The Ringer NFL Show - Stats That Matter After the First Month of the NFL Season

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

The Ringer’s own Austin Gayle joins Sheil to analyze and discuss some very telling statistics that paint a picture of where some teams are after four weeks of NFL action: (00:00) Intro/cold open(1:54) Joe Flacco(8:44) Ashton Jeanty(16:45) Aaron Rodgers(21:41) Saquon Barkley(27:05) The Hurry Up: Sean McVay’s offensive scheme 15% off $15+ on NFL Gamedays with CODE: GAMEDAY at https://littlecaesars.onelink.me/vc9i/n15m71zn The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Sheil KapadiaGuest: Austin GayleProducer: Chris SuttonSocial: Kiera Givens and Brian WatersProduction Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Shield Capadia. Today we are talking about the numbers that explain the NFL after one month. And we've got my friend from the Ringer, Austin, Gale, here, Austin. We've had many great conversations off Mike in the past. I don't think any of them have been limited to like around 30 minutes. So I am a little concerned for you.

What do you think? Are you up for the challenge today? Definitely. I talk fast. I think we can move through things pretty quickly. I'll try to keep it short. That's right. Austin, you know, don't be listening.

Listen to this one on two-time speed. If you're one of those ringer NFL listeners out of here, just normal speed, relax, take it all in because Austin has some awesome nuggets that we're going to go over in this episode. All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we talk about the numbers that explain the NFL so far this season. This is the ringer NFL presented by Fanduel. And if you're betting on the NFL, fan duels the place to do it. They've got everything.

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All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. So, Austin, biggest news item in the NFL today, the Cleveland Browns make a quarterback change, benching Joe Flacco, going to the rookie Dylan Gabriel, our second quarterback benching of this season. What is the number? what is the analytical case for this move from the Browns perspective. What do you think? What's funny is I don't know necessarily if you need an analytical case to bench Joe Flacco,

just given how he's played. He's got eight turnovers this year. That's not a big number. But I was writing about Deshawn Watson or tweeting about Deshawn Watson a lot last year saying, oh my gosh, it's the worst start for Brown's quarterback and franchise history by EPA by dropback by success rate. Joe Flacco has been worse. He's averaging negative 0.32 EPA per dropback.

Worst of any Brown's quarterback in weeks one through four this millennium, yes, worse than Deshawn Watson's disaster class last year. I think that the other interesting wrinkle here is how bad he's been just on both sides when he's pressured and when he's not pressured, but when not pressured this year. And everyone's talking about Brown's offensive line, they're battling injuries, both tackles are hurt. When not pressured this year, he has a 40% dropback success rate. That's lowest in the league by over 4%.

He has been unplayable, absolutely unplayable. I'm not surprised that they went to Dylan Gabriel this week. Yeah, you know, you look at it and certainly early in the season, it felt like he had some bad luck. Some of those interceptions, you're like, those aren't on on him. Come on, is this a great supporting cast? And I do think we have to consider what's this season even about for the Browns. You know, they took a bunch of dart throws at quarterback.

Joe Flacko, he's out. Can he pick it out? You know, now Dylan Gabriel and Chodor Sanders, presumably the rest of the way. And I think you're one in three. you have a bottom three offense with Flacco. Now you move on to the, hey, let's do some information gathering on Dylan Gabriel. I'm sure in their heads they thought, hey, we got a good defense. Maybe we sneak out a win or two early in the season.

And if you're 500, you know, maybe you're not making the move, even if you just win one more game. But now they have to look ahead because this is a team. Remember, it's not just about this season. They've got Jacksonville's first round pick next year. So they've got their own. They've got Jacksonville's and they need a quarterback. So it's like, all right, get some information on Gabriel, see what he looks like in this offense, figure out what's your offseason plan going to be?

