The Ringer NFL Show - The Patriots Look Better Than Ever, Kyler Murray’s Comeback, and the Cowboys Shine | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

The Patriots might have their best team in a decade (1:30), the Ravens pummel the tanking Dolphins, and the Cowboys look like the real deal. (9:30). Plus, the Browns disappoint in a major way at home, the bizarre Lions-Cardinals game, and the overreactions from Week 1 (28:30). Hosts: Robert Mays, Kevin Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's back. We're back. We're back. We're back. We're recording after the week one games. And we will get into all of the week one action, but I believe the only place that we can start is with the New England Patriots looking as good as they have ever looked in dismantling the Pittsburgh Steelers tonight.

Craig, our producer, asked the question, kind of a hypothetical before we started recording. He asked, is this? the best Patriots team since 2007. And I think the 2011 offense was just underrated and overlooked. The defense wasn't very good. But I think when you look at it from top to bottom, there's a very good case that it is. And we're about to drop Antonio Brown into this. I mean, it's pretty ridiculous how good they look tonight on offense and on defense.

I think that there's a lot to be sorted out there. I just want to go with their very basic point here, which is that the Patriots looked amazing tonight and they're going to get significantly better in about 24 hours. I don't know, unless you're the chiefs right now, or maybe, I don't know, I don't know where you throw the Ravens there, but with the exception of basically the chiefs, if you're an AFC team, you're looking at next year, in my opinion. I mean, that's tonight's performance. I mean, absolutely just, just embarrassing the Steelers. You know, I saw it was a funny tweet from Pat McAfee, but it's like Dorset was taking the top off the defense.

And then you had Edelman there. And then they add Antonio Brown tomorrow. By the way, they had the dolphins tomorrow. They're the next week. They had the dolphins next week. Okay. The dolphins.

I wrote this morning about how, you know, in three receiver sets, Antonio Brown is going to essentially just step in for Philip Dorset. Yeah. Which when Philip Dorset looked like he did tonight, I'm not sure how much of an upgrade it can be. But in reality,

it's a pretty massive upgrade. I mean, Dorset has done very little. over the course of his entire Patriots career. I just want to put this in context. When we're talking about Dorset taking the top of the defense, Philip Dorset does nothing typically. So if you're going to get a productive Dorset and you're going to get Antonio Brown,

being Antonio Brown, and you're going to get normal Edelman, we're in uncharted waters. I think the 07 team is completely in its own category for a couple of reasons. Number one is it changed football. I've written thousands of words in that I can write thousands more words on that.

But, I mean, that was the first team in history to run more shotgun than under center. They basically reinvented the slot receiver. And obviously, they had Randy Moss in the outside. I think the mixture of talent innovation cannot be matched ever again. I think Tom Brady was different quarterback back then. But I think on paper, you're looking at one of the most dynamic offenses in history. I want to talk about a couple different things as it relates to this Patriots team. I agree with you.

I mean, I think that there's that one's in a class of its own just based on how influence was how just dominant they were in the moment even. I mean, it felt like we were really witnessing something. There are two things that stuck out to me tonight. One, I was very impressed just by how they were able to tack it down the field. I mean, that's something that their offense hasn't had that element to it in a little while. And Antonio Brown is an incredible deep receiver. I mean, if they're going to be hitting those shots combined with everything else they can do,

they just get really scary in a hurry. The other thing just about tonight's performance that jumped out to me is that their second area is ridiculous. And they are so deep and just again, so versatile, they can do so many different types of things, you know, with Jackson, with Jones, with Gilmore, you know, McCordy getting the pick. They just, there's an answer to every question. And I was thinking about this as it was kind of relates to Stefan Gilmore, just the way this team has been built and how they've just managed to find guys and really understand exactly how to construct this roster blows me away. Because Gilmore is, it's really hard to get a return on your investment

when you make a guy the highest paid cornerback in the NFL and he's been every bit as good as they wanted him to be. I mean, they look at that contract, they don't even blink because he's been so good. And then you look at just like being able to put Isaiah win in there for Trent Brown. The idea that Trent Brown, that trade last season kind of swung their year.

If they didn't have him, it's an entirely different conversation. It's just the offensive line, the secondary, the areas of a team that are the receiving core now, with Brown. The areas of the team that are hardest to build and make them complete, those are the

strongest areas of this roster. And it's just so impressive. By the way, Gilmore's cap number, he gets expensive to keep him around next year. His cap number right now is only nine. That's me, it's been higher in other years. No, no, of course. I mean, they did make

them, as he said, it was five years 65. It is a big deal and certainly a big deal for the New England Patriots, but not a big deal for Tampa Bay or the Lions who throw money at mediocre players all the time. They threw more money than they usually did at a really good player and it paid off. That was really, I mean, and this gets to, Bill Barnwell had a great tweet over the weekend right after Antonio Brown was signed.

And he said, can we stop saying, oh, I know Bill Belichick and he'll do this or he won't do this or whatever. What Bill Belichick's going to do is he's going to win. And if he identifies, okay, so they let Malcolm Butler walk. and we all know what the Patriot way means when it comes to contracts and all that stuff, that's such an overblown term, but usually means letting guys go too early instead of too late. It usually means finding undervalued assets. It usually means staying away from huge kind of sticker shock free agents.

And then they looked at Stefan Gilmore, who was from a division rival and said, here's $65 million. You know why? Because he's really good and he would fit this system. Because Bill Belichick cares about winning. That's why Antonio Brown is here. That is why Stefan Gilmore is here. And so I agree with you. I mean, this Define Gilmore is one of the best moves they've made on this current 53-man roster.

And their secondary is awesome. Jonathan Jones is awesome. I mean, it is really interesting to me. You know, this is a team without Trey Flowers. This is a team that was going to have to change a little bit their identity. But Tom Brady, I guess, told the Allen Chris on the broadcast that he feels the defense as good as it's ever been. So this is a Belichick defense. This is a Josh McDaniels offense.

