The Ringer NFL Show - Sunday Wild-Card Recap: Ravens Fall Short on the Road, Bills Hang On Against Dolphins, and Giants Upset Vikings | The Ringer NFL Recap Show

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Nora, Ben, and Steven start by discussing the Bengals defeating the Ravens at home. They discuss some of the major plays, including Sam Hubbard’s 98-yard fumble return touchdown that ended up being the game winner. Then, they talk about the Bills narrowly defeating the Dolphins. They talk about Josh Allen’s up-and-down game, and the play of Dolphins quarterback Skylar Thompson (23:21). Lastly, they wrap up with the Giants' upset road victory over the Vikings, and the performance from Daniel Jones (45:17). Hosts: Nora Princiotti, Steven Ruiz, and Ben Solak Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA. Tap into Offguard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to the Ringer NFL recap show. I'm Nora Pintziati. Sunday night of Wild Card Weekend is in the books. Three great games to talk about. The Bills, Giants, and Bengals are moving on.

The Dolphins Vikings and Ravens are going home. I've got Stephen Ruiz and Benjamin Solac here with me to break it all down. Ben, we missed you last night. I think we're going to start with the game that we just watched. Bengals 24, Ravens 17. Raven season ends here. Bengals are moving on to play the Bills. uh, Tyler Huntley does does, does in a lot of ways an admirable job.

Surprising to see this game 1717 going into the fourth quarter. But let's start with where the game really hinged, which was the Ravens getting first and goal at the two. Uh, and not being able to turn that into points, not only because Huntley is attempted quarterback jump sneak, uh, doesn't break the plane turns into a fumble. recovered by Sam Hubbard for the Bengals, who takes it all the way back for a touchdown, just an enormous swing of win probability that is probably the reason that the Bengals moving on and the Ravens are going home, even though that was sort of the expected outcome of this

game, the way that I went down sort of surprising. Let's start with that sequence, Ben, because I know you were popping off about it. What did you think there? It's just what a, what a dumb way to lose a game, man. Just what a, like, just dumb. Like, not like, like Tyler Huntley is dumb. Greg Roman is dumb, but just like a dumb, awful bad way to lose a game. They played such a good game. Defensively, they were awesome.

They were doing good stuff on offense in terms of rotating the backs. Tyler Huntley was making plays outside of structure, missed snap, pick it up, go find Josh Oliver running around, right? He was throwing, like, you know, interception to Akeem Davis Gather, notwithstanding. He was throwing with, like, some timing, anticipation, taking isolation, throwing to the boundary. He was doing what he needed to do. Like, it was, it was clunky.

You know, there was a weird sound when you started the ignition. Sometimes the brakes screeched a little bit, but it was running. The car was going. Like they, this, they hadn't had a game without Lamar where they'd scored more than one touchdown. And then, you know, in this game where it counts, they were at least able to do that. They got two. Yeah, there we go.

And they almost got a third. The ESPN win probability model has the Ravens at a 69%. chance to win after the 35-yard scramble up from the Bengals 37, this setting up first and goal from the two. So Raven's 69% chance to win once Sam Hubbard scores his, what is it, 98-yard touchdown is it officially, right? Yeah, the Bengals are an 85.8% chance to win the game. So it's just like a 50-point swing, just like a 54-55-percented point swing on the one play. By the way, the funniest part of that was watching a lot of reporters. there's like NFL commentary

out, myself included, although I didn't go so far as to tweet about it. Try to do math because some people are doubling the probabilities. Like some people are going, that was a 125% swing.

Like, guys, the Ravens didn't just lose that game. 100%. They also lost a second game. They didn't know they were competing and they lost one probability and that. That's what they were saving the timeouts for, actually. It was just the other game of win probability.

So you're, you end up with third and goal from the one. on the box score. But the box score doesn't tell you where the ball exactly is. The ball was outside of the one. They had more than three feet. They had four, maybe you get five feet to go. That ball was pretty close to the two.

And Tyler Huntley's arm is not a yard and a half long. So there's just no, no theory here. So your first, oh, and it's your first, your first blame, the primary bulk of the blame goes on Huntley for just situationally, not knowing what he needs to do on a cold sneak just outside the one. between the one and the two, you can't go for the leap. You have to be closer. You need to know that there's enough,

like you got to burrow and Gus Edwards is going to push you. The pile moved forward. Yeah. But the trajectory of the quarterback, Nate Tice had a really funny tweet, which was the Lion King meme, is like he's just, he's going up and it's not what you want to do.

I actually have the next gen stats, like the actual official distance. Okay. The ball was, it was 0.9 Tyler Huntleys. I made that up. I don't have the next gen steps. You got me. Well, the next gen sets,

they actually did say that the ball never got. I think it was like 0.6 of a yard. Yeah, exactly. So the ball did not get within 18 inches of the goal line, right? Which like if 18 inches doesn't sound like a lot, like look at like your forearm. Like look at like your elbow to your fingertips. Like the ball didn't get close, man.

Like this was an inexcusable mistake on a goal line. sneak. With that said, your second error goes to Greg Roman and John Harbaugh, who both on this drive and then on the eventual game losing drive, the two-minute drill, seemed just determined that the game being Tyler Huntley's hands, just certain that the move was to let their star quarterback, their guy that they're about to give a $250 million extension. They draft in the first round who won MVP in the second. Maybe. We'll talk about that later. Yeah. give that guy the ball, right? On first and goal, from the two,

they go play action, throw to Patrick Ricard. And everybody's like, oh, Patrick Ricard is open. Yeah, but that's the problem when you have Tyler Huntley throwing to Patrick Ricard. It's a really narrow road to walk. There's not a big margin for error on that one. They get one handoff to Gus Edwards, get, you know, half a yard, a full yard, whatever it was,

and then they go for the Huntley sneak, even though they're not close enough. On the two-minute drill drive, they carry two timeouts in their pocket all the way down the field multiple times huddling. On the backside of the two-minute warning, first and 10 from the 17 after a J.K. Dobbins first down, the clock runs from 11-11 to 35 seconds.

They have two timeouts. I don't want to hear about it. We wanted to make sure Joe Burrow didn't get the football. Zach Taylor had timeouts. He wasn't calling him. He loved what you were doing. So they did not call this game when they got into the red area, when they got into scoring position,

as if they had a backup who's played shaky this year, who's got 10 and 90s to his right shoulder. And there were moments where that. that was good. Slug out to to DeMarcus Robinson touchdowns and balls he called. Like there's moments that work for them. But overall, they were for some reason determined to let Huntley impact the game

this much. And he made the critical mistakes that you can imagine a backup making the wildcard round. They lose an extremely winnable game. Why does Greg Roman want to do everything but just hand the ball off to Patrick Carr car in short yardage? He wants to have him like run a shallow route. He wants him to do everything else. Catch a screen pass.

