The Ringer NFL Show - Mid Season Awards

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

Mal and Nora rejoin to give out there Mid Season awards! They band together to discuss who the season's MVP is so far, Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, and much more! Host: Mallory Rubin and Nora Princiotti Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Mallory Rubin. And I'm Van Leithen. Check out the Ringerverse podcast from The Ringer. For all things, superhero movies, nerd culture, and fandom entertainment. We have instant reviews and fun takes on all the latest news and more. Available now on Spotify. And welcome to the Thursday edition of the Ringer NFL show.

I am Nora Pinceati. I'm a staff writer at The Ringer. I am here, as always, with Mallory Rubin. How are you doing, Mallory? Nora, what a joy to be here with you somehow. at the mid-season mark, where's the time gone? It's really bananas that we're halfway through the regular season. It's also, I do feel that while dealing with the 17 games as far as records go is challenging,

it is nice that an 18-week season gives us a clean midpoint. It is. It's handy. Love clean math. Don't have to do all of the X number of minutes into X quarter stuff that we did for our Quarter season awards. That was fun. I had a good time with that.

I was told there would be no math. And there is no math, only midseason awards. All right. We are going to give these awards for the first half of the season. So those are not necessarily going to be our predictions for who is ultimately going to win. Right. We may offer some thoughts on that as well. I will do my best, certainly.

And I'm sure Mallory will excel in this to make those distinctions clear. Sometimes I do let my imagination. Run wild in these types of situations, but we will stay on the straight and arrow, I promise, sort of. I think we can do it. And look, if we end up in the process of saying who deserves these honors here at the midway point

through the first half of the season, if we end up also correctly predicting the ultimate outcomes, so be it. That's not our goal. Might just be a byproduct. Who can say? Wow. Wow.

The all-seeing podcast. All right. Well, we will start the only place to start with the most valuable player award. And one thing I noticed going through notes, figuring out who I was going to pick for all of these things. There's some real clear-cut answers for a lot of these. I don't know that that is the case totally with MVP. I think you can argue a number of different players. But I did expect us to be in some degree of symmetry on this one because I will spoil it. We both have Lamar Jackson.

We do. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. It'll shock everyone to hear. Valerie, I'm going to give you the floor first on this. Oh, boy. Talk to you about Lamar. You know, I did really genuinely consider other options here. And I know you did as well.

I did. I did. I can hear the skepticism and the. doubt in your voice. Just a delight for me to break for him and not choose Tom Brady for this. But I don't know what you have to say for yourself. I had Brady in the consideration set. And then of course, Kyler Murray in the consideration set here as well.

And of course, Kyler was our MVP pick at the quarterway mark. I think that Kyler, Brady, Lamar will remain in the mix for the rest of the season. And how this ultimately goes, who knows? But the spirit of the exercise is, again, we won't say this 100 times, but we might say it like 25 more times, midseason awards to this point in the season. And in terms of value, value to this point in the season, I don't know how to ultimately talk myself into anything other than Lamar, because no player is more valuable to his team right now than Lamar Jackson is to the Ravens. I, I, Nora, I don't know if you know this. I'm a Ravens fan. And so... No.

Shocked, I tell you. It pains me to say this, but I feel compelled to. I don't know how many games this team would have won without Lamar. I think the number is quite small, and it's definitely not a six and two record and a top pack in the AFC looking like a real playoff hopeful. That is the reality. right now because of Lamar Jackson, period.

Obviously, also the coaching staff, let's throw some praise Justin Tucker's way, as we always like to, the analytics department, the way that they have recrafted the team around Lamar and worked to open up the passing game so that he can continue to develop evolve and excel, the way that they have overcome injuries. But then if you also look at the other side of that, it only heightens the argument, right? Decimated, as we've talked about all season long, by injuries all over the field, offense and defense. And when you look at what he's done in all facets of the game, he has really, really, really elevated as a passer. Average depth of target, 10.9 yards,

opening things up for the offense, finding Hollywood for big plays back in sync with Andrews. Bateman, since he came back from injury, has been an absolute godsend. I mean, he's just an instant first down. That connection is really quickly developed and there's a lot of harmony and synchronicity there. I think they're going to be great together. Lamar is the run game right now. He is the run game. And as we've talked about a few times already this season, it's not the same Ravens defense, especially when it comes to tackling. So this is not the kind of quintessential Ravens team of years past where they could win with low scoring offensive outputs. They can't. They have got to score. And we've seen that manifest in a few different ways. Of course, the

comebacks, most of all, this is like a comeback magic team. The Ravens have played in three overtime games already through eight contests. They've won two of them. Now you could say, well, that doesn't feel sustainable. And that would be a fair thing to say. But here's my read on it. Magical season unfolding in real time before our very eyes. And the comebacks are something that you have to right now credit Lamar for.

