The Ringer NFL Show - Second-Year QB Concerns, New England’s Rough Start, and the Breakdown in Minnesota | The Ringer NFL Show (Ep. 307)

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

The Ringer’s Robert Mays and Kevin Clark link up to discuss the ongoing struggle for Jimmy G (and the future of the 49ers), Deshaun Watson, and Mitchell Trubisky (1:00). Then the guys cover why the Patriots and Vikings are trending down while the Rams, Chiefs, and Dolphins are trending up (14:45) before throwing their challenge flags of the week and predicting tomorrow’s headlines (41:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get the Yahoo Sports mobile app and you are golden. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Robert Mays. I'm Robert Mays, joined as always by Kevin Clark. Kevin, how you doing, bud? I'm doing it a little better than you because I don't root for a team with Mitch Trubisky. Good Lord. It was a long day for me.

This was the fourth wedding in four weekends. This one was on the road. So I watched football from a bar in Sedona, Arizona. And I watched another extremely frustrating performance for Mitch Trubisky. We're going to get there. We're going to start with Trubisky, but also a couple other quarterbacks that, fall under a similar category that we made up. So I think that my takeaway from today was just that there were a couple guys that came into

this season with, I don't know, optimistic overtones, I guess is what I would say. Yeah, I would say there's, and so we'll name them really quickly, it's Mitchell Trubeski, Deshaun Watson, and Jimmy Garoppolo. I think Watson and Garoppelow are on a different plane. Those are the guys who we think could have. conceivably taken the leap into, you know, elite quarterback status this year. I mean, if everything broke right, that could have happened. We saw in limited sample sizes, both of those guys look absolutely awesome last year. Trubisky was more a projection as far as getting Matt

Nagy in there, getting a support system, a new offense built around him, but all three of them, there was definitely good vibes around all three of them three and a half weeks ago. Yeah, Trubesky was more so he'd look better with Nagy. He'd look better with those past catchers. With the other two guys, they were the stories of the off season. They were two of the names coming into the NFL season, Jimmy Garoppel and Deshaun Watson. I was working on stuff about both of them.

I mean, it was just those are the two quarterbacks. I think everyone had kind of attached themselves to coming into this year. And what I want to chat about tonight before we get into the rest of the show is just how much panic should be associated with their individual situations at this current moment. With Garapolo and the Niners, it seems like DefCon won full scale. I mean, if his ACL is torn, their season is over. Yeah, and that's the fear. Kyle Shanahan said at the postgame press conference.

We haven't gotten a definitive word, but it seems to be trending that way. C.J. Bethard is not Nick Foles. I don't. And also, by the way, Carson Wends towards A.C. in December 1st. It's not like Nick Foles had to navigate 13 weeks of NFL play. Yeah, they obviously and don't even have a deep enough roster to carry a C.J. Betherd-led team for the rest of the way. So that's just it.

If Grapalos out, they are out. And by the way, we thought they were a year away to begin with. Yeah, I was optimistic. I thought the offense would be rolling a little more smoothly than it was over the first three weeks. I mean, even against that KC team, they did. necessarily move the ball. It will. I hope they're better next year. I have so much faith in that coaching staff. I think they have a lot of talent. But this kind of resets the timeline a little bit. It's a bad thing for your starting quarterback to Terra's ACL. It's also one of those things where

maybe it's okay that now we're kind of setting them back a little bit and saying, all right, 2019 is when the Niners will be ready to kind of go at this. Yeah. I mean, I always felt that way. I thought they just hadn't built that roster enough. I felt like we needed one more year. an offseason when they could get some more guys in. Obviously, I thought that a guy like Jared McKinnon is a good piece in that offense, but he's out for the season. And so I just never thought they were going to contend. I thought maybe if everything broke right, they win nine games,

then we'll see what happens in the NFC. I always thought the NFC was too stacked for them to make the playoffs this year. But I am disappointed just from a football perspective. We're not going to get to see the best version of the 49ers for 16 games this year. I totally agree. And one of those things that I was projecting with them was that could they're defense be better. Could that group kind of come along faster than we had maybe predicted? Richard Sherman looks hurt, by the way, as well.

Richard Sherman was hurt today. O'Kell-Wetherspoon has not played well. It just has not broke the way it needed to for them to be a legitimate team in the NFC. So, I mean, you could probably just write their season off right now. The Niners are done. Yeah, let's go ahead and do that. That's totally fine with me. I mean, whatever you think of C.J. Bethardt, in that conference, there's just no way. So let's move on to the Texans because I feel like this is obviously a more interesting conversation. Deshaun Watson is still on the field. But I also think that there is legitimate reason to start panicking because they just

cannot consistently move the ball in offense. It's a really bad scenario. So first of all, Deshawn Watson has bruised ribs, which is the most obvious outcome. Yeah, exactly. It's shocking. If you've watched the Houston Texans at all this year. Every time you watch him, you say, that's the guy who's going to have bruce ribs pretty soon.

Four fall starts from the Texans. Don't know why that's happening. Touchdown call back on a holding penalty, which again, the most predictable outcome. Jerome Solomon, who does a great job in Houston, had a column about Bill O'Brien

and sort of the bad, terrible play calling. And he mentioned that Bill O'Brien spent the entire press conference talking about how many mistakes were made and he never mentioned the New York Giants who beat them pretty good on Sunday because the entire,

press conference was spent diagnosing his and his team's mistakes. Deshaun Watson is not running the ball on designed carries. They're just happening on scrambles. I don't know why that is. The fact that you put up 385 yards will maybe impress some people, you should not be impressed. They were down 20 to 3 early, and it didn't get much better from that. A lot of those yards were empty yards. And at this point, we know what this team is. They have a bad offensive line. Bill O'Brien is not making the play calls. to put Deshaun Watson in a position to succeed. It is, as far as their expectations go, it's a disaster. Yeah, it seems like it's over.