Everything else except for just be a large human being. I'm convinced that he has like he has like the prop that Ben has going on Sundays. He's got Paco card over 0.5 catches. Ben brought this up before we started recording and I think it's a good point. So Ben, I'm going to steal your joke here. But on the, uh, from first single at the two before the fumble on the sneak, they did, uh, Gus Edwards got the hand off on one of those plays. Yeah.

But what you said, which I think is. really true, you have a player whose nickname is bus. Have him do it. Try more than once. Try that twice before 200-pound Tyler Huntley is like, you know, reaching for the heavens. It's the inability to accept simple situations. Coaches and players are so good at understanding and deconstructing the complex. They're so good at figuring out creative ways, handling all of the minute details,

that when it gets the first and goal from the two, and the one thing, the one thing, that they do better than the opposing defense is be big, like is run the football, like it's what they built the whole team around, they cannot get their head around the fact that it's that simple. It should have been under center handoff to Gus Edwards or J.K. Davins on first and goal,

under center handoff to J.K. Dobbins or Gus Edwards on second and goal, and then on third and goal, once you're close enough, do your little sneak jump. I don't mind a little sneak jump. It's just you've got to be within 12 inches to make sure they're just, over the line, right? Wait a way till fourth down.

Trevor Lawrence did it. Trevor Lawrence did it on the two-point conversion for the Jags last night after they got the penalty to put the ball in the one-yard line, right? I'm not with you on this. I hate the sneak jump no matter what. Daniel Jones did it earlier today and it worked, but his back bent 35 degrees backwards. Too many guys go in the other way that are going to run into the head, neck,

and shoulders area of your quarterback. Like Belichick would never let that happen. Belichick always tells you don't reach out for the end zone unless it's fourth down. And that's why. Lest we forget, early in this game, the Ravens had a third and one, and I want to say motioned Mark Edrews into the backfield in shotgun

and then handed him the ball at a same side zone run with no additional tight-end blockers. Like, stop. Like, it's not even reinventing the wheel. It's reinventing a clearly worse wheel. It's making a wheel and making it bad. They just a demo package and they turned it into the Mark Andrews package. It is coaches struggling to do the simple things when they're just presented to them.

Give the ball to the back, go up 2417, and have the defense, which was delightful in this football game, win it for you. You tell the Ravens going before this game kicks off that they can either play 60 minutes or they can have the game against the Bengals. They can have the opportunity to advance in the playoffs, come down to a single short yardage. sequence of play calling and place. They would take that every time. That's exactly what they would want to do. So the irony that that was where, where they fell short.

Now obviously, you know, there was a lot of, even if they'd scored there, who knows what would have happened. But it is surprising that they were even in position to make this a game. And they lost it in a way that you would think

that if they just did the easy things and they just did the simple things, that they, they should have been able to win it. A thing that that is impressive, even though obviously not the result they wanted, yet another good result, relatively speaking from Mike McDonald in that defense,

game planning and going against Borough. Stephen, what did you think about what they were able to do against the Spengel's offense, which now is dealing with really, really significant issues on the offensive line and that was certainly part of it. But we've now seen three games, right, two in the regular season in this one, where they've done a good job on him. So what did you think defensively Baltimore did? I think the most impressive thing for me was how many of those like stop routes on the perimeter

that Mike McDonald's, the DC watched, get completed. And that didn't like deter him from playing that shell coverage, that over-the-top coverage, not giving up anything. That was discipline. A lot of defensive coordinators would be like, screw it, I'm playing press man, I'm blitzing. I can't take this anymore. I can't keep watching completions.

But I thought that, like, kind of explains why they were so good in this game. And they took away the run game. They took away the RPO game, although they were getting a couple of passes off early on in the game. They figured it out in the second half. I've been kind of like ringing the alarm bells for the Raven,

or the Bengals offense for the past month, because this is kind of what it looked like. only they've gotten like amazing field position. No other team is even close to them outside of the 49ers in terms of field position since that Bucks game. It's like their average drive starts at the 40 yard line. They've been really relying on turnovers in short fields. And like I want to see this offense evolve again.

We saw it evolve like around October needs to evolve again. Zacko needs to figure out another thing. He needs to add another layer because right now it's just all on Joe Burrow to be perfect. And that's very hard, especially against smart. offensive coordinators. Well, and so now they're going to have to try to do that dealing with three probably backups on the offensive line because so coming into the game, the right side of the line is a big concern, big storyline. They've lost Lail Collins and Alex Kappa in the last few weeks of the regular season. And then during this game, Jonah Williams hurts his knee.

We'll have to see what the prognosis is there. But he was ruled out fairly quickly in the game. you never want to see that. Yeah. So right now from left to right, they've got Jackson Carmen, Cordell Vulsen, Ted Karras, Max Sharping, and Hakem Adengi. And, you know, it's shades of the Bengals offensive line when that was a real, real, real concern. It's, and it's worse, I would say, because it's not like they've been playing together for a while and they kind of know, okay, here's what we can and can't get away with here, so we're

help these guys here's where we know they have to scramble every single week and critically also it's worse because carman's on the field carman is a liability you cannot trust him to avoid penalties you cannot trust him in past protection this is the guy the drafted the second round he has not worked for the middle uh with sharping and and and and lay all kind of together on one side you're worried about stunts and games let's slant the protection let's put a tight end over there you can kind of like you know two birds one stone it you can't when if you can't leave your left tackle on island you can't help the two guys on the right. It is rock in a hard place right now for that offensive line.

The field position point is extremely well taken, right? The Bengals had a touchdown off of the Tyler Huntley turnover. They scored on the first drive out of the pregame locker room and the first drive out of the halftime locker room and they scored off that turnover. That was after the Bengals' offense. Generally, the Ravens in the meat of the game held them very well, helped them excellently defensively.

however, if you're going to live on turnover field positions, the Buffalo Bills are not a very bad matchup to have in the divisional round. We have a way to keep this train rolling for another week. So for as long as Burrough continues to play his brand of mistake-free football, which he has really dialed down on the sacks. He has dialed down on the interceptible footballs over the course the last few months of NFL play. You ask that defense, hey, what you've been doing, keep doing. And we can run the football and we can throw short.

