The Ringer NFL Show - The Six Quarterbacks Who Caught Our Attention in Week 1

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

“Atrocious” is one word used on this episode to describe the decision-making of one quarterback . For better or worse, who are the six quarterbacks that delivered noteworthy performances in Week 1? The Ringer’s Sheil Kapadia and Steven Ruiz discuss. QB 1 (00:00) QB 2 (10:28) QB 3 (18:16) QB 4 (26:53) QB 5 (33:36) QB 6 (41:31) The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia and Steven Ruiz Producer: Troy Farkas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Brian Curtis from The Ringer, and I want to tell you about the Press Box podcast. The Press Box is a podcast for anybody who likes news, whether it's about sports or politics or pop culture, and wants to understand how that news really gets made. We have news shows every Monday and Thursday. We have long interviews with everyone from John Crackauer to Joe Buck. Your social media feeds are bursting with information every day. Let us help you sort it out. Join us on the press box.

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capati here with Stephen Ruiz. Feels like we were just here like 12 hours ago. Sunday night to Tuesday night is just a blur for me, Ruiz. I don't know about you, but it's just like locked in a room. Don't go outside. No exercise. Just get to like the certain part of the week where you feel like, all right,

I'm as caught up as I'm going to be. And now I can look ahead to week two. That's kind of where I'm at where I'll be at at the end. of the show. It's been a blur since the Sunday night show. And I went outside today for the first time all day. And my skin started to burn. It was like, oh, I felt the need to go watch Bo Nix on tape. I know, I know, especially at week one. By the time when you get to week 12, you're like, all right, there's teams here. I can start ignoring. But week one, it's so exciting. You've been waiting so long to see all these guys play, all these teams play, new coaches, new coordinators, new quarterbacks.

And so we looked at it. You've got your quarterback rankings will be out by the time people listened to this, I believe, on Wednesday. And so we thought for this midweek show, let's talk quarterbacks. I just said, give me six guys who you want to talk about on this show, come to the show with some takes, analysis, whatever you want to talk about them. I've watched five out of the six. So when we get to six, you carry us.

But the other five I've got opinions on as well. So that's the show today. And I'm excited because I was surprised at at least one of the selections you had here. So I'm curious to hear what you have to say about them. But let's start with the guy who played Monday night since we recorded the Sunday night show. We did not record after Monday night football. Aaron Rogers stayed healthy for the game, had some moments, had a nice drive in the first half. Ultimately, the game was not competitive.

The 49ers went up and down the field. but he was the first guy you wanted to discuss. What's your take? What did you see from Aaron Rogers in his first full game as a New York jet? Yeah, on the first viewing, on the live viewing of it, I was really, if I was a Jets fan, I would have been deflated by that performance, even more so than maybe last year when obviously Aaron Rogers goes down. But Aaron Rogers did not look good.

The team did not look good. The defense, the pass rush, none of it looked good. But on second viewing, on the All-22, I don't think Rogers was that bad. I think there are some reasons to be concerned. especially the mobility. I think that was the first thing to go in Green Bay, his final year there. And I assume that it had to do with the calf injury because he was on the injury report with the calf injury in his final year in Green Bay.

But no such injury report issues this time around. And he's still having a hard time getting outside of the pocket and then resetting and throwing downfield when he gets outside of the pocket. And I think that's where the biggest issues were. Like you saw it on the Floyd sack. I think even you even saw it on the pick, the pick to Garrett Wilson, where He has pressure in his face. He kind of has to throw across his body.

He can't step into the throw, and he leaves it inside, and it's tip and it's picked. So that's where I'd be most concerned. It's the movement and how that affects his arm strength. But in terms of, like, distributing the ball, getting the ball out on time, getting the ball out on target, out on target. I thought he looked like the old Aaron Rogers at times. I felt the same way. You know, I thought like, all right, the Jets did not play well last night. I thought it was going to be a more competitive game.

They get blown out. But if you're just isolating Rogers and what he looked like and you're a Jets fan and you had this idea in your head of what is this going to look like 40 years old coming off an Achilles injury, I actually thought it was kind of encouraging. I mean, he's still doing Aaron Rogers things. He had to throw to Lazzard down the left sideline where it's like he just ran it over and handed it to him. He draws him offside and hits Lazzard for the touchdown down the middle of the field. He had some nice throws on that one drive where they're hitting Garrett Wilson, I think four times, three times on third. down. So yeah, I actually ended the night and even this morning thinking, I want to see more. Like, I'm not say, I'm not out on the Jets by any means. I mean, they couldn't run the ball at all. You know, I think a big thing in that game for me at least was like, oh, I forgot Nathaniel Hackett

is still the designer and the schemer and the play caller. And I know Aaron Rogers is going to get to the line of scrimmage and do what he wants to do and change stuff. But still, like, during the week and stuff in those meetings, somebody has to be putting stuff. together. And even if Rogers is driving a lot of that, that person is still Nathaniel Hackett. And when you watch that game and you have Shanahan on one side and hack it on the other side and you look at the Jets game plan, which was they came in wanting to run the ball, which is fine, but they couldn't run the ball at all. I mean, they were, they had first three quarters. They on early downs, they run it 13 times for 31 yards, 2.4 yards per carry. So it was like the

classic run run, Aaron Rogers save us on third down. And it's like, that's not how you want to play, they didn't adjust, they couldn't do anything. So that was a reminder to me that like, if this does work out, if it gets fixed, like, Rogers is going to have to just kind of take control of everything, even the game planning during the week because just Hackett's not going to give them any type of advantage. If anything, he's given them a disadvantage. Yeah, and then like maybe you can cope and be like, oh, well, in Green Bay it worked. Hackett was the OC there.

