The Ringer NFL Show - Sunday Divisional-Round Recap: Bengals Cruise Past the Bills, and the Niners Shut Down the Cowboys | The Ringer NFL Recap Show

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Nora, Steven, and Ben recap the Sunday divisional games, starting with the Niners defense leading the way to a 19-12 victory. They talk about both offenses struggling to score and what’s next for the Cowboys (1:28). Then, they discuss the Bengals' impressive road victory over the Bills. They talk about the Bengals' impressive defense, Josh Allen’s struggles, a look ahead to Bengals-Chiefs, and more (30:08). Hosts: Nora Princiotti, Steven Ruiz, and Ben Solak Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Follow the show now on Spotify. And do us a favor. Give us five stars. And do us another favor and stay major. Divisional round recap show. The divisional round is in the books. The 49ers and the Bengals are moving on. The Cowboys and the Bills are going home.

I'm Nora Preciati. I am here with Stephen Ruiz and Benjamin Solac. about four co-hosts short of a Fox pregame show lineup, but that is okay. We're going to break down both of these games and have a lot of fun. We're going to start with 49ers Cowboys. The Niners are going to play the Eagles in the NFC Championship game. They win 19 to 12.

Ben, you're going to have to explain to me what I just watched because I think what my eyes say, see, is that I saw Zeke Elliott line up at center to begin a last dash Hail Mary play for the Cowboys snap the ball to Dak Prescott

get absolutely leveled the ball going to come on to Interfit and absolute silliness and incompetence in suit but that can't possibly be what they came up with on a season defining play right? Like something wrong.

Wait, wait, wait. I got a name for it. Do we call it the hook and satter? Or is there something better than that? Oh, I like hook and satter. No, that's good. The, uh, firstly, let's, let's highlight the important things. Number one, high quality snap from Zeke.

Shotgun right to the mix. I mean, dead center too. Zip on that thing. The Raven should sign him. Play started off great, okay? Number two. And then what happened? We have to remember that this entire week

Mike McCarthy has been I can't do this seriously with seeing Steven on the Zoom this entire week Mike McCarthy's been like all right last season ended against these guys ended on a QB draw that was really bad

can't do that again and so he was positive he had an end of the end of gameplay dialed up that was not QB draw with 14 seconds left in no timeouts and he did he succeeded he avoided running another QPie draw so big for Mike

this progress right we're growing what I think is supposed to happen is you got like three blockers to one side and three blockers to the other side, and then you got two seam runners. And Dak throws the seam runner on the left, which is Cavante Turpin, and then Turpin is supposed to throw it all the way back to the right side of the field,

where C.D. Lamb is like three blockers in front of him. And that's how they're going to kind of start this play. It's very interesting, though, because if you told me like, hey, Ben, you're running the Cowboys, we need to go 80 yards in zero seconds. We need a pitchy-pitchie woo-woo play. Who would you like to end up with the football? I go, okay, well, we roster Cavante Terpard pretty much exclusively for returns.

I think he should end with the ball. And they started with him in space, no blockers running like an eight-yard curl. And Jimmy Ward just took his head off. I'm so sorry. Like, it's this Niners defense of all things. It was, it was watching them line it up and then watching the Niners take a time out so we could all, like, sit down and get prepared for it. that was really the best part, which would be like, all right, this isn't even like weird. Like, we are locked in what's going to happen next?

And it was complete mess. This, it's almost like, I have to talk about it because we just like need to engage in this kind of catharsis. But that play, the last play, uh, is going to overshadow so much mess. Just so much mess from the Cowboys at the end of this game. the DAC game winning drive attempt just dropped pick six misses a throw that could have been a big game

he has the long hold the sack on third and 10 it's Dalton Schultz then when they're when they managed to get the ball back just like the cranium explodes think about all we needed

to get that play we needed Dalton Schultz not actually getting two feet down we need Dalton Schultz clock running going out of bounds we needed Elijah Mitchell going out of bounds when he could have assaulted the game for the Niners.

We needed Eric Armstead not getting the sack. We needed a Drey Greenland not getting the pick. So much happened that could have ended this game in the last four minutes that didn't happen such that we got Hook and Satter. And how appropriate for an end of this, this horribly coached game by both Mike McCarthy and Calhaw-Shane. It had to happen. It had to happen.

And I really love, I'm not going to put it all on McCarthy because Kellyn Moore is the offense coordinator, but I really love them watching the efficacy of curl routes all night long and going, you know what, we need 80 yards in 10 seconds. Let's throw another curl route and see what happens. The same thing that happened on every curl out they threw, they were on everything. And I feel like Dak's going to get a lot of the blame, and he deserves it for some of those interceptions and some of those near interceptions. But man, this felt a lot like last year, the same problems with this offense against the same defense. And I don't know how you go into the game with the same plan where you're just going to throw a million hitchhraouts against

a linebacker core that is on everything and has been on everything. And it has been on everything their last year and a half. I need to know how much time they spent in practice this week coming up with that. I just need to know. I need to know what the Genesis was. I need to know where they got the idea from. I need to know how many conversations led to, hey, if we get in a situation where we need 80 yards, one play, here's what we're going to do.

By the way, we got to come up with all of our two point plays. We got to have twice as many two point plays as usual because the kicker can't kick extra points apparently. But also, priority number one for this week is the let's put Zeek at center play and then give it to Cavante Turpin first. Just fantastic stuff. I have, really, I have like the urge to blame Kellan Moore instead. And the reason why I have that urge is because that's some Boise State nonsense. I'm but I say that's some Boise. That does not work against non-Okloma football team. Like, no, run a real play. Be serious. Yeah, you got at the very least, like get like the throw 30 yards down the field and then do the pitch and kind of like try to

screw with him the second level you can't be doing this in the first level jimmy ward's eyes are as biggest saucers baby jimmy war was closing down like there is no way and there was there was there was janeh there was jennie and truth serum right now he was all right he was he was snickering as he jogged off the sideline like he was giving a full kyle grid yeah he was feeling yeah he knows he knows all right uh as much as i would like to make it seem that way. The last two minutes of this game were not the only things that happened during the course of it. Stephen, you mentioned Dak, who though I agree with you, he doesn't deserve, there's a blame pie to go around here, but this was not Dak's finest hour. What did you see,

you know, he has the two interceptions, could have had more. What did you think was going on with him in this game? I honestly don't know. I mean, compared to to last week, it was just like a total 180, where he was missing like the most basic reads. That reads that I've never seen to make, like couldn't read out like stick, for instance. He almost threw interceptions on stick multiple times. So I don't know if it was like the 49er speed and he wasn't ready for it or he was just like a second behind. There was a latency issue, but that's just what it was. I just never seen him discombobulated in that way.