We'll take all these stop routes, right? Like Stephen brought up McDonald watching and taking all those stop routes of being comfortable with it, being willing to be patient with it. It also tests the patience of Burrow, right? You don't get any of your 15-yard back shoulders. You don't get any of your 35-yard Jamar Chase bombs. It's just eight-yard turnaround to Jamar Chase. Are you going to throw that on time every time,

or are you going to try to push this football? And the fact that Burrow does, I think, is a testament to how he's matured this year. And so the Bengals are flimsier than I think we expect them to be. This was a really, really good team in, like, November. And I think December started to hit into their, into their projection a little bit. So they're flimsyer than we thought they were. But this Bills matchup, you know,

it can make sense as long as Bertovovoy's the turnovers. We'll see if you can do that behind this line. Yeah, and I really don't like this matchup, like the Bills defense against this. I think it's like a totally different thing. Even if, like, technically by the numbers, the bills are probably the better defense, the way that the Ravens disguise is why I think this offense has had so much trouble

against them this year. McDonald is the best at, like, presenting space pre-snap and taking it away post-snap, and you saw it on the last third down where Burrow, I think Burrow made a change at the line, and Collinsworth pointed it out. But at the beginning of the, like, right when he got to the line, the Ravens Corners were in press coverage. And then right at the last second, I don't know what they're basing the indicator on. It might be like when the center picks his head up, they drop back and they drop into cover

three. Burrow changed the play because he thought they were getting manned coverage, and he called the slam route against it because that's usually that's usually the rapid call they drop out of it the corner drops off someone drops under the slant route and he takes the way burrow hesitates for two seconds and that's the play i want to get in more to uh this matchup with the bills and and the bills dolphins game as well but to just close the loop uh on the the raven side of things because their season is over now and you know look they were not expected to win this game with tyler huntley at quarterback and and probably outperformed expectations just by keeping it close.

Their offseason is going to be completely defined by whatever happens with Lamar Jackson. Did want to bring up before we go. Either of you guys think it was a little weird that he wasn't, that he didn't go to Cincinnati with them. Yeah. Agreed. I am, I am pro player generally,

and I am pro Lamar unbelievably. Like, just as like a dude and also a dude I think should get paid because of the way that he plays. that wasn't like, if Lamar's like got like medical pain that he's dealing with and he's got to stay home, he's got to stay home. If it was anything other than that, if it was another move on the chess board of contract negotiations, I think that's stuck. The one thing I will say is like apparently he's dealing with a lot of swelling in his knee and usually flights are the worst thing for swelling. Yeah, it's Cincinnati. So your point there is well taken.

And if that is the case, then I really hope that Lamar or somebody around Lamar, leak that to a reporter right now. It would, as another extremely pro-Lamar person and someone who would generally like to take the side of a player in this situation, I would love to know that information. I'm Google Maps and Baltimore to Cincinnati as we speak. It's like a seven-hour drive.

Eight hour drive if you take 70 West. I'm not driving eight hours to see Patrick Picard screen passes and Tyler Humphi throws. I mean, you kind of got you. I feel like you got to. And honestly, if I'm Lamar, I'm trying to get my way out of Baltimore anyway. Right.

You're, yeah, this is your island. You can hang out on your island. My statement here is not like, what a bad guy. He didn't go support his team. Much, much, much more than that. It's just, this seems like bad news bears. Like, that situation with how Harbaugh talked about the injury for the last going on weeks, right? Because at first it was, oh, yeah, you know, he should be back soon.

and then as time went on, it got less and less clear what they even really thought the prognosis was. And obviously, Lamar tweeted out the other day that he was still dealing with swelling and sort of hopeful. But it just doesn't make me feel good about the state of Ravens Lamar Jackson relations. No, it should not. Either hop on a quick flight or, you know, suck it up and do the drive. It's a bad look. But can I just point out one thing. I made three appearances on the island.

One was Trevor Lawrence is going to be a top 10 quarterback. The other was Daniel Jones. They should turn him into a running quarterback. And then Lamar should never play another down. This was a great weekend for my island appearances. Trevor came back from 27 down. Daniel Jones looked like Michael Bick. Lamar Jackson didn't even travel for a playoff game.

That's unimpeachably true. My only island appearance was don't hire any more college coaches. And I think the NFL's probably going to hire Jim Harbaugh. But he kind of is like cheating. He doesn't count. He doesn't count. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I mean, also, your island take was not that they wouldn't. It's just that they shouldn't. And also it should be noted since then, Cliff Kingsbury has fled to Asia. So. So incredible. Usually you flee to overseas directly after college, not before you start your pro career. It's the best story of the season. Although I saw somebody saying that you need,

to enter Thailand, you need to have a return ticket. So I would love to see some follow-up reporting on this, this Cliff Kingsbury, one-way ticket to Thailand. I want to know if Cliff needs a house. Is he going to fake his death? I want to know if Cliff needs a house sitter. Remember,

remember Prime Cliff, Arizona Cardinals COVID draft? I'm just saying, somebody making sure those pipes are good. Somebody's, you know, checking on the lawn. I got you. Do you think we can stay there?

during the Super Bowl? Pod studio. Hello. Ringer staff. Video content in the living room with the fake fireplace thing. Bachelor house. Yes. All right.

Incredible stuff. Speaking of which, so the Bengals are moving on. They'll play the Bills who beat the Dolphins, 34 to 31. Another game with featuring a backup quarterback on one side that ended up being closer than usual. But Ben, you mentioned that the bill's propensity. for turnovers might be a factor in this upcoming matchup with Cincinnati.

And that was certainly a factor against Miami. Buffalo turned the ball over three times. Two Josh Allen picks and a fumble that they lost one of three, but the only one of those three that they lost. Josh himself, 16 interceptions and six lost fumbles and 17 games a season. So regular season counting this one. it's definitely something they do. You know, this is a fundamentally good offense, but they are careless and they'll take some risks.

The dolphins seemed like they fed into that because they had a pretty aggressive game plan. But Ben, what did you think about the Bill's offense against the Dolphins defense in this? Yeah, so this is a really important game for us to understand the Bill's offense, things that are sticky, things that are reliable,

things we can set our watch div and things that aren't. The bill scored 34 points. Good. There's a lot of points. Won a football game. The bills average negative point one three. EPA per play. Josh Allen averaged negative point one seven EPA per play.

Worse, bad. That implies not calling points. Yeah. Why does this matter? What does this mean when we see a team with this much offensive output? And then we see that by metrics, their passing game wasn't working and their quarterback was was a detriment to the team, so on and so forth. It means that they live and die on a razor's edge, man.

I mean, this Phil's team, like, why does Josh Allen lead the league in turnovers? It's because Josh Allen is the whole offense. And with every single week, Josh is acting more like it and acting like he knows it and acting like it's the only way that he's allowed to exist and act like it's the only possible outcome he can endure what it simply isn't. Like, there was that drive that they walked out. It was, they had just lost the lead, I believe. It was 24 to 20 or whatever.

And they just had, he had just two vertical bombs to Gabe Davis and then took a sack on third down. And there's just open receivers. Short, intermediate. There's escape lanes. There's places to go. Those weren't shot plays either. You're not supposed to throw the clear out route, Josh.

Yeah. It is. Alan's Adi. Anybody want to guess Allen's depth of target in this game? I have it in front of me, so I won't, I will cheat. 12. 16. Ah! Dude, he went full James.