Here's a quote from an NFL.com article from Dante Coplowitz Fleming. Quote, Jackson, who was 0 and 4 in his regular season career prior to this season when trailing by double digits at any point in the second half is now three and one in that scenario in 2021. No quarterback since at least 2000 has more than four wins in a full season in games they trailed by double digits in the second half. I think that's the key point, right? Because it doesn't really matter if it's sustainable or not. What matters is that this was something people thought Lamar Jackson wasn't good at. Now, that was always silly, but it was still a pervasive part of the narrative surrounding. can't.

Just by flipping that, and these are narrative awards, just by flipping that, it doesn't really matter if they, I mean, I guess if they started falling behind and not being able to overcome it like consistently, consistently and badly in the second half of the season, then maybe that negates some of what they've done. Sorry, Mel. But I don't think it matters if they sustain that or not. I mean, arguably, they would rather not sustain it, right? They would rather just win handling.

Nice to rack up some easy wins. That would be a pleasant change of circumstance. Wonder what it's like to enjoy a peaceful Sunday. We'll never know. Don't hope for that. And Tucker deserves some credit for the comebacks as well. But again, I really don't think those things matter so much. I think it matters more.

This was the thing that Lamar historically has been knocked for unfairly. I think fair or unfair, he'll get the credit for not doing it. I want to talk about the depth of their, downfield passing game just for a second more because what Lamar is doing, which I think is so impressive, is he's getting better, he's getting more explosive, he's throwing deeper downfield, also getting more or meeting his career high sort of accuracy metrics at the same time, while he has arguably a much weaker infrastructure around him. This is not what is supposed to happen to quarterbacks.

So I think you said, you had his average up the target at 10.9 yards. Is that right? So I'm using just the pro football reference advanced stats. I don't know what the slight distinction is. They've got them at 10.1. It's the best in the NFL. It is Lamar's career best by far. He's never been, again, by how they measure, above 8.8.

His completion percentage is 65%. That's just a tick below the 66%. completion rate he had in his MVP season. And that's happening while he's throwing for a full yard more per completion and 68 more passing yards per game. Also, when I was, there's a couple things that we're going to get to in this pod that I just was like, I think I know most things that are going on in the NFL. And this is not something that shocked me, um, sort of being in the ballpark.

But it's, I had not realized the Ravens are still the number of, one rushing offense in the NFL by yards. This is silly. This is not a thing that should be happening. And it's not happening for any reason other than Lamar Jackson. So ultimately, I think your descriptor of this as, or your framing of this as how many games would they have won without him, that to me is the central logic for Lamar over, over Brady, maybe over Kyler.

Kyler, to me, is getting faded just because the injury is a little bit, puts things up in the air right now, and he just didn't play, and they still won. And I think that tips things in Lamar's favor, at least right now. I think you could make a similar argument, generally speaking, for Kyler, just in that he's so the straw that stirs a drink there. Brady, look, I'm not going to say that Brady's not playing quarterback at an exceptionally high level that were it not the case in Tampa. I think they would be a much worse team. That's a very good team. Now, they've had a lot of injuries, but it's not quite the same situation

where you're just like, what would this team have going on, were it not for this quarterback who could do so many different things? So I do think if we talk about the entire season, just given how difficult the Raven stretch, stretch run is going to be that maybe, you know, I don't want to bet against,

I think Brady here necessarily, and then we'll see what Kyler looks like. But right now, Lamar. I love it. Do you think that if the award were actually handed out today, it would go to Lamar, though?

I think if it were handed out today, it would probably go to, despite everything we just said, I think it would probably go to Kyler. And that would be completely valid. I mean, as you just alluded to, you know, he has a very similar, what he means to this team is,

is, in addition to all of the stats that help support the argument, almost like intangible in its relevance. And then when you look at the numbers, you know, 72.7% completions, 24 big time throws despite missing a game. His turnover worthy play rate is 1.3%. You know that I am a secretly like 95 year old. And so I love baseball, as I've mentioned multiple times. It's like that combo of the big time throws and the low turnover rate. It's the, it's the equivalent of like being the best home run hitter in baseball. on never striking out.