And he picked the worst time to have his worst game. That was almost worse than the Washington game. Yeah, I was going to say, like that I like right before the, the Jimmy Ward into Fred Warner pick, I was like, Dak's playing like a pretty good game. Like he's just like avoiding risk and like the balls out super quick and they're really decisive. And they're just like getting the ball to athletes in space like C.D. lamb in the swing and Tony Pollard on the swing route. Just like they're staying ahead of the sticks.

They're not letting the Niners really tee off. And I'm like, this is great. And then Dak threw that pick. And it was just such a bad mistake in such an important moment. Right. they're starting to get into the red zone. They have the ability to take the lead, right? You're going into halftime.

Like, you've had this nice methodical drive. You already had one earlier. Your score to touch and I'm like, this is it. Like, this is the way we want to do it. And then from that moment, it just seemed like Dak never got back on tempo, right? He just never got back on to like,

they needed him to be such a quick point guard. They were really like, they were very scared of the Niners defense, right? Like, they were not pushing the ball down the field. They were not leaving Dak in the pocket for a prolonged period of time. They were not protecting with five when they could avoid it, right? like they were scared of this defense. And it seemed like once Dak had that,

like the Gallup pick was like, all right, I thought you were going to come down. You didn't. Like, you know, you kind of gets on the sideline and you're like, all right, that's on me. No, that's on me.

Okay, go, whatever. Like, you know what I'm saying, like, you kind of wash that one away pretty quick. Once he threw that one, we're like, he tried to get to an underneath route late

and got caught by Jimmy Ward squatting on it. He just, like, he was firing too quick on once he should have waited on. He was firing too late on once he should have thrown quickly. He just never got back on tempo. and that was a frustrating thing to see happen with Dak. It was frustrating that Kellamore couldn't get him back in rhythm, which has been a problem for this Cowboys offense.

When they have these like three hot games and one super cold game, they can never get back on the horse. Like they can never like settle it down in the middle of the game. But it's also a testament to this Niners defense, which just like, you know, I don't want to like get into a whole like film versus analytics football heads thing. But like when coaches talk about why playing this sort of defense is so difficult, this is the thing that they cite.

They are so fast and they are so fast. so physical that once they get you, you're seeing ghosts. Once they get you, you're shaking in your boots. It is just a nightmare to have to say, like, all right, we're going to throw six yards curl routes and get our bells rung every single snap. The moment that stops working and you start getting picks, you're just like, you're frozen. It is a terrifying defense to play. That doesn't even begin to get into when they got them into third and seven, and they put nine dudes on the line of scrimmage and Talanoho Fongas like a Peregrine Falcon somewhere. Like, they just This defense is aggressive.

They are physical. They are dangerous. They are scary. It is hard to get behind the sticks against these guys. There's a combination of that aggressiveness and tackling, just tackling. We're going to talk about the game later, but the Bill's defense kind of wins in the same ways as the 49ers defense, just being fundamentally sound, being in the right place,

just being smart about it. But you saw in that Bengals game every tackle, the Bengals were going forward. Every tackle in this game, the 49ers were hitting. And that's what they've been doing all year. It's crazy. It's such a good defense. All 11 guys swarming to the ball, every play. And then Fred Warner is just that play that he made on CD Lamb.

I was going to say the bills have some okay linebackers, but I don't think any of them you want running in a foot race against CEDA. Right. That's another difference. He was on the other side of the center on the line of scrimmage and C. C.D. Lamb is running down the lot. Oh, my God. The best linebackers in the league can make that play when they're lined up five yards off the ball

at middle linebacker. Fred was lined up at pass rusher on the other side of the field. What? No, you can't. It's not, like, like, Prescott saw that and he was like, money. Like, we're in scoring position, and Fred can just fly. But like, we talk about Fred a lot. We talk about, like, Nick Bosa a lot. Like, Diomador Lenore is taking C.D. Lamb and Tony Pollard down in space two yards past line. Deshaun Gibson. DeShon Gibson, who was like a vet free agent, Jimmy Ward got hurt and camp. Gibson's like flying downhill, making tackles behind a line of Crimmage. Drey Greenlaw was unbelievable in this game. Fifth round pick out of Arkansas. Aziz Al-Shayir stops the line of scrimmage on third down. Undrafted free agent.

Samson Ebelcom is the Russia outside of Nick opposite Nick Bosa. Gets a sack on third and 10 when there's seven points down in the fourth quarter. It's everybody, man. I mean, they are as deep and as physical and just like as hairbrained, like just banana. Shit like, like D'Amico's got them like all in the same coating, man. You can just see like in their heads, like the light goes off at the same time. the big red alarm starts flashing like, go, go, hit, hit, destroy, destroy. Eat, eat, eat, eat. It's crazy the way they play.

Next gen stats does like the live dots during the playoff games. I highly recommend watching the 49ers defense on that. You just see like these dots just swarming to the football after heavy play. It's amazing. They're like little magnets. All right. Other side of the ball. Brock Purdy got a little bit more of a test here, I think, than he did against the Cardinals, Raiders,

commanders Seahawks, Bucks, right? The defenses that he'd faced up to this point. Obviously, they were able to pull it out. But what is Stephen, you are our QB guy? Give us the purdy update after dealing with this Cowboys defense. It obviously was able to get a lot of pressure. I mean, I think you still see why maybe if he's not as talented, why he brings a little more to the offense than Jimmy G.

