The Ringer NFL Show - NFL Divisional-Round Weekend, Part 2

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti share instant reactions to the Buccaneers' triumph over the Saints (00:40) and the Chiefs hanging on to beat the Browns (15:30). Later, they discuss the news that Brandon Staley is joining the Chargers as their next head coach and how it could lead Brian Daboll to the Texans (37:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. It is a special live edition, reacting to Sunday's divisional playoff round. Brown's Chiefs, Buck Saints. We cover it all here. This was live streamed on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, and is available in pod forum here. We will also be doing a live show next Sunday after the conference championship games, both with Nora Princiotti and myself. All right, Nora Princiotti, we came into this weekend wondering.

This is the Josh Allen era. Will it still be the Tom Brady era? We found out it's the Chad Hensi. era. We got two games to talk about Chiefs 22, Brown 17, bucks 30, Saints, 20. This to me felt like I learned the limits of Drew Breeze. And I think that we knew this was going to be a quarterback matchup coming into it, obviously. It's Brady versus Breeze. I've been playing since 1999. If there's one takeaway, what do you start with? The takeaway is that I think we just saw Drew Breeze play his last NFL game. Yes. Right.

Like it's a little sad to witness it, but I think we're witnessing the end for the reason that it's the end, right? He doesn't have the arm strength. The three interceptions plus the additional saints turnover setting up the touchdowns that the Buccaneers were able to score in this game, basically the difference, right? Like I think clearly Tom Brady is the better of the two quarterbacks right now. Neither of these guys is playing the best football that we've ever seen them play. But the picks were the difference. The turnovers, I think were the difference, the fact that the Bucks were able to score off of those. And I think we should just take a moment and acknowledge that that's a really seismic thing for the NFL. I mean, Drew Bree is like, it sort of sucks to watch the end.

Like it's, it's sad, but that's why it comes to an end. So it's just sort of the NFL quarterback circle of life, I guess. So even though, I don't know, depending on your personal taste for, it's not Schadenfreude, but whatever you want to call that, I don't know that I would search washed on Twitter right now. It's not a pretty place. Yeah. Yeah, washed is going around a lot. So I thought this is going to be a referendum on how these guys handle inside pressure and all that stuff. And it really ended up being a referendum on how much these guys had left. And again, that's kind of what you said. But, you know, I saw a stat from next-gen stats that the Drew Brees,

this was the first time he'd thrown multiple interceptions from a clean pocket in four years. And it was that kind of game. And obviously, the Bucks defense is good. Obviously, Devin White is good and all this stuff. But for me, this was about Drew Brees having an average depth of target of, five, that's lower than he even had during the regular season. Brady, by the way, was at 10. His deep passes, Brady's deep passes were not good for most than that. I think he was one of six, but that one really mattered. And it was Scottie Miller between two defenders. And so this was

about Brady doing enough. And I was intrigued to see some of the B-Wriders say that the game plan here was to keep this as close as possible for three quarters. You know, play Pete Carroll ball a little bit, okay? And run the ball. They're running the ball in the first and second down a lot and just try to take shots at the end. And I was a little bit suspicious of that when I started to read that. And then as I saw it develop and all of a sudden, he hits Tower Johnson on that 18-yard throw. They hits Scottie Miller on that big play, gets the field goal and they get the turnovers. I think it made sense because if it was going to come down to the quarterbacks, they liked that matchup. And I thought it was, I think that there's just some hope there.

I just don't know if either of these quarterbacks could have gone into Lambo next week and beaten Rogers. Let me ask you a question. Having covered Tom Brady and knowing the kind of the situation he was going into, when you were watching, watching this is, did you feel like this was kind of validation for him joining a deep roster with wide receivers everywhere? You know, Mike Evans was pretty much bottled up by, by Latimore tonight. They had to go to the well on some of the depth on the receiver. Do you feel like this was validation for Brady's decision? Yeah, I do. And I think, you know, it's funny to me, we had a question in one of the preview pieces that we did as a staff about these older

quarterbacks and and what kind of legacy implications these playoffs have for them. And one thing that I found myself thinking about is that while I think the upper end of what could happen, like if Tom Brady and the Bucks go win the Super Bowl, there is a little bit of an odd thing where I'm not actually sure that it changes the perception of Tom Brady that much. I think it influences how people think about his choice to go to Tampa Bay. I think it does great things for a few weeks of Boston Sports Radio. I think there is a, you know, Tom a million.

This was a win for content. This was a win for content. Yeah, great for content. But there's just a little bit of like the Tom Brady legacy stuff. That, that curve is asymptotic at a certain point. So like Aaron Rogers winning another Super Bowl is a bigger deal for how we end up thinking about Aaron Rogers 10, 20 years from now than it is for Brady.

However, the other side of that spectrum, I think, for me is that. is that if Brady crashed and burned here, because he made the big gamble to switch teams, because they have so much talent, and because he's doing the stuff. Now, by the way, like Drew Brees took an L on the field here today. I also just want to point out,

Tom Brady did that man so dirty in that that history channel post where he made them both look old. Brady was like salt and pepper George Clooney type of old. And Breeze was like, balding and wrinkled and bad. It was like, that was to me just like a mean thing. But I just wanted to make sure that that was on record.