I mean, even in the AFC right now, with them being O. Five teams in history have made the playoffs from O'N3. Five teams in history, and it just doesn't seem like there's any reason to believe that they're going to transition out of this. Even if you think the AFC is weak, and even if you think that they can maybe sneak in to the wow card at 9 and 7 or 10 and six. There's just nothing I see from this team, especially on that side of the ball, that lends to believing that this is going to get any better anytime soon. No, there's not.

And Bill O'Brien has not done much to encourage us. J.J. Watt had a little bit of a comeback game today. That was nice to see. But against a third string offensive tackle that it was only playing because Eric Flowers is incompetent. Now, you of all people should be excited about a empty JJ Watt comeback game. Honestly, though, he played very well. I got a lot of those. I thought a lot of those plays. I mean, he had that little swim move down, like, bouncing back inside. I mean, it's really impressive tackles for loss against the run, but I'm not, let's not just like pencil it in quite yet. I mean, Wheeler is, I never have. I've kind of slow road that whole, whole comeback story. But the only reason Wheeler was in the game is because Eric Flowers can't

play and they still didn't want to do it. Like, watching Eric Flowers in the first two weeks, they still were apprehensive about benching him. I don't want to change to subject to know. I don't want to change the subject and go on a tangent here is Eric Flower is the player your most surprised is still in the NFL. I wouldn't say that. I wasn't even surprised that he was starting last week because when you're a guy that's picked in the top 10 and you have that sort of guaranteed money and that sort of contract, we know this. You're going to get your chances. Yeah, it took a lot to put in my bench. I just don't. Some sort of like prop would be better, right? Like a barrel. That was the entire thought about putting Wheeler in today.

is because anything would be better. But here's what I'll say, though. If he gets another contract with anyone, even for like pennies, I would be shocked. There's a, when I've reported that story at the beginning of training camp about how all the quarterbacks throw in two seconds,

basically, they've basically shaved a second off of their delivery time. One of the things they said was that the offensive reaction, because of this, has been to just put huge blobs of people on the outside and just hope it takes a long time for the D.Ns to go around them. Literally wait.

People like Eric Flowers are literal time wasters. Oh, yeah. That's their job. And they can't even do that effectively. No. It's really, really bad. I mean,

it's so I liked watching Watt to play like that, but I still don't feel. I want to see it against a somewhat better opponent, I guess is what I'd say. Okay, so what do we do with Watson? How do we save them? Do you think that Bill O'Brien makes it out of the season?

He just won a power struggle. I mean, organizationally, it's a tough spot to be in because he wins a power struggle. He's got Brian Gay, his basically anointed GM, I don't think his GM who basically is partners with him is going to fire him after one year. Do you? No, that's probably true. I mean, I feel like that kind of just... I mean, it's a tough spot for the organization. The change in the dynamic definitely gives him, you know...

Well, you know, the Eagles did that with Chip Kelly. They only gave him one year of personnel control, basically. Yeah. I mean, it's just... I mean, it's not, let me tell you something. I have no idea of, I'm not reporting this. I'm just thinking about it. What happened when Chip Kelly got fired after one year of personal control? They bring the old guy back.

Well, the old guy is basically still, he's on a sabbatical right now. I'm just saying you could see Rick Smith back there, right? It's really bad. I mean, they very much look like a team that missed out on a left tackle and free agency and had no first or second round pick to pick an offensive line. I mean, that is what the Texans look like. It's rough. But DeShawn was not good today either, man.

No. He bounced so many balls. I mean, it's just that offense looks so out of sorts. So speaking about a source. But you can't, I just want to say that you cannot separate his performance from what he's had to go through this year. I mean, just as far as he's going to hit all the time. So if you say, okay, well, he doesn't look good.

Well, maybe that's because he's seeing ghosts out there. That's what I'm worried about with Sequin Berkeley. I tweeted that today. It's a very similar scenario. It's like, man, I'm just concerned that this is going to be. such a bad environment that he develops terrible habits. And it just feels like that's inevitable for Watson. The Texans have no history of ruining a first round pick with bad offensive.

No, no, of course not. No, it has no impact on those guys whatsoever. All right, let's get to more bad quarterback play. We can do this briefly. I just felt like he made sense. We're going to get to the good players at some point. Correct. So I'm starting to get really worried about Chubisky.

Did you see, to just see, I'm sure you saw the play, did you see the screen grab where there were four bears lined up in a sort of Trips formation on the right? Only three Cardinals DBs there. So that's just a math problem. He threw the fade to Robinson. And he just immediate incomplete pass. Yeah, that was the other side.

Yeah, that was, I mean, that's a call play though. I understand that, but how do you not see that and go, hey, look at this? It was just So here's my two problems with what happened We can do this very briefly He also missed Robinson on a touchdown throw On that very same drive

And it's just like I am concerned that So Matt Nagy made a lot of very troubling decisions today In terms of like field goals going for Or whatever And I just feel like His lack of confidence in his quarterback Has started to short circuit his decision right

And again, I also tweeted this, but I felt like the McVeigh stuff last year gave us a window into how good it can be when your head coach is your play caller. When Nakey has to decide to go for it on fourth down and he just watched Chubisky miss Allen Robinson in a hole for a touchdown, that's going to affect your decision making. And it is right now. It's a really, really bad thing. And I just, I don't know. I just hope that with more time he can settle into this offense, but there are guys running open

and he cannot hit people right now. It looks really bad. I mean, it's a double whammy. He makes bad decisions and when he makes and on the decisions he makes, they're inaccurate passes. I don't know what you do with that right now. Yeah.

It is troubling. I'm starting to get extremely concerned. Before we move on, let's take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Miller Lite. Look, here at the Ringer, we have our disagreements. But there shouldn't be any debate about this. Miller Light is the great tasting light beer with only 96 calories and 3.2 grams of carbs. That's fewer calories and half the carbs of Bud Light.