And I think that's why they made this move. Now, what are your expectations? Because you made the point, they sucked with Watson. You know, they sucked with their other quarterbacks last year. They sucked with Flacco this year. The other variables haven't changed that much else. And I mean, the offensive line is worse. But it's like Kevin Stefanski, the wide receivers at some point, it's just like, is this just a bad

situation for a quarterback? or could a average quarterback lift up this group a little bit? It's obviously a bad situation. Jack Conklin, the right tackle, he's missed their last three games. You don't know how long he's going to be out. DeWan Jones, their left tackle, he's out for the season. They just traded for a Texan's backup tackle. We know how bad that Texan's offensive line has been all year.

Imagine go-getting a backup tackle. That's not a great situation. It's not a great situation, but I think where the problems have been with Flacco, just looking at more of these numbers, he's bottom three in EPA per dropback when pressured. He's only completed 39% of his passes when pressure this year. When you move him off the spot, so looking at out of pocket, he is the lowest ranked quarterback in EPA for dropback when moving out of pocket as well.

Like, he has really struggled when the pressure's on. And I think the Cleveland Browns know when trading for Cam Robinson that this is not going to be an offense where you can have a statue back there at quarterback. Dylan Gabriel, he's very short, but also spry. I was looking back through Tom McShay's analysis of him. He kind of compared him to a Tua-Light in terms of him getting out the ball quickly, being accurate with the football. I was talking to my buddy,

Mike Grinner, a draft analyst at CBS Sports. He was trying to convince me he should have gone in the third round. He thinks he's a starter. So I do think that they are confident in Dylan Gabriel just being able to execute the offense quickly and handle pressure better. And I want to go back to something you said. This isn't a good defense.

It's a great defense. This Brown's defense is reminiscent of what they were in 2023. This isn't what the defense was last year. Miles Garrett, obviously, a force multiplier. Jim Schwartz being there. He continues to be well. They are averaging, opponents are averaging. 19.4 yards per drive against the Brown's defense.

That's the best in the lead by almost five yards. They win second in defensive success rate. This is one of the best defenses in the lead. I think that's part of the reason why they're making this decision. I think some of it is tackles are banged up. They're going to be more pressure. They need someone who can handle that and get the ball out quickly. And I think the other part of this, they just don't want to waste such a good defense right now.

Yeah. And in that division with the way things are going for the other teams, you can kind of talk yourself into, hey, if we can get average quarterback play, can we at least be in the mix here in December. So we'll see what that looks like. I mean, I've done the work on just like what an average rookie season looks like. An average rookie typically performs like the 25th or 26th best starter in the NFL. Now, obviously, there's variance there.

And he was good in the preseason. I don't want to put too much stock in the preseason. But at the very least, and I went to some Eagles, Brown's joint practices. It was like he knows what he's doing. Like he is grasping the offense. He doesn't look lost out there. Can he just be kind of a point guard, get rid of the football, be a little bit better under pressure. When you were mentioning Flackawas, I was thinking, he must think like,

man, when I came into the league, like, I was what a quarterback was supposed to look like. And now, when my career's ending, nobody plays like me. You're like, you can't, you almost can't play in the league if you have his lack of athleticism right now. What a, you know, he's kind of spanned the different eras here. No, absolutely. I think some of those out of pocket stuff, right? I feel like quarterbacks now need to be able to handle pressure better, but also like just need to be able to create plays with their feet, and Joe Flacco isn't that. But Joe Flacco used to be, you know, this big arm quarterback, accurate down the football field. He's one of the least accurate quarterbacks in the league throwing 10 plus yards down field. He's bottom five in success rate,

throwing 20 plus yards down field. He's four of 19 with three picks and no touchdowns. He is not, you know, Dylan Gabriel is not a great downfall thrower. He's not this like rocket arm quarterback. But Joe Flacco is not adding that for this offense. And you can say some of that is the supporting cast. But I don't know. I kind of like this skill group. I think they've gotten good play out of Quinchan Junkins. I think he's averaging 4.8 yards per carry. They're two tight ends and Injoku and the rookie Harold fan and seems solid. Jerry Judy is still something like there are pieces here. Your buddy, Ben Solac, I saw him tweet out after the news day. He thinks they could go 500 rest of the season with Dylan Gabriel. I think that's a testament to how good

this defense is, how good some of these skill players are. It's not as simple as like, oh my gosh, like this is an untenable situation. Any quarterback playing here is going to struggle. I really do think they're going to get better play out of Dylan Gabriel offensively. And I think it's going to use that defense a lot more. All right. Settle down. Solac 500 up. I'll send him the text after we're done recording here. I don't know about that. Settled down. All right, what's the next one?