Like, that's not a thing that's supposed to happen. So shouts to Kyler. Just wanted to say that, too. I think you're right. I think it would go to Kyler. He's also, you know, look, Lamar won it.

I think that matters to a degree to voters. Kyler's been just electric and incredible. I think I probably were it not just for the missing a game and them still looking dominant

recency bias right now feeling type of thing, probably would have leaned, leant, leaned Kyler. That Cardinals' dominance will be coming up for both of us

in a later category. Yeah, we'll get there. Stay tuned. Goodness gracious. All right. There's probably like two listeners who can already guess where this is going

just by the fact that I had to issue a deep sigh when you said that. But first, no deep sighs for Rookie of the Year awards. So offensive rookie of the year, I have Jemar Chase. Same buddy. Heck yeah.

Nora, we're so in sync. Look at this. It's amazing. It's really beautiful. I think there's going to be, I think it's going to keep going. I mean, look, there's not one of the takeaways here is that a lot of these, a lot of these players, anything can happen second half of the season. But so far, a lot of these players have really, really, really separated themselves from the pack. And so Chase has been incredible, averaging 19 yards per reception.

835 yards, 44 catches, seven touchdowns. It's just absurd. I mean, the highlight reel needs no explanation. But I think the thing to sort of zero in on here is that normally, I think we would be looking at, you know, maybe if there were a really dominant rookie running back or rookie quarterbacks. But one of the big surprises of this season has been that the rookie quarterback class just has not been particularly, I'm. either exciting or trustworthy. Justin Fields, I think, has had flashes, but that's not a good offense.

Mack Jones is the only one who's sort of steadily chugging along with a team with a winning record and has more touchdowns than interceptions. But, I mean, he's not exactly lighting the world on fire. That's a fundamentally conservative offense that's looked pretty, you know, stuck in the mud. Now, if they keep, look, the Patriots have been improving. If they keep doing that, it's always easier for quarterbacks to kind of run away with things than anybody else.

But I think it's pretty obvious that no one has had both the consistent success and the flashiness of Chase. You could try to make an argument for Najee Harris. He's got 830 yards from scrimmage. So that's not, and that's in eight games. so technically on a per game basis, that's more than 835 receiving yards and nine games. What a pod so far for the AFC North. For Chase.

But I just don't think that Ben Rothesberger like dinking and dunking and handing off is really any match for 19 yards per reception. Yeah, it's unbelievable. I mean, you already ran through the stats for Chase. He's my pick as well. He was my pick at the quarter mark as well. I think that, you know, how Chase and the Bengals look coming out of the buy and what tone that sets for the second half, in addition to just what the ultimate production is in the second half and how sustainable says we'll go a long way toward determining the ultimate outcome, especially as you noted, if McJones or another quarterback really surges, there's really no, I don't think there's really an argument to make against Chase at this point.

The only thing to even point to in terms of like how the pathway for someone else could open, I think, in addition to what you already mentioned, is just the kind of mid-season slump kicking in a little bit already. You know, the one area in which he needs to improve a little bit is just, and this will sound like an absurd thing to say for a receiver, exceptionally, especially one who has excelled so fully is holding on to the football in a couple different ways. You know, he's got the six drops. He's got the two fumbles. and he's cooled a bit in recent weeks. You know, he torched the Ravens three games ago for 201 yards touchdown.

But then he's had his two least effective games of the season since against the Jets and then the Browns. I think, though, in a way, the fact that he struggled in those two games, it only amplifies his importance and how dominant he's in right away, what that Burrow Chase connection, tapping back into that LSU magic right away at the NFL level, what that means as really like establishing them as one of the must watch, can't miss quarterback wide receiver duos in the game and establishing chase is a true wide receiver number one in the sport. Because when he cooled, the Bengals stopped winning, right? Like, their slump and his dip coincided in full. So if he comes out strong and they begin winning again, I think the hype is just like right back on track right away. And that's, that's only a blip,

not a, not a real interruption. He has just been just sensational. So, Mal, you made a promise to me. And I'm actually going to, I'm going to make you make it to our listeners as well, because we put these picks in a Google Doc. And it became apparent that we were in sync on a lot of these. That came up, sort of came into stark relief with the defensive rookie of the year award, because not only were we both advocating for Micah Parsons, our runner up was the same player

Patrick Sertan. So, Mallory, got the hard push at home from my Broncos fan husband for Pat. Went with Parsons. You've been getting lobbied. That's right.