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How worried are you about the pageants right now? Not worried at all. Okay. That's a totally reasonable answer. I was just curious. I wanted to know. Here's the thing. So the most worrying thing is they're just absolutely getting their ass kicked in the trenches, right?

but we saw this in 2014 and Belichick just figured it out. This is not even approaching the Chiefs game in 2014, which is the last time they started two and two. They're one and two right now, but I'm sure they're going to be 500 very soon. The Patriots have lost consecutive games by 10 points for the third time in the Bill Belichick era. That's incredible.

Both of those happened in 2002, by the way, which was their sort of lost year. Yeah. That was 5,700 days ago. This number comes from the NFL. NFL. Now, the interesting thing to me, aside from the fact that the Lions got their first 100-yard rushes since 2013, which seems impossible. What were you doing in 2013? Hanging out in Los Angeles. I don't know. Josh Gordon was really good in 2013.

26. Yeah, he was amazing. He did not play today. He did not play today. But listen, so I didn't, did you see Brady's post-game comments? I did not. He was really kind of calling out guys in ways he doesn't normally. I mean, and this is just Brady's always going to be sort of the ultimate teammates. So this is just calling out in Brady's words. But they asked him about James White, who had the touchdown. And he said, the guys who make plays, those are the ones who should be involved. And then, I mean, so it was just interesting. Yeah. And so like, yeah, he wants more James White. That's, that's what he's saying. He doesn't want maybe the first round pick who isn't playing very well. I don't know what he's getting at. But when he says the guys who should be involved

for the ones who's making plays, that's a pretty direct indictment of at least some players on the field. He's not playing very well right now. He is not. Brady has not looked impressive over these three games. I know it was against Jacksonville,

but this is against a pretty mediocre lion's defense. And the Patriots problem is that they have no one on the outside who can win. And I mean, you watched some of those plays today, and it just seemed like

the lion's corners were in hip pockets, the entire game. And Slay is very good, obviously. But Philip Dorset can do nothing against Darius. I'm sorry, the second Brady quote was about just that. It was, they asked him about one of the interceptions and Brady said something to the effect of, Slay got his eyes on there before Dorset. And this is from a guy who very rarely says things like that. I love what they can do offensively with these weird personnel packages. But it does feel like we're kind of stretching the limitations of what that can be. And when Dossette can't get open,

it doesn't matter how fast he is. So you're really not stretching the defense because Darius Slay can just stay with him step for step in man coverage. So that's what I am assuming they're looking for in Josh Gordon. Is like, can he just take the top off and let us work underneath?

Because that's what Brandon Cooks allowed them to do last year. They threw the ball deep a lot, but Cook also just opens up your offense. And they just do not have that element right now. Hey, I have a question. They have, what's up? Why did they trade Brandon Cooks? This is the Belichick thing.

He tried to trade Gronk. I know. To the Lions. This would have been a gronk revenge game. At a certain point, do you feel like that affects your building? When guys just know they have to be looking over their shoulder every day? Well, I mean, I, there's a couple ways to look at this. Number one is that if you're looking over your shoulder and you're knowing you're sort of,

you could get cut at any second if you're not playing at your peak, or maybe your extension is going to come with another team, I think the answer to all of those doubts is to play really, really hard. So that's one way to look at it. But yeah, I mean, I think just chemistry-wise, I think sometimes it can hurt, but especially if you start to do that stuff in training camp, but you look at, you know, he's made a lot of uncomfortable decisions and 90% of them have worked out.

We were talking about last week talking about Jamie Collins. Oh, wow. Colin's athletic linebacker. When was the last time you heard Jamie Collins name? That's so true. He's like the 17th most talented player. I mean, Chandler Jones is a really good player,

but they won the Super Bowl of the year they dealt him. Yeah. No, I understand we were coming from. I'm just saying that like with Cronk, it just seems different. I mean, Broncos is not Jamie Collins. But the Brandon Cook's thing now is very strange to me.

Yeah. I mean, that was just a nice piece. I mean, I understand why you would deal him. If he's in the last year of his deal, you can get a first round pick for him. I understand the, value proposition. You let M. Mandela go. Julian Edelman is out for the first four games. I don't know if the timing works out where they would know that. But then, you know, you just don't have a lot of

weapons right now. And I know you don't know who you're going to get with that first round pick, but it becomes, you know, one of those first round picks goes to a running back who doesn't look very good. I just feel like they could have allocated. That's a puzzling decision. As I sit there and think about it now, it's like, they could have allocated those resources a lot better. Yeah, it's, so the way they play offense with this kind of running back centric approach to the passing game, it really requires Brady to be so precise. There's no room for error. There aren't guys that are going to bill you out on these deep balls the way the cooks could occasionally last year. So when he's not on, it's more apparent because of their style of play.

Yeah. And I mean, they've got James White, but they just need other guys who can do this. as Brady alluded to. I like Burkhead, but he's been banged up. Burkhead had a neck injury tonight. I don't, I mean, he had a concussion. You know, obviously those are out of his hands, but at this point, you just need running back depth.

I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to sign a guy this week. Yeah, because Hill's out. Hills out for the season. It just seems like, yeah, there's strong ones there. I'm not even sure. You know, Sonny Michelle had a knee procedure, a kind of minor one on August 4th. He's not supposed to be out for the year or anything,

but I don't know if he would be playing, if it was a normal depth chart right now. I truly, when I say I don't know, I'm not suggesting I do know. I don't know. But I'm just saying it's, it's, he does not look very good turnaround for an,

a knee injury like that in the second week of camp. Quick Lions thought before we move on. I was impressed by them tonight just overall, but is Kenny Gallaudet the best wide receiver on the Lions? Oh, Golden Tate still has a lot of talent as is Marvin Jones.

That's, that's why I'm asking. Because I know it's a weird thing to say. he looks amazing. He looks really good. Stafford just has those three guys is nuts. He looks really, really good.

And I can't wait to see, I cannot wait to see the Matt Patricia experience because it's been three completely different games. So true. Yeah, it's been all over the place. He got absolutely destroyed to the damn jets in the first week. He has a weird backdoor cover,

almost one against the 49ers. And now he has this kind of dominating performance. against the damn Patriots. What is going on with Matt Patricia? It's a really good question. I have no idea how to feel about that team. They looked very impressive tonight. Stafford threw the ball well.