So we got to the Browns. What is the next number that you feel like is a good reflection or an interesting number from the first month of the season? I feel like it doesn't really explain the season, as much as it explains kind of my heartbreak as a longtime Raiders fan, an Oakland Raiders fan that has followed the team to Las Vegas. I've said that if they changed the jerseys or the name, I might abandon ship. But I have to stick with them even going to Las Vegas.

But this is Ash John Gentie, who had a big game. against Chicago, best game of his career, obviously, over 170 yards rushing. He has been contacted at or behind the line of scrimmage on 66% of his runs, highest rate in the league. He's second to last in yards before first contact per attempt. Yet he's fourth in the league in yards after contact per attempt, second in total force miss tackles, and tied for second and runs of 10 plus yards. What he's doing, and you want to talk about untenable situations, like what he's doing behind this Raiders' offensive line that we can get to later and how Pete shook it up and all this stuff.

Like what he's doing behind this offensive line with a passing game that has struggled since week one after playing the Patriots. Gino Smith looks blind out there. He's got seven picks most on the year. Oh my God. I, you know, Danny Hyfitz of the Ringer Fantasy Football Show has this running joke, how he'd rather have Cam Scadaboo over Ashon-Gentie. I think he's absolutely asinine and crazy.

Genti looks the part of the kind of player that you draft in the top five, top ten. He's second behind Bejohn Robinson in force miss tackles this year. He's just playing in an all-time bad situation that I don't think you really get the value of Gentie until he's playing. behind a better offensive line. But I think it's just insane that the Raiders, after last year, having one of the worst rushing offenses of this millennium

didn't really change anything along the offensive line and now are running into the same issues with Ashton Genty. I will buy everyone's Ashton Genty stock. I mean, I thought last week, like it's the old, it's like the alien test. Last week, I thought if you were watching that Raiders Bears game

and you're just like, who are the bet? You'd be like, Max Crossby. He definitely looked like one of the best. But offensively, like Genty looked better than everyone else on the field. When he just needs a little. Like he doesn't need a leap blocking. It was so clear that when he gets a little bit of room or there's an opportunity to get skinny in the hole

and make a guy miss or break a tackle, he was doing that over and over and over again. He was doing it as a receiver. He was doing it as a rusher. I thought he looked awesome last week. And it took a couple games to your point. It's not his fault. And, you know, I was even filtering more for running backs

who have had at least 50 carries, Austin. And I looked at the same numbers. you did. Now, I was looking at yards before contact. Running backs with at least 50 carries, if you look at the last 10 years, this is the lowest yards before contact of any back in the last 10 years. That's 660 running back. That's how bad it is. I mean, that's bad. 660 out of 660. It's almost to the point where it cannot stay this bad. Like, it's never stayed this bad for a running back. So yeah, I'm bullish on him. He's doing all this stuff. You feel like it's always hard to control, you know, a running back situation. It's what do they do?

What's the situation? The stuff he can control, I feel like it's really good. But you're right about the offensive line. Now, you're a Raiders fan. So I'm sure you've been on like a Reddit or whatever. What is going on with Pete Carroll's son has become a target there? And it's like they're switching guys. Give me the gossip on the Raiders offensive line because we have not gone over this on the Ringer NFL show.