I think there were a lot of Jimmy G-type decisions and throws, but he got away with him. And like I've been saying all year, if you get away with like that dumb interception and you're the 49ers, they're going to win the game. And that's what happened to this one. He almost threw a couple interceptions.

He took some bad sacks. But if you can't capitalize on those mistakes, he's a player that's going to continue to make plays. I think that's the one thing that I will give him credit for is he doesn't get scared. Like he plays. He's not scared of the moment. He's not scared of making a mistake,

which is very rare for a quarterback. in his situation being thrust into this situation where you're on a win now team like a lot at stake a lot of guys in that locker room that have accomplished a lot and they've almost won a Super Bowl and now they're banking on you as a as Mr. Irrelevant and he doesn't care he's like screw it I'm sending it I don't care. I'm relevant like yeah I mean it's a good approach it's a noble approach I do think it's going to come back to bite them at the worst possible moment it almost did in this game the Eagles like I could see it happening in the Eagles game.

So I'm kind of worried seeing them go up against this defense where the defensive line played so well. And Dan Quinn's defense played so well. I don't want to take anything away from them. I think they deserve all their flowers. But I could see the Eagles like giving him the same problems and maybe they're more opportunistic. Yeah, I'll be very curious to see what the Eagles defense is able to do

because the Eagles and the Cowboys are both pretty static. Right? They're both pretty lineup and play. in terms of their defense stuff. They don't, they don't like change the picture a lot post snap. And it's like, okay,

well, you want to screw with a rookie quarterback. Maybe you change the picture. Changing the picture against the Niners, offense is extremely difficult. It's really hard to do it independent of who's playing quarterback. The reason is because they run so much like motion, reverse,

switch to the outside screen, like everything. Like, if you're trying to, like, rotate guys and you accidentally get caught rotating away from the Debo Samuel screen, it's a 40-yard touchdown.

Like, it's like, it's very dangerous to be like a chaos or into defense against an offense that motions this much and then finds so many plays into the boundary out of the backfield, right? So, okay, being static against the Niners actually isn't a bad thing. It helps, even though you can't really screw around with 30. Okay, well, then how are you going to get the surprise plays? How are you going to get the interceptions? Well, you've got to really key in on tendency, right? You have to know what's going to break. You have to know how

it's going to break. Like the Seahawks had a couple opportunities on, on interceptions because they were attacking those weak side slants that Kyle likes to run on third down, right? You saw the game salting drive, they came to field goal at the end. They ran a little third down slant to Brandon Ayuk, a little third down slant to Christian McCaffrey. And the Seahawks were getting on top of those and almost got some picks,

but they couldn't bring it in. So if you get in on a tendency, if you're able to jump around, you have to secure the play. Because in general, Kyle's going to be ahead of your defensive coordinator, right? He's just, he's going to,

it's Kyle Shanan, he's been doing it for five years. You're not going to win that. So when you get your opportunities, you have to secure. And then if you're going to play kind of static football and they're going to get their underneath stuff, and they're going to get their slants against off coverage and whatever.

Now you have to tackle. And that's like the team is bringing up. It seems like every year we spend 18 weeks in the regular season talking about schemes and about coverages and drop this and blitz that and rotate this and play action and motion this and go this way and go that way. And then we get to January and we go, wow, the teams that tackled better one. It's what the Niners are built for. It's what IUC plus Kiddle plus Debo plus McCaffrey plus Elijah Mitchell plus Kyle you should

us all about. It's about saying we think we're more physical than you on offense with our skill position players. So if we can just get the ball to them, they're going to handle the dirty yardage. And that's going to be a huge question mark for the Eagles, who are a really, really, really light defense, right? Like the Cowboys had it in their secondary,

J. Ron Curse and Israel Mukuamo and Trevond digs, they look big guys, right? They're late in Van derrash and Anthony Barr. They're stopping power. They were making tackles. You know, lost George Kettle a couple times, so he's going to get you, whatever. The Eagles are much smaller.

And so if you can't take advantage of those moments where you beat Shanahan, and he's just kind of dinking and Dunkin and Purdy's getting the screens off and the reverses off and the pitches off, and you can't tackle? Long day. Long day in the office. I have to rewatch the Christian McCaffrey third down conversion,

but I'm pretty, like, that was a good call by, like, Quinn. I think they were in like cover one robber and Wilson was supposed to fall off after the first inbreaker was overtaken by the free defender and he fell down.

Same exact call that he had in Super Bowl, in the Super Bowl against Brady when they had the pick six right before the half. That's like playoff football, man. It comes down. just being able to keep your feet sometimes. Yeah. I am a little sad that we don't get to watch Eagles fans

and Cowboys fans yell at each other for a week straight, but this is going to be a great. You think because the Cowboys lost, Eagles fans and Cowboys fans are going to yell each other for a week straight? All right, that's a fair point. That's a fair point, Ben. And also, let me introduce you to the 49ers fan base. Yeah.

They are the Cowboys. You guys cheered me right up. West Coast Cowboys. Yeah. Yeah, no, this wasn't the best offensive. day for Bertie. It wasn't the best office day for Kyle. I think if you're the Niners right now and you see the way that the Cowboys took advantage of your interior front and now you're looking at Fletcher Cox and Javon Hargrave and

and Domagant Sue and Lindvald Joseph and Milton Williams and Jordan Davis all coming to town, you're worried, right? Like that's the number one thing you got to solve. If the Eagles are going to beat the Niners, they are going to need a dominant game from a defensive line that had 15 more sacks than the second closest defensive line in the season. Like it is on both sides of the ball, it's strength, strength. Like this is a, this is a trenches game. Yes, Dvall, EJ. Brown, Devont, Smith, McCaffrey, Goddard, don't get me wrong. This is a trenches game.

Eagles have to watch this Cowboys film and say, man, we can kick their butts up front the way Dallas did. And then just hold on to the football, a little bit better, a little bit longer, not get stuck in that Elijah Mitchell driver. They're just leaning on you and sitting on you. If we can do that, we can beat this team. All about the trenches in this one. Yeah, it's funny. I remember being out in San Francisco during training camp. And you could tell that the coaches there kind of knew that they had a good, good thing going, a lot of faith in the defense.