But I think the Brady thing, if he'd crash and burned here, that was going to go down as, wow, Tom, maybe you shouldn't have, maybe you shouldn't have done that. And I think at this point, he is on the verge of doing enough. I don't think that they have to win the Super Bowl where it's like, you know what? You got yourself to a better football situation than you would have been in. New England. And I think he's, I think even though he gets frustrated on the field, even though the dropped passes, the penalties like he does Tom Brady eye rolls, it seems like he's feeling validated by where they are. Both of these quarterbacks were in the same position, which is they're no longer,

even though they're two of the best passers of all time that the two by yardage, literally most prolific passers in history, both of these quarterbacks need their supporting cast and their defense to lift them up. And I was a little bit disheartened. know, Mike Thomas, I was looking at his average separation. It was less than a yard all game. The Murphy Bunting interception, you know, Chad Johnson went on Twitter and he said that he's never seen a guy in the slot win that decidedly on that interception that ended up being a touchdown. And so I think that there's probably, you know, Camara played well, whatever. But I think that there are probably some questions here about the Saints. And just in the fact that by the way,

I mean, people were, we asked for reader questions, people were saying, why wasn't James Winston involved more after he throws the deep pass that by the. where they stole from the bears. If you're looking at this from a Saints perspective, you start where? Well, I think you have to think about who's, so assuming, by the way, the Drew Breach's retirement stuff has been reported

like 19 different times. I was talking about this earlier. It's insane. It started in March when I think Sean Payton was like, yeah, this is last year. And then since then once a month, everybody's been like, oh, yeah, this is his last go around.

Yeah. And then we just do it again. I think it's because so much NFL reporting, is about transactions that get pretty quickly confirmed or made official or they're on the wire or whatever, that I think we've lost our ability to, like, identify what actually is being reported as fact and what's just sort of like wishy-washy in the water stream information.

But like, I feel pretty confident trusting those guys and saying like Drew Breeze is done that we just watched Drew Breeze's last NFL game. So where you start with the Saints is who's playing quarterback, right? And I'm not saying I like it, but my money is on Taysam Hill. I don't know about you, but I think that's where they go. And I think that we will see. I give Sean Payton a degree of the benefit of the doubt, although I will say that I'm a little scared because this is still a great roster

that I think we saw in in moments this season can be a good team and can win with a quarterback like Taysam Hill. But I don't know that that gets them to their ceiling. And for a team like this, I think you want to see them have that opportunity. But I don't know. Do you think it's Taysom or some? I mean, it could be Jammis down the line if that's the path James wants to go down. I sort of, I think they can go in four or five different directions.

I think the quarterback market's going to be really interesting because you have new GMs in different places with veteran quarterbacks. Maybe there's some guys we're not expecting to be cut loose who will be available. So I think that there's there's a handful of ways they can go. I think that the Taysom Hill thing seems most obvious. and maybe you work James Winston in. We saw that today. It worked. So I think that there's, I, you know, I'm waiting until March to make a declaration on that,

except I can say, Drew Brees did not have another year in him. Even if you wanted to kick the can down the road with NBC, this was it for him. Now, the Bucks. Let's talk about this from a, from a Lambo next week standpoint. Tom Brady played well enough, and this was the fourth quarter of the whole thing. Maybe they try that in Lambo. Does this team and their talent have enough to win in Lambo? I actually think they're a pretty good matchup for the Packers just because they have so many,

they don't necessarily have the best coverage players in the NFL, right? But they have a lot of guys that are pretty good in coverage, particularly at the linebacker level, safety play. That can be a pretty good matchup for the Green Bay offense just because there's so much that they want to do in the sort of short intermediate area. And Aaron Rogers is playing football at a much higher level than Tom Brady is right now. So don't get me wrong. I am very much on record as having pitched the Packers in that matchup if it was what were to come to fruition.

But I think they've got a shot. I mean, we've seen them play well against them before this season. And I think some of that is actually relevant to this game. I also do, and I'm curious to hear what you think about this. I do buy into the adjustments that they've made in their offense in the last since their by week in week 13, where they've used more motion. They've used a little bit more play action, not a ton, even though it's been super effective.

So I think that's something that they could even stress a little bit harder because that's something that makes Brady very comfortable, staple of the New England offenses with Josh McDaniels, as was motion, which Ariens has seemed to really not like he said at one point that Peyton Manning didn't like it. So he didn't want to do it, but they've been a little bit more willing to do it through the month of the December. and continuing now.

So I do think that even though they were playing mostly bad teams toward the end of the season, some of how they were putting up more points and just functioning a little bit better and seeming like they were getting to know each other finally at the end of the season, I think that's legitimate. So I certainly wouldn't take them, but I do think they have a shot.

So I think the Packers are going to win. But I started to see, and you've seen this a million times, I started to see not old Brady, but just flashes of what Brady's capable of. And I think that sometimes we forget this. I remember the first time I ever saw it. I think they were playing Drew Breeze and the Saints in Foxborough. And he started to come back on them.

And everything just looked so easy. And when that happens, especially when you're watching it live, it's unlike anything you've ever seen before. And I remember obviously playing when they played the Falcons in the Super Bowl, you saw it too, where all of a sudden, 15 yard throws or 20 yard throws look like their handoffs. And I saw that a little bit in the fourth quarter tonight,

whether that was, you know, obviously Johnson made an incredible catch. He's a rookie. and I think that they really like him. And as the broadcast said, they were trying to get him the ball more. But then the Scottie Miller thing and just finding ways, again, because of the things the Saints defense were doing to them,

they had to sort of adapt a little bit, especially after Ronald Jones's 44-yard run comes back a little bit, once he started making those toes, he said, oh, I get this. And the fact that he missed that Grunk touchdown in the end zone was a shock to me. That was the next thing. Because we've been talking all year,

we've been like, okay, Grong's going to make one catch all year. And it's going to be, he's moving at three miles per hour. and it's in the back of the end zone. I thought it was going to be that. Obviously, Gronk was involved tonight and he had some catches,

but I could not believe that it wasn't that touchdown. Well, you know why it wasn't that touchdown? Because he's waiting for the Super Bowl? Yeah, because it wasn't the Super Bowl. No, I just,

