The Ringer NFL Show - Saturday Wild-Card Recap: Jaguars Mount 27-Point Comeback Over Chargers, 49ers Surge Late Against Seahawks | The Ringer NFL Recap Show

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

Nora and Steven recap the Saturday slate of wild-card matchups, starting with the Jaguars’ stunning comeback over the Chargers (01:19). They give credit to Doug Pederson and Trevor Lawrence for their second-half resurgence and speculate as to what this loss means for Brandon Staley’s future as head coach. After, they break down San Francisco's win over Seattle and why all their offensive assets make them so dangerous (21:29). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at the Ringer, Offguard, hosted by me and my guide Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure it was time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league. And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA.

Tap into Offguard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Oh, and welcome to the Bringer NFL Wild Card Weekend recap show. First of two, it's Saturday night. I'm Norr Pintiotti. Here with Stephen Ruiz. The first two games of the 2022 playoffs are in the books, and we're going to talk about Jags Chargers and 49ers Seahawks. Stephen, how is it going?

It's going good. It felt good to like we didn't have to stay up and watch the second game because it was a blowout. I was able to turn it off at halftime and just get ready for the box. Did I miss anything? Stephen, unbelievable. Yeah, so if you happen to turn off the Jags Chargers game at halftime, quite a bit happened. The Jaguars won on a last second field goal 31 to 30.

The Jags won this game despite trailing by 20 points and having a turnover margin of minus 5. They ended the game still with the turnover margin of minus 5. an unbelievable, like the chargeriest chargers, the chargers, the chargers hard, the chargers chargered harder than they'd ever chartered before. So this game starts and it's just like, it is a blowout before you can even blink your eyes

because the jags come out and their first, however many drives are an interception for Trevor Lawrence, another pick, a three and out where they gained one yard, another pick, another three and out where they gained only one yard. The fourth pick and then the muffed punt fumble. It was like, it was super fluky. You know, Trevor Lawrence is not an interception prone quarterback. The first pick was super, super fluky.

It was tipped, I think, twice. Really only the third was like an inexcusable misread of, of the Chargers Zone coverage. And it was like a disguised coverage. So it wasn't like it was understandable. It was like a very good disguise and call. So even that one was like at least understandable. It was bad.

No, it was bad. It was bad. But it was like the only out of four of them. It was that, okay, geez, don't do that, Trevor. But, you know, the fourth one was a great play by Asante Samuel Jr. who had the hat trick going down for the ball, hanging on. So just like a strange game. But

they get down by 27 and it's just like, all right, well, I don't think this is going to be a huge referendum on Trevor Lawrence because this is just not who he is. But this is a weird game. Really disappointing. Jags looked like they could make some noise. This was a totally winnable game. It seemed like one of the more evenly matched wildcard matchups and just what a snoozer. Huh. but then they're down by 20 at half time.

The turnover margin is minus five. They haven't converted a third down. So in that circumstance, you're probably pretty happy to be down by only 20. And then Trevor starts heating up. He throws the fourth pick with six minutes and six and a half minutes left in the second quarter. They're down by 24. They're about to go down by 27.

From there, his next 19 throws, he goes 16 of 19 for 165 yards and three touchdowns. That gets them to the end of the third quarter. And all of a sudden, the score is 30 to 20. And what were you thinking as the tides were turning? Because I was thinking more, frankly, about the chargers and just like, what is it going to mean for this team if they blow this again? And holy crap with every drive that they don't take advantage of, some of the penalties,

some of the mistakes. you just like clench more and more and more. But I want to talk about the fact that that Trevor Lawrence was able to do this first because it made me think of some of the discourse around him. And I don't mean to like crap on people's old draft takes because first of all, not that many people were saying this. They just said it very noisily. But it was one of the stupidest things that's ever happened.

And there's a lot of stupid pre-draft discourse. Do you remember the, he did whatever profile it was. And he said something about not being motivated by like negative. not having a chip on his shoulder. And this was like, oh, this guy is too calm. He's too, like, he doesn't have that negative bile in him and he doesn't get riled up about stuff. That never should have happened.