This is a Super Bowl team. I mean, the way that they kind of allocated their resources on defense is the way that they've done it for a very long time. I mean, to get Michael Bennett for half of the Trey Flowers price and then to pay corners. That's what they've always done. The one spot they've spent on in the last, in this, under this current CBA is cornerback. They did it with DeRovarov. And then they did it with Stefan Gilmore. And it's worked out in both cases.

They just signed Jonathan Jones to a contract extension. they're willing to spend money in that area and it works out for them yeah the Gilmore contract i didn't realize how uneven it was over those years oh so he restructured that's the reason yeah okay i was whenever you see those sort of numbers there's a restructure in there typically there is and i was just surprised so it's been yeah his cap it is 9.2 this year goes to 8 point 18.7 next year but they easily can fit that i mean that's not going to be a problem he is it's 15 and dead money again because he restructured so they clearly are not concerned concerned about, you know, whatever he's going to be, have to be paid next year.

They'll have to restructure next year when they get Aaron Donald for $4 million dollars somehow. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. Brady looked good tonight. You know, the Steelers had really just looked rusty on offense. I mean, they could kind of use a guy like Antonio Brown, it seems. That might have been a nice little jolt for them. The only problem with this whole thing is that Tomlin does not have the sense of humor

Gruden does. So he will not do that Colel Mack bit where it's like, oh, man, we could really use a dynamic receiver. Like, he's not going to keep referring to that as Gruden did with Colomac. But really, when you look at just the stops and starts on offense tonight, it really did seem like if they could add any player in the NFL right now, it would be Antonio Brown. All right. Let's get to stock up and stock down for week one here.

Let's start with the Ravens. And, you know, you tweeted this and I'm with you on it. I think that it really was just a display of the plan that they had. Yep. Well, no. Wait. I'm sorry. I let's let's put this in context the the dolphins played the ravens and both teams just played their plan yeah yes with the dolphins that's being as bad as possible and having your players start reaching out to their agents saying they want to get out of town yeah a couple people reported already today I mean if I was Stephen Ross I'd be concerned maybe they didn't lose by enough yeah that was a little a little too unembarrassing for my life they were absolutely terrible but I do I mean it's I think we

still need to give some credit to the ravens. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are plays where guys just getting torched down field, but I just love how they've constructed this. And the way that they've constructed it is, we're going to run a ton of play action and we're going to throw the ball to the middle of the field, whether that's 50 yards down the middle of the field or whether that's 12 yards down the middle of the field to Mark Andrews, it still is an area where they want to attack. And they ran it to perfection today. I mean, Lamar Jackson just throwing deep dimes in that area is precisely the type of offense they wanted

because when you have that run-heavy approach, you're going to be able to take shots. And Marquise Brown is the perfect guy to take those shots. I just, it was so cool to watch it all come together, even if it was against the Dolphins. Yeah, and it was also cool to see Lamar Jackson. Basically, all right, you ready for this? I have a conspiracy corner.

Okay. They talked, they talked so much about how, how much this run game was going to change football. I mean, John Harper literally said it was going to change football. Their running back coach Matt Weissman told me that they wanted to start a sort of run game revolution that they caught fire with the rest of the league and basically changed the course of how everything was going. And then we see what we see on Sunday.

And it's almost like they knew the passing was going to be so good and so take advantage of defenses who are planning for something. Listen, I did an entire story about this, about how you keep up with Lamar Jackson if you're in the division. I talked to the Bengals coaching staff, talk to the Ravens coaching staff, excuse me, the Steelers coach staff. I obviously did talk to the Ravens coaching staff, but on offense. And they were saying, I don't know. When Lamar Jackson starts running, we don't know, do we put a safety on him, to put a linebacker on him? Do we put a cornerback on him because he's fast at the cornerbacks? And all of a sudden, you've got Lamar Jackson throwing dimes. And it's kind of

funny to me how much the coaches were willing to talk about Lamar Jackson as a runner in the offseason because it looks to me like they were the passing is what's going to get there. And I think that's going to catch a lot of people off guard. I'll be curious to see what it looks like moving forward. No, I agree. They're not going to play the dolphins every week. I'm just saying he looked like an awesome, awesome passer. Yeah.

I mean, I just feel like this is a situation where we had this in week one all the time where you can just jump on a team and make that you don't know what's coming. you can just really kind of unload on somebody when you have an element to your game that maybe they didn't see coming. I'll be curious to see what will happen in future weeks when they do try to run it with him a little bit more. And two, if a team can make him a drop back passer. Sure.

Because so many of these are just massive play action shots. And we've seen quarterbacks all the time that are completely different players when you're asking them to drop back and actually kind of go through progressions, everything else. And Jared Gough is like that. When you turn Jared Gough into just a drop back passer, he tends to. to struggle. But again, if this is the plan, then that's okay. If you want to build this passing game on play action shot plays to either your tight end or your fast receivers, that's a really good place to start and we'll figure everything out if somebody makes you

play outside of your tendencies. But for the most part, I could not be more excited about this moving forward than I am after today. I'm so happy that Lamar Jackson get to coaching staff that's excited about building around him. I totally agree. It is so easy for him to have fallen into the lap of the wrong coaching staff. And they promote Greg Roman, who has experience with sort of non-traditional offenses and building around that. And I'm just so happy that there's going to be a sort of a creativity there.

And Lamar Jackson obviously can pass. He made the joke not bad for running back to sort of needle a little bit, all the talk of the offseason about how he was a running back. he is a quarterback and he's a damn good one. By the way, I do want to say this. It's not, when you look at the,

the dolphins defense, they aren't going full major league on us. I mean, they are bad players and it's a bad team, but it's people like Eric Roe is, Rasha, you know, Mika Fitzpatrick got dusted today.

Zavian Howard is out there. I mean, like, I'm not saying that these guys are all going into Canton, but I am saying that they would probably be on NFL rosters if they weren't, you know, the starters on the dolphins would probably stick somewhere else, you know, maybe in a different role if circumstances were different. So I don't think this is, we're not fielding an XFL team here.