All right? If you've ever wanted to know a Jameson, like a souped up James, James with Nitris, and a playoff game was going to look like? This was it, man. I mean, this was full on flame thrower.

And let's, let's compare this to, like, the Dolphins' defensive approach. Because the Dolphins' defensive approach was full on a flamethrower. Cover zero blitzes, man coverage across the board, get a free rusher. The dolphins are doing that

because they are outclass. The Dolans are doing that because they're at a disadvantage. They want to invite chaos. They want a play to either be a 50-yard touchdown or a turnover. They need this to be nuts. That way they can score defensive touchdowns on scoop and scores, that they can get a couple of lucky coin flips and stay in a game that they don't belong in.

Josh Allen is on an objectively more talented better team, a team that is favored by 14 points, two touchdowns coming into this game. Allen needed to sit and let the offense work for him. He needed to let Ken Dorsey call a second and eight run and get to third and four, and then on third and fourth, throw to Stefan Diggs on the slant.

He needed to walk the football down the field, keep this game slow, keep it under control, and just beat a worse team. Let your defense stop Skylar Thompson. Yeah, they'll give up a catch to try and kill there. They'll give us a nice run of Jeff Wilson there, but we're better than them.

And instead, this game was like four and a half hours long. It was just chaos after ridiculous moment, after fulcrum moment, after watershed moment. This was not a mature game. the bills cannot play like this and expect to beat the Bengals and the Chiefs. They might beat one of them. They might be close in both games because Alan is incredible and Diggs is incredible and Dave Davis is huge, so on and so forth.

But this is not reliable. It's scary stuff. But why are we saying the bills? Why are we saying they? It is Josh Allen and Josh Allen only. The complaints about Ken Dorsey are just beyond comprehension if you watch this team on film. Like people are open every single week. And Josh Allen is not making the throws.

He's scrambling like half the time. And it makes it look like this is a one-man offense. Dorsey has been like a top five offensive coordinator this year. So Dorsey's like has the, the criticism of Ken Dorsey probably wins the award for offensive coordinator that a lot of the teams fans don't like that I just do not understand why. He's been good. The giveaway is when you could. playing about passing concepts based on the broadcast where you can literally not see downfield.

And I would say like his performance compared to Brian Daibald last year, he is far and away better than he was last year. Brian Daibald was bad last year. But that's the thing is, is Daibles, Bill's teams won and they like, you know, Daibble is the coordinator when when Josh got good, right? And that's what it is. Right. And then Daible went to the Giants and Daniel Jones is winning and Dable just want a playoff game. So like that it's just, it's the guy who got away, you know what I'm saying? It's watching Dable be so successful with, with Jones and with the Giants that then goes, okay, well, why are the bills worse than they were?

Well, let me put two and two together and make four. Brian Dable's doing a great job over there. It must be that Ken Dorsey's not doing as good of a job. But here's the thing. They're not worse than they were. They're second in DBOA. They are second in success rate. They are second in drive success rate.

They are consistent offense. It's not. When they're worse than they were, when they, like in that drive, in that quarter in that moment, then it's Ken Dorsey's fault. Right. Right. It should be emotional reaction. None of the criticism is based in reality.

Like they were complaining about deep shots when Dorsey called mesh. Well, but also isn't some of the criticism a proxy for like I think it's misplaced frustration with their receiver depth, which during the off season and preseason on paper looked like if everybody's arrows were trending up. looked like it could be really exciting and looked like, oh, my God, Gabe Davis is going to flourish into this real, like, true, true number two, you know, number two who if you didn't have Stefan Diggs, you might feel like he could be a number one maybe.

And man, what's Isaiah McKenzie going to turn into? This is so exciting. They're going to have such a deep receiving core in all of these different weapons. And, you know, Gabe Davis had a hundred-yard game today. Like, those are still, those are useful players, but we're talking about players who, in hindsight, that's a little bit of offseason hyperbole talking, right? Like those things have not panned out in the way that a lot of Bill's fans and Bill's watchers in August might have optimistically projected that they would.

And now, okay, we talk about this game. Josh Allen attempted 11 deep throws. That's the most by any quarterback in any game this season. he was four of 11 for 139 yards a touchdown and interception on those now to be fair the interception was the uh zavian howard pick on the deep ball to john brown might have been a little bit of of past interference on that that didn't get called um the other pick you could say it bounced off cole beasley chest right like there's different ways to look at this stuff but when we talk we're talking about a little bit of the same thing right like why does john

Josh Allen feel like he either needs to go for the hero ball or instead of trying for a checkdown using his legs as the checkdown. Part of that, I wonder if it's a little bit of this internalized thing of if it's not Stefan Diggs in a good matchup, the other guys are not necessarily going to go make a play. Now, I think that's a dangerous mindset. I think we've just seen and it's not just today, right? like this has been an issue for them all season. I think we're seeing an example of why that's a dangerous mindset to have.

But I do there is a, it's not coming out of nowhere, but I think when it gets turned into criticism for Kent Dorsey, it's misplaced. Yeah. Yeah. No, I would say one of the fair criticisms, which is kind of related, but not totally, is that his, his usage of the wide receivers, I do think is worth criticizing. But that's like a small thing in the grand scheme of things. like Beasley is getting too many steps.

Shakir is not getting enough steps. So that's the one thing I think you can like fairly criticize, but everything else, I don't know. I'm just not seeing it when I watch these games. Yeah. And I think that like I think the Cole Beasley thing is a perfect example. I'll tell you why. Because they put Beasley on the field.

And when he's on the field, they run place for him. Right? Like it's like, all right, third and four, Beasley's on the field. Guess who's going to be the open guy the pick play. All right, first and goal, guess who's getting the target on the little wide receiver screen, whatever, right? It's Beasley. And then when they're not running like a 20-21 redux where they like grabbed the Brian Dable part of the playbook that says Beasley on the top, dust it off and said, all right, this one, run this one, Josh. Beasley's not on the field.

It's Khalil Shakir and it's Gabe Davis, right? So like they, they, I think they had this sensation of like Josh is not trusting these new receivers in these concepts. Like he's not seeing it the same way these guys are, he's not throwing it to game, Davis on this slant, whatever. Let's get Cole back here. He likes Cole. He knows Cole. And let's run some of the coal favorites. And this way, like, they'll be a part of the offense that works.

You see, like, I think like that Cole Beasley signing and then usage is indicative of the problem that they're trying to to solve. And that's why, like, what this boils back down to for me, Stephen, like, you brought up, like, this is not on Dorsey. Like, why are we saying the bills overall? Like, this is on Allen. Schematically, I don't think it's on Dorsey. I do wonder why Josh Allen's quarterback's coach the last three years, 2019 to 2021, Ken Dorsey, is not able to go to his quarterback and be like, hey, buddy, not, this is not the way we can't run it like this, right?