But I remember talking to people and the thing that would just come up is, look, if there's a, if there's a great roster, if there's a weakness here, it's interior offensive line. And it just hasn't really bitten them all that much getting to this point. but it's just funny to think that could still be the thing. And, you know, it's only two teams that can go to the Super Bowl. So they've made it plenty far up till this point. But there's still a chance for that to come into play. And Philly is a team that you would think that it would have a good shot at doing that against. All right.

Have we missed anything from this game? Should we talk about Mike McCarthy a little bit? By the sake, can we do a quick Cowboys moratorium, Autopsy? whatever the word here is. Yeah, I mean, Cowboys run it back. They got, you know, Pollard is the big free agent offensively, right? I guess Dalton Schultz as well,

big for agent offensively. Defensively, they run back largely the same group. They got to worry about the late in Van derrash contract, but I don't think LV was like a super impact player for them. So otherwise, like, you're going to bring back the whole group. Now, I think Dax's a good quarterback. I think Dax is like a tier two quarterback in the NFL. I think, Dak played largely great ball this season.

High interception numbers, threw into a lot of tight windows. But I think that's largely a good quarterback. You got a good quarterback and you got a great roster. If we do McCarthy, Kellynne Moore again, it's insanity. It's expecting the same result, right? Like, I'll get why they did it. But it's very difficult to imagine them in an NFC that's got the Niners and it's got

the Eagles taking a step next year that they didn't already take with this nucleus. that's not even including what I think would be a likelihood, which is that Dan Quinn's leaving for a head coaching job now the season is over. Quinn does really nice work with that defense, and I'm not positive that another guy would step in and have them top five in DVA way and back-to-back years away that Quinn has. I don't know what to do. Just say it, Ben.

Say what you want to say. But I really don't like, I think they should fire McCarthy, and I think that they should find a head coach. But it's tough. Like, they got to have the guy. And if that guy's- So if the guy might be in the building, already, is it that tough?

You say promote Quinn? Promote Quinn? Yeah. Because it's like beyond the offensive stuff, which I think is what you're getting at. Another disaster game management for Mike McCarthy, which kind of low-key covered up. I mean,

we didn't even talk about about punting. Yeah, punting on, yeah, the punts were crazy. Like Kyle had himself a roller coaster too that I think is going to be overshadowed. Yeah. Not a good showing by those two coaches. Right. I like if they if they if they if they fire McCarthy and promote Quinn, I think like at worst that's neutral there's a chance that that's better because the in game management.

I'll give you that one. I wasn't really barking up that tree, but that makes sense. The name that I was kind of circling the circling around was Sean Payton. Right. And that's where like like yeah, that's where if you go Sean, I can kind of talk myself into the team taking another step because Payton's a really good coach. You don't have a first round pick now. And that's going to be an interesting, interesting situation to handle. Dennis Allen coming with them? No.

Because Champagne without Dennis Allen that had quite a decade in the woods there. Yeah. But that's the salient point of this conversation. It's like the Cowboys should look into an improvement in their coaching staff. I'm not sure it's easy to find. Like I don't, I don't think there's a lights out decision here. And that puts Dallas in a tricky spot. They really have to find a way to.

start winning in the margins. And like, man, it would have been nice as they kind of like figured out Pollard a couple of years ago before he had free agency, wouldn't it? You know what I'm saying? Like there's this would have been nice. They figured out the Amari contract situation instead of kind of letting that reach the head that it did. It feels like they've wasted a little bit of time. And now that now they're past the curve. Well, so just just to that last point. I mean, I'm, I agree with you. I think if we're talking about how this team, how we can talk ourselves into this team taking a step next year. To me, first and foremost, it has to do with coaching. I also look at it. I also look at.

at, you know, I look at the game, um, the game box a little bit here and 10 targets to CD Lam or 13 to CD, 10 to Dalton Schultz. So 23 out of 37, uh, passes for Jack Prescott going to those two guys. That's been a problem. They need somebody else. You need a little bit more help there. Michael Gallup's making 14 million dollars this year. Did the, the Gallup extension happened, our contract, whatever it was? Did it happen this off season or last off season. It happened previously. And it was before his injury, if memory serves me, don't quote me on that.

I suppose it's a podcast. So I'm definitely being quoted on that as well. Yeah. I will say that Gallup's, they have an out after the 2023 season, right? He's 19 million dead cap, $14 million hit in 2023. After that, six million dead cap. So like, I like Gallup a lot pre-injury. I think it's very clear he has not gotten athletically back to where he was post-injury

and he's not nearly the same player. And they mishandled that Amari situation. But yeah, that's like, again, like talk about like things the Cowboys need to handle, things the Cowboys need to be realistic about. They flirted with Odell Beckham Jr. for 14 weeks before signing Ty Hilton. They drafted Jalen Tolbert in the third round and never got him on the field. Like they so much of like what needed to happen and what maybe still needs to happen in the McCarthy-Kellenmore era is improvement in the margins.

And they just don't do that. They continue to be like, DAC, solved the whole offense for us on the field. Defense, win with pass rush. fast-fuss. We don't know what to do. Like, there's just that they, if you're going to be a championship team, you got to do little stuff really well. And they don't do that. They're always overlooking the little stuff. That is like, I think that the diagnosis of that problem, in fact, so many layers of this organization, because it's how they, it's how they play the game. It's also how they think about

roster construction, right? Like, just because I think it's something about Jerry and the star and being Dallas and being the cowboys, when you need something else, a little injection of something in the receiving room. The thought is, okay, can we get Odell Becker? And can we flirt with that for week after week after week? It just seems like the instinct is less. And now at a certain point, that's easier to do, right? Than like, have a player develop in the blink of an eye.

That's not possible. But it just seems like that's an easier instinct for them than we got to draft and develop some guys. It's not to say that they haven't done that. I mean, this defense is a testament to them doing that. But in certain areas, it just doesn't seem like a part of their DNA. And I do think that that has to do with coaching. But I also think that there's just a little bit of Cowboysitis that contributes to that. Here's my pitch for Dan Quinn.