He had one throw. I can't remember who it was two. It might have been to Gallaudet, or it might have been, actually, might have been to Marvin Jones. He placed it right over the corner, right in front of the safety. And it wasn't even that like cover two whole throw

that we normally see. It was even a tighter window than that. And it was just perfect. I mean, like, that dude can just really throw the ball. And when he's on, it is fun to watch, especially with those guys catching it. Can we move to another NFC North team with? Let us get to the other NFC North team. The Vikings, so sticking with stock down here.

Very much. I cannot remember. I went back and watched that game just now because I wasn't on where I was sitting. Again, I'm on the road. So it's a little harder to catch everything I wanted to. every single thing that could have gone wrong for the Vikings in that game did. What was amazing? What was that?

I don't even have, I don't even have analysis for this. Let's, let's go through this, okay? So Josh Allen completed, I think, 68% of his passes against the Vikings defense.

Do you know how many of his 27 college starts he completed that many passes in? Zero. Six. Wow. That's more than I thought. 21 games where the defense played him better than the Minnesota Vikings defense. Texas State, which I did not know as a college, like I thought there were like 50 Texas States and they didn't have a football team.

It was one of those deals. Were you aware Texas State has a team? I knew Texas State existed. Okay. I did not. I haven't watched college football in a number of years, maybe five years, probably missed this. This isn't the place Larry Coker was head coach, right?

That's Texas San Antonio. what's important here is that Texas state held them held into a lower completion percentage than the Minnesota Vikings. It was a bizarre game. I mean, just the pass protection for Minnesota was bad. The fumbles were just terrible.

They had so many pounds. Total and total breakdowns. I mean, just didn't know idea what they were doing. It was just one of those games where it was so clear early on that it had gotten away from them. And that's why I'm hesitant to kind of like

throw too much into this. I think every once in a while you're just going to have these moments where it just well shit just goes wrong that's my next point but all right so we we chat about this briefly I I understand where you're coming from here what lay out why you think that this is not just an aberration I don't know why you think that this actually might be I don't know if it's an aberration or if it's a consistent thing or not but here's what I do know is that this team played just abnormally badly in the NFC championship game in a way that just defied everything.

It all fell apart. The same way it did today. And one of the things that made me believe that the Vikings were going to make the Super Bowl this year, which is something I predicted is when you watch the NFL films version of the NFC championship game, you see that the Vikings defenders are kind of looking into and they're literally saying, and they say this when they're miced up, they were like, they are out scheming us. Like, this is scheme.

We have no idea what the hell is going on. And it was all the RPO stuff. I think Doug Peterson told me they ran about 10% more RPO's with Nick Folsp. And it was just a little more than Wends, but they were running a lot of them. And the Vikings had no idea what to do. And I felt like I taught to Rick Spielman. I talked to a lot of those guys down there, up there. And they talked about, you know, getting ready for the RPO.

Mike Zimmer spent the entire summer on it, basically. And I felt like that the RPO and sort of the Eagles machine just sort of broke them a little bit in that game. And now I see this. and I'm wondering, why is it that every once in a while the Vikings just play like they have no idea? Like, they just woke up and forgot there was a game. Why is this happening? I can understand that. I know what you're saying.

I just felt like today was there was so many moments early on that just kind of started to snowball. And that's just what it seemed like. Every once in a while, stuff's going to pile up. And the penalties early, the fumble early, you know, Josh Allen scrambling me. The Vikings defense turned Josh Allen into Todd Gurley. But that was like that, that was the third down conversion. And like when you, that's just a backbreaking play. You start to break your spirit when all that stuff starts happening.

And it just felt like that's what happened today. I am not nearly to the point where I'm worried about the Vikings. I think that their offensive line. Nor am I. I'm just starting to wonder. I totally get that. I just, yeah, today just seemed like one of those things where the ball gets rolling downhill and eventually some of these games get away from you.

That's what today felt like to me. A 15-point favorite as the bills were 16.5 point underdogs. 15-point favorites had won their last 47 games outright. That's incredible. One more thing before we move on. I was impressed by Josh Allen today. Me too. He has his issues clearly.

But when you watch him play, you can definitely understand how people could get tantalized by the talent. I mean, he's big, he's mobile, he can really sling it. I mean, it's, the guy is, I'm sure it's going to be a rocky road here, especially with that offensive infrastructure, but he could have been worse. I mean, it's one of those things. It's like, I watched him and was like, all right, like, he's fine.

Like, it's, he's better than Mitchell Trubisky probably is. I mean, it's just, I did not know what to expect coming into the season. I guess, you know what? I did know what to expect. might have been slightly more pessimistic than I should have been. I would love to be wrong about Josh Allen. I think that it would be fantastic for all of the NFL media, including myself, including everybody here at the ringer to just be incredibly humbled by Josh Allen.

This is the take every single outlet had. There are not a lot of Josh Allen believers outside of a handful of buildings. Clearly, they did not watch the Texas state tape. Yeah, he played well today. And I was like, all right, you know what? I could understand this. And I did not expect that, especially against a very good Vikings team. But I think the Vikings will be back.

I think this is a one week kind of blip. I agree. We'll see, but that's kind of where I'm going to win. I'm still going to win the north. I think that's probably true. All right. One more stock down very quickly. Stock down for anyone who invested their time in Titans Jaguars.

This is the, this is the Blake Bortles problem. First of all, first of all, how dare the NFL put this game on a Sunday? It's an insult to the storied history of Thursday night football. How dare they? I mean, did they know what kind of tradition they were breaking when they put this game on a 1 p.m. Sunday. You know, if you turned it on, you were transported to Thursday night. That's what happened. What an unwatchable football game.