I thought that if the Bucks, and this is an overarching point here, if the Bucks have put Tom Brady in position where he only needs to be Tom Brady for like half a quarter, that's great. And that's why he came. You know, Peter King was on our,

a couple months ago, and he said that he talked to Tom Brady after the Tennessee game last year, and he realized that the Patriots were just hopeless, right? And there was just nothing, nothing going forward there. And I think now when I look at this and not, I'm not talking about just the weapons. I'm talking about Devin White. I'm talking about, you know, obviously Carlton Davis had a weird game today and was hurt, but they've got young town, Antoine Winfield with that with that fumble was fantastic today. And I think, by the way, the Antoine Winfield thing, I'm not ready for I've known about Antoine Winfield Jr. for years, obviously. But the fact I looked it up today and Antoine Winfield Sr.

was playing when I started covering this league in 2013. And I'm out on that. I don't like it. I don't like any of it. But I think that there's, I think that they've got him in position where, yes, there's a, there is a path forward to play the Packers tough in Lambo. I just, I'm starting to think the Packers is just a little bit of a buzzsaw here. They're absolutely a buzz sign.

And Rogers just, Rogers isn't throwing three picks. that set up short fields where the bucks can score off a short field. I mean, the thing is, is that if the Saints hadn't gotten some of those long punt returns and the bucks hadn't had the short fields off of turnovers, there was a little bit of potential for the score in this game to be kind of on the ugly side. I'm glad it wasn't. It's good to get some good football on this weekend. But I just don't think Green Bay is going to do that.

I don't think that they're going to have that type of advantage. that said, the bucks did plenty of things to screw themselves with penalties and just overall sloppiness, which has been baked in with them all season. So I don't know at what point we can expect them to stop doing that. But there are some things that if they just cleaned them up themselves, they would be in a better position. So maybe there's a little bit of a give and take there. But unless there is just a Tom Brady inevitability game, which feels within the spectrum of

possible outcomes. Sure. Sure. I do agree with you that it's, it's a tough draw. So the Bucks had six pressures tonight. Shaq Barrett led them with three. And I'm thinking that some of that stuff is you have to throw out the window because it's Breasian is getting rid of the ball so quickly. It'll be really interesting to see the chess match with Rogers in that defense.

And, and Devin White and his athleticism in the middle of the field, we'll have to see about Carlton Davis and that injury. But I'm intrigued to see how they play the pressure, obviously going from, going from Breachia Rogers is totally different as far as just the range of motion and all that stuff. But again, I'm heavily favoring the Packers. We'll get into this a little more later in the week. But there's, I'm just, I'm just starting to feel like this Packers team might be a little bit inevitable. All right.

Let's switch gears here to the game that I think has, I don't know, the biggest question in the playoffs right now. And that's, that's Patrick Mahomes and his health. So it's Chiefs 22, Browns 17. Chad Henney has two of the most remarkable plays I've seen, just from a surprise. standpoint. He starts running at 17 miles per hour according to next gen stats. He gets on the edge of the first down. I thought he got it at first. The next play on a fourth down, Tony Romo thinks they're just trying to draw, draw the Browns off sides. They don't. They snap it. They run a sprint right to Tyreek Hill. I've never seen anything like it. Your first impression is what?

My first impression is just a question, which is did they practice that? Like this is something, I think I've, I have talked on Bill's pot about this before. There was an old joke. not an old joke. It's current, but I just don't cover the Patriots anymore. So I'm not part of making it. But when I cover the Patriots, one thing that we would always joke about was their tendency to after a win where they did something clever, just kind of sneak in. Oh, yeah, we worked on that in practice. And it was always so funny because they're mostly so sort of modest and reserved and don't want to say anything and don't want to, you know, pump themselves up or bullet and board material or whatever. But there's always just these little like, oh, well, good for you.

aren't you so smart? And I've got to think because that little sprint out to Hill that clenched it, that's exactly what you would want to run there. Yeah. And I got to think that there was a little bit of, well, is there some situation in which we might need this? Okay. If Mahomes isn't in, we're probably going to need to use every down. If we want to move the ball, is there a possibility that we could end up in? I'm not saying exactly this situation. But something. like that. It looked like something that they were prepared for. So I've got some questions about that because that would be a pretty impressive preparation job. So I do want to talk about the practice angle of it because I actually talked to Chad Henney a couple years ago about practice and how the chiefs do it.

And he was saying that what Andy Reid does with him is similar to what he does with Mahomes, which is they use practice to test their limits and really empower the quarterback. And I don't think, obviously Matt Moore played a couple of years ago and Andy Reid was able to eke out some production there. But I don't think that there's this feeling that. that the backup quarterback is irrelevant or anything. I'm not saying they get a bunch of reps with the ones because they don't. Almost no teams really include the two is with the ones ever. But one of the things that Henny told me was what Andy Reid wants you to do in practice is test your limits

and understand what you're capable of. And practice plays you might not be comfortable with, hey, throws, sidearm throws. That's why Patrick Mahomes is able to do some of the most amazing things because Andy Reid wants him to practice. What can you do? And so with Henny, I wasn't surprised to see him take off for a. 14-yard run. I wasn't surprised to see him do a sprint right. I don't think he's practiced with Tyree Kill and the Ones, but I do think he's probably practiced that sort of stuff. I mean, I don't think Andy Reid would do something Henney's just never done before. And he has been a

starter in this league. And so I was, I was not surprised to see the way that that Henney was just, I guess, confident in that spot. And Andy Reid and Eric the enemy were confident with as well. I was surprised to find out. So after the game, Patrick Mahomes tweets, Henny thing is possible, pun intended, okay? And it starts trending. So people ask Chad Henny if he understands that that's trending. And he says, I don't think so because my only social media is a LinkedIn. So I looked up his LinkedIn.

For some reason, it's public. I don't know. I think we have multiple connections in common, but I'm not a connection with him. His one of his skills is, or industry knowledge is athletics. So good for him. And then it has all his teams and all that stuff too. So Chad and he's on LinkedIn. Yeah, he's great.