But if anyone ever tries, they wouldn't. But, like, if that wasn't put to bed with just, like, the absolute chill, not blinking an eye, calm in the face of pressure. This was like a mental masterclass. I think even more than it was a football masterclass. So what did you think? I know this was a matchup of, you know,

two of your large adult quarterback sons. But from the Trevor Lawrence perspective, what did you think about how he navigated this comeback? I thought it was this game as a whole is kind of like a microcosm of his career so far through two years. He gets off to the ugly start that was not, entirely his fault, although he didn't play his best in the first quarter. But the talent, even during his bad first half, you could still see the throws were still there. He was still making

throws outside of the interceptions. And it was only a matter of time. And then when the Chargers, first of all, I think there was two major things that happened in this game. I think Michael Davis getting hurt was a huge deal. And then because them getting out to this big lead, I think it just gave Joe Lombardi the chance to feed into, I think, his worst traits as a play caller. And he was like trying to salt this game away. They ran the ball way too much in the second half. And I don't think you could play that style of defense without Michael Davis out there. Michael Davis is like really one of the keys to this defensive turnaround we've seen from the Chargers. So once he went out and the way Trevor was playing in the third quarter, I was like,

like I expected the Jaguars to win at that point. I mean, now the Chargers being involved, it was part of that. If this was like a team like the chiefs or the Bengals, I would not have expected that. But I mean, by the fourth quarter, it looked like the Jags were the better team by a wide margin. Well, and the, you know, you see that Chargers offense under Lombardi getting sort of like more and more stagnant. I think on the flip side, you know, obviously Doug Peterson is going to get a lot of credit for the Etienne's fourth down conversion that ended up putting them in the position to kick the game-winning field goal. I thought they made some really nice adjustments as the game went on, as the Chargers were hit with some critical injuries.

But it seemed like at the beginning of the game. They were trying to just run this like their short and intermediate passing game. And the Chargers defensively were just clogging all of that up. And their coverage was really good. It was really tight. It was super sticky. And they were just playing a lot of those. They were disguising those zones really, really well.

and it was causing a lot of problems. As the game went on, it felt like they were testing the edges, using the sideline a little bit more, and just saying, okay, we're going to try to make them tackle. And that, I think, proved to be a really, really effective adjustment against the Chargers defense, especially like as they get more tired,

as they get hit with injuries. I think that probably would have been an easier way to go about this from the beginning. But part of that is just a good defensive game plan from L.A., which is a little bit, it is an interesting dynamic because, look, I think Brandon Staley is coming out of this game in a really, really rough spot. It is hard to see how he holds on to that job, given the combination of how this game went, the horrible collapse, and the fact that the biggest story coming into it was Mike Williams

not being able to play and his handling of week 18 and not resting the starters. William's getting hurt and then some of the comments about him not being hurt and them finding the additional back injury later and some of the nebulous stuff around that, obviously it's not a great look. Let's not let it get lost in that. You know, yet again, he came out with a good defensive game plan. Yeah, I mean, that's what he's been doing. And the question now, and I don't even think he's going to get a fair shake just because

of how things ended. And I don't think he deserves one because you have to explain to your fans. Yeah, you have to explain to your fans why you're bringing them back. And you can't be like, oh, yeah, you call it a great game, though. It was a great game plan. But I really think like Michael Davis going out, along with the adjustments, because I agree, they started throwing the outbreak routes and the perimeter routes. Like the Christian Kirk, like, quick hitches where he would like turn and pick up an extra five yards.

That was like a big thing in the comeback. But the initial game plan, they were like sitting on the intermediate crossers, like you were saying. and it's hard to play that style of defense where you have the backside safety, like poaching those crossers coming from the other side, if you don't trust that isolated corner. Because now you're leaving, if you take that safety and have him poach the crosser coming from the other side, that means that cornerback has no help.

He's one-on-one. The charters weren't able to do that last year because they didn't have the cornerbacks. They signed J.C. Jackson to be able to do that. J.C. Jackson was bad, got hurt. Michael Davis, who was the guy last year and was bad at it, somehow had like a career rejuvenation. nation. It was like one of the better corners in the league in the second half. He goes out. They have to start calling their defense differently. And that's when you saw the Jaguars hit

on a couple of big plays over the top. We saw the coverage bust that led to one of the touchdowns. So I think Staley has had a lot of things go wrong and it has had a lot of bad luck. Like the Mike Williams injury was kind of bad luck, even though he could have avoided it. The injuries all season long have been bad luck. Even in this game, there were some bad bounces. But at the end of the day, like it comes down to him making decisions. And I thought that his decision making this year, after last year, when he got a lot of criticism,

especially after that Raiders game in Week 18, I thought it changed for the worst. I thought he gave into like the media pressure. And it cost them. And it cost them in this game. He had a chance with I think it was like eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. They're up by, uh, was it seven point? No, 10 points. He opts to kick the field goal to go up 13 to stretch a 10 point lead to a 13 point lead, which honestly, I'd rather be up