They're not. And again, I think the point you made is perfect. It's just so fun and so encouraging to see a team, understand the strengths of its players, build a system around the strengths of those players, and to have that system work. And that's exactly what we saw today. I mean, there is no reason when you draft a quarterback in the first round to not do everything in your power to build the correct offense around that quarterback. And that's exactly what the Ravens did today. And again, I'm excited to see what it's going to look like moving

forward. Yeah, I mean, listen, I think the one thing, there's questions, okay, what happens when he becomes a dropout passer or whatever? But like, what happens when he starts running? He's awesome. He's so fast. I mean, I just think that we have not seen the best version of Lamar just yet. And I'm really excited to see that going forward. That's what I kind of what I was getting at with. what's going to look like when they can't jump on a team. How many different versions of this can we see depending on what they need to be? And I think that that's going to be something tomorrow moving forward.

I think we can see a lot. How excited are you for Dolphins Patriots next week? It's going to be great. I mean, the line cannot be high enough. Can I talk about the dolphins for a second? Yeah, you absolutely can. Okay. This is a Dolphins podcast now.

This is the Fish Tank podcast officially. So there's an amazing Paul Dipodesta quote that I've brought up a handful of times. mostly in print. But it's basically about how he sees analytics is a roller coaster, right? And Paul D. Podesta takes his kids to whatever, you know, he lives in San Diego, whatever it is, six flags. What's it's what does it close roller coaster to San Diego, Robert? Probably Magic Mountain, right?

Yeah, I mean, I guess, but that's a long drive. Like real roller coaster? That's a long drive. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I guess when he's in Cleveland doing his browns things, he can go to see your point, right? Sure.

Okay. So whatever, whatever it is, he takes his kids to the roller coaster. and they say, we want to go on a roller coaster, right? And then they get there and they're like, oh, wow, this is scary. I want to get off. And that's Pauldi Podesta's analogy for analytics, which is you see the roller coaster and you want to get on it because it looks fun and you know that people have had fun there.

And then as soon as it's scary, ownership wants to get off. And this is the scary part for the dolphins. The scary part in Cleveland already happened and Sasha Brown lost his job because of it. and I think that there's, you know, the Florio report that everybody wants to get traded or whatever, that's part of it. Losing is part of it. Being a national joke is part of it. If you want a tank, you have to tank. There's no respectable way to take the losses. It doesn't exist. You have to take it on the chin. And that's where I kind of think, you know, you're going to have a lot of lows before you get the first overall pick. maybe get the first overall pick for two straight years,

whatever it is, but there's no dignified way to do that. And I think that's something the fan base needs to be aware of. If they're actually going to go through with this, it's going to be a lot more weeks like this. And that's okay. That's the plan. The difficult part, though,

is even if you sell ownership on it, and even if ownership doesn't want to go off the role. Ownership sold you. Or ownership sold you, whatever. I think one of the parts here is that Stephen Ross told it for an office to get a franchise quarterback. somehow. Or do something. Do something that was different. I mean, just have a plan that did not resemble the old plan. So if there's a harmony between your front office and your ownership,

that's great. But the hardest part of tanking is that the players on this team still have to play. And it's understandable that they wouldn't want to be a part of this experiment because it does them no favors. And I think that's going to be the issue moving forward, is even if you sell the decision makers on it. Being a part of a team like this and playing on a team like this, when you may not be part of the long term plan, there's just very little upside to it for you. And it's going to be a very long year for those guys. Yeah, I mean, it sucks. Tanking sucks. Ask anybody in Cleveland. John Dorsey is going to turn over the entire roster when he got there. But that's how you play by the rules of the game is currently constructed. I think that if the dolphins lose by this many

points often, you might see a rule change in the NFL. You might see a lottery change. And maybe a team that goes 0-116 doesn't automatically get the first overall pick. I don't know. The Brown's process didn't ring alarm bells because A, Sashi Brown got fired. But B, people think it didn't work because, quote, unquote, the football guy had to come in and make those picks. You can't tell the Brown story without the story of those picks. And I think that there's a huge disconnect there.

But we'll leave that aside for a second. if the Dolphins front office and coaching staff gets the first overall pick two straight ears and builds their franchise because of it and loses by 40 points every single week, I think the NFL might be like, you know what, we're not going to let a team do this anymore. With two-thirds of guys experiencing noticeable hair loss by age 35,

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All right, let's get the next stock up. The Cowboys offense looked incredible today with Kellan Moore. I mean, this is, we talked about Kellynne Moore, you're decently often on this podcast in the preseason. Well, I mean, yeah. It was a conversation. It was literally a rule that you can never talk too much about the Dallas Cowboys.

Sure. But even beyond that, beyond the obligation to talk about them, I just always, when I watched them in the last two years, and I watched how stagnant that offense had become, when I was considering the evaluation of Dak Prescott, whether they should pay him everything else. I wanted to reserve judgment until I saw him in an offense that actively helped him. The same way we see with so many quarterbacks around the league, the same way we've seen

with golf and Wence and all these young guys that are propped up by their offense to some degree and not system quarterback in a way that kind of takes away from them, but just understanding that the system does matter when you're trying to get the most out of a young quarterback. And to see how they play today with all the motion, with all the motion, all the play action stuff with the way they used DAC as a runner in the right situations. It was just really fun. It's exactly the type of offense I was hoping they would be. And again,

the Giants aren't very good. DeAndre Baker had a really rough day in his first start, things like that. But the plan was there. And that's what was encouraging to me. I loved this nugget from Chris Wesleyan. In Kellynne Moore's play calling debut, Dak Prescott becomes the fourth quarterback in the Super Bowl era with 400 past yards,

four past touchdowns and a perfect passeret. Okay. Three of those happened in the last six years. Can you guess who they are? I have no idea. Dak is one. The second is Jared Gough. And the third is Nick Foles.

Last year against Minnesota. Yeah. And then Nick Foles, obviously, in 2013. And then Ken O'Brien for the Jets, 1986. So that's, that list is funny. But that list is also very telling. Because it's Nick Foles in that Chip Kelly offense, there's that game against the Raiders.