He's got some endorsements from people. It's like leadership and quarterbacking the whole thing. It's very good to say. But I think that there's, I think that there's something there where the Andy Reed backup quarterback is always going to be more confident than a lot of other planes. You know, I mean, I think the Rosetta Stone for this is a couple of years ago when Derek Carr went out.

And the Raiders had no chance in the playoffs. They lost. And Jack Del Rio was asked after the, after the playoffs. What did you learn this year? And he said, I learned to not lose your quarterback. And I heard about that. And I heard that quote. And I'm just like, what kind of feeling is this? You know, like, why can you just say, okay, we're screwed, you know, our backup quarterback's in? And the next year, Nick Folles wins his backup, all that stuff. And I think there's some offensive coaches who say, okay, we can deal with this. We can do what can a guy do? What can he do?

All that stuff. Figure it out, streamline everything. Andy Reid is good at that. And so I think that I was not surprised to see this this very small, uh, Henney success story. By the way, it's not like he played a perfect game here, the awful interception in the end zone. I think Andy may have let we, Andy may have let Chad Henny cook a little too much, but I think that right at the end, you, you just saw what we needed to say. The point of that play is that it's easy to complete, right? It's a little sprint out. He gets the ball out and under two seconds. Like, that's what you would want to run there. So it's not really execution that we're talking about, but we're talking about dialing the right thing up at the exact right time in a situation when probably a lot of

coaches wouldn't want to go for it. Right. I would imagine that feeling prepared for it and having thought about that situation before makes you more inclined to attempt something like that, which was a little bit surprising to Tony Romo and to many others of us. So, congrats to them. Great work. I also do think that it's maybe a little bit of a trend we're seeing with these backup quarterbacks having LinkedIn's. Um, because we'll, Wolford has one, right? Oh, yeah. But Wolford is, you know, in and out of the league.

Right. Chad Hennie's, chat, Chad, Chad. We're talking about preparation. He's setting himself up for future success and networking and being a man in a man of various industries, I suppose. All right. So let's talk about the rest of this game. First of all, we'll start from the beginning and then we'll get into Patrick Mahomes and

what his, his concussion means going forward. And obviously that was. from someone who just is a neutral in football to see someone who brings so much toward football field down and looking hurt was, you know, I did not enjoy that. And we'll get to that in one minute.

I do want to talk about just the entire team performance because when you have a backup quarterback or whatever, just a game that's just not going to be perfect, the fact that you had that supporting cast, that's why you have it. And I want to talk about Travis Kelsey here for a second. You know, seven career touchdowns in the playoffs,

second most by tight end in history behind only the aforementioned Rob Wunkelski. we've talked about this all the time. A couple of weeks ago, we did a thing about the most important people in football in 2020. And I picked Travis Kelsey in part because Mahomes has already taken. But one of the reasons is because I think that Kelsey is the reason that you go from an elite offense to an unstoppable one, you know, one that has a knockout punch at all times. You know, one of the best, I believe the best blocking grade in football for a tight end can take on cornerbacks. We saw that with Ward today where he just got Denzo one.

out of his shoes. You know, he's able to, today, some of his most production came when he was isolated on one side of the formation. And I believe he leads the NFL in both receptions and yards and touchdowns when he's on one side of the field. It's kind of a three by one set. Darren Waller is also really good at that according next-gen stats. And I think that we've just seen time and time again, Travis Kelsey is just so athletic that

he does things that tight end shouldn't do when he changes the offense. And so I think that the fact that he's a. attached receiver. I think the fact that he can block, he's physical, all that stuff. It really does change the math equation of the chiefs offense. And then on the other side, you saw Tyree Kill. I mean, Tyree Kill is such a good receiver that he got the Browns to make a dumb challenge. Okay. Like, he forced them into a dumb challenge because Stavansky looked at a reception. It was like, this can't happen. He is among the best at contested catch rates in the league. And I think, I think about this all the time. And I'm not, I'm paraphrasing here because I don't,

And Chad Henney is not a fool or anything like that. But there's an old Warren Buffett line where he says, you know, invest in a business that any fool could run because one day somebody will, right? And I kind of think about that with offenses where it's like you can build an offense to where anybody can run it because one day something bad's going to happen and someone's going to run it who isn't Patrick Mahomes. And that's why I thought that it was so important to see that. And then obviously have not a perfect day in the fourth quarter and have Chad Henney in there

because I just think that those guys plus the line, this is just a great chiefs team. They're really impressive. Even if you think about the Hardman, the long run off the sweep early on, which by the way was ridiculous because Miles Garrett caught up with him from behind, which is just absurd in its own right.

But that offense is constructed. They could function with everyone, but or anyone, but they function with Patrick Mahomes. So we'll see what happens next week. I mean, I just don't, you know, around half, half of players who go out with concussions are able to be back for the next game. We'll just wait and see on that. Obviously, I don't think that playing an entire game with Chad Henney is the place that they

want to be in. And I think we saw on that pick that we were maybe dangerously close for the, the Chad Honey sample side. growing to a place where our perception of it might have ended up a little bit different than it is now. But they're not completely screwed if they don't have Mahomes

for a small period of time. And that actually, when you think about it, is impressive. Okay. I think for a full game against the Buffalo Bills, they are slightly screwed if Chad Henney has to play the entire game. I think they're completely screwed if it's for a full game.

I think for a full game, I think for a couple of, of drives, everything's going to be fine. I think that they would have been completely screwed against the Browns if it had been for an entire half. We're going to get to that in a second, but the Browns could have very easily won this game. I mean, for God's sake, there's a reason there needed to be a sprint right to seal the game here, okay?