10 than 13 in that spot because now you incentivize the other team to go for the win instead of going for the tie. Now maybe we know what Doug ended up doing so it was a moot point, but you had three yards to go to put this game away and to advance to the next round and extend your season. And he brought on a kicker who you signed off the street midseason and who has never been a reliable kicker throughout his career. It was these high leverage mistakes are just confounding. And honestly, you can't overcome that no matter how good of a play caller you are. yeah it it's and that some of this stuff is not on him right but like there's just always something they get you know joey bosa gets the on sports i'm like um for slamming the helmet before the two point conversion for jacksonville that's obviously not staley's fault but then it's like for the last jacksonville drive um when they went and kicked the field goal i think bosa got benched It's hard to tell because it wasn't that many plays, but it seemed like he wasn't out there.

He wasn't out there on the fourth and one. He wasn't out there as they were getting into position for that. It's not his fault, but at a certain point, it's just like so many things go wrong that we have a really clear picture of what this guy is really good at. Maybe just do that. Like, do defense. This hasn't worked. There's no shame in being a defensive coordinator. I think he regressed as a head coach.

Like in terms of like the head coaching, the forward facing head coaching duties that we can see and judge as analysts. He regressed mightily, I would add. Yeah. No, I agree with you both in terms of the decision making, the aggressiveness. And then I don't know if this is so much regressing, but over time,

the issues with that offense have been pretty clear. And they just get more and more clear the more you see them. that's kind of the amazing thing is they made this comeback without a turnover. Right. Because the Chargers stopped scoring. I mean, they scored three points after halftime. Maybe if you were a Division III quarterback, maybe don't hire your college OC as your OC when you get an NFL head coaching job. Like, that's ultimately what's going to do him in is he hired his friend, he hired his buddy.

Well, look, and also like we don't know how the, the, the, um, the Mike Williams thing plays into this, right? The chargers and games that Mike Williams have been out, we talked about this last week, they've scored less than 30 points in those games. So in some ways, they found a way to move the ball. That said, you know,

the Jacksonville defense is okay. They're certainly not the 49ers out there. And you never know, right? Like, you never know what kind of difference it would have made having, you know, Keenan Allen and Mike Williams are sort of 1A1B, but like having that guy there for you and he's made such a difference when he's been available. There are so many other things that are like explicitly available to us from this game to criticize, but I think that's part of it. Like they scored three points after halftime.

And I felt like even when I felt like Jacksonville could make the comeback, it felt like they were going to need a turnover. They were going to need to steal a possession. And they just didn't have to because. No, they just needed Joe Lombardi. They just needed the thing, my problem with him, like, there are a lot of issues with the offense. Like, the nature of it being shrieked. It's Sunday, January 15th. It's just turned to Sunday.

It's midnight as we're recording this. Stephen Ruiz. My problem with Joe Lombardi is. My one problem. It's not even just like the offense is conservative. I don't think he plays to his matchups and his advantages in personnel. Like in this game, in the second half, they kept running over the left. tackle and they were rotating their or they weren't rotating but they had to switch their left

tackle in and out because of injuries. And the Jaguar's strength lies on the edges of their defense. They like Trayvon Walker, why are you running at him? When you don't have good blocking tight ends, you don't have a good, good tackles that block in the run game just makes no sense whatsoever. Scoring three points in a half with Justin Herbert, who didn't even play well or play poorly in the second half is right. I don't. I'm at a loss. flowers for for Dougie P in this. I mean,

he's had quite a year. Comes in for Urban Meyer, gets this, you know, after doing something a little bit similar, though not in any way, shape, or form as extreme, gets another chance to sort of revitalize a franchise that's had some issues

with previous coaching staffs. They're frisky, all year. Trevor's obviously very exciting to coach. They get into the playoffs. And then he gets to win this game by in that fourth and one going for it. Colin time out, putting them back in there, putting three backs out there in the T formation.

Etienne gets it, takes it around the right edge, they gain 25 yards, gets them in position for the short field goal. Boom. You win a playoff game. I mean, it's kind of just how we would draw it up, right? like literally and figuratively. It's got to feel fairly good to be Doug Peterson right now. Yeah, and I'm happy that he was rewarded for making the tough choices that I don't think Brandon Staley made.