And it's Jared Goff last year against Minnesota. It's the type of offense where it's tons of play action and this system is actively helping your quarterback. I mean, was DAC excellent today? Did he make a ton of just like ridiculous throws? Yes, the one to Cooper down the left sideline is just silly. But that's the type of stuff we should see them doing more often. They did not push the ball down the field last year because they didn't use as much play action as they should have. It was teams around the league said, okay, this is the way to create efficient offense.

The Cowboys at the same play action percentage they had in 2016. They didn't change at all from the system and the formula that it worked during Dax's rookie year. And they suffered as a result. And today, it's not like this vastly different offense. That's why Elliott can just step in and play. But the way it's packaged matters. And the packaging today was awesome. Hey, I just need to take a detour real quick.

I just saw this quote on my Twitter feed. Ben Rothesberger was asked why the Patriots gave him trouble. And he said, because they're good. which is true. I appreciate the analysis. He's not wrong about that. No, no,

no, he's 100% true. That's why I bring it up. Okay, does anything about today change your expectations for the Cowboy season and what they can compete for? No,

not necessarily because I thought if they had an offense like this, they were Super Bowl contenders. I wrote that. And their offensive line was awesome. I mean, they're going to be good. I feel like if that group

is even slightly healthy, This was the biggest question to me because their roster talent is excellent. I mean, that team is loaded at so many positions. And it was about unlocking certain aspects of this offense, whether that's D, Dak Prescott, whether that's having an offense that can turn Michael Gallup into what we saw today, which is one of the first times I could remember where a hyped guy in training camp actually was as good as people thought he was going to be. That was the number one issue for me.

Honestly, that's kind of a through line between the Ravens and the Cowboys. I was curious what these systems could make these quarterbacks look like. And if the answer is what we saw today, then I think both of them can compete deep into the season. I agree. I mean, I really, that I saw everything I needed to see from Dallas.

So what didn't get the Giants? I think they looked how I thought they would look. I mean, I think that their defense is kind of a mess. I think that their quarterback is not very good at football. He was fine today. But I just, I think that they're going to be underwhelming,

even when they're playing decent. So I, They're not a team that I get excited about. You can say that again. We move on. Let's get to our last stock up here. We move on before we make another point about the Giants. Yeah, I don't need to talk about the Giants anymore.

It's just, there's nothing to be said. Delvin Cook looked fantastic. Yeah. And that offense. Kirk Cousins just not throwing anymore, just phasing out throwing. So I'd be curious to see if what happened today ends up being a bad thing for the Vikings. if they just think they can throw 10 times every game and just destroy people because they got a ton of turnovers. And I feel like that's kind of what fueled this. But Dalvin Cook was just excellent. I mean,

I thought this offense could really be a boon for him just in terms of his production and just a year removed from that surgery. And he was just destroying people today. So we'll see what happens. I think, honestly, as much as Dalvin Cook looking good was encouraging about the Vikings, the fact that their defense just absolutely dismantled Matt Ryan might have been the best take away from today. That's what I was going to say. I mean, I think it's hard to draw conclusions today because as you said, the turnovers, you know,

the Anthony Harris interceptions of Matt Ryan were quite frankly strange on Ryan's part. The second one was bizarre. Yeah. So, it's hard to draw many conclusions about what the Vikings will look like because they were playing a team that was just actively imploding in week

one. I think that the, they have a significant injury on their offensive line now going forward, but I think the Falcons can. They still have the roster to turn it around. I'll get to a rant about overreacting to week one a little later. But I think from the Viking standpoint, we just saw that they have roster talent. That's something we knew. That's why I picked them to win the NFC North last week. So they are who I thought they were. I was excited to see it. I think they're going to look very different going forward, but it's nice to have that option with Dalvin Cook in the run game. And I think that, listen,

If they want to run a little more than most teams, I'm generally going to be okay with that. Yeah, I mean, if they're going to be a team that runs the ball, I just think it's about finding the right mix. You know, are you going to run the ball too much? Or are you going to run the ball to the point where you can still throw it? You can still use play action. I mean, Cousins was good today.

And the chances he did get to throw, he looked good. So I'm just hoping they don't learn the wrong lessons from this because I think this team, again, with an offense that plays to the strength of its players, everything else, has the roster talent to be very good. I just don't want it to become a situation where it's last year's Seahawks, and they're pounding their heads against the wall a little bit too often. I'm with you. It might be this year's Seahawks, by the way.

Yeah, I know. It's frustrating. Tyler Lockett had one target through like three quarters. Hey, D.K. Metcalf can play. Yeah, he looked fantastic. I mean, just dropping an athlete like that into that offense. We probably should be able to see that one coming from a mile away. Okay, let's get to stock down.

A big stock down. You want to say it? I mean, so, All right, let's talk about the Browns because that game was just ugly. And I mean, when you have that many penalties, I think they had 15 penalties through the first like three quarters. That was very close to that. I mean, they had almost 150 yards in penalties by that point. I don't think the offense looked terrible for the first three quarters.

I think that they were just sabotaging every single drive. Every time Chubb touched the ball, it seemed like it would go back 10 yards. Losing Greg Robinson in the middle of that game against a. pretty decent Titans front was just terrible. And then at a certain point, as soon as Henry scores that 75-yard touchdown, you start playing from behind, that's when you can get into quicksand very quickly. So I just think that it was a brutal day, but I am not necessarily, you know, that bearish on the Browns moving forward.

I just think the game got away from them today. Do you know the last time they committed that many penalties? 1951. 151. The game was on watchful. do one. I mean, again, Baker played fine for the first three quarters. It's just that offensive line, the one thing I will say about just their overall outlook moving forward, that offensive line is a problem.

You know, Hubbard got just absolutely toasted by Cameron Wake a few different times today. Baker was holding out of the ball way too long and the offensive line is bad. That's a recipe for disaster. So, again, I think they'll be okay. And I think that this is just kind of an aberration when you consider how many penalties. penalties are often a product of discipline. I think that it didn't really didn't speak well to Freddie Kitchens as a head coach that they looked this unprepared.