The Browns played a very good game. And I do want to get to that, but I just want to talk about Mahomes here for a second. So Mark Mask and the Washington Post wrote this. And I think that it's important to address. This is not a Mahomes decision for the next week. This is not a chief decision. It's not like Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reader going to sit there and say, can you go, yes, I can go out there.

No, this is about medical professionals, independent neurologists, all that stuff, will look at this stuff and make the determination. So we don't know anything. And if you hear reports, they're like, okay, yes, he's feeling good. You know, his, um, his fiance reported that he's, he's feeling all right. Obviously, he was tweeting after the game and praise of Chad Henney, but we don't know anything until those tests are done. And so any optimism or pessimism or whatever it is or guesses about what it is, we got no idea.

And it would be, it would be from a just a football perspective, a real bummer, if we didn't get to see Patrick Mahomes against Josh Allen and, you know, two of the stories of the season and pretty much the stories of every season until further notice. If we didn't get to see those two teams of full strength, it would be really a sad thing. But also, I mean, Patrick Holmes's health for the, you know, not just him and everybody around him and his loved ones, but also the sport of football. We need Patrick Holmes healthy. So I think, however that breaks, we just have to wait and see. And so I don't know any kind of rush to report anything is just reckless at this point. So let's talk about the Browns here for a second.

We'll start with one of the biggest plays in Brown's sister, unfortunately, which was a fumble at the one-yard line that goes out of the end zone. The last time they fumbled inside the 10-yard line in a playoff game was the fumble. And that was obviously one of the worst days in the history of Cleveland. This is not that bad, but this was this was a rules controversy and a gut punch because it would have changed the game, would have changed halftime, would have changed everything. Nora, where do we start in that rule? I don't care about the touchback rule.

I'm perfectly happy if people want to change it, but it's just don't, don't fumble there. Like, it's not, I mean, it's not that it's not that hard. Most things that people have to do on a football field are pretty hard. But if you don't want the touchback, you have to not fumble there. And as long as that is the rule,

I just don't understand why, and I'm going to reference the Patriots again, sorry, all of these teams don't coach as they do to not extend there. And the Titans, Belichick tree. The Titans, Ryan Tanna was yelled at the scoring a touchdown while extending. However, what I will say is that play drove me crazy, not because of the touchback rule, but because of the missed targeting call.

Right. And it just drives me up the wall when we are watching a replay review of something over and over again. And there's something so obvious that we. was missed about it and we just can't address it. We can, we can think about one thing and we're going to watch the play over and over again, but we can't talk about the other thing because it's not allowed. So I don't, I'm not really, I don't have super strong opinions on replay itself.

But if we have it, everything should be challengeable. Like there, everything should be challenging. Of course. Of course. I mean, even for safety, I mean, a lot of people don't think that. No, including people who run the NFL. It's just, it's ridiculous. True, especially those people.

But I just don't understand how you can say, we're all about health and safety and all this stuff and not be able to review a helmet to helmet hit or waiting with the head or any of these things. I mean, this is not just that. It's everything. And, you know, people made the point that if this was college, that may have been an ejectionable offense. And instead, it's chief's ball at the 20. And I just feel like that. It's just, it's all a little bit unfair. and there's nothing they can do about it.

Because, again, they went to the review and they just said, hey, yeah, it was a fumble. Nothing we can do about that. And they can't make up call it or anything. There's nothing they could do in the moment. But if we're going to all yell and scream about the stupid touchback rule, then we should be yelling and screaming about this. Because I don't know about you, but I've like sat in in press conference rooms or at the

combine or the owners meetings or whatever and watched all these videos about how that type of hit. By the way, it's not actually the most dangerous for the guy who's getting hit. It's really dangerous for the guy who's hitting someone like that because his neck is in like parallel position with the rest of his body. And it's really, really, really dangerous. And it's also just a blown call. And again, if we're going to sit there and dissect exactly what happened on this play, it is just, it baffles me that some of the stuff that impacted the play can be off limits and other parts of it can't be. And that is my feeling about that play. It's not really. I like, I do like Dominic Foxworth's theory or not theory, his statement that this is the one rule that

favors defenses. And so we should keep it. The touchback rule that like everything else is trended towards offense in last 10 years. Let's just have a little bit of defensive positive rules. I can see that. Also like everything everything in sports is ultimately kind of arbitrary. Right. Like just well, I mean, now you're just getting. Why is a. Why is a. safety, why is a safety worth two points? Why is a touchdown six? Like, all of these things at some point were a little bit random. And that's just the rule. Just don't fumble there. You have all of this other space where you can fumble and it's probably going to be okay or not a huge disaster. Just don't fumble there. Okay, a couple more notes. Number one, Baker played a very nice game.

Honey badger had that interception. Honey badger is amazing. And we're going to do this thing, Nora. we're going to do the thing where we say we don't talk about enough about somebody. But then that's our fault because we're in the media. So it gets sort of meta, even though we talk enough about Honey Badger. Honey Badger was on Kyle Brand's podcast here on the ringer. I've written about Honey Badger. I know Honey Badger.

You've probably written about him. We've all talked about him enough. But the problem is we need to go from, we talk about him a lot to we talk about as one of the best, you know, safeties in the game. I don't know. Yeah. It gets so meta at some point. On this topic, do we talk about Travis Kelsey enough?

I know we just did. I'm just not short. Like, yes, we do. Now we do. Okay. Now we do. Okay. Glad to get a ruling on that.

Okay. We didn't. And now we do. And now we do. And we're on the verge of maybe talking about him too much in two weeks is all I'll say about that. It's crazy how it goes back and forth like that. He's on alert. I'm glad we got that cleared up.

Because that was a thought that I had today was, do we talk about Travis Kelsey enough? But I'm glad we're in the clear there. And the Honey Badgers is incredible. We'll just go through the rosters and figure out who we're talking enough about, talking too much about and talking not enough about. We'll just go through those rosters. there. Color code.

