the stuff that I talked about, I was like, I'm worried about this corner room. And they haven't gotten the best Denzel Ward season. But Martin Emerson just decided to come out of nowhere and be elite. It's like, all right, there you go. You solve that problem.

I had a lot of doubts about the linebacker room and the defensive tackle room and the ability to actually be good defending the run up the middle. And they're like doing a full rotation at linebacker. And I don't know people know this. The Brown's like the top one defense. And they just like, they're playing four linebackers. Because like they don't have any, like, none of their guys are like all good enough to be on the field for one for all three downs. So you're just like rotate them. You can't do that. You can't just have a unit where you're just like chucking guys in and out with different packages and you're fine, but they're getting away with it.

And it's because this defense of front is so dominant because Jim Schwartz is running a simple and extremely aggressive, high caliber tackling, get after and dictate defense that a lot of offenses are getting overwhelmed by. They're not able to handle. So if I could go back in time and get my defensive predictions right, I would have bowed to the wisdom of the masses, and more particularly to the wisdom of Shield Coppadia, known unit ranker preseason, excellent ranking takes.

And I would have accepted that the Browns are going to be as good as they are. Because holy smokes, this Brown season, man, five and three. And with the way the quarterback has played when he's been healthy, and then the backup situation, this team should be two and six. And not for the fact that their defense have been carrying them for the first half of the season. This weekend, best two defenses by far, I think,

well, I don't know if I should say by far, Cowboys are pretty good, Browns and Ravens going at it. Those two defenses. That's going to be a fun one, which I'm sure we'll talk to, talk about later in this week. All right,

was that your extra point taken? Do you have an extra point taken? I got some stuff here if you don't have one. That was, that was like my official third take. The extra point was kind of the first point here. So it was like Jets Chargers, here's an actual take on a game.

And now we're coming off of the, off of the kind of the preseason edit takes, which by the way, if we wanted to make the Browns take, an actual week nine take, holy smokes Clayton that poor poor boy I can't believe what they did to him oh my goodness it's a tough film your your MVP is Lamar Jackson right you're sticking with that I saw in the column for the first half of the season yeah I think Lamar's the

MVP I think the race is pretty tight I think Tyree Kill has a legitimate case and legitimate shot I think if Tyree Kill gets 2,000 yards the way this offense uses him I think he's up there I think Jalen Hertz has really pushed himself in that conversation recently has had a few really high production games last few weeks I think Mahomes is still up there like the receivers are not good and the Chiefs are seven and two. Like obviously their defense is great as well. So there's a lot of candidates. I'd vote for Lamar right now if I had a ballot.

I actually would too. As much as you know, I like disagreeing with you. I think through the first nine weeks of the season, I would have Lamar Jackson as my MVP. I would be open to Mahomes and Jalen Hertz. I think Mahomes is doing way more with less than people even understand and realize. And Jalen Hertz, you know,

has obviously come on very strong. The guys I'm keeping my eye on, in the second half of the season, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. I'm not burrow. I'm not burying the bills yet. There's too much. And I saw you tweeting about this. And I'm sure we'll talk about this more.

There's too much like data analytical evidence that this could turn for them. The Cincinnati Bengals had the same record last year that the bills have this year after nine weeks. Like keep that in mind. It is a long season. These things turn. I feel like if the bills are going to make a run, Josh Allen's going to have to be. Superman because I don't think it's going to happen consistently on the defensive side of the ball.

So I've got my eye. I would not be surprised if two months from now we're going, Josh Allen's the MVP. Look at what he did. The other guy is Joe Burrow. I mean, the way he's played the last two games and we'll see what happens with the Jamar Chase injury. But man, if they keep that up, that's the other one. I've got an eye on. Do you know, I was looking at this.

The bills are averaging 25.9 points per game this year. They average 26.9 points per game last year. Some of the stuff just messes with. with you. When the numbers say one thing and I say something different, like, what is happening? Like, I don't want to, I'm doing a play sheet on the Bills and I'm excited to do it. I feel like Bill's fans are going to get really mad at me. And I get why, because it's very annoying to have just some nerd be like, the EPA is good. And like when you're losing. But like, let's, let's call a spade a spade of spade. Like, Bill's fans, you're not mad at Ken Dorsey. You're not

mad at EPA. You're not mad at Josh Allen. Like, you think about all these news. You're not. You're mad that you're losing. Which makes sense. And it sucks. But that's what's happening. The bills have been one of the best teams in football the last three years. And they continue to lose to the top AFC contenders, losing the playoffs. And now this season, they lost to the Bengals and they're five and four. You're losing games.

Like, that's what sucks. Losing sucks. It's not EPA's fault. Not Kenora's fault, Josh Allen's fault. Like a little bit Josh Allen's fault because of turnovers and whatever. But like, the reason why it's not, stop blaming me. Stop blaming. The media.

Like, you're mad at the media. And bills fans are mad at everybody. It's just, you're just like, you're losing and that blows. Like that's, that's, it sucks. It's super unfortunate, but that's football. So you play really, really good football. And then there's a loss in the lost column. There's nothing you can do about it.

It stinks. In a season where the offenses are not as great as they typically are, where the bills are statistic, again, you're probably right. They're probably like shut up. We don't care about this. Where they are statistically, higher EPA per drive than last year, higher success rate than last year, just a nine game. sample of this. Like, I understand. I hear the frustration. I see it too. There's just,

you still have the quarterback. You still have the wide receiver one. Like, the tight end's coming on, despite the fumble. Like, there's enough there that in this landscape of the NFL, that they can turn this around. So I'm not burying them yet. All right. Last thing. You have a coach? I don't know if you've thought about this yet. So I can throw some of my out there coach of the year through the first half of the season. So I wrote Mike Tomlin. in the column. The Steelers make the playoffs. He's never won it, and yet he's

immortal. So you have to give it to him at some point. If you're just going to do this for forever, he's got to win it in some year, right? So Tomlin, I think O'Connell is a legit candidate as well, especially the Vikings. If they play a playoff game with Josh Jobs, they acquired at the deadline.

O'Connell should be up there. I think that John Harbaugh should be up there. Hard to overstate how challenging it is to have what is objectively a good offensive coordinator who's coached good offenses in Greg Roman and a good defensive coordinator who's coached good defenses in your building. Both of them did it in your building

with your personnel in Wink Martindale and over two off-season get rid of both of them. For guys who you, like, McDonald, you know, but is super young. Monk, and you don't even know. Monk is not from the family, man. And to bring both of them in to have immediate success,

oh, that's stones. That's really, really good, just organizational management. So to me, those three, Harbaugh, O'Connell, and Tomlin, those are three right now that are high up on my life. list. Those were the three I had written down and then I threw Dan Campbell in there as well.

I think just, I mean, you look at that franchise and what they've done here since the middle of last year to this year. I think he has done a very good job as well. So we'll see what happens there the rest of the way. All right, that'll wrap it up for this edition of Extra Point Take and thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing. Thanks to Eduardo Ocampo for the video production. Again, You can catch that on all the Ringer NFL social media channels. Additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopal. Next episode will be Nora and Stephen with Dual Threat. And then Solek and I will be back on Friday.

Thanks for listening, everyone. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Fan duel is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC. Gambling problem. call 1-800 gambler or visit Fandul.com slash RG in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. Call 1-800-nextap or text next step to 533442 in Arizona, 1-88-787-9-777.

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