Like, I like when aggressive coaches get rewarded. So this is a win for good coaching going forward. Don't be a coward. Now, he, Doug Peterson did go for, this was like, it just feels like ages ago because it was in the first half. But he went for like a fourth and six. That was an insane decision. some point. It was more than seven. Yeah. I don't even remember the situation. I just remember looking at

my TV like, what are you doing, man? Chill out. But I'll as well. That ends well. He's like, just let me cook. Just let me cook more. Give me time. Let Doug cook. Doug was cooking. So, okay, the Jags, uh, Jags would foresee. So we're going to have to wait for the rest of the AFC games to figure out what their next matchup is going to be. I think if all the favorites when they would play Buffalo in the divisional? No, they would get Kansas City. If the Bengals and the Bills win, they get Kansas City

because they would be the highest. Then they would be the lowest. Right, right. And then if the Ravens win, then they would get Buffalo because, yeah, okay. If all the favorites win, you're right, they would get Kansas City. Look, that's a tough matchup. You're not going to hear me picking anybody against the Chiefs

at this point. However, I'm moderately surprised by the outcome of this game. It felt like a relatively even thing going into it. But if you'd asked me at, you know, 7.30 this evening, I think I would have said, you know what, the Chargers are probably a little bit more complete because we've seen them come up with, you know, over a month of really solid defensive game plans. They have enough talent. They're probably a little bit stable in that way with Herbert despite some of the offensive deficiencies.

That said, because the Jaguars offense as sort of weird and confounding as it can be is willing to play to Trevor Lawrence's strengths, I do feel like they have a higher ceiling. I'm glad for football that they won this game because if they do get matched up with the chiefs, I'm not like, not that we haven't seen the Chargers play a good game against Kansas City before, but I just am more excited about that than I think the current state of the Chargers makes me feel. Yeah, and I think like the way it happened makes it even more impressive. More so than like when they blew the Chargers out in the first game where they went by like 17. Right. Being able to overcome those four interceptions for Trevor, I think this establishes him as

one of those quarterbacks where it's where you don't worry. Like if they get off to a slow start, you don't have to worry. He just doesn't care. Tom Brady has thrown like two picks in a Super Bowl first half, but he's one of those quarterbacks where eventually they're going to figure it out and they're going to keep coming. I think Joe Burrow, I think that's probably his greatest strength is that even when he gets off to a bad start,

he just keeps coming. And based on this and some of the other games we've seen, like the Ravens game in the regular season where they made a similar comeback, like Trevor is establishing himself as not just the quarterback that I think, I think we're past the point where we talk about. him as a prospect and as a young quarterback. And maybe that starts next year. And maybe it starts in the offseason.

But I think he's at a point where we need to raise the bar for him and start talking about him in the same terms that we talk about Herbert. The same terms we talk about some of these other younger quarterbacks who are on the verge of superstar. Joe Burrow might already be a star, but I think even he's in the same boat. Yeah. This was a coming out party. And like it couldn't have had a better script with him falling behind with those four interceptions. It's just a great game for him. There were so many Nathan Peterman tweets.

I made one. This man overcame Nathan Peterman tweets. We don't see it happen. It's a rare feat. I've never seen anyone beat the Nathan Peterman allegations within a single game. He was charged and he beat the allegations in two halves of football. What a guy. Happy to have Trevor Lawrence still in the playoffs.

Good stuff. Sad to no longer have Justin Herbert in the playoffs. However, it was probably time to take about the Chargers. All right. You want to talk about 49ers Seahawks? Yeah, let's do it. So, okay, 49ers, 41, Seahawks 23. The 49ers would play either the Vikings,

if the Vikings be the Giants, or if the Giants meet the Vikings, then they would play the winner of Cowboys' Bucks. So we will see based on those results, who they're matched up with. This was a fascinating game, and it's a fascinating game, I think, mostly for what it means

for the future of the Seahawks. Because I think you can see whatever you want to from this. Because they did, you know, they lose this game by, what, 18 points in bad of math. They did everything right in the first half. They played, they did not play 60 minutes of great football, but they played 30 minutes of pretty close

to a perfect game. against a 49ers team that's just better. They're just better. They have more talent. They're just a total buzz thought. First half of this game, Gino's completion percentage over expectation was plus 23. He's nine for 10.

He has probably his play of the game, which is the gorgeous deep ball to D.K. Metcalf. Brock Purdy, meanwhile, has a completion percentage under expectation of minus seven. Their offensive game plan, Seattle's basically had eliminated the, the 49ers passed rush. I think Armstead was the only one who touched Gino. He had a sack in the first half, but that was that was it. Kenneth Walker was really doing well. He's getting to the

edge. That offensive line was playing really well. San Francisco has a bunch of kind of screwy things happen. They, they have a bunch of penalties, zero penalties for Seattle. Then they're going into halftime and the 49ers have that, that they decide to squib kick it. And then Jimmy Ward has that penalty that essentially hands the Seahawks, three points. They've done everything right. The 49ers certainly have not done everything right.