I just want to say the last time Pete Carroll and his son, the offensive line coach, worked together. It was with those like early teens, Seattle C. Hawks offensive lines, those ones that were like bottom in the league by pretty much every metric, highest pressure rate allowed by any metric. That's the other thing, too. It's not just in the run game. Like, Gino Smith is under pressure, I think, at the second highest rate of any quarterback in the league. And you said maybe it gets better. Colt Miller, their left tackle, their best offensive lineman by a country mile is now on the inter-reserve with a high ankle sprain. It's going to get

worse. They brought in Stone Forsyth, who's not been with team, brought in in the offseason, he's going to be that swing tackle at left tackle. This is going to get worse. It's going to get ugly behind this offensive line. I think the other piece that everyone's talking about now is last year Jordan Meredith, who's now the center, was playing left guard. Dylan Parham was playing right guard, and Jackson Powers-Johnson, the rookie from last year and now second year player out of Oregon,

was playing center. They completely flipped it. Dylan Parham's now playing left guard. Jordan Meredith's playing center, and Jackson Powers Johnson is in a competition with veteran Alex Caput to play at right guard. And then they have DJ Glaze, the right tackle, who God bless his heart, but not the athlete you need to be getting scoop blocks on the backside. I think there are like a handful of plays that really like

stand out to me on why Genty is very good, but why this offensive line is also struggling. On third and fourth and one, or third and fourth and two, they are 41% rushing success rates, the worst in the league. And there's a play against the Bears where Jordan Meredith pulls and blocks nobody, and Andrew Billings comes right up the middle and blows them up and then soul forces the fumble. There's another one, a toss play where Ashgeny ends up gaining 13 yards. But Bowers misses the downblock. He's playing her.

They don't have Michael Mayer. He was out this game with concussion. Like, they're tight, Ian Thomas, their veteran tight end, missed a block. Look like he was past walking on one of these run plays. Like, they look poorly coach, out talented by, in every single week. And I don't, again, like, yes, does it get better? Maybe this screams to me like the situation they had with Josh Jacobs. Like, oh, man, this guy looks good.

Ooh, not in a good situation. And immediately he goes to another team and he's better. People forget, Ashton Genty wrote a letter to the NFL saying he could be like Sequin Barclay on the Eagles. Buddy, that's not happening on the Raiders. Okay? The Raiders' offensive line is not the Eagles. offensive line. I think that's exactly right. Ultimately, Ashton Genty is not going to be worth the value of that top five pick until he's actually

running behind even just an average offensive line, let alone something like what the Philadelphia Eagles have had of the last few years. Yeah, I, I'm a little more, let's, it can get to like below average, but not the worst of the last 10 years. I'm, I, there were last week, I'm telling you, if you watch Ashton Jenties carries last week, you're like, he doesn't need a lot. This guy is good. He can do it. But yeah, it's tough there. I mean, you got to, Chip Kelly is probably happy that Pete Carroll's son is the O-line coach because he's escaped all the heat. Gino Smith is playing the worst football of his career.

The offensive line stinks. Brock Bowers, is he healthy? Is he not healthy? He's not. You go back and watch the tape. He is trying to block. They're asking him to block a lot. They want to run a lot of 12.

They want to do with Michael Mayer, but he's missed some games now. There was multiple games in that Washington game two weeks ago where he's trying to block. It's not working out. And he's like limping back to the huddle. It's like, cheese. We do not need to be playing a banged up Brock Bowers in this. situation needed like especially if gino smith is just throwing directly to defensive backs now and you don't need them to block also i would say like all right yeah i know you can't totally you know you don't you don't

make a predictable with what you're going to do but yeah you need a pass catcher if he if that part of his game is still available to you then don't get him out there blocking some with you i mean that game last week i felt like they outplayed the bears but then you're like well four turnovers and a blocked field goal you just you almost can never win an NFL game so there's six and a half point dogs in indianapolis this week We'll see what that looks like. All right, let's take a break. We come back, a couple more numbers to get to. The Ringer NFL show is brought to you by Fandul,