But so we're putting these into our Google Doc and Mallory tells me that Sartan was going to be her other choice too. We're so in sync. And I replied, Spider-Man meme. And I just swelled with pride. It's one of the proudest moments I can remember experiencing. I thought this was really wonderful because, Mallory, you're giving me credit for making

like a superhero movie reference. To me, that's an internet reference. It's a Twitter meme. Yeah, I know, I know that you were just going with a Twitter meme, but I am choosing to, here's what this means to me. And we're joined today, you know, Steve Allman is here with us producing the pod. Steve is a binge mode producer. Steve is my ringerverse producer.

Steve and I talk about superheroes all the time. I think Steve would agree. You might think that you were just like, oh, you know, I see this on Twitter or Spider-Man. What to Steve and I know to be true, Nora, is that we have entered the multiverse. You know, you're seeing and feeling and absorbing the Osmosis,

the Spider-Man, No Way, Home conversation just like everyone else is. And you're going to be there with us. Now, maybe not literally, but at least in spirit on December 17th, talking about Doc Ock. That's how I took this. Heck yeah.

You know what? I support you, Mallory. So I'm going to be there for you. And you said that you were going to try to make a Taylor reference for me by Christmas. I'm going to make a Taylor Swift reference for you. Yeah. I'm going to do it on air. Putting it in proverbial podcast spoken writing, which is the concept that I just made up.

Anyway, we both went with Micah Parsons. Mallory. Man. make the case for me. Here's the case. He has been an incredibly versatile front seven defender for a team who has needed him to be exactly that. Like that versatility and deployability

across the front of the Cowboys defense has been incredibly valuable for a Dallas team this season that has, you know, until a, I don't know, frankly, like bizarre recent result against the Broncos had been one of the, I think clearly better teams in football. And Parsons has excelled

most and has been just downright exceptional for a rookie as a pass rusher. He's PFF's third rated pass rusher among linebackers. He's got a 90.5 grade. He has five sacks. He's got 15 quarterback hurries, 27 total pressures already, 10 tackles for loss. Bobby Bell. Sounds like a really good 27 dresses sequel. Oh, God.

Michael Parsons stars in. 27 total pressure. It's actually, it's about a pass rusher who keeps getting pressures but never gets a sack. That sounds actually really sad. What's like the inspiring turn of events at the end of the film? The breaking through for the sack at last to send his team to the playoffs. Is that how the film concludes? The way the film concludes is that he gets to play against Carson once.

Oh, boy. Not actually a problem that Micah Parsons has. Again, plenty of sacks, plenty of sacks. Plenty of sacks. Here's a little nugget from Bobby Belt of NFL Network. He tweeted this. Parsons is the first player in NFL history, Nora. History.

With 50 tackles, 10 tackles for loss, and five sacks through his first eight games. Pretty good. Pretty, pretty good. And yeah, he's, look, that Cowboys defense being good, they put a ton of resources into it over the offseason. Parsons, drafting Parsons being chiefly among them. But the fact that they are, they're seventh in defensive DVOA right now, that I think is probably, if you gave them all truth serum,

beyond what the expectations would have been for improvement just over the course of one season. And particularly with DeMarcus Lawrence, her, right? Right, right. That's a really, really, that's a startling result. and Dan Quinn's defense, we know, we've seen this, look, and this is not a direct comparison I'm making, but we've seen this in Seattle and Atlanta. That defense needs good and versatile pressure players. And the fact that Parsons has been able to be that and be that consistently, by the way,

I mean, they were terrible against Denver. Parsons wasn't. He was like the only player having a good game. So that's been, that's so important to that defense. think changing the scheme the way that they have in addition to bringing a new talent has really, really accelerated just how balanced they can be as a team. And Parsons, to me, has a lot to do with that. So that one's easy. Also, Sir Tan's dealing with injury. So I think that probably makes this additionally clear. Also, having great season. Player of the year.