Yeah, I mean, the Browns played a nice game, and they had, they had, you know, the 18 play drive and all that stuff, and they easily could have won this game. And I need to now just extend my theory of all the matters is having Patrick Mahomes, because now all the matter is having Patrick Mahomes or Chad Henney. By the way, Chad Henney, fourth straight AFC championship game because he was on the 2017 Jaguars. Wow, what a run. A lot of buzz.

Anything is possible. Okay. So unfortunately, we can't start our prediction for Bill's chiefs because we don't know what this game looks like. It's very, very different depending on the health of Patrick Mahomes. But first impressions, just when you're looking at these rosters, what stands out? Well, assuming that let's just work under the assumption that it's Mahomes, which we obviously don't really know. but that's that's a little bit more interesting to analyze than uh than chan peti in which case I don't think that the chiefs are in a good situation.

I agree with that. I, I am of the opinion that I think the bill's defense has sort of sneakily come together and is actually playing pretty well at this point. So I would be fascinated to see that matchup. in terms of the offense, I think Buffalo is actually a pretty good matchup for what the chiefs do. Just because of the number of different,

basically for the same reasons that they're a pretty good matchup against anybody. Because they have man beaters, they have zone beaters, they have safety valve options, they just have a lot that they can do against you. And they seem to have, really a lot of comfort with each other. Like I just thought that I thought their game actually was really interesting because

it showed an ability to win when not everything is perfect. Like Josh Allen was not great in the first half of that game. Like definitely overthrew some balls. Definitely had sort of old Josh Allen rearing, rearing its head. And they won because their defense had an incredible game and because they started coming together as the game went on. And in an odd way,

I think just because a lot of people have a lot of fairly, um, thoroughly entrenched prior opinions about this bill's team and about the quarterback. That's a helpful thing to see. Because some resilience from them is important because they've had this sort of charmed season.

But I think what we're learning about them is that they're, they're a real contender because they have something else to go to when things start getting taken away. So I think even if the, assuming the chiefs have, Holmes, that's a really tough. That's a tight game. It's a close game. That's two evenly, fairly evenly matched teams, even if the chiefs have this sense of

inevitability that might put them a little bit ahead. Yeah. And the sense of inevitability is entirely dependent on the health of Patrick from Holmes. That's why it's hard to do this. But, you know, in the interest of full disclosure, I thought that the Ravens were probably going to win on Saturday night. And I was surprised at how well the Buffalo defense played. And I think it was, I say this a lot, but I think it was a ross.

win for them because it's Jerry Hughes having seven pressures and two sacks. It's Tehran Johnson, who it was a mid-round picked in 2018. And it's eventually you have a deep enough team to where, you know, they can make enough plays and Leslie Frazier and Sean McDermott can scheme something up and all of a sudden you've stopped the reigning MVP. And so I was hugely impressed with that. And I'm getting a little bit tired of being wrong about the Buffalo Bills because I keep doing it. I was wrong about Josh Allen. We've talked about this. I was, I don't even think I publicly picked the Ravens, but I, you know, obviously I'm not going to run from it. I thought the Ravens are really good team. And the bills just keep, they just keep exceeding my

expectations. And at some point, that just becomes, they become a culture and a franchise that does that all the time. And maybe there's just some bias in my mind where I say, okay, they can't do it now. They can't do it. And they keep doing it. And so I think that I'm coming off of the chief's inevitability thing. I'm still picking the chiefs to do it because the chiefs are the, worst second best team in the NFL behind the check up behind the uh the packers but i i am i'm almost done making declarations about the bills and i've been so impressed with what they've been able to do and this comes down to mahomes's health and you know we will probably hopefully know more later in the week and hopefully that involves mohomes playing and and being totally healthy and being totally

cleared as soon as possible um but i could not have been more impressed with with the way the bills uh bottled up lamar jackson because i thought that we were going to see 20 20 or 29 Lamar in 2020 and we just we just didn't see it so that's it we have a little bit of breaking news here Brandon staley has taken the Chargers job and that's a bit of a surprise because I thought it was going to be Brian Daibble. Big picture what do we think it's a defensive coach for Justin Herbert it's a little bit away from maybe the direction we all thought that was trending where we start I wonder if that my first thought is I wonder if that means dable ends up in Houston, which is a whole whole hot hot mess express right now.

But I wonder if that I would I would wonder if that ends up happening. I don't know. I mean, I think that there's hopefully, hopefully the Texans are going to understand they need to bring Deshaun Watson into this process and have a collaborative, of the collaborative process for the rest of the next month, okay? What evidence is there that that's going to happen? None, none. And they've gone all in on a character coach. And it's the strangest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And they looked at it and they said, we have one of the five

best quarterbacks in the NFL. And it said we're going all in on this dude who we have no idea what his football acumen is. And it's all very strange, but we're just going to trust him. And part of this to me is so funny because there's this debate now. It happened all week on all the studio shows, oh, is there going to be a player empowerment era in football now and all this stuff? And I'm thinking this debate is useless because the power is right now in Houston is consolidated into the character coach. Okay. So you can't protest against, okay, I'm, I'm not going to do the player empowerment era. Well, don't make it the Jack Easterby empowerment era. Like, what is that? What is that? That to me makes it so offensive. And I think that if you're not

going to give, give Deshaun Watson the power that Jack Easterby has, okay? I don't know what it is, but give it to him and get Jack, Jack Easterby out of the building and just, and just, I just figure it out because that is to me, it is one of the strangest things I've ever seen in football is what Jack Easterby is doing in Houston right now, and now they're alienating Deshaunson. By the way, Chris Mortensen tonight reported that Deshaunson will not play, apparently will not play for Houston again because even Jack Houston being fired would not solve the problem. Unless, quote, Cala McNair fires Cala McNair, there would still be a problem. It's not what you want.