Like, I have my, like, pet theory that, like, all coordinators in the booth are bad and Ken Dorsey's in the booth this year. But, like, it's got to be somebody's job on the sideline. Like, Stefan Diggs, Mitch Morris probably can't do it. What do you mean like the Like going for the home run every time And not checking you down Or the Beasley target specifically

Going for the home run Not checking it down Not just like kind of point guard in the offense Like Josh is playing well Overall There's no question about I had Josh down second team All pro quarterback in my ballot

Josh having a great season But the bill's offense could be better If he just took his foot off the gas a little bit And I wonder why nobody in Buffalo's been able to get that across to Josh I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just curious about it. I think he's almost cursed by what happened last January when they had to shoot out.

Also, I've been thinking that too. Yeah. Everyone just put him on the same timeline as Mahomes. He's a younger player. He's a player that needs to develop. We were having these same exact conversations about Mahomes like October of last year. Right. So the fact that it's happening to Allen now isn't really a surprise.

He's just like a year behind Mahomes' development in that regard. And I think like Allie, thinks he needs to be ready for that game. Like, I think he thinks he needs to be ready for, you know, he's playing that game for like a month and a half. Yeah. Like, like down three for 13 seconds left. Like, I need to be ready to like make these calls the line,

like make this throw and like yada, yada, yada. And like, he's just so tunnel vision dialed in on being that sort of a player where it's like Josh, dude, like step up in the pocket. And if there's six yards, talk the ball and go get the six yards. And we'll take first and 10 from the 31. Like, it, as you. he just, the entire bill's approach does not seem comfortable with the idea of a drive being more than five plays. Yeah.

You got to, you got to be. You have to accept it. I just want to point out, because you referenced the third and four that went to Beasley on the pick play. Stefan Diggs also got a pick play on the backside of the play. I don't know if it was the back side. And it was open. And Josh Allen decided to target Beasley. It was a pick-aside situation.

And he decided to target Beasley. Like, that's another one. Dorsey gets to play. Josh Allen, he can't press the button for him. Beasley snapped at target ratio is absurd. He's on the field like 11 times against like four targets. Why? Why?

Why did Beasley run that route at two yards of depth? It's bad. Anyway, it's scored 34 points. All right. Let's go to the Dolphins a little bit. Look, Skyler Thompson, gave it everything he had. The stat line doesn't look great, right?

18 to 45, 220 yards, a touchdown, two picks. But he was getting hit quite a bit. hung in there. Receivers dropped quite a few passes. There was all the stuff with the operation with the play clock and all the delay of game penalties and the false starts. So a lot of messiness, but I don't know,

man. Credit to Skyler Thompson. That's a tough spot. And it didn't look half as bad as it could have. That's all I have to say for him. I mean, If we celebrated Brock Purdy yesterday, we could give Skylar Thompson a little bit of gloves.

Like for like, yeah, 40 minutes he was playing just as well as Purdy kid on Saturday. So it's fine. Yeah. I very much agree with the Skylar Thompson. Nice. If we're going to talk about the Brock Purdy game,

we've talked about the Brock Purdy game. Skylar Thompson should start for the dolphins next year. All right? Here we go. Easy. Let's talk about the play clock stuff. Because, so they had four fall start penalty.

T's. And then the real death blow in the final drive was the delay game on fourth and one. They're at midfield makes it fourth and six. And Miami doesn't convert. They never got the ball back. Mike McDaniel, I guess, said that he thought they'd gotten the first down, which and therefore they didn't have the play call ready for fourth and one. That makes a lot of sense to me because they were subbing with like 10 seconds left on the play clock, it seemed like. But that wasn't the only time that they had a really messy operation there. And that's been something that they've struggled with this season. know he's been a great play caller, but he hasn't always been a great, uh, manager of the play clock. I don't quite know what to say about that other than it's just something that he's got

got to work on. Obviously, I think functioning with a with a backup quarterback, um, with your third string quarterback doesn't help, but it's not a great look to, to have that kind of messiness in a playoff game. He's so bad at it. Like I wrote that story about the timeouts in the, the middle of the week last week. I did not realize it was. this big of an issue, but he wasted the most timeouts by far in the NFL last year. Like, they waste so many timeouts. They still take delay of game penalties. It's a disaster. He's got, I like my perfect play call syndrome, which I get given the way that he coaches. But yeah, that's, that's a thing that like, there's a lot of think a first year head coach

realizes he has to learn after his first year. And that's one of them. It's just that that clock management process takes a while. There's a real. There's a lot of offensive coaches, coordinators who have done very well for themselves coming out of San Francisco. It seems as though one leaves, one tends to leave the 49ers with a little bit of difficulty getting the play call in and keeping things. When you got to say 19,000 different words to get a play call in, you know, it makes the margins a little tough.

And like another point is Mike McDaniel was not calling plays. Kyle Shanahan was calling play. So not only is he, this is his first year as a head coach with those responsibilities, it's his first year calling plays and he's doing both at the same time. So I think we should give him a little grace because he did just put up 31 points. So I'm like willing to give him a pass and give him time to learn how to manage a game. Because the other work he did outside of that in this game, it was like magical stuff. I mean, that was giving 31 points out of Skyler Thompson.

I know there were turnovers by Buffalo, but it was still impressive. And he called a good game last week and they only scored 11 points. That was not on him. No, it's just, it's, he has to get better at it. He absolutely has to get better at it because it is a clear issue and it's clearly costing them. But there was reporting, I'm spacing on who it was. But I think somebody at ESPN was just shooting down rumors during this game about the idea that they would move on from, from McDaniel.

Where that came from, I don't know, man. And I guess it's just sort of Steve Ross has a, as a history of making reactionary decisions. But that guy can coach. He doesn't do it like everybody else does and he's new at it. And there are some areas for improvement.

This is a really clear one. But Mike McDaniel, I think, if it's not obvious to you that Mike McDaniel helps a football team far more than he hurts with stuff like this that he can get better at. I don't I don't quite know what to say to that. So I'm glad that that was put to rest. What's the conversion rate between Skyler Thompson's A dot and Josh Allen's A dot? Because Skyler Thompson having an 11 yard A dot is like even more insane than Josh Allen.

That's like in Josh Allen terms, that's like a 35 yard A dot. I will say this, the dolphins got things to figure out. No two ways about it. Corner is in a weird spot with like the Byron Jones injuries and Xavier and Howard being in and out. And they had to play a lot of young guys this year and they got to figure that out. And then obviously quarterbacks in a in a totally weird spot, just whether, no matter where you fall on the two of debate as a player, you have to go through the two of health and what he may or may not choose to do with his football future coming into this offseason

and how much the Dolphins want to invest in him on a long term. but I tell you, Dolphins get corner right and quarterback right. This team will be back in the playoffs, and they will be with a higher seed and with a good chance to win one. What they're building here is impressive. Offensive line, too. Office of line two, sorry. Yes.