But I do think they're going to be all right. I think this game was just a weird one to start off with. And again, it got away from them in the fourth quarter. I needed you to do that because I'm going to talk about the 1951 Browns. Coached by Paul Brown. So let's not act like they were some amateur hour team. And they almost won the championship. So let's not sleep on the 51.

Browns here. Okay. Now, the 2019 Browns, this is what I talked about all offseason, which is when you have a lot of faces, a new head coach, a first time head coach, it can take September to hit the ground running. It can take October in some cases. September for a lot of teams is a new preseason. The funny thing about it is that the team that showed us that was the Patriots, and they seem like they're in playoff form already. So from my perspective, I, I'm not panicking about this. I still think roster talent wins. I still think they'll figure it out.

Maybe they start with a two and two type run. Maybe it goes to two and three and we have some panicky stories. And then I think they'll win 10 games at the end of the year. I don't think this is going to trend towards a massive disaster. I just knew the whole time that there were going to be some early struggles. That's just the byproduct of importing a lot of new faces and having a first time head coach. Yep. Yeah.

This is something that we probably could have seen coming early in the season. I do think that the talent does win out in the end because I do think the quarterback is good. I think he's going to be good. Again, I can't remember who was talking about this. There was somebody this weekend, and I apologize. It's kind of the discussion that turnover differential is not always why you lose, but it's often a product of losing. You throw interceptions while you're losing.

So when you're trying to catch up at the end of games like this, that's when you can have just that nightmare quarter that Baker Mayfield did. that the Browns didn't lose this game because Baker Mayfield through three interceptions in the fourth quarter. The game was already lost, so he threw three interceptions in the fourth quarter. I mean, that's why. I mean, just you take risks you wouldn't elsewhere.

And as soon as Henry scored that touchdown, I feel like they started to play outside of themselves. And when you're already having just that absolute meltdown game with all those penalties, that's when it can get really ugly. Worried about Baker's play at all. He left the stadium in a sort of a soft cast. seemed to have a

That would concern me. I mean, if he's hurt, yes. If he's not healthy, that's another it's the whole of the story. Just watching him today, was there anything they concerned you? Not really. Again, I think a lot of the terrible decisions

were in the fourth quarter when they were already losing by a lot. For the most part, I think he looked okay. The only aspect of his game over the first three quarters that was concerning to me was the fact that he was holding out to the ball way too long.

I think that for the most part, as an offense, they were trying a little bit too hard today. they were really trying to get everything on every play. And when you have those sort of expectations, when you come into the season, I think as hyped up as they were, both from the outside and in their own building,

I think they really wanted to show out in the first game of the season, and they really tried to play outside of themselves, and it became a problem. I feel like as they settle in, they'll be just fine. The Red Sox fire their gym. Didn't they win the World Series last year?

They did win the World Series last year. What? Can you split that to me in five seconds or not? why they would No, absolutely not. I do not. I do not watch the American League. I now no longer care.

I now will not care. I just saw it and I was like, didn't that happen? And now I've just completely moved on. Okay. All right. Stockdown, a quarterback I actually am concerned about.

I don't know how long, much longer we can do this in Tampa with James Winston. Oh, I know. I know how long, um, nine months ago. I mean,

this is, which is when I would have got rid of James Winston. I, the 49ers did not exactly, you know, shower themselves in glory today. And they won that game by two touchdowns because Jabas Winston threw two pick sixes

and he doesn't seem to care who he's throwing to. The second pick six was just, it was like they took a fan from the stands and not a fifth year pro. I mean, I think that that team can probably be okay moving forward with Ariens. The problem coming into the season for me

was going to be, is this just who he is? And I think that we can probably start coming to that conclusion if we have a couple more of these. It's week one. It's a new play caller. It's a new offense. There's,

I guess maybe you can give them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm just tired of watching this. I'm tired of just him, again, not having any sort of regard for where he's going with the ball. I mean, how many three turnover games can we endure with him as the quarterback before we just understand it's time to move on?

Well, I don't think, I have a lot of thoughts here. The first one is that if you, If the ownership was truly hiring Bruce Ariens and Byron Leftwich to get the most of James Winston, I think they need a new mission because that's going to be happening. I think that the plan going forward needs to be identifying and developing a new quarterback, and that can either start this offseason in the draft, can start in free agency,

you can take a flyer on a mid-career guy, whatever it is, but it's not going to be James Winston. and it's not going to be James Winston at a veteran price point. So just start planning for something else, Tampa Bay. Yeah, and again, it's week one. I mean, this absolutely could get better. Mike Evans was sick today, things like that. But this is just, it's a trend. It's a trend that's continuing.

And if we saw everything we wanted from teams like the Ravens and the Cowboys, this is the exact opposite of the start you would have wanted to see from Winston in this office. Yeah, I'd say, I mean, that's the second pick six was just like, that was maybe the worst throw non-mat Ryan division of the weekend. Yeah, it's, he's very frustrating to watch. Okay, let's get to our last stock down. Again, a team dealing with some quarterback issues. This Nick Ful's thing in Jacksonville was a problem.

I mean, Gardner Minchu looked fine when he got to play today, but they were also getting blown out by that point almost. It was early in the game. Accuracy, Accuracy God, Gardner Minchew. By the way, Lamar Jackson set the Ravens record for completion percentage. I just want to say that because Minchew, she was threatening something at some point with the Jaguar's completion percentage record. But Lamar Jackson actually said it.

Yeah, I think that we'll see what happens with Gardner Minchue moving forward. I feel like there's reason to be skeptical of what he'll end up doing in that offense against the team that's not the chiefs. And if they're playing with a backup quarterback for the next eight to ten weeks because Nick Fulz broke his collarbone and that defense is going to look this hapless, this has a chance to get out of hand for them. I mean, Miami is going to be the worst team in the league. But this is, the Jags I thought had like disaster potential coming into the year and starting off with two months of a backup quarterback and not being able to tackle anyone. The rumblings are there. I mean, we're starting to start trend in that direction.

Yeah. Sucks for Foles. Glad he got paid. But obviously, I'd much rather be on the field. We'll see what happens with. I mean, I think, for net actually, I, I, I love. liked the way he moved today. He looked okay. Yeah.