I did. It's not what you want. I did international affairs in college. And I always think about, like, I've just been thinking about this as we're seeing all this news from Houston. We used to study like power vacuums. And if there, if there's a country wherever that has. a power vacuum, it always freaks people out. Like that gets circled on maps at the State Department and it's like, we got to watch this.

This could be bad news bears. And the reason is because when there's an obvious power vacuum somewhere, the vacuum gets filled, not really because of rational logic or merit or a democratic process or whatever, but it just gets filled because it's there. And the fact that it exists means that someone's going to jump in and fill it. it might not be the right person. And if you think about the recent history of the Texans, you know, they had an owner die. They've lost, they've fired or otherwise seen leave a head coach, a couple different general

managers, some really high profile players, other team executives. And it's a power vacuum and it's getting filled. And that's just sort of what's going on. So it is so strange in some ways, but with the absence of someone to be in that role and to be making those decisions, someone eventually is going to come in and fill that. And it's very funny because I cover Jackie's to be in New England. And I think anyone there would tell you pretty much anyone that when he was in his original role as a character coach, he was a real value add to the organization. a lot of players thought very highly of him and really liked him. And then at a certain point,

he decided that he wanted this completely different role. He hired a coaching agent. And that was very strange, by the way. Like, this is very inside baseball. But if listeners, viewers ever want to go look up Bob Lamont's client roster, like one of these things is not like the other.

Not a lot of character coaches. Not a lot. So that was a weird one. And pretty soon after that, it just becomes obvious that he doesn't, he doesn't want to be a character coach. He wants something more. And that was the beginning of the end of his role in New England, which ultimately he was the one who his contract was expiring and he left and blah,

blah, blah, blah. But he had made it clear that he was interested in this personnel role. And that was just not going to happen. Because as Belichick said when he was on a call with Houston Media early this, earlier this season, he's not in Belichick's eyes a personnel guy. So he found another place that didn't see it that way. And I guess we will find out what the limits of that are, but it's already gone further than, than you would like it to. And if it goes to the point where they no longer have Deshaun Watson as their quarterback, that's a real failure and would be one of the most

striking things that we've seen in the NFL in a while. I'm in, complete agreement with you. In fact, I use the power vacuum analogy when I first wrote about this in November. And I basically said that there, listen, there was the chance, however small, that Texans fans would look back on the Bill of Brian arrow wistfully and say like, well, at least we had that guy instead of the random character coach running thing. So I think there's just a lot there. I will say, you know, sometimes we'll make fun of us for getting off track. We actually did not address Brandon Staley to the Chargers. which was the original question.

So from my perspective, I think that I'm a little bit, I understand why you would do this. So the whole thing was we're going to bring in a coach, the whole feeling was we're going to bring in a coach who can get Justin Herbert to the next level, develop him. That's all that matters. But I also understand going the defensive route,

going with the, you know, listen, Brandon Staley's seen as one of the best young minds in football. Maybe you bring in a really good offensive coordinator, have the leader of men thing with Staley. I don't know what it is and just try to build a culture, right? Like that's the big thing is if you're not going to have an offensive mind, you're going to have the culture guy. You know, we've talked about Brian Flores in his podcast a million times.

He wasn't the office. I think he was the only defensive coach in that cycle. And he might end up being one of the best coaches hired in the last few years because he wasn't worried about the offensive. You know, he's really good at building a team. And maybe that's the thought process with Staley. But again, I think most people in this league thought he was going to go to an offensive mind. Most people thought it was going to be day bowl in the last week.

Where do you start? I'll be really curious to see how he fills out that staff. Because I'm not going to, I don't know enough about Staley to know what his interpersonal relationships and his sort of CEO role component of being a head coach, how that's going to go. He's great at running a defense and he seems like a smart guy. Good enough place to start, right? but that's one where if he rounds that out by bringing a little bit more experience in getting someone really good for the offensive side of the ball,

seeming like he's he's taking a lot of, you know, making thoughtful choices and who else is in that building and particularly who's going to be working with Herbert, then I think that's great. That to me just is wait and see because I don't, I don't really know what you would base a judgment of how he'll do working with players, how he'll do with the big picture stuff would be.

I'm certainly not. I haven't been around him enough to know that, although I will say I did interview him at one point this season, and I remember just totally feeling like I'd bungled a question, and he really bailed me out and gave me a great answer anyway. So I'm all for it. Yeah, no, it'll be interesting to see now with the only two jobs that are still open being Philly and Houston,

two very different openings. One of them does not have a quarterback, quarterback question mark when Deshaun Watson, as long as he stays, one of them has a huge quarterback question mark. There is no, no Jack Huster be in Philadelphia, but it certainly comes along with its own baggage. I'm intrigued to see how those two things just play out

because I think they're very interesting. Obviously, the Army is still available, and now Brian Daibble is still available. You know, the High, Kellyn Moore at one point interviewed in Philadelphia. Josh McDaniels is interviewing, I believe, tonight. I'm intrigued to see how that that all plays out. Any other coaching carousel thoughts?

By the way, yeah. Again, I'll love to Brandon Staley. But like Leslie Frazier, among defensive coaches that were impressive this weekend, that's who I'm going with. Well, it's funny because I think that there's, I think going off the last. last game to me is a little bit, you know, Kevin Stefansky kind of laid an egg in his last playoff game last year

against San Francisco and everybody who's making fun of it. And so I do hesitate a little bit. But when you're looking at the whole resume, I mean, Brandon Staley is obviously hugely well thought of when Rusillo and I were doing the personnel draft in October, I took him as my defensive coordinator. I love the guy. But I think that if you look at resumes, there are guys who have really good resumes for a longer period of time.