It was like one of those Twilight Zone things. Like, everything went dark. It was all of a sudden November. It was November 13th and it was Thursday night. This should not be the barometer for how we judge football games, but if the NFL does like a highlight package for every game that they put on YouTube, usually they're like 12, 13 minutes a piece or so. Do you know how long the Titans Jags highlight tape was from today?

Tell me. Four minutes and 57 seconds. So Blake Bortles had 155 yards passing. Jesus. Blaine Gabbert had eight, eight yards passing. Marcus Marriota on 18 attempts. had 100 yards passing. Let's see.

Nobody on the Titans or Jaguars broke 60 yards of rushing. Corey Davis led the Titans in receiving with 34 yards. TJ Yeldin led the Jaguars in receiving with 46. This is why I am not

that concerned about New England. This is the biggest reason. These two teams might make the playoffs. Who else is going to beat them in the AFC playoffs? Which teams in the AFC look decent? Kansas City Chiefs. That's the only one you throw out there.

And I feel like by season's end, the Patriots will be able to put up 45 points against the Chiefs defense. Yes. I generally agree with that. But I'm saying for right now, yeah, I mean, you have the 3-0 dolphins. We'll get to them in a little bit. But yeah, I mean, that's the state of play in the AFC.

The AFC is an absolute disaster. Pittsburgh Steelers, we're going to find out a lot about them on Monday night. I mean, there's a real chance. That defense is, I mean, I know they got owned by Mahomes and they did okay against the Browns and give up, what, 16 points. There's a real chance to go out there and give up a lot of points to Fitzmagic. I would not be surprised. All right, let's get to the Chiefs.

Let's start with some stock ups here. Stock up for the pretty prohibitive conference favorites, I would say, coming out of week three. I mean, the Chiefs just move the ball however they want. That offense is incredible to watch. the touchdown that Mahomes threw on the run to the back of the end zone. Oh my God. His arm is literally like a live wire. I mean, that was an unbelievable just rip,

like through decent traffic to the back of the end zone. That guy just can sling it in a way that you just do not see. And the other team that I would throw out there, the Los Angeles Rams are very much for real. Yes, and then the Philadelphia Eagles. Yeah, so why do you want to throw the Eagles in this group? I just wanted to mention Carson Wentz, who returned for the first times in September 1st. So I want to talk about the Chiefs first because that's what you brought up first.

Now, Mahomes now has 13 touchdowns slowed a little bit in the second half. That was the big talking point. And it's almost like I joked about this last week about pro football focus, sort of said that he was stepping up too much in his throws in the pocket. like if these are the criticisms, if he's not putting up 30 points in the second half or criticizing him, that's a really,

35, you're up by three scores. That's a really good sign about Patrick Mahomes and how basically he is flawless. At this point. I mean, I wrote about this last Sunday, but just the degree of athleticism

on that entire offense is so overwhelming. I mean, the fact that Demetrius Harris is their number two tight end, he ran a 4-5-40, like less than a 4-5, before the draft. It really is the most explosive past catching group I have ever seen.

Yep. I mean, and this is, I know that this has been talked about a lot as far as the quarterbacks because John Dorsey drafted Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes, although, you know, Reed was obviously intimately involved in the Mahomes thing. But this is the Green Bay model. This is the explosion.

This is, these are the guys they wanted on that, on that offense, and now you're seeing it. And, you know, I, everybody made fun of the Spark thing. I learned a lot of that from my conversations with those types of guys with people like John Doris, with people like Andy Reid. Very early in my NFL journalism career, I talked at length with both those guys about that. And it is showing now how important athleticism is on the football field. It's funny the Chiefs in the Rams being essentially the best teams in their respective conferences

because I feel like there are such different offenses, but the Rams are almost as efficient and dominant as the chiefs are. You watch the Rams play, and they don't have the type of athletes across the board that Kansas City does. Like, Robert Woods is not a burner. Like, Cooper Cup is not a burner. But they fit so well in that scheme. And that was the thing that jumped out to me about the Rams today.

It's just like, man, they just know how to use those guys so well. Like Woods had a huge day. He's so effective in that role. They use cups so well. So many cool third down designs. You know what? I mean, we talk about Patrick from Holmes a lot. Jared Goff made some throws today that just like took me out of my seat.

He had won to Brandon Cooks that could have been a touchdown that cooks, you know, he got knocked out of his hands. He had one throw on a third down on the right sideline to Woods. That was just gorgeous. And I know that he, you know, system quarterback. whatever you want to say. He's in a great situation, but still is not to be overlooked

that this dude has started like 23 games in his career, I guess 29 now. He's a very young quarterback that was the number one overall pick in the draft. He has a chance to be pretty darn good. Good number tweeted out by J.B. Long, who's the Rams broadcaster. In the McVeigh era, which is 19 games,

they've put up 30 points 12 times, which is as much, as the previous 96 games before Sean McVeigh. That's all you need to know about how bad the offense was in L.A. and St. Louis and how good it is now. They left meat on the bone today, too. Yeah, they missed a field goal. They turned the ball over in the red zone.

I mean, it seemed like you look at the box score, they played a perfect game with how many points they put up. They did not. There were many more touchdowns to be had today for them, which is... They also have Taleb and Peter's bank. up, which is a concern going into a weird Thursday night game against a Vikings team that just got, just played the weirdest game in the NFL. We'll talk about that, obviously, on Thursday.

All right, very briefly, let's get to a couple more stockups before we move on. Stock up, Drew Breeze is a hell of a quarterback, man. I mean, that game was fun. I assume there'd be a lot of points in that game. It was even more explosive than we could have thought. Calvin Ridley had a monster day, obviously. But, you know, this is a situation where we knew the defensive or Russian was coming for New Orleans.

They bench Ken Crawley, which good for Calvin Ridley, he ate because of it. But that team is going to give up so many more points. And Breeze is right there to say, you know what? That's fine. I'll get you 50 if you need it. So this is the team, as you just said, we knew or we thought we were getting, which is the offense has to bail them out in a way that, I mean, it was pretty spectacular. Drew Breeze's spin move.