They're leading by one point. Right. So it's just like, can they do it for another 30 minutes? If they can't, the dam might just break here. That was kind of a bad half of football from San Francisco, and they're still trailing by one point. Then they come out in the third quarter. 49ers get the ball out of halftime.

They start driving. And then there's this play where Jonathan Abram twists Debo's ankle. They convert on third and seven in Seahawks territory. And Debo, like, hangs out on the turf for a little bit. And they all got really mad. And that turns into a touchdown drive. Then Seattle gets the ball back, gets in the red zone. That's when Gino gets

stripped sacked. It's 3 and 14. Nick Bosa recovers the ball. Fourners get the ball back. Go on another touchdown drive. All of a sudden, you know, it's a little bit before the start of the fourth quarter and they're up by multiple scores and the game's just gotten totally out of hand.

You don't love the final score. I don't know that a lot of people expected this game to be close, but I really feel like if you're a Seattle fan, I'm thinking more about what went right earlier in this game than what weren't wrong. I know, like, it's a playoff game. Of course, you feel crappy. But it is kind of miraculous that they, that they stayed in it

that way for 30 minutes. Yeah, it was a good 30 minutes of football that you could build on going into next year. I agree with you. I think like this, the contract decision. And apparently, like Ian Rapidport reported before the game that the Seahawks have decided that they're bringing Gino back. They haven't decided how that's going to work, like whether it's going to be a franchise tag, which they're willing to use on him. Or maybe it will be like a two or three year deal similar to the one that Ryan Tannahill got from Tennessee a couple years ago after his breakout. But I think a game like this just makes it so much harder because like you said, you could see whatever you want to see. You could see the throws to D.K. Metcalf, the creation under pressure, him getting outside of the pocket and making plays outside of the structure of the offense.

But then you could look at the turnover. You look at the strip sack and the interception, which was a bad throw. It was a bad route by Tyler Lockett, but a poor decision. And when you look at Gino's stats throughout the year, it kind of follows that same track, where when everything's going right with the offense and they're not putting him in bad situations, he played like a top 10 quarterback. But when they put him in bad situations, when they couldn't protect him, when they couldn't get receivers open, that's when you saw the flaws start to come out. And the question is, is that the result of a guy sitting on the bench for eight games or eight years and not really getting those reps and maybe seeing things of a beat or. too late in throwing bad passes because of it. And will he take the next step having this season to kind of go back and look at in the off

season and kind of work on his flaws? And I think if he does take another step and this this improvement, you know, continues on this linear track, I think he's probably worth like a $30 million a year contract. I think he can give you enough production if you build the right team around him. Like he could be like a top, I wouldn't say a top 10 quarterback. I would say like 10 to 12 range like the Joe Flacco, Matt Stafford, Matt. that area of the quarterback hierarchy. I think he could be that type of guy.

But you have to build around him. But now I think the question is, do we franchise tag them and just make him prove it next year? Or do we give him that two to three year deal and kind of make a small bet that gives you some short term flexibility? Because like let's say you give him a three year deal, you can make that first year cap hit like $10, $15 million. Low, super low. Yeah. If you give them the franchise tag, it's $30 million and that's it. There's no way to like...

Yeah, but you know what? In any case, teams out here edging up against $50 million a year for their quarterbacks. And I'm not saying that Gino's going to be

in that conversation. But that is the thing that happens in the current state of the salary cap. Yes. One of the reasons that the Seahawks season

was so exciting was that no one thought they would be any good. I mean, the Stephen Ruises of the world notwithstanding. I didn't even think they would be good.

Like you're giving me too, I had Gina ranked as like the 22nd ranked quarterback and I thought they would win seven games. And a few things happened, right? Like there was some existing talent on the roster that was probably being overlooked a little bit. But they also absolutely, John Schneider nailed that draft class. And the combination of that and then Gino playing really, really well, being not only a, you know, winning that competition, being more than a viable starter. And then outperforming even even the expectation.

of those that felt he could do that, those two things meant that this team way overachieved based on what the median expectation for them was for this year. They still have the resources going into 2023 of a team that you would think, you know, other than draft position, but because of Russ, they're set as far as that, they can improve the situation around Gino.