It's time. It's time. Another offense and defense double dip. You want to go first. Should we just spoil the fact that we have the same picks again? It's really bad. But it's right. It's telling. It's telling. We put our picks down completely independently. They just happen to all be the same. We like to embrace debate. Have you seen Eternals? No, I haven't. Okay. Well, I feel like we're, we're activating the Unimind here. But I'll check back with you in 45 days when that's on Disney Plus and you can you can find out what that means. We can't be doing this to Nora on a daily, on a podly basis, giving her so many references. I know she doesn't understand. On a podly basis. What a lovely turn of phrase.

I'm going to use that. I'm going to use that so much. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Steve for coming to my defense. What is it called the Unimind? Yeah. Yeah, the Unimind. All right.

Well, I will spoil it. We are welcoming Rams receiver Cooper Cup into the Unimind as our jointly appointed offensive player of the year. I think this was maybe the easiest pick in the entire exercise here. Yeah. Right. I mean, just absolutely astounding, astounding production so far. League leading 74 receptions.

League leading receiving yards, 10,019. League leading 10 receiving touchdowns. Stop me if you've heard this before. League leading 113.2 yards per game. He has 446 yards after the catch. Yack machine. Yackety yak. WICC. Cup is targeted 121.7.

He and Stafford just have this electric connection right now that is powering one of the most exciting offenses to watch at the moment. And if he can stay healthy, he's not just going to win offensive player of the year. If he can stay healthy, Cup is going to have a historic, historic season. Here's another nugget from NFL.com's Dante Coppulowitz Fleming.

Cup and Jerry Rice ever heard of them. Pretty good. Pretty good. In 1990 are the only receivers of the Super Bowl era with 1,000 plus receiving yards and 10 plus receiving touchdowns through nine games, Nora. This one's easy. Let's talk about that connection with Stafford a little bit more because it's just been absurd.

And we've had so many instances. I mean, we talk about Chase and Burrow. We've seen some electric connections between quarterbacks and receivers who have some degree of history. Like, that's such been a big storyline this season. Stafford and Cup, it's just this thing where two players, they just made sense together. It's just worked.

So Cup's identity over the last three seasons in L.A. had kind of been, you know, he was mostly a slot guy. He ran short intermediate routes. his average depth of target had also been falling every season, kind of mirroring what was happening to that offense with Jared Gough at quarterback overall. So his average depth of target, 8.4 in 2018, 7.2 in 2019, 6.3 last season. Now it's 9.4. So all of a sudden, the quintessential Stafford to Cup route this season,

it's been a deep over. Like, they're doing all these, this stuff where he's actually getting targeted at a higher percentage on snaps where he lines up on the perimeter than when he lines up in the slot. So he's getting targeted on 32.6% of his routes overall,

but 37% of the ones where he lines up out wide. So they've changed the identity of, the player and made him this much more explosive, impactful receiver by changing the quarterback. But those are also, look, those are hard routes. Those are hard catches. And Cups just been absolutely dynamite with it.

And part of it is because the timing with those is hard, right? And I think what's critical about it is that Stafford clearly really, really trusts him because the difference is that he often has to throw that ball before Cup gets open and just trust that he's going to throw it right when he's getting into his break and just have the trust that the receiver is going to be able to create

some degree of separation, make a catch. That is what Goff was not doing. He wanted to see just a short route and then for the player to get some separation and then he was going to just quickly fire a little short route in there and hope for the best. Obviously that was working to decrease effectiveness. You can also see the trust, I think, in the red zone, Stafford's 14 of 20 for

128 yards and nine touchdowns targeting cup in the red zone. I believe he is their most targeted player there. So what's fascinating to me is just how you manufacture that in the first just few months together, right? Yeah, because it seems effortless, but it isn't. It's so carefully designed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing stuff. As always, Nora. Tough podcast for golf. Apologies to Jared Gough. The Lindsay Buckingham of this podcast. I guess I'm conflating a what's up with that reference with a Matt Damon reference,

but whatever. We're just going to roll with it. We're mixing references. Let's talk about defensive player of the year where we both have Miles Garrett. We sure do. Brown's defensive end. We sure do. What a season Miles Garrett is having.