Do they bring Josh Boyer back is my question? Because I think, like, with the way the Dolphins defense was built, I understand wanting to play a lot of man covers. Like that, going into the year, that's what you thought they would do. they had Biden Jones who got hurt. They have Zavian Howard, who used to be a player that could hold up a man, but he's not that guy anymore.

And I think like Romo kind of hinted at it at the beginning of the game that the Dolphins coaches may have said something along those lines in the production meetings. But it's obvious on tape that he's not that guy. You cannot ask him to hang up one-on-one, hang in one-on-one coverage against Star wideouts. I think they might need to make a change because the fact that he did not recognize the liability that he had at corner. and adjust like in October is a bad sign. And what's up with Josh's?

They're too chaotic. Stop blitzing. Josh Allen, stop throwing interceptions. We're canceling Joshes until we figure this out. Josh McDaniels failed to make the playoffs with the Raiders. Josh Tupot is a backup nose tackle. Why is he not a starter? I'm running out of NFL Josh's.

We'll work on it. Josh Jacobs was the only one holding it down for Josh's this year. Josh Kelly. Did Josh Kelly get one of the seven failed runs for the Chargers last night. Anyway, these are not the important things. Maybe they are. Just to your point about where Miami goes from here,

another complicating factor, their last in league in draft capital, five picks total in the upcoming draft, none in the first round. And once they do a little bit of the regular bookkeeping with futures contracts and stuff, they're probably around $20 million over the salary cap. So largely a productive,

productive year. You've got the coach, starting to develop a scheme and offense, made some strides, but there's a lot to figure out there. And first and foremost, just what's going on with the quarterback

and his health situation, because presumably, too has had some hard conversations with people telling him about the risks of repetitive head, injuries. And that's just really scary stuff. And there's sort of no way to predict how a player is going to react to that, how he looks at his future and what type of decision he wants to make. But it just makes this a complicated moment for Miami. But still, I think we saw just based on the fact that

they were even able to be competitive in this game, that there really still is, um, some cause for optimism. The NFL playoffs are heating up and with Fandul, every play is a rush. New customers join today so you can bet the divisional round with $150 in free bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. Just sign up with promo code Ringer NFL. For Monday night, my favorite bet is Cowboys minus two and a half. I think they're going to beat the bucks pretty easily.

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org in Maryland. 1877-8-Hope-N-Y or text hope-N-Y to 467-369 in New York. 1-800-2-2-4-7-0 in Wyoming. Or visit www. 800 gambler. net in West Virginia. All right. Should we close this out with Giants Vikings?

Sure. Sure. No, giants. All right. Well, this is probably Daniel Jones's best career game. So, Stephen, you're a Daniel Jones guy. Why don't you kick us off? I mean, this is why I think Daniel Jones has always been better than people give him credit for it because he is a useful football player. He is very athletic, as we saw. He could throw the ball decently enough. if you could just get him to look at the right receiver and actually throw the ball,

he's a good quarterback. And Dayball has unlocked that version of him this year. And he unlocked that version of him this week. The difference between this game and the last game against the Vikings was Daniel Jones just wasn't making the throws that were open. The receivers were open. He just wasn't making the throws. Either he was missing them or he was holding the ball. This time he made the throws.

He was decisive. He was aggressive. Like he looked like I don't buy into the like, oh, this guy's good in the play. playoffs. I think that's nonsense. Like Joe Flacco, I don't think he's actually good in the playoffs. I think he got hot one year. But Daniel Jones looks like a different, it looked like a different mentality from him. Like he looked more aggressive. He looked, especially in the pocket. He looked like he was more willing to contest tacklers that tried to bring him down. It was a good performance from him. I think he's a good player. I don't want to go overboard, though. I feel like

there's been an overreaction where people are like, oh, yeah, pay Daniel Jones. Like, no, he's fine. you can win with him, but we don't have to like go overboard with it. He's a good quarterback. I'm not going any further than that. Good is strong. It's a strong work too. The other thing is that look,

okay, this is the Giants first playoff win since the 2011 Super Bowl, right? It's an awesome moment. This still, I don't think any of us think particularly highly of the Vikings, you know, relative to their record.

But this qualifies as an upset. It was a really great. great game. Daniel Jones is 2435 for 301 yards, two touchdowns, 78 yards rushing. Uh, he's the first quarterback in postseason history with 300 plus passing yards, two passing touchdowns and over 70 on the ground. He picks up seven first downs just using his legs. It's an awesome game, right? So he's, he's having a fantastic game. Dables got the aggressive play calling going. It's all really exciting. So I just say that because I don't want to take anything away. The Vikings defense is

a bit of a privilege, right? Because I think they had over a hundred yards before contact in the first half and Daniel Jones wasn't pressured once before half time. Um, it was bad. He played a good game. I don't know that this, you know, it's not the 85 players out there. I've made jokes about, I've made jokes about like the Shanahan McVay offense being the white privilege offense. The Vikings might have the first white privilege defense. Yeah. When in the regular season when a quarterback who we know to be kind of like middling has a really nice game against a bottom six defense by DVOA, which let's emphasize that that's what the Vikings are, we go, yeah, it's because of the defense they played. In the playoffs, we go, what a playoff debut. Daniel Jones,

baby, what extension time. It's like, listen, just because the Vikings made it here doesn't mean we wipe the slate clean on Duke Shelley and Chand and Sullivan, right? Like, it's just this, uh, Jones did a great job doing what he's done all season. Trusting the offense, throwing on time and accurately, better than he has previously, and then using his legs way better than he has previously. Overall, good report card if Daniel Jones continues to get. Let's see, let's see, get the Eagles defense. Pretty good pass rush.

A lot of talented players. Let's do it again. Also helped by the aggressiveness that Daible showed, which that's helped them all year. I think they've, it's just such a great moment of self-awareness from a team, which I think has really defined this giant season. It's just like understanding that you need to inject chaos if you're going to outperform, which they have, right? Like, not necessarily in this game. It makes sense to me that they won, but they were going to need that to, you know, especially with all the injuries that they dealt with later on in the season to be able to beat teams that a lot of people would say have a talent advantage. and the fact that they've consistently done that and did it again, you know, going,

going forward on fourth and one inside the seven instead of taking the field goal to go up seven, you wind up scoring a touchdown there that maybe should be an obvious go, but I don't think that would be to a lot of coaches. And then going again on the fourth and one from their own 45 with three and a half minutes left in the game. get it on the Jones keeper. It forces the Vikings to burn their last time out. And that's a really smart, gutsy call, right? So the numbers are probably a little bit inflated because of the Vikings defense.