I mean, he's reinvented himself as Randall Cunningham here. Sure. Sure. It was amazing. Let's go. Alvin Kamara 190 yards from scrimmage. I mean, this is just the offense that is going to have to carry that defense. Ryan and Drew Breeze put up five touchdowns apiece.

Ryan's passer rating was 148. He gave up 374 yards, the Saints defense did. This is going to be the Drew Breeze team. He's going to have to put up incredible statistics and have these incredible performances because this defense is not going to save them like last year. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, this is what we've seen from them for most of the time he's been there. I mean, there's a reason he's set the completions record today.

It's because they've needed to throw the ball around like that. And their game to do it, I just don't know how far that gets you in the NFC considering how strong the teams at the top are. Yeah. last one dolphins Dolphins are 3 and oh we can do this briefly I'm very impressed by them

I think we forgot what I did at least I mean I shouldn't speak for other people I forgot what Adam Gase can do with a competent quarterback Yeah Tana Hill looks like Rantan Hill You know

Oh you mean wait you mean a quarterback Who wasn't retired until training camp And was filming a reality show Yeah and semi retired Even when he was playing Yeah exactly I mean he was the original Vante Davis except he never left.

Yeah, Jay Cutler just stayed in the game. He retired in a week one. And he was just like, I'm going to keep playing. I've been impressed by the defense. I said this in week one. I'm standing by it.

I feel like they tackle extremely well. It just feels like this is a team that looks very put together and very kind of prepared and solid in a way that I just did not expect them to. Yeah. I mean, that's why I took him in the Wins League, which is turning into a... I regret it now.

Well, no, I mean, I'm not going to do anything with it as my other two teams are the Texans and the Patriots. Yeah, that's kind of why I'm glad you were the one that got them. But now I'm regretting it because I'd probably win that. I probably would win that league if I had taken the dolphins. You got the Browns? No, I have the Rams, the Bears, the Bears, and the Cardinals. Oh, the Cardinals. Yeah, you're done.

The Cardinals are screwing me. It's interesting to me, you know, Howard had I think a 20, I saw a 28 rating, quarterback rating coming into it when they throw to him. He had two picks today. He's just really good. And that defense is really good. He's a good player. They had a fourth down goal line stand, which I was really impressed by.

I just think, you know, they, I don't know, do you know they're number one in defensive DVOA? That's not surprising. I've been super impressed by just watching them in general. I mean, they got rid of Sue, and I think we're in Ewing theory territory with Sue. Yeah, it feels that way. Their pass rush leaves a lot to be desired. Andre Branch also got hurt today. But they are extremely just on assignment.

Hayes and Achim Spence were in varying degrees of unavailable. Akeem Spence got kicked out of the game and on a drive, on a drive extending personal foul. Those are always great. Great. Yeah. No, so I mean,

they actually played pretty poorly and still grinded this one out. So I was a little bit impressed by that. That's all you need to say about the Raiders. They also had some weird Vikings-esque just total breakdowns where nobody was covering like Jordy Nelson. Yeah, that was early in the game. It was bizarre.

But, I mean, they definitely locked it down. Yeah, That stuff went away. But yeah, the first couple drives were weird from Oakland. It was like, man, what is going on right now? I do feel like we're just going to just keep getting those types of performances every September with limited practice time

where there's just going to be games where a team just has just forgot how to play football happens all the time. Yeah, absolutely. Again, that goes back to the Vikings points. Well, doesn't happen in November. Correct. Before we move on, let's take one more quick break. Football season is underway, and I'm sure a lot of us already have major. regrets about our season-long fantasy teams. It's like you spend all-off season researching and getting

excited for the season and then comes the pain. This year, I believed in too many New England Patriots. I went too all in on that team. They're not playing as well. It's not good, folks. That's why I'm excited to be playing on Fandul all season. At Fandul, you get the excitement of researching and building your team each week. Every week is a new season, so regardless of the outcome, you get to do it all over again. Fan duel has never been more fun or easy. It's the place to play if you're not a fantasy expert. Fan duel has something for everyone and there are more ways to win than ever before. Like the Gridiron Pickham contest each week. It's a free contest and all you need to do is pick winners, no spreads and $10,000 is split between the top pickers. I know I cannot stop going

all in on Patrick Mahomes. He is still a bargain even if his price rises every week. New users get a $20 bonus when they make their first deposit on Fandul. Come play with me at Fandul.com slash the ringer. That's Fandul.com slash the ringer. All right. Let's get to the challenge flags for this week. We're only going to do a couple of these. Let's start with just the lack of understanding of logic,

any explanation for what the hell is a personal file in the NFL right now? It doesn't exist. I mean, it's unbelievable. Clay Matthews has three this year. What do you do with your Clay Matthews? Here's the theory I'm working with. So they said, so that Clay Matthews has that BS call last week.

And they said, well, we showed that in the video because it was such a correct call, that we're officiating video. Is, was the officiating video just telling them to just call more penalties on Clay Matthews? Was that it? The penalty was correct because anything Clay Matthews does is a penalty? I understand that by the letter of the law, what Clay Matthews did today is roughing the passer

because he landed on him. That shouldn't be the letter of the law. Like, how is that a rule that if you land on the quarterback just by virtue of your momentum, it's roughing the passer? I get why you shouldn't be able to lift the quarterback up and drive him into the ground. Like, that is a reasonable rule. That should be roughing the passer. what is Clay Matthews physically supposed to do in that moment in order to not land on the quarterback and still sack him?

It's physically impossible. Here's the problem. With the catch rule, the way to avoid the catch rule is to catch the ball standing up, right? Just in middle of the field, there's just ways you can do it where you take the rule out of the game. My concern with this is there is literally, literally,

no way to sack the quarterback without incurring something that in some form or fashion looks like a penalty. Now, literally the only thing you could do is do the Michael Strayhan thing where Brett Farb just falls down because he likes you.