Well, so Miles Garrett. Garrett is sort of having the season that he has started to have a couple times and then missed a bunch of games either because of COVID, because of suspension. It's always felt like, all right, this guy's really, really dominant. He's got to win defensive player at the year at some point. Like, come on. And it really feels like this is the year. It's, you're completely right. And it's so funny that you say that because one of the one of the experiences that I had prepping for this and thinking about the picks. And they're, And again, I think Garrett was the clear pick here,

at least at the midseason mark, is exactly what you're describing, that feeling of like, oh, it's all finally coming together. Now, of course, Miles Garrett has been an incredibly productive player since he was drafted as the, you know, top player overall. But I had this moment where I was looking at his pro football reference page,

and it's like, Miles Garrett is 25. He's not like 50, you know, he's still only 25. And so there are these, there's this dissonance, I think, where it's like, oh, it's finally happening, even though it's always kind of all been there. And it's just like you're saying, okay, can it all really coalesce and last? And right now, it's looking like it will. You know, he's got 12 sacks already. He's on pace right now to tie Strayhands mark, 22 and a half sacks. That's in reach. That's a real thing right now. He's leading the league and tackles for loss at 12. He has 20. QB Hurries. He's PFF's highest-graded pass rusher right now, 92.3. He's their third-graded overall defender, 91.19. There's nothing that he's not doing well in terms of his production as a pass-rusher. And he's the player. He's the player that the opposing team has to game plan for and strategize around specifically, because if they're not, they're not going to be people to stop him, but they're going to have to obsess and agonize over how to attempt to even

approximate containing him. Like, that's the kind of year he's having where that's the best anyone can hope to do. He's also, I think the, I think the sort of consistency argument is made more likely to come to fruition just because, and part of this is because Garrett's there, but also Clowny's there. And Clowny's been pretty good. I think his PFF grade is in the mid-70s. And so he's in this situation where I just feel like he's going to have more free rushes than Miles Garrett should ever be afforded by an opponent. And even if that's just like a couple more per game just because you have, you know, you have a pretty good overall pass rushing unit there,

I very much believe that he will be able to take advantage of that. And now, look, if he continues to average 1.3 sacks per game and actually does match Strayhan, it's done. Like, it's over at that point. I don't know if that'll happen. But if he's up there, if he's close, I still think that this one's pretty clean cut. Also, look, Tramon Diggs was kind of going to have to have a pick a game for the entire season to be able to lock this one up. That one obviously is not happening anymore. and I think it's become more obvious that he's,

I like to think of him as the James Winston of cornerbacks. Unfortunately, I think we've seen a couple more of the highlight misses than the interceptions lately. Still a great season. Still a lot of impact plays. But he'd been the main competition. And I don't think that that's really the case anymore. And of course, you know, look, look, moving forward, you know, never rule out Aaron

Donald. T.J. Wad, Max Crosby's having an incredible past rushing season. There are a lot of defenders who are having exceptional seasons and will, you know, be in the next for this. But again, right now. I mean, Aaron Donald's sort of the defensive player of the year every year, but we're just done with that. Just by default. We just can't do it anymore. Yeah, it's like, you know, Mike Trout is the MVP of baseball every year, except that many years he isn't in terms of who actually wins the award.

That's the, that's the comp here. Though, of course, now we've got Otani, you know? Now I'm just trying to turn this into a baseball pot. I won't do that to you. I do know, I do know, Mal, but just barely. I want you to know this. You would honestly love Otani. I'm just going to start sending you Otani highlights.

So I'm well versed in the Otani specific discourse. But I think most of the things that I think I could love a baseball player without really being aware of where they play or what they do. Again, that is not actually true in that situation, but we're an inch away from that. I would, however, I'm like an inch away from having a long in-depth baseball conversation with you to avoid moving on to our next award. It's time, Nora.

I'm going to have to just like eat a nice old crow. I'm clearing out. We have the same pick again. We have the same pick, but it's only surprising for one of us. So the floor is yours for coach of the year. It's Cliff Kingsbury for Coach of the Year. I can't believe it. I mean, I can believe it, sort of, because no, you can't.

You can't. You wrote on our Google Doc, oh goodness, it's Cliff. I can't believe this. I cannot believe that it is. Talk us through it, walk us through it. How you feeling? How you doing? How did you arrive here at this moment of clarity?

I mean, look, they're eight and one. They're eight and one. They play in the monster division, the division of all monsters, where the monsters just come and try to play football against each other every week. That's what happens. He just won with Colt McCoy.