But I do think that a lot of the things that were good and that they did really well were reflections of why this team has been really exciting this season, a lot better than people thought they were going to be. And I think one thing you can say about the Vikings defense, as bad as it was, they do force you to earn things. Like it didn't so much happen in this game, but they force you to not make mistakes. Like that's what they capitalize on.

That's what they're trying to get the quarterback to throw the ball to the safety. And for one weekend, Daniel Jones did not do that. So I think he does deserve credit beyond like just saying that like his defense is bad because of that. Well, and even there was like a moment when it felt like Viking shenanigans were taken over. Right?

There's the slate and drop and then there's a horrible roughing the passer call on Lawrence. And it's just like, oh my God. Really? Again? And in part because of that willingness to be aggressive and what they were able to do defensively didn't end up mattering. But there was still Vikings potential was engaged at one point during this game.

Can I, there's something I would like to talk about that I feel very strongly about with the New York Giants. Absolutely, Benjamin. this is the best the roster has been all season and this is really important to note like when the giants were like five and one and we were like cordel flot are we sure jason pinnock like what are we doing like they were banged up and they were playing rookies and they were like figuring out a bunch of stuff like they came on tibidil wasn't taking snaps yet they didn't have jelan smith on the roster which like far be it from me to take jelan smith like seriously as a starting linebacker in

twenty three i'm not trying to do that but the giants you go look through the roster, especially defensively. They were in complete and total upheaval on a week-to-week basis. Like Leonard Williams is gone. And now Xavier McKinney's gone. And now Adory Jackson is gone. And they are just cycling through Cassie. They cannot stop getting injured. They are trying to figure out which young guys

make sense where Dane Belton's just like playing a bunch of snaps. Total mess, right? And they have just been very slowly, very gradually, very successfully. Since like week eight, just been climbing up out of the muck. And all of a sudden, like, I,

tell you, like the memes are fun. The jokes are a good time. This is a solid roster. Like, is Isaiah Hodgens, Richie James, and Darius Slayton the best wide receiver core left in the league? No, okay? I'm not trying to sell you on that. It's a solid group. Isaiah Hodgons can play. Absolutely. Isaiah Hodg is a solid NFL receiver. Dary Slaten is a speed threat. Like, they have guys. This defense's a backfield right now with Xavier McKinney Healthy, Julian Love has been light-satt all season. Dane Bell and fourth round rookie who has played well for them at his back now with or Dory Jackson return from injury and Darnay Holmes. It's a good, it's a good, it's a good, it's a good, it's a good back five.

Again, like, it's, I'm not saying they're the Niners. I'm not saying they're the Eagles, but like the, yeah, we, we have this, this, this kind of frozen, paralyzed perception of like these, these rag-tag giants out of nowhere, baby. No, they got their guys back. And the guys that they've had all season, these young dudes, they've got better. They've earned their reps and they are pretty solid. Again, like, Evan Neal, Jail, Jail Smith, just stuff you can pick on. This is not the best roster in the NFC.

playoffs. They're going to be outclassed against the Eagles if they go on and they face the Niners of the Bucks of the Cowboys. They're going to be outclass there too. But this is a better roster than people realize. And kudos to the development they've done over the season. Cudos to the health and training staff getting these guys back. They've got their horses. So there's nothing to sneeze at. I brought up the point about them needing to inject chaos over the course of the season to be able to get here, particularly when a lot of those guys were either in and out or just out. It's, you know, a lot of that goes hand in hand with what we know of Wink Martindale

and how he wants to play defense. It was striking to see this game. And, you know, they're going up against a Vikings offensive line that isn't particularly good. But they're just rushing four. And it's fine because Dexter Lawrence gets eight pressures. He's doing that as a pure nose tackle. Leonard Williams has seven pressures.

Tibado has six. Um, they got 21 combined pressures as a team and 14 hits on Kirk cousins. They're not, I, I don't know what the final splits were, but it didn't seem like they were blitzing very much. It just seemed like they were rushing for and saying, no, we're going to, we're going to get there. And then when you're doing that, it helps them on the back end have a second player bracketing Justin Jefferson pretty much all the time. And so they can put a Dori Jackson on him primarily, but he's got help a lot of the time. And, you know, Justin Jefferson's night ends. He's got seven catches, 47 yards, no touchdowns. He has one catch

for four yards in the second half. There's a lot of situations where you can't, you know, the wink, Martinville Tiger does not tend to change his stripes. It seems pretty obvious that the reason why we're seeing that to some extent here is just because it's undeniable that the players are good. They're good enough to do it. They don't need, they don't need it. They're good. Only six blitzes according to the media. And guess what? Kirk, 100, uh, no, 83% completion percentage, 0.6 EPA per dropback. So I'm happy that we did not give into his instinct and do that. Yeah. Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink has absolutely 100% grown up. It's also hard not to when you have Lawrence, Leonard Williams, and came on tip it all on the field at the same time.

Holy Moses Dexter Lawrence, man. I am I am enamored with this guy. With sexy dexy. Sexy, sexy, I'm in, I'm all the way in. I don't know how to correctly enunciate how much more difficult it is to rush the pastor from nose tackle than from like three technique, than from like between the guard and the offensive tackle, right? Like where they put Aaron Donald, where they put Chris Jones, or they put Fletcher Cox, I mean, I'm oversimplifying it a little bit, right?

But like, it's harder to run into a wall than to run into space. It's like getting out of a parking spot when you're parked it, when you're like double parked in. And he does it. This is just the only way to do it is with next gen stats. I love that. I know your best. Yeah, quarterback pressure leaders this season from a zero technique alignment. Dexter Loris leads the league with 29.

Rayquon Davis of the Dolphins is second with eight. What? That's 21 fewer. If you just, if you just tripled Rayquant Davis, you'd be close. And now this isn't pressure rate, right?

And so like some of this is the fact that the giants leave Dexter Lawrence head up over the center. They leave him at nose when they want him to rush the passer. But the Giants leave Dexter Lawrence head up over the center when they run versus passer. It's,

it is bananas that this player who was like, it was a good prospect coming out of Clemson, but it wasn't like you were writing the book on his past rush ability, that this player has become this effective getting to the pastor from this role. It is unique in elite rife with incredibly talented defensive defensive tackle. Some of the best defensive tackle play we've seen in the league, a unique true one of one. And he's just, he's a handful and a half sexy dexy.

I love it. Beyond the fact that he's this good and he has this much production, like being able to put a guy over the center just messes with protection so much. You can only check into like two different protections. And then if you give that information to Wink Martindale, which I know it didn't really work out here, like that's just like giving him the answers to the test before you take it. He's a phenomenal player.