The problem was he hit him straight on. When you hit a quarterback straight on, what are you supposed to do? Yeah, are you supposed to change your angle? Fall off? Yes, but why would you? And then if you hit him too low, I mean, it's just you're going to,

If you change the angle, you'll probably get a penalty somehow. I can understand, you know, the one last week against Minnesota, it was after the throw. You know, you could probably make a bad argument that it was unnecessary just because it was after the ball had been released. This was a sack. It was a sack where he did not hit the quarterback with his helmet and he did not drive him into the ground. If this is going to be a penalty, then I feel like we're in serious trouble. This is something that I've thought about a lot since the rule was enacted

and I think about it every Sunday now. Everyone says you're ruining the game. The NFL is softening the game, et cetera, et cetera. This is what the NFL wants. The NFL wants Patrick Mahomes with 13 touchdown passes. They want the most touchdowns

of any two weeks in history league-wide coming into this week. This is what they want. This is what helps television ratings. you know, kind of peak NFL ratings started in 2011, 2012, 2013. I think the AFC championship game in 2014 got like 60 million viewers because it was Brady and Manning. And the thing that came along with those things is just a massive increase in passing numbers. Started around 2010, 2011.

I think for six straight years, there were record-setting passing yardage numbers, record-setting completion percentage numbers. Those just started to spike. the NFL realizes that passing and good passing is good for business. And if you can't get good passing everywhere, especially with a lot of these guys aging out, guys like, you know, the upper ages, you're not going to have Brady forever, you're not going have Rathasburger forever, you're not going to have Drew Brees forever. What do you do? You make it so these guys don't get hurt.

They're healthy and they can stand back in the pocket and make throws. This is not a flaw. It's the system the NFL wants. Correct. But it's a flaw in the watchability of the product from. fairness standpoint. And I feel like when you're talking about the other rules, right? You know, so many other rules like, well, you know, who was it?

We were talking about this. Maybe it was Troy Palomalu or Ed Reed talking about it. It was Troy Palomalo. He said that you're going to have to play flag football. This was in 2008. Flight football. And this is a decade ago when like the Steelers and the Ravens were just like knocking each other out in every single play, which is hilarious.

But I mean, it's not hilarious. But it's like the irony. They're so profound. Those rules you can somewhat work. around. And what you said about it being unavoidable is the key thing here. If you're a safety, you can make sure you try to hit a guy in his midsection and not go helmet to helmet, and you can work your game around that. If you're a defensive lineman or a pass rusher, there is no way to work your game around what happened to Clay Matthews today. And that's the part

of it that frustrates me. If you're a fan of a team, anytime the pass rushers in the backfield need to hold your breath. That's just the reality and it's not going to change. They're not This works for the Bears because Bryce Callahan is the one getting all the sacks. So when it's a corner, it doesn't look as violent. So they're not getting flagged. No, I absolutely think that's real. I mean, we talked about D'Andre Hopkins and, you know, even Grunk, two guys who just, the defensive pass interference rules just don't apply to him,

them. And it's kind of the opposite for Clay Matthews. I just think there's some guys who don't look menacing and they're not going to get called. You know, I mean, I just, that's just the way it is. Yeah. it's a really bad thing. I mean, that one today, usually I feel like there's a lot of noise around this,

and I don't pay a ton of attention to it. It's like, yeah, that's the rule. That's like how the game has changed. But that one with Matthews today, I was just like, what do we do? Mike McCarthy is very, very mad. Oh, he was pissed. And I understand that.

I mean, that's a key moment. You're trying to come back. That's a tough one. All right, one more here. Let's throw a challenge flag on what is going on with the Dallas Cowboys office. and the defense they were going against today, which included a player who had two interceptions

and refused to practice for the Seahawks this week. You know, there was a guy, he's played for Tottenham Hotspur, named Ledley King, who didn't have, like, cartilage in his knees, and he would just not practice. He just didn't practice because he knew that he had to save himself for the game,

so he went, like, years without practicing. We were watching a press conference once, and the manager, Harry Rednapp was, like, like, literally he is disproving all of our theories about how important practice is because he just doesn't do it and he's just really good every time he lines up. And right now we're learning the value of practice from Earl Thomas. And it's not about his knees. It's about just Earl Thomas not wanting to practice. Now the report... He said today that if he had a headache, he wouldn't practice. The report, which is amazing.

The report from Jay Glazer is that he's holding in, which is the opposite of a holdout. It's where he's in the building. It's where he's in the building and he just plops down in the practice and decides he doesn't want to practice anymore, which is aspirational, I would say. I don't know. It's incredible. I'm so proud of him. And so, no, I... That's what I'm going to do on Thursday's podcast.

I'm just going to sit here silently for 45 minutes. I do think that there's maybe better ways to handle this, but that's, I'm not Earl Thomas, and not in that situation, but... But what are the better ways? Because, like, we're seeing what's going on with Levian Bell right now. Like, is there... Is this not the best way? because he's getting paid.

What are they going to do? Okay, here's my question. So he didn't show up. He didn't show up on Thursday and Friday, right? So is he just not going to practice anymore? Because I'd rather prefer he doesn't practice and just does things off to the side and then plays, then he starts practice and then plops down. Because at least you can plan for it.

I guess I just feel like if you're trying to exert power as an NFL player, I feel like this might be the best way to do it. Because if you're holding it out, your leverage is. is just so limited because you're not going to get your checks. And now he is, but he's still able to express his displeasure. I just, I understand they're going to find him. I think it's going to be, reportedly it's very happy for contract depraemental of the team, whatever. But it just feels like this maybe isn't the worst way to go about it, even if there are better ways.