That man knows how to hire an OC. He hired Kyle Shanahan. And then he hired Sark, who like, okay, things aren't going well at Texas. but Sarkeesian is a very, very good offense coordinator. And those are two like, obviously Kyle wasn't an out of the box higher, but Kyle's like, his stock was low after that Brownston. And then after how things ended in Washington, it wasn't like a no-brainer higher.

And after year one, people were calling for Kyle to be fired and he stuck with them. And then we got one of the best seasons ever from an offense. And then finding Sark and kind of keeping that offense afloat after Kyle left, like I would not, I would, I think. going with Quinn is the best thing for this team because you want to keep the defense intact because that's like the strength of your team right now. And then you just, you got to give Dak something else because Dak, as good as Dak is, and I love Dak, they put too much on his plate. And he's not Tom Brady. And it's hard to run that style of offense if you're not

Tom Brady or like you're not Joe Burrow and you have all these guys that make it a little easier and make a little harder for defenses to do the types of things that team, that defense is due to the Cowboys where they're like just jumping on routes and they're on all that short stuff. Totally. All right. Should we get to Bill's Bengals? Yeah. If you've been watching the NFL playoffs from the sidelines, there's still time to get in

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All right, Ben, where do you want to start with this one? Obviously, Cincinnati goes into Buffalo snow game. They win 27 to 10. and Buffalo, I think, struggled on on both sides of the ball, sort of a tough performance for them. But where do you want to start with this one? I just think the Bengals are so, the Bengals are so much better right now than they were when they were here last year.

And that's really cool. Like, I think, like, this team is absolutely improved. The fact that Joe Burroughs playing behind three backup offensive linemen and isn't taking nine sacks like against the Titans, isn't throwing interceptions, like huge. Like, he's found a way to play more risk-averse football. ball. The fact that they've got, you know, they, they switch out CJ Usoma for Hayden Hurst and like, Hayden Hurst just like, was it, one year, three million dollars and just like extremely solid

player for them, like just easy personnel move and go. And like, we talk about their, uh, they've got their backup offensive line and like, oh, they tried to retool this offensive line and like, Kappa goes down and Leo Collins goes down. They also got Max Sharping this year with the point of saying, like, we need to be better in the two deep. Max Sharpen played right guard and like, played fine in this game. The fact that they're running game, which has been like, like so much of an experimentation, so much of like, oh, they got it better for three weeks with the RPO's, but then like teams caught up to the RPO's.

They had to run a little bit more under center stuff. And like once, like, once, like, every week, the Bengals will have like one random run play where they run like, way up. And you're like, sick. Like, I don't know you guys could do that, but they only do it for one play. They have like all these one offs in the running game. And it's like, all right, this isn't sustainable.

Like, this isn't a real running game. But they keep on figuring it out. Like Joe Mixon played himself such a tough game. So like, offensively, they've improved a lot. They're so much more legitimate, so much more reliable of an offensive team than they were at this time last year, where it was a lot of like, all right, well, if Jamar Chase breaks the tackle on the boundary, he's going to score. If T. Higgins, you know, stiff arms, Jalen Ramsey on the go bowl, he's going to score in the Super Bowl. Like, a lot of the Bengals wins last year in offensive drives were so fragile. They were so explosive robust.

And this year, they're so much more methodical. And to me, that's a huge testament to an improving and maturing team. and that doesn't even get into freaking Big Lou in the defense, man. I mean, it's just, to not have a head coach interview for Lou and Arumu, inner Arumo on his schedule.

Big Lou, Big Lou. It's a big Lou. Big Lou. You know what? Big Lou was big. I'll give him Big Lou. He's big Lou. I watched the entire game with my mom on FaceTime, and every time like first in 10, Bengals get like a two-yard stop on a running play. Mom would be like, that's Big Lou.

And I was like, it is Ma. That's it. That's it. That's Big Lou. That's so awesome. I had this moment watching this Bengals game where I was like, oh yeah, like Joseph Osai like back from injury. Like he's got like he's brushing the past, but like Zach Carter spent such a nice run stopping like big end for them. Like oh, Cam Taylor Britt, step down against the run.

And I'm just thinking to myself like, why are all of the Bengals defensive players just really like good at what they do? And then I realize it's because they're all in the correct role for their skill set all of the time. that's insane. Like how many players in the league do we watch get used on offense and defense to go, like, don't use him like that.

That's dumb. Like, he's not going to be good at this. And Lou just, every, every, like they get their little Mike Hilton on the field and get Bon Bell down against the linebacker and get Jermaine Pratt in the gap, get Trey Hendrickson snap jumping, and get DJ Reader in the run defense.

Like, the three man rush Trey Hendrickson's sack is just obnoxious defensive coordinating. You can rush three down and get a sack within three seconds of the snap because you've just built this defense to stop elite quarterbacks and to stop flex tight ends and to stop the end to everything and they just like they Lou just gets it man and they are I I love this Bengals team they're so much more real so much more substantive than last year's Bengals team and that like the fact that they're making a run again is just cool like I thought it was going to be kind of annoying yeah because I was like

either back like everybody's like oh Joe Burrow that's nothing no it's just sick. Because we've done two years of it now, there's so much more visibility on the non-Joe Borough, Jamar Chase pieces of it. And that to me is great. That's awesome. This Bengals team is so well constructed. Hats off to Duke Tobin who runs their personnel group. Hats off to Lou Anorumo, hats off to Brian Callahan. Hats off to Zach Taylor. Still not entirely sure what he does, but he's got to be doing something right. Go Bengals. I want to talk a little bit more about Big Lou and the defense because we're going to talk about this matchup with the Chiefs. But just going back, because I think the story of this game going into it was since he's down three starting offensive linemen and you're just thinking, okay, how are they going to get by in this game?

Not only was it just not really a problem, they kind of dominated up front. I think they had 85 yards before contact allowed by the Bills, Bill's defense, which had allowed the fewest such yards during the regular season on a per carry basis. Buffalo got very little pressure. Pressured Borough, 21.6% of the time, according to true media. Rose getting a ball out in 2.5 seconds. They lose Ted Caris for a bit in this and he has to come back in with a knee brace. Just didn't matter. It just didn't matter.