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Gambling problem? Call 1-800 gambler or visit RG-Help.com. Call 1-888-88-88-78777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right. Back on the Ringer NFL show. what's your next one, Austin? What do we got? This is, I think, my favorite, as much as I love the GenCy stuff and the offensive line being terrible. Aaron Rogers and this Pittsburgh Steelers' offense, I don't think we've seen

anything like it. 71% of Aaron Rogers' yards have come after. And this, 73% in just the game in Dublin, but 71% on the season have come after the catch. Highest of any player this year by over 13% and highest of any quarterback in weeks 1 through 4 this millennium. He's got the fastest this time to throw in the league, fastest of his career. He's got the lowest average depth of target in the league by almost a full yard. They're using D.K. Metcalf in a completely new way. Like, they are playing, I think, a style of offense at Rogers at 41 years old, surprisingly older than Joe Flacco, needs to play because he doesn't want to get hit,

can't move with his feet anymore, like, just can't extend plays. Like, he needs to get the ball out fast. That when they go against better teams, because I think their schedule to start the season has been, like, very underratedly easy, is they go against better teams, like even that Brown's defense that they still have to play twice. I know the Ravens defense isn't what it was. But as they go, they got the chargers later on the schedule. I think we're going to see like really, you know, I was hearing,

I think you're going to see how much the Steelers' offense is fake when you start to go against more playable defenses. Because they're three and one to start the season. It's probably exceeding people's expectations. I know some people thought the streak was maybe going to end for Mike Tomlin and the winning record. But like, I don't know if this style of those people. If you listen to the show, I'm just, I don't know if Austin was sub-tweeting me or what. Listen, there are many old takes exposed to me. the Pittsburgh Steelers out there.

It's kind of an annual tradition. I predict something bad's going to happen to them and it doesn't happen. But I am with you. It's like, is this sustainable? And just the depth of target, you mentioned. So Rogers is under five yards, his average pass. Do you know how many quarterbacks in the last 15 years have gone through a season with the average depth of target under five yards?

I'm going to say two? The answer is zero. Okay. This hasn't happened. So no, it's not sustainable. The closest we got was Alex. Smith in 2020, that was 5.1. Only four quarterbacks in the last 15 years have been under six yards. And he's under five yards. So no, I didn't. And the thing is like, so if you want to play that way,

the yards after the catch have to be unbelievable, which D.K. Metcalf, I think we both agree. It's like, oh, he had this in his game. That's pretty cool to see. And like all four continuing to use that. But you just, the run game's got to be good. You can't turn the football over. and Rogers, surprisingly, is 25th and turnover-worthy play percentage. You look at a lot of the metrics, they're like a mediocre offense, and I feel like that's what a lot of things have gone right for them. To your point, the schedule. I don't think the defense has been great.

So they're three-and-one. The rest of the division has a lot of issues, so they definitely have a chance. But I'm with you. I'm still kind of selling that what we're seeing with the Steelers team and specifically the Steelers' offense, that it's real. I think that the defense has been worse than the number suggests, too, because you look at where they rank in like success rate EPA per play and and even like one of my favorite metrics is just like opponent yards allowed per drive. You know, they rank bottom three.

And a lot of those metrics where they've had success is forcing turnover. So I think three of them have come off of Cameron Hayward tip passes. And like three of them also came inside like the 20 yard line against the paths. Like you're, I think this, it's been a volatile weird start of the season. I think Aaron Rogers lost a fumble against the Vikings, but that play was nullified by penalty. He lost another fumble that bounced right into Broderick Jones hands and they still ended up in the first. down. You go back to week one. Remember that pass that hit D.K. McCaff and then another player

and then landed in D.K. McHaff's hands? They've had a crazy, lucky start to the season. I don't ultimately think a lot of this stuff is sustainable. D.K. Metcalf, I mentioned how they're using it. I think maybe it makes sense. It's the lowest A dot by a lot, like almost a cut in half what he's had in his career.

And getting him on slants, getting him on screens. The other average depth of target number I like for this that is insane to me, they're throwing, on average, 4.7 yards short of the sticks, which is 1.5 yards shorter than any other quarterback in the league. You look at some of these long third downs. The amount of times that Arthur Smith is trusting Rogers to actually deliver a ball beyond the six is very minimal. Like third and 11, third and eight plus, this guy's throwing screens, slants, stuff over to the middle. They're getting

a lot out of Jill and Warren, you know, making plays with the ball on his hands. Watching back to this tape is honestly disgusting. And I think that the Steelers have had some very lucky turnovers on defense. And the style of offense that they're playing, again, against the defenses that they've had, they've been able to have success. I think when they go against better competition, I think someone mentioned, I think I'm going to have been on the Bill Simmons podcast

with the ringer gambling show, they feel like to me, like a team that's going to make the playoffs and then get blown out in the wildcard round. That feels like the trajectory for this Pittsburgh Steelers team. Which, you know, that's better than what I even anticipated. I didn't have him as a playoff team. Topla looks happy, though.