And they're not going to be, they have good cap flexibility. They can, they can pay him $30 million or, you know, maybe it's less and that's great. If you're just talking about a lowered cap hit in year one of a multi-year deal, if that's the road that they choose to go down. But in any case, you're not going to be screwed with the salary cap. They've got two picks inside the top 20. They've got four on the top 54. 45 million in cap space, 45 million in cap space, like one of the highest cap numbers in the week. And, you know, that's before the teams always move on from people, stuff gets shuffled around, you can restructure or whatever.

One of the things that I think has become clear is that they're in a good position to tackle spots, but they'd probably do well to address interior offensive line. And then beyond that, probably defense is the focus, right? Yeah. Defensive line specifically, like, we saw they can't run it. They can't defend the run. They haven't been able to do it all year. Right. And the 49ers are a heart, you know, it's, that's not who you want to be on tape against for that, but they haven't been able to do it all year. Start adding in those places. And it's not just like, okay, Gino's proved that he can do this. They can have a markedly better situation around him going forward. And, you know, what was he doing last week? Like tweeting out, it'll be funny how much better I am with a full off season to prepare as a starter and do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, It makes sense. If you're a Chargers fan right now, I think you feel pretty horrible. If you're a Seahawks fan right now, based on, you know, the two losing results today, it sucks, but the future is fairly bright, is how I would feel.

If there's a team that you can make the argument, should, like, go for it in a similar way that I would say, like, it's not like the Rams, because I feel like the Rams had more playoffs success. They had been to a Super Bowl like two years earlier. They had Aaron Donald. They had Jalen Ramsey. The Seahawks don't have that. But like an offseason like the dolphins had last year, like why not do that? Because like there are some glaring holes on the roster, but they are concentrated. Interior line and defensive line.

And this is a good draft class and a good free agency class for defensive line. It's a little suspect for offensive line. But I think they can you can fix an offensive line in one offseason, especially if you have the tackle positions locked down already, which they do with two. that were really good this year. Right. And this is a good team.

I really thought really good in this game. I mean, especially like, I keep in the drum about the first half. But, you know, the number one thing you think of with the 49ers is that pass rush. And they were totally neutralized. And, you know, Ken Walker was getting the edge pretty consistently. Those guys are good. And Shane Waldred's a good offense coordinator. Like, I think he has proven to be at least a good one.

I don't know if he's like a needle moving offensive coordinator, but he's not, I don't think he's going to get a head coaching job. He's going to stick around. Gino's going to get to grow in this offense, fix the offensive line, get that running game going. Like we saw it, like when this offense was at its best, Rashad Penny was playing. And at the end of the year, Kenneth Walker kind of figured out how to run. He stopped running so impatiently, and it really changed the dynamic of the offense. I think another year for Kenneth Walker will be big. And if you fix that interior line, Shane Waldron comes back and D.K. Metcats.

and Tyler Lockett. They have like a lot of talent on this team. And they're getting Jamal Adams back. I know like Jamal Adams has kind of become a meme over the last couple years, but he's a good player. Still good. He's still good at football. He might not be worth two first round picks,

but he's a very good player. And he's a very good player against the run. So he would help out a lot against some of these perimeter runs that really gave them problems at times this year. The two young cornerbacks that they drafted, Tariq Willan, who had a bad game this on on Saturday, but a really good rookie season. I'm still skeptical of this new defensive staff

that Pete kind of built based on like pressure from outside of the organization for him to evolve. I think they would be better served like kind of going back to the old defense. But if they could figure some things out on the back end defensively and then add a couple like a pass rusher, maybe draft a guy in the top five, why can't this team compete with the 49ers next year

who are another team that have a lot of quarterback questions? Is cover three bat? Is that what you're saying? Yes, return to cover three. Brandon State League is going to get fired. McFandio's out of the league. Cover three's back. Reject modernity embraced tradition.

A Ben Solac classic phrase. All right. Let's talk about the team that actually won this game. The 49ers man. So Austin Gale came on the island last week and was doing Brock. His take was Brock Purdy for offensive rookie of the year. And at the end, I told him that I couldn't, I couldn't condone it, mostly based off of one quote that Brock Purdy gave. Like, it wasn't even that he had five starts.

There was this one quote that he gave last week where he said, it started because somebody asked him if playing in the NFL was easier than playing college, which is just a hysterical situation. But his answer was kind of yes. And then he literally said something like, I just. check it down and then Kyle schemes it up and Christian and Debo and the other guys worry about all the yards and stuff. Self-aware. I didn't know. I like I like him more after that one. No, it was great. He's like Kirk. Like, Kirk, say what you want about Kirk Cousins, but that man knows what he is as a quarterback. He's like, yeah, I need play action. I need scheme. I need play action. Like, I need this stuff. Yeah. What are you crazy? It was my favorite quote of the season.