And it got me thinking, I mean, I think a lot of that is a credit to the Bengals, what they were able to do, how this offense has developed, how smart Burrow is at just managing a game. But Stephen, I know you've been such a big fan of how the Ravens defense has played Cincinnati and played them in the wild card round. And I was a little bit surprised. And I know this Bill's defense that, you know, they line up and they do what they do. But I was surprised that it didn't seem like they were making much of an effort to disguise things defensively for Burrow. because they just didn't do anything to make him wait a second

and slow down his processing. No, not at all. And he's Joe Burrow. If you don't change the picture enough to make him think about it a little bit, of course he's going to get the ball out in two and a half seconds with every throw. He's too good. Jamar Chase is too good. T. Higgins is too.

Like all these players are too good to play that type of defense. And like you had a blueprint laid out and they did nothing that. that Baltimore did. Nothing. They played the same thing they always do. It was amazing to watch. They don't, you know, it's not the same personnel, obviously. It's not like you can just copy and paste the Ravens game plan. If you could, everybody would do it.

But I am such a big fan of this Bill's coaching staff. And by the way, that doesn't change with this. But, man, I was a little disappointed in that, just because it was there for the taking. And it didn't seem like they even really gave it much of an effort. It reminds me of when they played the dolphins in that primetime game after the Dolphins played the Chargers and the Niners and had such trouble with those teams.

And the bills just kind of were like, well, we're going to run our stuff. And they did and they played about as well as they did in the first game, got a couple luckier bounces and they beat the Dolphins. It's like, okay, great. But like, why did you just run your stuff? Because there's stuff that like you can run

that we know you can run and you got it in the book. And like, it was working really was last couple weeks. Like, well, let's get a corner on the inside of these dolphins receivers, right? For going up against this Bengals team and like, if you're going to say, all right, like they got their down three offense alignment. Like our pass rush can win.

Then the number one question I've got in the meeting room Monday morning is, how do we make Burrow hold onto the ball for more in two and a half seconds, right? How are we going to make this a high a dot high time to throw game for Joe Burrow? And Joe Burrow had a six point five a dot. I haven't seen his time to throw, but certainly felt like it was like, you know, 2.3, like it was a low, low A dot game. 2.5. Yeah.

2.5. There you go, right? Like it's, they didn't solve the problem. And so they let Burrow beat them the way Burrow wanted to beat him. No, no, they did the opposite of making Burrow hold the ball. They presented them pre-snap looks that made it easy to get the ball out, and then they didn't take the spaceway. They presented space. They did the opposite of what Mike McDonald did.

They presented space pre-snap and then did not take it away post-snap. They're like, here you go. You have a slant to Jamar Chase on third and seven because we're playing. We're in a cover zero look. And guess what? We're going to show you a cover zero look before the snap. You can not give Joe Burrow the answers to the test before he takes it. That is a death sentence.

He's Joe Burrow. Like, he is not, Joe Burrow doesn't have. Josh Allen's physical traits. Joe Burrow doesn't have Josh Allen's arm. What he has is an incredible processor. And you have to give him a challenge in processing. And they just, Ben, I'm, you're right to bring up that Dolphins game because I do think,

and again, I believe in this coaching staff, I think they're, they're among the, you know, upper echelon in the league. But I do think that a problem that they have exhibited in multiple high profile spots is just a little bit of an over commitment to we do what we do. And that works for them a lot of the time, but dial it back a little bit. That's all. It's a regular season defense.

Let's just call it what it is. It's a regular season defense. They do not have a game playing defense. They don't. You're saying like you have all the faith in the world in this Bill's coaching staff and I had it coming into this year. Like Sean McDermott got him off the ground. I do not think he can land this plane.

I think he's another Ron Rivera. This is what Ron Rivera did in Carolina. He's a Ron Rivera disciple. They have a Ron, they have a Panthers front office. I know this team. I know how this team operates, man. This is what I saw in Carolina

every year when Ron Rivera got to the playoffs. Yeah, Stephen, you're like, I know this team. I know who hurt you. Who was their defensive coordinator all those years? Same guy that's the coach of the bills right now. So, right, I want to talk about the other. half of this, right? So, bills are a lineup and play team. There are other teams in the

league who are pretty line up and play. Eagles are the first one that comes to mind. Eagles run out on defense every week and run the exact same stuff. They never game plan nothing. And sometimes that means that Dak Prescott drops 40 on them and they're like, oh darn, we didn't know that they were going to run seams. Ah, like, you know, it's just like, come on guys. Nobody told us. Yeah. Now, what do the Eagles have? The Eagles got all pro corners, all pro pass rusher, Johnson Gardner Johnson but Javon Hargrave and I got some talent

What is this thing you're doing With your voice right now I just say I'm very good I like it I'm enjoying soothing It's little change List more players Yeah

Johnson Garner Johnson Well Josh sweat What are we gonna say All right listen The most important thing is this The Eagles have brought a lot of talent Into the building successfully It's like you know

Not so much two years ago But over the past couple years It's done a great job of that The bills have had trouble getting talent into the building Right like who were the impact players of the Bill's 2020 playoff run. They were Tradavius White

and Josh Allen and Stefan Diggs and Matt Milano. And it's just all those guys is just trying to do it again two years later. And you're getting Tremaine Edmonds in coverage issues, which is the same thing you had two years ago. And you've got corner twos getting picked off by playoff teams,

which is the same issue you had two years ago. And you're getting our pass rush can't get home against the elite quarterbacks, which is the same issue you had the last two years, right? And you go when you look at like resources spent they spent a first round pick on Gregory Russo. They spent a second round pick on AJ F, Vanessa. They spent a second round pick on Boogie Basham.

They spent a first round pick on Ed Oliver. They spent free agent contracts on Vernon Butler, on Quinn Jefferson, on DeQuan Jones, on Mario Addison and on Vaughn Miller. And obviously, Vaughn doesn't play in this game. But like, what's the product, right? Like, they line up and play, like, a team that has elite talent. And since 2019, they haven't drafted a pro bowler.