A notable data point. Notable, very notable data point. Easily won. was cold. Handily. Yeah. Also, without one of the best wide receivers in football. And look, I think the best, if you were to argue against Cliff, and I'm not here to do it,

I'm arguing for Cliff. The best thing that you could say, I think, would be just to argue for somebody else, because there are other coaches who I think have done a really, really impressive job. Who also on your short list here? So I think Vrable. Yes. really is, particularly because, look, I think there was a lot of expectation going into the season that losing Arthur Smith was just going to absolutely tink them. And clearly that has not happened.

I think when you have a team that bucks a lot of the trends of modern football that we tend to equate with success, it's pretty impressive to see someone just look at the players that they have, figure out how to maximize that. They're physical. They're tough. They seem like they play really hard. Obviously, those are things that are really hard to quantify. But I do think that coaching would be given some credit for those characteristics.

In any case, I also think just because people sort of know what Brable was like as a player, kind of know his vibe. The fact that the Titans seem to embody that same vibe. is a credit to him. And also they're keeping it going without Henry now, right? I mean, that's no small thing. And they've got really meaningful wins. The bills, the chiefs, the Rams.

Nora, I am old enough to remember our week one panic meter episode when we were like, should they just relegate the Titans out of the NFL? Yep. And now the Titans leading the AFC and Cliff Kingsbury's coach the year. the NFL. I have I have Rabel on the short list here too. He's definitely considered picking him.

I think, you know, Harba has to at least be in the conversation because of that reshaped approach, the way that they've contended with injuries, everything we talked about already. I think that if we had done this a couple weeks ago, Brandon Staley might have even been the pick, certainly would have been in the conversation.

The recent slump, you know, moves him down the list a bit. And so, again, given the exercises mid-season awards, he's not the pick right now. But if they surge again, I think he could definitely be in the mix come season's end. I don't know, though. I do think it is Cliff right now. I think, like, we've talked a lot over this season about how, we talked about it earlier today, how elemental Kyler Murray is to everything that the Cardinals do.

But we can't really ignore, you know, I'm glad you mentioned earlier, like how many aspects of these, of all of these awards are tied up into the narrative. Cliff Kingsbury has gone from like one of the guys who would be in the lead photo for a hot seat watch piece at the beginning of the season to the leading contender, at least a leading contender for coach of the year. In the same season, in the span of just a couple months. I mean, that's frankly astonishing.

That's a big deal. And I don't think that crediting Kingsbury in any way diminishes Kyler's central role. It's just a fact that this team, and, you know, again, like, you don't knock Kyler in any way for what they did without him. I don't, I don't think. But it does speak to how this is just a kind of like humming machine right now, what's happening in Arizona. The team is just operating at a really, really, really high level. overall and a lot of that credit has to go to the head coach. Shout out for our guy.

Shout out Cliff. I will say, I just want to say this one thing. If Sean Payton gets the Saints into the playoffs, he should win the award. But right now, come on down Cliff Kingsbury. If he wins, do they do coach the year with a K? I hope not. I hope so. Our last award, we made up.

we had to do something where we weren't so fully in sync. Yeah. So it's still almost happened here. Oh, no. I didn't even know that. All right. Well, this award, it's the surprise of the year. Dealers choice.

Mal, what is your surprise of the 2021 NFL season? I'm not going to spoil your pick. I'm just going to say that I almost picked what you picked because I think it is actually the right answer for this category, for surprise of the year. Thank you very much. It is, it is the correct pick. I would like to state that for the record. Norris pick is the correct pick for this category. However, for the sake of variance today, thank goodness. We really needed it. And, you know, for our old pal recency bias, I'm going to throw out Mike White Jets Lord.

This is just like a delightful thing that's been happening the last couple weeks. I am mostly doing this for Sean Fantasy, for Roger Sherman, for Matt James, for all of our ringer colleagues who are absolutely miserable Jets fans and spend most of their sports viewing hours processing their own despair. Because right now. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Would you rather become a Jets fan or do every podcast for the rest of your podcasting career with a third of a bottle of smart water having been accidentally poured into your lap? That's an easy one. Would you rather only works if it's a hard choice? Definitely the water. I'll sit in a fucking pool to record the podcast. I'm not becoming a dead.

Jets fans are no way. Oh, my God. Well, that settles that. Oh, boy. You know, but again, as that might indicate, I'm very happy that Jets fans right now are enjoying this strange but really energizing moment with Mike White, who set the record for completions in a first career start with 37. He also had 405 yards in that game.