It kind of reminds me of how the Eagles used Fletcher Cough when they went to the Super Bowl, they would put him over the center at times to dictate protections. He was like a three tech who is not used to being there, but it's not surprising that he was a good pass rusher. Dexter Lawrence is not supposed to be this good at rushing the passer. This was the first year I got to vote for all pro and end of season awards. And when you do defensive player of the year, you rank three players.

And I wanted to put, I did Nick Bosa, Micah Parsons, and I wanted to put Dexter Lawrence third so badly. Like, I just, I really wanted to. And ultimately, Chris Jones was my third. Also, I think it doesn't really matter. I bet Nick Bosa is going to win. and it's ranked choice so the third is less significant. However, I went back and forth so many times that when I finally sent my ballot in, I hit send, and then later on I was looking at something,

and I realized that I hadn't changed the team affiliation. So it said Chris Jones, New York Giants. So I had to sheepishly email back and be like, hey, I kept replacing Chris Jones with DeVosy, So just to clarify, I meant to vote for Chris Jones, even though it was incredibly hard for me emotionally. You had one more chance to vote for him and you didn't do it. Let him down. I don't think I should.

I'm fine with it. You're not a part of the sexy-dexy conglomerate. You've been ousted. That's not fair. Absolutely not. I can find you back in. Thank you. That was hard.

All right. So the New York Giants are going to play Benjamin Solax, Philadelphia Eagles. some divisional round. No birds. San Francisco, by the way, winner of Tampa Bay Dallas tomorrow night. What you thinking, Ben? Giants, Eagles.

I do think that the Giants are like a tougher out than a lot of people are discussing them to be. I think that they have some matchups that work well against the Eagles, namely this is a game which Martin Dell can blitz and should blitz a lot. Eagles have struggled against the Blitz this year. Moves Jaylon Hertz. I want to say last time I looked at he was like 19th, and EPA dropped back against the Blitz among NFL quarterbacks, right?

takes their offense and kind of, they throw a lot of screens against it through behind the line of scrimmage, right? They throw some 50-50 balls. It kind of simplifies them. So the Giants are, I think, tougher to handle. Like when they played the Eagles last,

like a serious game, it was when they had like Rodarius Williams and a cornerback. You know what I mean? Like, they got more guys now, so I think their game plan will be a little bit better. I think it'll be closer to people realize. With that said, yeah,

I would rather play that than the Cowboys. I think the Cowboys are going to beat the bucks, right? So I still think it's the preferable draw. it's the ideal draw for the Eagles. So we'll see. It's third time seeing them. Brian Davel's a good coach. I think,

you know, we've seen a lot of these, like dolphins, bills a lot tired than people thought it would be. Even Seahawks Niners, like the Seahawks were hanging around there for a while, right? A lot of these games, I think we're tired of than people realized.

And so. It's been an awesome weekend. Yeah, a lot of fun. I can't believe we got through all of Giants Vikings and didn't discuss Kurt Cousins throwing a fourth and eight. Oh, we were waiting for that.

I thought we were saving that for last. I know what he did to do like that. another hour on that. Yeah, yeah. Log in from part two of the podcast. Stephen talking alone into the mic while Nora and I sleep about fourth and eight Kirk Cousins checkdown. Kirk played a great game.

He played a great game, just like Kirk usually does. And then it came time for Kirk to make a play. And Kirk gave a two-yard out to T.J. Hawkinson. And see you again next year, kids. The thing about Kirk is he's always going to be Kirk. He's always going to be Kirk. It doesn't matter. He could look like Patrick Mahomes for the first 58.

minutes, he's going to throw that checkdown on fourth and eight. It does not matter. That was bad. In another way, though, it was good. It was really good. It was just prime. I saw somebody aggregating all of the snarky tweets from Packers players about how it ended for the Vikings.

And it brought me a lot of joy just because sometimes it's easy to get sort of, you know, you learn more and more about the business of football and sports and everything is sort of like, oh, you know. people are playing for money and are all of these rivalries and things just kind of manufactured. Nope. They don't like him. They don't like this team. That made me happy.

Can we also talk about Tibodeau's postgame outfit where he was wearing pajamas? He was like dressed like a sleepy Monopoly man. He had a top hat and pajamas on. Just missing the monocle. There was a was there? Oh, there wasn't there wasn't a monocle. I Mr. Peanut Man? It was like a

Twitter search Kavon-Tibato right now. You need to find this. Yeah, I'm looking at up. I am positive that Kvon-Tibon-Tibato is going to be a good player because you cannot behave this way and not be extremely good at football. It's just it's a one-to-one correlation. Oh. He is in deep sleep right now.

That's a choice. Man, that's a choice. I'm for the pajamas. I love a pajama set. You know he's sleeping well. right now. And he's wearing, I think the, oh, they're a little bit different. They're like the Joe Burrow glasses from last year. The top hat, I do have a lot of questions about. But it's like he was going for like the sleepy Ebenezer Scrooge look, but that he got the hat. Yeah, he needs like a sleeping

cat. A lantern. Yeah. Thank you. You know what they had in olden times when they needed fire. We're laughing, but that man is probably deep in sleep right now. He's probably getting some good Zs. Yeah. It's also like, you know, succeed road playoff game and you pack a strong postgame outfit. That's belief in the team, all right? He said that we're sleeping on him. I made that up, but I'm assuming that's what he was saying.

Oh, that would be good. Yeah. That's it. Listen, we're going to win this game. I don't even worried about looking like a complete idiot if we lose when I walk out in pajamas and the top out. We're going to win. There's the thing. Like, did he have a hat box?

usually a hat like that. It comes in a box, like a big box, because you got to keep it safe. You can't have it get folded in on on the plane. I didn't see any pregame entrance photos of Tibido. I didn't see what the pregame fit was. All right. The hat was included there as well.

If any Giants reporters are listening to this, made it an hour into this podcast with us. Thank you, first of all. Second of all, can you follow up about the hat box? We'd really appreciate it. Also, what did the shoes look like? slippers or did he go like with like dress shoes to match the top at I want to know slippers would be ideal but then you hope that he has different shoes to walk to the bus you know

yeah you know you got to go like nice nice loafers right so that way it's it's casual but they're also it's comfy it's good all right as much as i want to do 20 more minutes of footwear speculation shall we call in night folks anything else from this great weekend man football's fun no yeah Let's call it at night. It's fourth and eight. Let's throw a four-yard pass. And head this thing. And head on home.

Go to bed. See you guys in camp. This has been the ringer NFL recap show. I'm Nora Prince, Adi. They are Stephen Ruiz and Benjamin Solak. Ben and Sheel will have you covered after Monday's Buck's Cowboys game. That'll close out the wild card round. We will be here for the rest of the playoffs all through the Super Bowl,

breaking down all of the action. Thank you, as always, to Isaiah Blakely. for production on this episode and to Arjuna Rangapal for additional production supervision.