Four drafts. And, like, the Pro Bowl is just like a general barometer, right? Like, like, it's not a very good descriptor. But overall, like, you look like in first three rounds. They're pulling Devin Singletary and Zach Moss and Dawson Knox and, like, guys who like are rosterable, but it's not enough, right? Like, look at how they manage receivers. Right. Look how they manage receiver.

Like, all right, Manuel Sanders out of the building. John Brown's out the building. Cole Beasley's out the building. Well, we believe in Gabe Davis and Isaiah McKinsey. And, like, over the course of the season, those guys weren't enough. And so they have a line up and play problem. Like, the coaching staff is responsible for getting the guys on the field. in an impactful position in week 18, week 19, week 20,

you got to win play a football by game planning it up. They also have like, you know, like Brandon Bean's got a lot of flowers. The digs trade developing Allen, like a lot of that's been great. But in general, like the bills have had a little bit of a talent flow problem over the last few years.

That's why this lineup and play thing gets them to January and then gets them no further. Marty Herney disciple, former Panthers, former failed two-time failed Panthers GM somehow. That's all. I'll leave it at that. It is Sunday, January 22nd. The second day of divisional weekend,

Stephen is trying to change this into a Panthers podcast. I have nothing of respect for it. That's the same. I'm going to keep pounding. I hate the fact that you just got key pounding so flawlessly in. Go ahead. All right. Bagels Chiefs' A.F.C. Championship game.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can we talk about Josh Allen? We have to talk about Josh Allen. We could not not talk about Josh Allen. That made stop playing the football. quarterback position like a month and a half ago and hasn't played it for the last, like you, Stefan Diggs was very frustrated on the sideline. And I got to tell you, like watching them on film over the last three weeks, it's not just Stefan Diggs. They're like five times a game. There are receivers that are standing open that are throwing their hands up and

Josh Allen is throwing it to Cole Beasley because he's friends with him. Like he hasn't played well. His eyes have been terrible. He would take. I have to watch the All 22 to like really see what was going on downfield. But man, he's just running into pressure. He's dropping his eyes. How many times did he pull the ball on an RPO and then end up running yourself? It happened like four times. You can't do that. That's not what an RPO is supposed to be. You are not the R in that situation. The running back is. You are not. The R. There we go. That's there. I know what you're going for. I'm glad to be a certain. Glad to help you out there, Ben. Yeah. Stephen, I think you and I talked about this with

Bill last week, but the dropping his eyes is really evident. It does seem like, again, like, and a lot of that should be on Josh Allen. It is on Josh Allen. There is a piece, and we've talked about this before. Some of that does come back to, I wonder what the coaching situation is. I wonder because it does seem like this stuff has crept up at the end of the season and might be, whether it's a product of the treatment he got after last playoffs, that Chiefs game, the sort of like anointing of here's epic folk hero, Josh Allen status,

whether it's coming out of, you know, that post-injury sort of lull they had and just feeling like he had to put the whole team on his shoulders. is some of that stuff, only Josh Allen can fix it and he's got to make better decisions and he's making a lot of bad ones. But you also wonder who's talking to him about it. And I do think that, again, I will say for the ninth time this podcast, I think this is a well above average coaching staff. But I have a list of questions about how they're handling stuff. And that is certainly up there because he did not have a good game. and he doesn't look, you know, he's never been a quarterback known for his poise before other things, but he just looks a little head cut off out there.

And we saw at the very beginning of the season, this year started. And now, okay, maybe we know a little bit more about the Rams than we did at this point. But this year started with Josh Allen executing, like, precision offense. Yeah. And that should be the goal, right? Like that's what that's what they're going for. But they're not there right now. Like Ken Dorsey has gotten a lot of blame.

And I've been like a very loud defender of him. But here's my question to people criticizing him. They don't have an offensive line so they can't run the ball. The offense line also can't protect. Josh Allen after the elbow injury was the most or was the least accurate quarterback in the NFL on short throws. I don't know how you build a consistent down to down. offense with all of those things I just said. And somehow they finished second in every relevant metric in offense. Well, it's because he's such a ludicrously accurate downfield

thrower, right? Like he was third in a league this year before this game in inaccurate throw rate downfield, right? It's like the third most accurate. But if I, if you have that guy, what you want to build is heavy personnel so that we can run and keep the short game going that way and then shoot, right? And then we can use him on downfoot shots. We can keep him high A dot, right? The bills are like super spreader. And so they walk out on first and 10 and it's like, okay, we want to, we want to get a,

we want to get to second and five. And it's like, all right, well, we don't really like running stick with our personnel with our quarterback, right? And that, that to me is the issue. Like the bills have just really, really, really sold out on being like extremely spread oriented. And I think it was a big part of like getting Josh's brain right at the NFL level. getting his vision right and he's understanding of space.

But if you put me in charge of the bills tomorrow, the first thing I do is get like whatever Mercedes-Luice I could get into the building. I would like, you know, let's go get Chris Mannerts. And let's like have a sixth guy that we can add who we can move around and put him in the backfield,

put him on either side, he could be an impact blocker. Let's be able to go under center. Let's have more diversity to our early down games. That way we don't need Alan to be a precision pass or five yards past Atlanta scrimmage. It's just not where he's built. That's what they had.

And like the first month and a half of the season, like that's one of the reasons why I thought Dorsey was doing such a great job is they found ways to diversify the offense. They were under center. They were personnel groups. Like Kevin Clark for the ringer wrote a piece about how that was the goal this season that have more personnel groups, more buttons to push. I've never heard of Kevin Clark.

He's never been on this feed. I don't know about him. Do you follow him on Twitter? Maybe I don't know. I don't know. Ringer NFL writers don't follow Ringer NFL writers as much as I thought. I have no comment on this. Yeah, but at some point during the season,

like something switched with the offense where, like they stopped running as much quick game. They were top 10 in terms of usage and quick game. And then after the elbow injury, it went way down. And like, you have to think that that injury affected the offense more than maybe is being reported because there was a fundamental shift in how they called the game after that injury. And I think there was a fundamental shift in how Alan approached the game.