The Miles Jack, uh, the Miles Jack thing was weird. He apologized to the city afterwards, which was a little bit dramatic. Um, the Jalen Ramsey hit on Tyree Kill, uh,

is, is probably the most interesting thing that comes out of that game because now Tyree Kill had to go to the hospital from it. Um, he's staying overnight. He was in a trauma, uh, unit.

And it was, I guess it's a, kind of a strange shoulder dislocation. and the chiefs, the chiefs released a statement on that. So I think that's probably to the greater competition of the AFC. That's a bigger injury than the Foles thing. But the Foles thing is certainly a season ruiner.

Do you think the chiefs will be okay if Tyree Kill has to miss extended time? I tend to think they will be. I mean, Sammy Watkins looked incredible today. Yes. I mean, the fact that you could just plug Hardman in there. By the way, Hardman rookie the year. Here comes. Well, with Tyree Killout, then this starts to become a possibility.

There comes. Yeah. I mean, Mahomes basically has resurrected Sammy Watkins from the veteran graveyard. And so I'm, I have no concern whatsoever if they have to go through September

and parts of October without Tyree Kill. Yeah. I mean, if Hartman can give them that speed element, and if Watkins is the guy we saw today, I think that they could absolutely not miss a beat over the next month. There was a, there was a really funny moment when I was sitting down with Brett Beach last month.

And he was like, there are, there are quarterback. who cannot play with four, three, 40 guys. Quarterbacks whose arm just cannot take advantage of. I mean, obviously, they can be on the same field with them, but there's no reason to have a four or three guy for some quarterbacks because they can't just run a fly route and you'll get him the ball.

The quarterback can't do it. Patrick Mahomes is the perfect quarterback for a fast guy. And that means Hill, but if Hill is gone, that means Hardman. Yeah, I mean, they have so much athleticism. that offense. I mean, again, if you just plug a Hartman in for Hill and you're thinking about what you can do with Watkins, with Kelsey, everything else.

I mean, it's just an unbelievably physically skilled group of receivers. And he's the guy to take advantage. I will say, him chucking the ball five feet over Kelsey's head when he tried to do the no-look pass was really funny today. It doesn't matter because they're going to score 40 points a game anyway. But him just trying to like throw a little

English on it for the sake of it was like, okay, good start, buddy. You're really going forward to week one here. The Chiefs are one and no. They've got the Raiders next week win. Ravens the week after. We'll see how that goes. Lyons the week after.

And we'll see how that goes. That's a win. And then we'll see how the Colts go. That's October 6th. Today's episode is also brought to you by floor and decor. Don't miss out. Floor and decor is the only one-stop flooring shop that keeps general contractors,

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To see if you're eligible, go online to NFL Sunday ticket. TV and stream every NFL Sunday ticket game this season to follow your favorite team no matter where you live. Use promo code Ringer at checkout to save 15%. Exclusive student discounts also available. All right, speaking of the Lions, let's get to our challenge flags of the week. I assume that yours might be about a certain bearded. pencil holding head coach in Detroit. I want the listener to know this.

So a second ago, this part got cuff in the podcast. We had discussed earlier whether or not Matt Patricia was going to be one of our challenge flags. And then he said, do you want to name Matt Patricia as a challenge flag? And I emphatically said,

oh my God, yes. Yes, I do. This is something that's been on my mind for a long time. So it's not just Matt Patricia, because actually the person at fault here is Daryl Bevel, but Daryl Bevel was hired by one Matt Patricia, and I'm just going to go throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Everybody goes.

Daryl Bevel called a random timeout right before a game ceiling third down. It was a strange, I mean, it was a great play, but the Lions player was completely wide open. He literally converted it, and they blew the play dead. Matthew Stafford. was obviously completely beside himself. At one point before that, he had been mouthing trust me to Beville,

which is probably something Beville should have done. And then they come back to the third down. And instead of running a similar play or just getting a guy open in the flat, which was the original play, they ran a weird five-receiver empty set, and it was not converted, not even close to being converted.

the punt was kind of semi-blocked. It was definitely blocked. Yeah, but it didn't go backwards. It was like a 20-yard punt. And then they took over at their own 40, and the Cardinals tied the game with two-point conversion and then tied the game in overtime. Wait, though, you're missing an important part of this step.

Matt Patricia, for no reason, with 45 seconds left in the game and the Cardinals out of timeouts, call the timeout. Yeah. not exactly a timeout master. He needs his owner. You know, you know, everybody just sits around talking about like, oh, everybody who's on Belichick staff needs, you know,

to bring in a veteran player from the Patriots who can teach the Patriot way, you know, P.O. Adele with Mike Frable or whatever. What Matt Pritch just needs his own Ernie Adams. Just tell him what the hell to do during his games because he clearly has no idea. It was really strange. and what I want to sort of use as a jumping off point is I wrote a profile of Matthew Stafford last week. And Dan Olavski and I talked a little bit about sort of Stafford's arm talent and his potential.

And Orlovsky basically said, what would Stafford and his arm talent look like with the Sean Payton or Sean McVeigh? And obviously that's told everywhere with every quarterback who doesn't work with Sean McVey or Sean Payton. But you have the opposite of that at this point, which is you have a guy. who wants to run the ball with Carrie on Johnson. You have a guy who has apparently no faith in his quarterback to, I don't even, I honestly don't even know what the hell happened at third down. I mean, we could do an entire podcast, just extrapolating what the hell happened there. But to call time out before you convert it and really kind of during your conversion

of it, it was so strange. If a bad coaching staff, I don't know what you'd do in Detroit at this point. Let me play doubles advocate a little bit because I think for the, the most part over the course of this game, the offense was kind of encouraging. Like, I love the way that they used Hawkinson. I thought that Stafford looked really good. Oh, no, no, no, no. They used a ton of play action, which they'd never done in the past.