This was a couple weeks ago against the Bengals. And Nora, he is quite literally in. Shrined in Canton after that start. They've got his jersey in the hall because of that record-setting start. And I would like to share with you how the article from the New York Post, Brian Costello, about this development begins. Some people this week have said everyone needs to slow down and not put Jets quarterback Mike White in the Hall of Fame just yet. The hall disagrees. This is just iconic.

Mike White The hall disagreed. On Thursday night football last week but he's back. He's back. He's starting against the bills.

He has created this just rare surge of euphoria and Jets Nation. He has played so well that his own head coach has said that the quarterback situation for the New York Jets will develop.

End I quote, organically. When number two overall draft pick, Zach Wilson recovers fully from his knee injury, who thought we would be here? I would like to share one more opening sentence from a New York Post piece, if I may, announcing that White would be making this start against the bills. Quote, the Mike White era lives on. Nora, nobody knew who this person was three weeks ago and now we're calling it an era.

What a moment in time. Just glad we're all sharing it together. So that's my pick. What's yours? Oh, New York, New York. It's a hell of a town. All right. There's really no topping that.

My only goal is to just sort of do so with logic, which is far less fun than the magic that is Mike White. So my surprise of the year is that the Kansas City Chiefs are not good. I think that is the surprise of this NFL season. Now, I want to pinpoint one specific element of that not goodness. And I really want to shout out Stephen Ruiz. who wrote an article that is up on the ringer.com, great website, called 21 questions answered halfway through the 2021 NFL season.

Stephen posed 21 questions that he thought were going to shape this year at the beginning of the season, revisited those. And one of his questions had been if the chiefs had accurately fixed their offensive line issue, which obviously they put a ton of resources into doing over the offseason. Now, what I thought was interesting was that when Stephen came back and had to take a look at this again, the answers he found were basically that, yeah, their offensive line has been pretty good, but I thought he was really smart to point out one of the reasons that hasn't led to an offensive improvement and has, in fact, made the chiefs look worse on offense,

even though their problems are still largely defensive, but especially recently. their offense has been troubling as well. And it actually goes beyond just the turnovers. And particularly, and this to me is the surprise within the surprise, the chiefs are really struggling against man coverage. So from 2018 to 2020, Patrick Mahomes' EPA per play was 0.23 against man coverage. Right now in 2021, it is 0.01. we think of the Chiefs as this team that, I mean, good luck covering Tyree Hill, Travis Kelsey, man to man, right?

Like, they just have their players are too much better than you and there's really no hope in doing it. And you can try to scheme stuff up to slow them down, but you're really never going to stop them. And now we're in this situation where a defensive strategy that's based around, well, we're just going to try to beat you with our guys. is not working against them. That to me is really sort of fundamentally shocking. And it does get into, and Ruiz does this really well in the piece, how Tyree Kill is primarily struggling

because he's getting extra attention. So even when defenses are playing man coverage, they're putting two safeties back deep and having those players put a lot of their attention on Hill. What's happening at the same time, though, is Travis Kelsey is having a really, really, really bad year against man coverage. Ruiz writes that he ranks 19th and yards per route run against ma'am, which is a steep drop from last season when he ranked fourth.

So the surprise overall being that Kansas City just is not a good team right now, but within that, I think he was really, really smart to point out this thing that had been kind of a bread and butter element of how they were good has gone away in part because of defensive adjustments that have been made against them, but also just because some of those players who deservedly earned reputations as just that guy's going to beat your guy, the majority of the time, that hasn't been happening. And I'm surprised. Me too.

It's shocking, honestly. It is rather shocking. Kind of penciled them in for the Super Bowl at the beginning of the year. But then again, Cliff Kingsbury. Anything can happen. Oh, boy. I got to get my digs in. Cliff can take it.

Clif's got a nice life. He's very good at coaching football. Wildest streams? Wow. Didn't even have to wait. Did it right here on this podcast? This has been the ringer NFL show Thursday edition. It's not getting any better than that.

We're going out on that mic drop. I am Nora Princeiotti. She is Mallory Rubin. Ben Solac, Stephen Ruiz, and Kaylon Jones will be coming up next on this feed, previewing the week 10 games this Friday. I will be back Sunday night with Kevin Clark, Solek, and Ruiz to break down all of the week 10 action. Now we'll be back on the ringerverse feed next week with Joanna Robinson. We will be back next Thursday. Thank you to producer Steve Allman for production on this episode and to our Juno Ramgapal for additional production supervision.