Brian Dable, I think, is one of them. Eric Bienemy is certainly one of them. I mean, Eric Bienemy has helped lead. You know, I mean, I think that people don't understand. I remember this time last year, the ASC championship game, Andy Reid was saying the guy who was given the pregame speeches, the Saturday night speeches, all that stuff. That was Eric Bienemy.

It wasn't Andy Reid. And I think that there, for some reason, because, for whatever reason, he's an offensive coach under Andy Reid. He doesn't get the credit he deserves. But I just think that there are longer resumes. I think it comes down to what did the Chargers here that room and I guess they're going to go with Staley and I best of luck to him. I think I think Staley will work as a head coach. I think Justin Herbert will be fine as long as the staff is

is a super staff and I think that there's you know urban Myers rounding out of staff right now I think when you look at the competition I think the owners now and I don't know if the charters are going to be involved in this but I think owners are starting to realize there's no salary cap on assistance and we're going to see this we saw a little bit of this with with Kellan Moore in Dallas where they sound that huge extension there and I think you're going to see a little bit of more move towards kind of the collegiate model, which is we're going to hire a guy and we're also going to pay the coordinator's a ton of money. We're going to have the best wide receiver coach in football. You're going to be real technician, all this stuff. And I think you're going to

see a little bit more of that in the coaching carousel. And I'm intrigued to see, especially with Urban Meyer, who obviously talked about that. He says, we're going to have the best out in football or whatever was. That was part of the facility's upgrade thing. I'm interested to see how that plays out because that's a second wave of everything. A good example of that. I'll be curious. to see if Aubrey Pleasant, who's the DB's coach in L.A. will be elevated with Staley moving on because people love him. Like probably a name that not everybody knows, but just a super highly thought of guy, especially with players, just technician, super focused on, you know,

developing younger players. And I think they've, they've in the secondary been really good at that. We saw that this year. and I think he'll probably take on some sort of larger role if Staley's going across the street, I guess. But that's one to watch for sure. All right. We're going to get to the listener question. I keep saying reader question.

We're in week, what, 19, week 20 of these? And I keep saying reader question. I think we should just go with it. All right. It's the listener question. It's from DTS. What team, if he's traded, obviously, will land Deshaun Watson? He thinks it's going to be the 49ers.

I don't know about that one where we start. What about the Cowboys? So what would they offer? Oh, God. And they would, they would, uh, they would let Dak Prescott walk. Is that in this scenario? Yeah. Okay.

Uh, unless they figured something out and could do a swap, maybe, I would have to. The cap implications would be pretty wild on that one. Would be pretty wild and hard. And I also don't know that they necessarily have what they could do draft pick wise. Okay. We're putting that as my long shot. What about the dolphins? I think that there was some talk about the jets and maybe there's something there

where maybe they buy into the culture, whatever. I mean, Deshaun Watson has a no trade and why is you going to want to go to the Jets and try to turn that culture around? I think that's a much bigger, I mean, that's as big of a problem as the Texans right now. So I think that there's, I don't know. I mean, I think that San Francisco would obviously be amazing. I think that Miami would be amazing. But I think the price tag is going to be so monumental that I don't know, I don't know how you assign Fair Value.

In a league where Jalen Ramsey and Jamal Adams, who are good players are worth two first round picks, do you start at four or five first round picks for Sean Watson? I would think you start at four, right? I would have said do the next four or they do like, do they do an NBA thing or even the NBA you legally cannot do four in a number? row because that rule. But like, do they say like, hey, can we actually have our 20, 23 pick? Like, that'd be good. It's, maybe it's like, you do first in a second and then, well, but the, the reason

the dolphins are more feasible is because they can give them their pick and they can give them their pick back. So. No, but that's embarrassing. That part of it's embarrassing. That'll be the, they, they traded for Lermanenton. Is it embarrassing or is it like, is it the ultimate saving of face? They traded.

They traded. They traded Lerman. traded for Laramie Tunsell in order to protect Deshaun Watson and that everything around them failed so miserably they have to trade Deshaun Watson to get that pick back. I think that that is the most embarrassing part of it in general. All right. Ara Hawani. It was the funniest like little like under the table face saving thing of this deteriorated so thoroughly that we are giving you our franchise quarterback. But hey, at least we got the tonsil picks back. Ariel Hawani, who is one of the best MMA journalist in the planet at ESPN.

This asked why Sean McDermott's not talked about for coach of the year. We will get to that in the middle of the week. But we have to go now. Okay, I just want to say, I feel like Sean McDermott was talked about for coach of the year on this very podcast. So, Juanis' point is that he's had a better year than Stefanski. I think,

I think that it's all, so much of it is wrapped up a narrative. The Browns were terrible last year. Freddie Kitchens was terrible. The offensive line gets better. All that stuff. Bill Callahan comes in, fixes it. they fix the culture in one year, all that stuff.

But I think that the fact, I think Sean McDermott's success since even the Nathan Peterman Tyrod Taylor year counts against him in the narrative coach of the year. It's a narrative award. It's the same reason. Part of the reason Aaron Rogers is a shoeing for MVP, even though he's had the best season. He's a runaway MVP because six months ago, five months ago, we're sitting there saying Aaron Rogers, they dropped the Jordan Love. He doesn't have any talent around him.

They should have gotten a receiver, all this stuff. and instead he just lit the world on fire. All of these awards are narrative awards. And that's, to me, hurts McDermott a little tiny bit. So that's all. Anything else? Sean McDermott's great.

Absolutely. All right, we are going to be with you live next weekend for the conference championship. Did you know that? You knew that, yes. I did not. Okay, I just found out right before they started. So I'm just happy about it.

All right, so we'll be back this time next week. We will also be back for the midweek show. This has been an Oregon NFL show. on the Ringer Podcast Network. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.