Just being like, they do all the, your job as a quarterback pretty fundamentally, right? It's like to execute the offense, gain yards, move down the field. He was like, no, no, the yards. I don't do the yards. They do the yards. And to Brock's point, most yards after the catch per catch by team in a playoff game in the last decade.

Number one goes to the Steelers in 2016 in the wild card against the dolphins. they had 12.1 yards after the catch per catch. Number two, goes to the 2019 49ers in the championship game against the Packers. Number three was the 49ers today against the Seahawks. 10.3 yards after the catch per catch for Mr. Brock Purdy, the beneficiary of all of that. This is hysterical. Like, they're a hysterical team.

It's a hysterical situation. I cannot tell how good or bad rough purdy is. I don't even really think that's the right question. He's just, he's just like, he just has to distribute it a few yards.

And then they worry about all the yards and stuff. And then they score 41 points. He was kind of bad today. Like, he was definitely bad in the first half. There's no way around it. In the second half, I feel like he did some good things,

but it wasn't like, oh, like a comprehensive quarterback performance. And the stats are like staggering. and historic. Like he average 11 yards per attempt or something like that. A 90 quarterback or QBR, which means like QBR is set up to to basically work as like a percentage. Like if you play like this, you will win 90% of your games.

Right. That's how Rock Purdy played, quote unquote. That was Kyle Shanahan. He's a top 10 quarterback by himself. The only quarterbacks with better, with like a single better playoff game by adjusted yards per attempt to their names. there are only three of them. They are Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner, and Dan Marino. And each of them only had one.

They only did it once. The Brock Pot did it the first time out. He's slow cooked that secondary. So, okay, let's listen. This is another thing that Austin and I were talking about a little bit. When you watch him move, because this was something that Pete Carroll brought up, where he said that he did a really good job of. staying alive.

The quote was, I don't know why we couldn't sack the guy. We chased him all over the place. He's not noted for being the greatest scrambler, but he looks like Fran Tarkington out there today. I love Pete Carol. That's true. He's obviously more mobile than Jimmy.

And that's got to help. I kept feeling like I was watching him back out of the pocket kind of recklessly. Yes. And not know where he was going. So it's another thing where I'm like, okay, yes, maybe he's, he has more mobility than Jimmy. So that's like one reason why it could be helping this offense. And this offense is all of a sudden scoring like twice as many points as they were with Jimmy Garoppelow.

But it's not like when you watch it, it's not good. It's that it can't be right. Like when you watch Trevor Lawrence in the game after, you weren't like, oh yeah, this is the same thing. Like it was clearly a different thing. He's not like doing it on purpose. He's just like, oh, shit. I'm going to keep dropping back. And like every throw,

and I'm not trying to take anything away from it. It was a very good performance. It wasn't a very good performance. But like, thinking of the situation, he was a rookie quarterback, Mr. Relevant. And I'm not trying to take anything away from him either. This is like an incredible thing that's happening. But the Brock Purdy 49ers offense scores double the amount of points

that the Jimmy Garablo 49ers offense scores. and I'm just trying to make sense of that. He tried to throw the Jimmy interception twice in the game. And once you saw that that wasn't getting dropped, like that's always the thing with the 49ers offense, with Jimmy at least. If he throws the interception to the linebacker in the first half, they're going to lose.

And if he doesn't, like the linebacker drops it, they're scoring 40 points. And that's what happened in this game. I, like the playmaking element really, like, it gives them another layer to the offense. But I think, like you said, it is reckless at times. And he's going to come up against a defensive line that's

a little better than Seattle's. Like if they play Philadelphia, it's going to be hard to play like that. And we could see some of those, those plays that weren't picked turned into, to interceptions or turned into long sacks that he was able to avoid in this game at least. I think it's like a house of cards.

Like it's, when it's ugly, it's going to be really ugly and it's going to, it might be season ending ugly. But if Kyle can just keep like gaming this up, scheming this up and letting Debo and Christian like take care of the yards, as Brock Purdy said, maybe they avoid it.

that is the thing where like I'm, I'm steering it on the mobility stuff a little bit because I think that'll be interesting to see how it plays out because the one thing that, again, this was part of my conversation with Austin, the one thing that I can sit here and be absolutely sure that I think that Brock Purdy does very well and better than Jimmy is he'll throw the ball away.