So, like, this to me is a better approach than what Levi-on-Bel is doing. I tend to agree. Actually, if Levyon-Bell showed up and did their Earl Thomas plan, which is I'm not practicing. I'm just playing. Maybe he just does conditioner during the week. I wonder if the stewards would go for that. Listen, all the power of Earl Thomas, if this works out for him, I'm happy for him. I'm very, very pro

Earl Thomas. I was just thinking out loud that it just seems a little bit rushed. It all just seems very rushed to me as far as just the plan he's enacting. But, hey, it worked out. Now, here's the thing we need to mention, is that we're not throwing a challenge flag at Earl Thomas

or the Seahawks. We're throwing a challenge flag at the team who, played Earl Thomas and the Seahawks. And despite the fact that Earl Thomas is, the situation is one of the craziest in the NFL right now. The team they played looks like absolute dog shit. It's a Dallas Cowboys. They cannot move the ball.

I mean, their offense has absolutely no pop to it whatsoever. I mean, there are some things you're looking at kind of the landscape of the league coming to the season. You look at a depth chart, everything else. And you're like,

eh, this team really lacks in this area. And then you're just wrong. Coming into the year, the Cowboys had no past catching talent whatsoever. And it shows up in every single moment of every single game. So, Dak Prescott, last five games, what do you think his highest passing yardage number is? Last five games.

265. 181. In the last five games? Last five games is high. 181 yards. That's brutal. it's not good. Now, what do you do?

I thought that team would be really bad. I'm not getting off that whatsoever. They're one and two. They beat a bad Giants team. I mean, the Cowboys are not good. It is going to be a long season. That defense is not good. He is not broken 170 yards this year.

Their passing game is horrendous. And when they cannot just run the ball mindlessly because their offensive line is not what it used to be with, you know, looney in place of Frederick or everything else, it starts to all fall apart. I mean, it was a house of cards. I saw that coming into the year. As soon as Frederick got hurt,

I just said, I do not trust what they're going to be offensively. And every single thing I've seen has proven me right. Jack Prescott, he's busy throwing for 160 or 170 yards the last three weeks. 2016, he's behind the best offensive line in football and at the time of the best running back. He's got weapons to throw it to everywhere. And he looks like a franchise player that year. They end Tony Romo's career essentially. for that reason.

Looking at this right now. A very good scheme and a very, a scheme that fit the things he did well. Everything kind of coalesced in the right way. Okay.

So here's my question. After this year, you do what with Dakrescott contractually? So he has one more year left on his deal after this one? Yeah,

but he won't have a fifth year option because he wasn't a first round pair. Sure. So, but he's under contract through 2019. That's correct.

The theory was that, out the year. You let him play it out? Yeah, right? I mean, because at the very least, so what's the worst case scenario? Let's say he is lights out next season for whatever reason, you know, the line comes back, they find a pass catcher, maybe they change coaches, whatever. Let's say he just is one of those guys that you feel was worth $20 million a year. Then you just franchise him. Right. And you figure it out later. The fear then, is that he's able to sort of Kirk cousins it and force this way to free agency because he's so close.

I'm just asking question. I'm just saying if he lights it up, he may not. He may never look like an elite player again. I have no, I have no idea what the hell is going on in Dallas. This is why we're throwing a challenge flag. No idea. If this continues, if this is the version of their offense we're going to see through the entire season, I don't know

how you can get him an extension. Well, I mean, if he doesn't throw for 200 yards the rest of the season, they're going to need a new quarterback. Yes. So I feel like you just Let him play out the string. And again, let's say they have a great year. Things come back around. Then you franchise him. But I just feel like you need to kind of be patient.

I want to put that in context. I mean, obviously, he's going to throw for 200 yards at some point. I still think Dak Prescott can be a good quarterback. I'm not saying the Cowboys are going to go out and get another guy or anything like that. I'm just saying I'm ready to believe anything with the Dak Prescott. The rest of his tenure is so up in the air. I'm ready for anything. I totally agree.

before we get out of here, very quickly, let's predict the headlines for tomorrow. Shoot yours out real quick. Okay, so I did Bill O'Brien panic last week, and I regret it because now is Bill O'Brien panic. I was a week early on that, and I might be a week early on. Oh, we'll get there.

I might be a week early on this, but I think at 0 and 3, we're going to start to hear some Gruden panic. Now there was the report that he hired the former NFL scout who was on Twitter for a couple years saying Juan Miller was going to be a bust. I mean. That entire story was amazing.

I mean, it just seems like it's absurdist comedy at this point. Yeah. He's basically running a second scouting department, which is nice. It's reading that story, just all the stuff that came out, I mean, just like the fact that he has on draft board, the fact that like he's trying to be the GM when in reality he hasn't been a head coach in 10 years. It's just, again, we talked about this many times. It's even worse than I could have imagined. Sure. I mean, they hit, they score a couple quick touchdowns today, and then they just completely

hit the wall and cannot move the ball for the final three quarters of the game. God, it's a disaster. There's no way around it. It sure is. All right, what's yours? I'm, I think O'Brien, like, I think some noise is going to start now. I mean, when you're looking at that team, I mean, we talk about this. I mean, obviously the fact that he won the power struggle a little bit, the fact that the

kind of dynamics there have changed, that's in his favor. but when you're an offensive-minded head coach and your defense is playing well enough to win you games but you cannot move the ball, eventually that's going to come back on you. And I get that it wasn't up to him to go get some offensive linemen this offseason. They didn't have any resources to do so, but the regression from that offense is just hard to watch.

They didn't have a good offensive line last year, and they still managed to be explosive with Watson. And for them to look just this defanged, you know, for the first three games. I just feel like at a certain point, I need to see more, or the noise is going to get louder and louder. You're no complaints here, buddy. That's a, it's going to happen. This week, it's going to start. All right. That's all we got for today. We will be back on Thursday, big Thursday night game. We have a lot to talk about, obviously. As always, guys, thank you so much for listening to the

Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. Today's show was brought to you by Fandul. Football season is underway and that's why I'm excited to be playing on Fandul. FanDuel has never been more fun or easy. It's the place to play if you're not a fantasy expert. Fandul has something for everyone and there are more ways to win than ever before. Like their gridiron pickum contest every week. New users get a $20 bonus when they make their first deposit on Fandul. Come play with me at Fandul.com slash the ringer. That's Fandul.com slash the ringer.