I was like, okay, like this, again, it's playing against maybe the worst secondary that we've seen in years in the NFL without Patrick Peterson and Alford. I mean, the Cardinals are a mess on the back end. But for the most part, you know, the majority of this game, I was like, okay. Like, I like this offense. I could deal with this a little bit. but just the utter meltdown at the end. And if Tremaine Brock catches that interception at the end of this game,

the Cardinals win, which it's just to meld down like that against a rookie quarterback and just have it be such a disaster at the end, I think that's my takeaway here. I think the offense probably will level out against better teams, but I have zero faith in Matt Patricia moving forward. And I'm not sure why we should. So, I mean, we didn't last year.

It's not like we had a brief glimmer of hope for Matt Patricia, but what I want to talk about here is certainly did not. I want to extrapolate that. So I agree with you. T.J. Hawkinson looked really good. I think Stafford looked good for most of the game. I think that the problem is when you tie the Arizona Cardinals and score 24 points regulation against the Arizona Cardinals, it is such a disaster that the offense didn't

actually do well. Like, I'm sorry. Like if you can't hang 30 on that team or you can't, by the way, just convert a third down, a third and short, or you can't score a touchdown in overtime when you probably could half. I mean, there were some plays there. Were you watching this game? Did you watch the game? Yeah. Yeah. It was one of the games that I had on. Especially in overtime.

It looked like they were playing for the fuel goal and some of the stuff. They ran on second and 10 in the Cardinals territory. It looked like they had no interest in winning this game at some points. And I understand from the conservative choices at the end were brutal. I understand from a play calling standpoint, they looked better than they have. But the actual

choices on what to do on each play, which, by the way, this is why I'm tying Patricia in with Beville, because it might have been his call, those were so head-scratching that I'm just, I'm mad at everybody. For all of the encouraging signs about what the offense looked like schematically, the decision-making near the end and just the strategic choices, those were really discouraging. I mean, that's one of those things where even if there are elements to this offense and this team that are a little surprising and I think might be pretty good for them long-term, I have very little faith in the coaching staff overall.

I think that's my takeaway as I kind of consider everything about this game. What were your initial impressions of Kyler? I feel like they were such a just nightmare over the first three quarters. But I thought that he was pretty good at the end. I mean, yeah, rookie quarterback first game. I think it could have gone a lot of different ways and to see him kind of come back near the end of that game and make some really impressive throws when the game really mattered. It was nice to see. I think that they could be fine moving forward.

I agree. The NFL put out some couple numbers. That was interesting. 54 passes for Kyler in his debut. Do you know who had the most passes ever in his debut? One more than this, 55. Cam Newton? No, even weirder.

Sam Bradford. Sam Bradford. Oh, my God. I know Cam had that monster like 400-yard game in his first start. And then the second game as well. Cam Newton was a monster in the beginning of his career. Still is. Um, yeah, so the other numbers there when he, second half an O.T, um, he went from 2.6 yards per

attempt in the first half to seven flat in second half in O T. Uh, he became a different guy. I think that part of it, I, I don't want to go too far down this road, but I think that, I think that it's almost a low grade version of what I said about the Vikings, which was the other team on the other side was imploding. So I'm not even sure what to glean from it because they were just so lost as a organization and as a franchise. I don't know what the hell was going on. But I was super encouraged by Kyler. Some of the stuff we saw I had heard about and I had seen some highlights of, but his ability to just not get hit when it looks like he's about to get destroyed is kind of amazing. Like there's times back there because he does look

small back there. And there were parts where I'm like, he's going to get a little. I'm like, he's going to get wrecked. And then all of a sudden he's evaded pressure and everything's fine. And he doesn't necessarily have to wing it down and get a 20-yard completion, but he just avoids mistakes. His escapeability was fun today. And hopefully that can continue because if he does ever get squared up by

somebody, it might be a concern. And I also, one of the aspects of his game that I thought, you know, might translate and was going to be a huge part of whether he could be successful is just his touch on deep passes. and he really can't fit the ball in there. It's a pretty looking ball when he's going down the field. And we saw a couple of those down near the end. And the thought of it's Gerald,

like, okay, like, let's do this. I can work with this. So, I mean, and the one to Johnson, that was just a beautiful design. I really like that play. And I think the Kingsbury will be fine. I mean, he said today he felt like he was just way too cute at the beginning of the game.

And I think that can happen. I mean, that's exactly what happened to my team last week. So, I mean, in week one, I feel like you can kind of come out and think that you have all these answers and these kind of weird play designs and everything else and they can fall flat. And I think that's kind of what happened

for most of this game with Arizona. Ben Rathisberger was asked what his reaction to Antonio Brown signing with New England was and he said whatever, which I actually think is the correct answer, but not in the tone he said it in. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think he's saying it like, I don't care.

He's really bringing it today. I'm more like whatever they were going to win the Super Bowl anyway. You know what I'm saying? My reaction when it happened was like, whatever. Whatever. Just add him on. What's your? challenge flag. My challenge flag is about actual penalty flags. I am just, I cannot, I cannot hate this

holding emphasis more than I do. It started with the Thursday night game. I mean, on both sides. This isn't a, my team got penalized so much. It was on both sides. I mean, the Browns game, it just makes games so hard to watch when there is a 10-yard holding flag every five plays. There, I think there were 2.2 holding flags per game last season in the NFL. The numbers haven't come out today. I can guarantee you that were at multiple holding flags on average per game. It just seemed like the flow of the games today was so bad based on how many flags were getting thrown. I just hope that they kind of take their foot off the gas with this a little bit,

the same way they did with the emphasis on roughing the passer last year because it's not good for the product. It's just not. Yeah, you know, you've sort of, you've state your claim. You hate holding Twitter. You think everything... Holding Twitter is the worst Twitter. Yeah.

Yep. Do you want to explain what holding Twitter is to the people? Just like every time a play happens or there's like a nice block or a nice offensive play and every single person's like, well, that was holding. It's like there's holding on every single play. And if you're going to call it on every single play, then you're going to have these stop and start games that just aren't enjoyable to watch. It's just I understand they're trying to give defenses a chance, but this is not the way I want to give defenses a chance. I'm with you. And I think there's a there's a really. huge balance that the referees have to take in order to make the game fun.