He loves this little, you know, throw it three yards and just, you know, we'll get these turnovers. He seems very happy on the sidelines. All right, Austin, give me one more. What's your last one here? So I know you guys talked about this on Philly Special, which I love. Love listen to Philly Special. Shout out to my guy, Cliff.

Cliff's one of my favorite producers at the run. Yeah. Every time that guy's on Mike, every time I get to see him outside. He's the man. He's the man. He's the man. But I think it just has to be mentioned, and this is a simple one here. Sequin Barclay is averaging 3.1 yards per carry.

It's tied for second lowest among backs with least 40 plus carries this year. And I think more important than that, and this is why it feels so crazy compared to last year. His longest rush is 16 yards. By week four of last year, he had four. four runs over 20 yards, including two, where he went over 50 yards without even being touched. I think some of this, and you guys talked about this on Philly Special, I think some of this is offensive line injuries, is Landon Dickerson playing hurt, Tyler Steen has been in and out, Lane Johnson's been in and out.

I think the other part of it too, and I pulled the stats from PFF, last year, they were running outside zone. I think 12% of the time in weeks 1 through 4, they're running a lot more inside zone. This year, 40% of runs have been outside zone. And when you look at and you watch back the tape, like it just has not been there. I think it's not been there. They've been running less gap stuff, running less counter stuff. It's been less multiple.

And Petulow has been, you know, under fire, the office coordinator for the Eagles for some of the passing game stuff. But I also think the run game stuff has been less creative, more outside zone. It's clearly not working. The offensive line, there's a lot of, usually when you see a player like Sequin Barkley, who I don't think necessarily has, like, lost a step or is washed by any means. I think some of the workload stuff, maybe it makes sense. that you're taking a step back there. But I don't really see that.

I think to me, predictable offensively, and the offensive line isn't playing like what it was before. I love that number on outside zone. I didn't know that. That's one of those where, like we've talked about it anecdotally on Philly Special

because it's like, man, they are running a lot of outside zone two weeks ago. I don't think they had any gap runs the entire game. And that makes sense to what my eyes are seeing. I think they need to get to more downhill inside running. But to your point, and I don't think know that people have caught on to this yet, their offensive line is not nearly the same offensive line as last year.

I don't think it's bad. I think it's above average. I think it's good. But the interior specifically, Landon Dickerson left guard. He had an injury in the summer. Came back. Hasn't looked like the same guy. Cam Juergens.

He had surgery in the offseason. Came back. Hasn't looked like the same guy. Tyler Steen, the right guard. He's starting for the first time. Those guys haven't looked, you know, they've been okay, but they have not been great. They certainly have not been dominant.

Their tight ends are getting ragdled in the run game. I think they're putting him in a bad place every week. Yeah. I don't really understand what they're doing with that. He can't block guys. Yeah, they keep putting him out there. They run condensed sets and, you know, two tight end sets and he's getting thrown around. That's been an issue. Sequin and Blitz pickup has not been good. So that hasn't all been the offensive line. Some of those numbers you mentioned in terms of pressure rate for Jalen Hertz. So yeah, it's, it's funny. It feels very unsettled in Philadelphia. And the team like has won 18 straight games with Jail and Hertz.