And yes, he tried to throw the Jimmy pick, but like, he's, will throw it away and get out of a bad play. When he's in a situation where it's just like, nothing's there, he's waiting, he's looking, he doesn't see it, he'll just get rid of it. I don't know if that is going to continue to be true. And it seems like he tests it a little bit more

when he starts getting moving backwards out of the pocket and he's like, oh, now I'm in make something happen mode. And like, just maybe don't. I don't want to, like, don't encourage. like don't encourage him is what I'm saying. Pete Carroll, don't encourage him. This is a bad idea.

No, but it's funny that like Pete said that because it kind of brings up the question of sustainability and whether like, what's going to happen when defenses adjust? If Seattle's head coach was saying, I didn't realize that he was able to like escape pressure like that. The coaches that they played next aren't going to make the same mistake.

And we might start to see teams adjust and start to figure out his scramble patterns. Like that's a big deal for coaches. when they're preparing for teams is like, which way does he leave the pocket? It seems like Bertie likes to go to his left more often than his right. But I think once you start to see teams adjust, that might be when you see some of the issues with a guy who's not, he's not Lamar Jackson.

Like those scrambles, it kind of reminds me. It's like a Baker Mayfield type thing where the willingness to be a playmaker is why he's able to scramble. And it's not necessarily his physical gifts. But we saw with Baker Mayfield, there's a point of diminishing returns when you're not a great athlete. eventually these NFL guys are going to catch up to you. Well, and you were noticing that it seems like maybe he goes to his left more often.

To me, the thing that stood out is it just, he just, he gets really deep back there. Like he's going, he's backing out of the pocket and all of a sudden it's like, dude, you've covered a lot of ground here. You somehow lose control of this football. His plan's in a strip sack somehow. Yikes. So I don't know. But, but just something to watch because Mr. Brock Purney is swiftly. becoming one of the more interesting figures in this year's playoffs.

And so far it's been fun. We'll see what happens. Anything else from Niners' Seahawks, Stephen? No, not really. Like, should we be worried about the 49ers defense? And not worried like, oh, this is a bad unit. But I mean, like, worried in that we saw the Seahawks kind of, they found success.

They scored 23 points, which they weren't able to score anybody. points against them in the first two games. We saw the Raiders put up a lot of points on them. We saw the Cardinals at least scored early on them. I think that we're starting to see some adjustments from offenses that are taking advantage of the aggressiveness of the front seven. And I want to see how Damiko Ryan's adjusted this, because I think this is like one of the first moments of, not adversity, but one of the first moments since he got this defense

really playing well in the back half of last year that we've seen kind of a downslide. I wonder how he responds and what changes and if there will be any changes. And I think that will speak to his performance as a head coach going forward. So that's something that I'm going to pay attention to going forward. For sure. And it depends who their matchup is, right? Because I think like if they end up drawing, say, Minnesota, they're good there, right? Like that offensive line, although I guess there's some news that they've gotten a little bit healthier.

But like, whatever, they're going to be fine. I would not doubt their ability to create pressure pretty consistently there. But if you're talking about, you know, if you get later on down the line and it's a Philadelphia, then maybe that's a different story. And that is the type of stuff where, you know, you write the ending to this season based on the ability to do that or not. The thing is, I said at one point earlier in this conversation, when I think of the 49ers, I think of that defensive front. That's still true because the names are still there.

Right now the reason this team is winning is because they're scoring 30 to 40 points a game. Right. And as long as Debo's healthy, as long as Christian McCaffrey's healthy, as long as they've got kid. Like, I don't know. Who's going to stop them? Like, these guys are just too good. There's too many of them. There's too many of them and they do like different things.

This is like a basketball. team, a modern positionalist basketball team. Like, Ushchak could be a tight end, he could be an H-back, you could be a fullback, Debo could be a running back. Like, they had to play this game where they had, uh, they, it was like an RPO basically, but it was under center where they have the backside

slant that they could throw if it's like there, there's space there. They had Debo at running back and they had Christian McCaffrey on the edge running the slant. Well, that's just like an asshole move by Kyle Shanehan. He only did that just to be an asshole. Such a Nepo baby move. This is a big nebo baby team. All right.

Good stuff, Stephen. This is our first pot of two this weekend. We will be back on Sunday tomorrow with the wonderful Benjamin Solac. We'll go through all the Sunday games as well. And keep going because the playoffs are here. This has been the Ringer NFL wild card weekend playoffs show. I'm Nor Princiotti. He's Stephen Ruiz.

Thank you so much to Eduardo Ocampo for production on this episode and to Arjuna Ravel for additional production supervision.