And I think that too many holding penalties can literally ruin the game. I mean, you can't, one of the problems is any penalty called too much ruins the game. I'm in favor of as few penalties as possible. There were 20 flags in the Bears Packers game. 20. That's just not good. It leads to these slogs that I just have no interest in watching. And again, hopefully they kind of take a step back after a couple weeks and understands that this is,

and understand this is not an answer and kind of back off of it a little bit. Because if they don't, I just think we're going to have games that just get ruined because the flow is non-existent. And whether that's the Browns game, whether that's what happened on Thursday night, I mean, there were a couple other flags today that's just like, come on, guys. It's just, this is not the type of football I want to watch it. I'm not sure who does. All right. You want to get to tomorrow's headlines?

I got one. I think that we're in agreement here. I feel like this is just what we have every single week one where people are going to freak out. Absolute overreactions. Yeah. That's exactly what's going to happen. Just ride it out. Like buy and hold in the stock market, man.

Just like if you're a Jets fan and you thought Sam Darnold was going to join the elite of the elite, don't worry about Sunday. Who cares? I mean, we've seen this so many times. Bills are a really good defense. No, I mean, I also don't think Sam Donald's actually going to be the elite elite. I'm just saying, don't let week one overshadow what you think. I mean, I think there's certain things. The Patriots are obviously very, very, very good.

We don't need to overreact to that because we knew that coming into it. And now we see it and it's confirmed. That's fine. Kyla Murray is not going to play like you did in the second half for the rest of the season. The Buffalo Bills are not going 16 and no, although I think that that was a really gutty win by them. And I think they're pretty good. So what we'll see tomorrow, we're going to see a lot of Lamar Jackson. which I think is earned.

I think what they did was awesome. By the way, I was looking up, I was looking up some of Harbaugh's quotes about how much Lamar Jackson was going to be run focused. And Brian Billick said that the record for a quarterback running the ball is 139 carries. And John Harbaugh said, I'd bet way over on that for Lamar Jackson.

It was basically a long con. He had three today. Yeah, it was basically a long con to unveil that passing offense is the ultimate bit. Again, I think that we'll see some higher volume running games from him over the course of the season. I agree. I agree. But I'm just saying they were talking up that run game. And what I'm saying is when you see that passing game, you probably understand that they were really excited about this behind closed doors. Anyway, absolutely. It reminds me in a way of that 2012 opening game from

Washington. Yeah. Where there's, you have this beautiful shotgun based play action attack where you're taking these chunk plays down the field, and you can jump on a team with that, and that's exactly what happened for Baltimore today. The ones that, I mean, I think the most frustrating one, the most annoying one will definitely be the Cleveland Brown victory lapse

from people that were just like, I told you, it's, it's, I told you, they're going to be bad. It's like, no,

I don't think so. Like, I think that they're going to be just fine. Yeah, and so, um, the fact, the Vikings are a great example of a team where maybe

week one is a little bit overblown. Chris Lindstrom, by the way, is the offensive line injury. I did know if it was McGarry Lindstrom. And Lindstrom fractured his foot. Oh, that's a bummer. I didn't even see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jake Laser had it a couple hours ago.

And so that's a problem with the Falcons. But again, it's one game. Do not overreact to this. I think there's a couple of teams. I think the Jaguar should probably hit the panic button. I don't think the Panthers really should be all that upset. The Eagles probably shouldn't be upset about the performance. Can we just briefly,

because you were not on a pod address how you should feel but the bears? I mean, I think that it was just a really frustrating and discouraging offensive performance. Not for two reasons. One, just the approach. I just really

didn't understand the game plan. It was confounding in a lot of different ways. The thing, I mean, like, Tari Coen's a slot receiver now. Anthony Miller no longer exists. I feel like there was a lot of cuteness going on that was not necessary. That being said, I have a lot of faith in Matanakey as a play caller.

I have an entire season of examples of him being very good at it. I do not have very many examples of Mitchell Tripisky being good at playing quarterback. That to me is what is worrying because I wanted to see him take steps forward in terms of decision making, things like that. He didn't. I mean, he should have been picked off four times in that game. And if he's going to play like that, then they have no shot because I thought the defense played excellent. but over the course of a season, I think the defense is going to be

not what it was last year. I think it's going to be really good still, but it's not going to be a dominant game-changing unit. Think about the lack of turnovers on Thursday. You are not going to be able to rely on taking the ball away consistently over a multi-year period. It just doesn't happen.

So if you can't do that, you need your offense to be better. And if he's going to play like that, the offense is not going to be better. And this is a team that's going to disappoint a lot of people. Hey, I need to just throw this out there. Kegan Abder just tweeted this out. When the Patriots used 10 personnel tonight,

guess what the yards per play were? Like 15, 16? It was 13, but it was only on two plays. When they did 11 personnel, it was 11 yards per play on 17 plays. So the moral of the story is there's going to be some wide receiver usage in New England. That's one of my favorite parts of the Patriots

and my favorite parts of studying the Patriots and watching the Patriots, is that the target is always moving. And last year, they relied so much on 21 personnel. And they used two backs and too tight ends a lot in the playoffs because they didn't have any receiver depth. Now the receiver position is the strength of their team. So we're probably going to see a ton more multi-receiver sets. It's just so hard to catch this team when the thing you're chasing is always changing.

And that's the genius of them. And that's why they're great every single year. having Belichick and Brady helps, but this approach is part of the reason that it's really hard to keep up with them. The Patriots are going to win the Super Bowl. Great. I'm glad that's where we're getting after week one. We might as well just not play the season. All right, guys, that's all we got.

We'll be back later in the week. Thank you so much for listening to the Ringar NFL show on the Ring of Podcast Network. It's good to be back, buddy. You're telling me, man. Today's episode is brought to you by Floor and Decor. floor and decor is where the pros go for tile, wood, stone, and installation materials. But the best part about floor and decor is their pro services and loyalty reward program. From the dedicated pro hotline to the exclusive pro app, your floor and decor team is just a touch away.

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