starts and ends the game. So people are like, how much are we allowed to complain about this? But yeah, the offense, the run game has not looked the same. They haven't had the explosive runs to your point. And we know the issues in the passing game. They did not complete a pass in the second half last week. So there you go. I do think that a lot of this stuff can change, right? A lot of this stuff can change with one big Seekoine Barclay run or whatever. But like, when you look at the yards before first contact numbers, too, 2.74 yards before first contact for Sequan Barkley in weeks 1 through 4 last year, that number is under a yard this year. And I it's also showing up in the passing game on quick throws, throws made within 2.5 seconds of the

snap. Jalen Hertz has been under pressure on 29% of dropbacks. That number last year was 21%. Tyler Steen ranks 52nd and pressure rate allowed. Dickerson ranks 65th in pressure rate allowed. I thought Cam Juergen specifically struggled against Kobe Turner and the Rams last week. I think that the offensive line needs to be a juggernaut for them to be the type of, I think, offense that they want to be. And that doesn't even get into like a lack of creativity in the passing game, calling more outside zone, being a little bit more predictable there. I think that they could be running more play action, honestly. I think there's a lot of stuff there that I think the Eagles need to fix.

Now, it's hard to say that about a team that's 4 and O coming off of Super Bowl win, but this offense is clearly not where it needs to be if they're going to be, like, beating up on teams and not going into these games and kind of sweating these things out. It's a mediocre offense anyway. So you can look at whatever stat you like to look at. It's been a mediocre offense. They cannot play a full game. They have one half where they look great.

the next half they can't do anything. You know, Jalen Hertz has been a big part of the run game. I actually think it's kind of underrated what an impact he's had. Even when they had Miles Sanders and DeAndre Swift, the run game was good. And it was offensive line, but it was also because Jalen Hertz was really good in the designed run game. I think they've been a little hesitant to use him that way, knowing like, we want him healthy. It's a long season. You saw it last week, but it's kind of like, well, you might need that to get this run game going a little bit.

I'm with you, though. Small sample. I think Seekwon Barkley still looks explosive. and some of these like seven-yard runs that he has, you're like, that was incredible. So it takes like one big game this time of year to flip all those numbers. And, you know, I don't know that we'll see it this weekend against the Broncos. They got a big matchup against Denver and they've got a great defense for sure.

But maybe after that it starts to flip a little bit. All right, we did it. Thank you. They said it couldn't be done. Austin Gale said, like nobody believed in me. I believed in myself. I believed in you, Austin. Thank you to Austin Gale from the ringer.

I will be right back with the hurry up. This episode is brought to by Little Caesars, the official pizza sponsor of the NFL. At Little Caesars, the pizzas are always large, so you'll always get more bite for less buck on game day. You know, I'm not high maintenance. I'm a simple guy. Just give me a plain cheese, like they said, large,

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Copyright 2025 LCE Incorporated. All right, the hurry up is our closing segment where I give you a take on something happening in the NFL. And we got a pretty fun game Thursday night. Rams, 49ers, Sean McVeigh, Kyle Shanahan. Now the Niners are banged up. No Brock Purdy, no Ricky Pearsall. So I want to focus on the Rams here because I ripped Sean McVeigh's game management a couple weeks ago after that Eagles game.

And don't get me wrong, I stand by that. But I want to be fair and say that he has been awesome as a schemer this year. The Rams have a top three run game. It's teamed up beautifully. Everyone's involved. Everyone knows their assignments. And then they're using heavy play action with Matthew Stafford. I mean, I'm talking a top three rate in the NFL.

And they're creating so many explosive plays when you watch them every week through the passing. game. Puka Nakua has been one of the best players in football through four weeks. So offensive coaches, they all kind of say the same things usually. You know, we got to marry the run game to the past game. That's something you hear from offensive coaches around the NFL. McVeigh, I feel, is doing that as well as any coach in the entire league right now. So Rams were a trendy Super Bowl pick in the spring. Then you had the weird Stafford injury stuff that scared everyone off, including me, by the way, in the summer. But now they're three and one. Only loss was to the on the road in a game they led 26-7.

I'm still a little worried about Stafford getting through a 17-game season at this stage of his career. But if you told me the playoffs started next week, I would absolutely have the Rams in the Super Bowl mix in the NFC. So we'll see if they can take care of business against a banged-up Niners team. Long way to go. But I've been really impressed with Sean McVeigh

through the first month of this season. All right. Appreciate everyone listening. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing. Kira Givens on social. additional production supervision by Connor and Evans and Arjuna Ram Gopal. I'll talk to you tomorrow on the Ringer NFL show. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino

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