Because like you said, that first month, like he was, he was that quarterback. He was the precise quarterback. He was getting rid of the- He wanted him to be. Yep. That first game against the Rams,

I was like, holy shit. Like, if this is what this guy's gonna be, it's over. And not like, even in my quarterback rankings, I had him at number one in like late September because he was playing like that every single week.

And then all of a sudden, just went away. This is the number one thing that like, we had to round up the bills, beat riders we know. I had Catherine Fitzgerald back on the pond and be like, find out what happened. There was some like week nine fight between Ken Dorsey and Josh Allen,

the Josh Allen won and the offense devolved, right? But it really, like, it's important because I think because Alan had such a strong end to last year and such a strong start to this year, there was the belief that like Alan, who has already improved so much over the course of his career, had improved again, and now he was the guy. He was on Mahomes' tier. And that was true until like early October. And then it just simply wasn't afterward.

And the bills, like Stephen said, still. remained like second EPA, second in DVOA and whatever, but like here we got to January. And this offense was just a mess. Alan's, I wrote this last week, Alan's rolling average. So the average of his last 10 games by EPA for dropback is the lowest right now that it's been the last three years of his career. So like in terms of just like one catch-all metric, this is about as bad as Alan's play since 2020.

And the context to that is you put in your article, you put the route maps. Like not where he's throwing the ball, where the receivers are running the routes and it's identical to last year. Steven's calling that out because when I was running the article, he told me, you should include the route maps. I was like, yeah, that's a good idea. And then he did. Teamwork.

We didn't have to say that. But yeah, I didn't even know if that was the case, though. I was just like, you should look into it. And then it turned out, like, yes, we're running the same routes. And this guy's just throwing it deep. All right. Well, Catherine Fitzgerald, get on it. Tell us what happened.

Figure it out. The case. Catherine, go flick Josh Allen's elbow and see how he reacts. That's all I let's do that. Catherine, do whatever you want. You're the best. Okay, we're going to have tons of time to talk about the AFC championship game this coming week. But Benjamin, Bengals Chiefs, who wins?

I think the Chiefs win. I think the Chiefs honestly win. Not comfortably, but I think that the Chiefs are very, I don't think Andy Reid and Patrick Holmes are going to go down 4-0 to a team. Even with ankle injuries considered, even with how Sighted am by this Bengals defense, I think with the way last season ended, I think a, big part of the chiefs off season was, okay, if we catch this team again and they play us this way again, what do we want to do? And that, that, uh, that game that they played in the regular season this year, right? Great game from the Bengals, but I think there's a lot more the chiefs can bring to the table offensively. And, and I think the, some of the reason behind,

like the Cadarius Tony, uh, signing in the Jerk McKinnon usage is about that, is about, like, what can we get behind line of scrimand yards up to catch stuff like that? I think the chiefs will be the Bengals because I think it's really hard. I don't want to say it's really hard to beat a team four times in a row because we've been doing that all week with like all the division of recaps. But I think that's really hard to beat Mahomes four times in a row. Before Saturday or before whenever he heard his ankle, I would have picked the cheese. I'm picking the Bengals.

I think this is a team like, I think the reason why they give these elite teams so many problems is they're the one team. And I know they haven't done it as much this year. They're the one team that's comfortable in the passing game working outside of the numbers. So much of like the last three years of NFL defense has been taking away the middle of the field. Joe Burrow doesn't throw those routes anyway. Like Joe Burrow doesn't really throw the deep middle routes. He throws outside the numbers. So I feel like they just match up. And when you talk about the Chiefs weaknesses, although I do think they're getting better at corner than they have as the

year has gone on, that's always been the weakness of this defense. They got some liabilities on the outside. So they play a lot of two highs. And like to Ben's point, I went back and watched that Bengals Chiefs game this week. Like Mahomes did not play well. He left a lot of meat on the bone. There were open guys and he just wasn't throwing to him. It was a bad Mahomes game, to be honest. And I could see him being better this time around, but that ankle scares me. Because I feel like you have to move. Lou is going to make him have to move and have to extend the play. Yeah. The ankle makes me even more positive that you're going to win. That's all we're going to talk about all week. And after the first drive, Mojum is going to make us feel like there's the biggest idiot. I think it's

mom's and chiefs. I was kind of saying the same stuff before the Bucks Super Bowl. And then like that ankle mattered. I know the chief defense, our offensive line, obviously, like, imploded and there was a bunch of injuries. But Mahomes, even that off. It seems like every playoff, this guy has an ankle injury. I swear it's happened at least three times. I also think, okay, I think Cincinnati has the better game plan defensive coordinator, but I think Spaggs is going to have some ideas. It's not going to be quite so static. He's going to come up with some nonsense. At least Daniel Sorenson isn't on the, on the roster anymore. So like Spags can't put him on the field. That's a, that's a positive. All right. On that note, this has been the ringer

NFL recap show. I'm Nora Princeati. They are Stephen Ruiz and Benjamin Solac. We will be back. Ben, you and she'll have extra point taken coming on Monday. A little different schedule this week. Yeah, we got extra point taken coming Monday where we're just going to talk about the same things that happened, but in a different way. And then we got to leave this recording and go hop in that recording and talk about Eagles Niners now. We know the opponent. So it's a good week to be a ringer NFL Eagles podcaster, moonlighter. Go birds. situation. Get to work,

Bob, yes, boy. Hey, listen, there, I bet my avatar every week even though I

continue to lose boy. If you have any ideas for Steven's avatar this week, hit me up on Twitter at

Benjamin Solak because Stephen bet on the Cowboys to cover! They should have covered, man. They should have covered. How does it

feel to say that every time you lose? Guys? You know exactly how that feels, Ben. I've seen your DMs about your bet you lose.

You know exactly how that feels. Good weekend this weekend. about it. We're chilling. Trying so hard to end the podcast. This has still been the ring around of all Sunday recap show. Thank you to Isaiah Blake for production on this episode. And to Connor Nevins and our Jada Ramgapal for additional production supervision. We'll see you.