He won MVP twice in a row. But Matt LaFleur was calling those plays. Right. And I agree with you, like, you need to give them some, some schemed up easy buttons on early downs on first and second down. He got none of it. It kind of reminds me of the conversation we had about Joe Burrow on Sunday night where I think Rogers doesn't like to be under center. He doesn't like to turn his back to the defense. He has said that. He's been on record saying that. He likes to be in the shotgun. And when you don't have Matt LaFleur there kind of dictating the terms

of the offense and creating the structure of the offense, you have who I don't know. Maybe it's not fair to call him a yes man, but I feel like he's a yes man. And Nathaniel Hacken, I think that's one of the big reasons he's there with Rogers right now. I think that's fair. Yeah, I think you're being kind. I mean, you could call him other stuff. I mean, he seems like a nice guy. I've always said, if he were like our neighbor or something, you know, your friend's dad or whatever, I think I would get along with the guy, but just in this role, he might not be cut out for it. No, I don't think he is, and I don't think we saw anything on Monday night to suggest that he's improved over his time as a play caller from Denver and then last year, obviously battling with some bad quarterback play.

But, yeah, there's no melding of the run game in the past game to me. I didn't see any really under center play action plays where Rogers had like a deep crosser that was wide open. You could just make an easy throw without, you know, reading it out. It was more like, we're going to spread it out and I'm going to get rid of the ball quickly. And I think one of the things that was missing was like the repeated precision where you can bank on it. Like the Tom Brady thing, the Drew Breeze thing, I think Rogers used to have that. And there were a couple misses, the fourth in one throw to Wilson. I thought it was a bad miss.

The pocket was clean, kind of faded back on the throw and left it really far inside. and on the ground. And it wasn't like he was protecting him from a hit. There was no defender in the middle of the field there to hit Wilson. So I thought that was just a bad miss. And if he's not hitting those, then, and he can't get outside the pocket, those are kind of like the pillars of his game when he was an elite quarterback. That mobility and that repeated precision kind of blended those two styles.

Because I always felt like he bridged the gap between like the processors, the Tom Brady's, the Drew Brees, the Peyton Mannings, and then the new age, like Patrick Mahomes. He kind of played the middle of that. And I kind of feel like he lost both of those. those things, both of those elements to his game. Yeah, the creativity blended with the just make the right throw over and over again. Yeah, that is kind of what it looked like.

I'm still first game back, didn't play last year, 40 years old. I'm still, I hear what you're saying. I want to see more. There's some of the stats actually, you know, the counting stats obviously were not that impressive, but I was just looking at like drop back success rate. He was top 10 for all starters in week one. only 13 for 21 for 167 yards and one sack. I thought the O line in pass protection was like pretty good.

I'm not saying it's going to be elite, but if you get that level O line play, I think that's going to be a good thing for the season. We'll see Mike Williams how much he comes back, what kind of role he can have on this offense. It was a lot of Alan Lazzard made some plays, but a lot of Alton Lazzard. We can say it.

Too much, too much. So I'm curious about the run game. I mean, I really thought the run game was going to give them more. so I don't know if the Niners were playing that well or if that's a Jets thing, that's another one. Let's get a bigger sample for. But yeah, I didn't look at it and think, all right, like Rogers is the reason

they lost this game or anything like that. They couldn't run it and the defense couldn't get off the field. I mean, the Niners scored on eight straight possessions there, so they didn't have much of a chance. Even like on the other side of the ball, we said the defense didn't play too well, but you're not going to go up against Kyle Shannon every week. And I think he was able to take the teeth out of the pass rush.

I think Brady, I think Purdy was only pressured on two dropbacks out of 28. That's not viable, but I don't think that's going to continue. There is depth concerns there. But Rogers, I think he ended up like third in PFF grade. Like it was like 86 passing grade. So apparently it was that we're not the only ones that don't think it was that bad. He only dropped two spots in the rankings this week. He dropped down from nine where I didn't really know what to do with him in the preseason. I was just like, I haven't seen the guy play in a year. I'm just going to base it on what I last saw. When we last saw him in Green Bay, I think he was like a fringe top 10 quarterback.

He only drops two spots. I think he's still in that same area. I don't think he's cooked. That's the one thing I'll say. I don't think he's cooked. You don't think he's what? Good? Cooked.

Cooked. I don't think he's done. I was like, geez. Man, yeah, I agree with that. I think physically, I mean, that arm is just still like, you know, in our lifetime, just watching him to just that throw down the left sideline. I'm like, oh, man, he still got that in his bag. So, yeah, I want to see more.

Let's see more of Aaron Rogers, certainly not give him. up on him. I'm not even discouraged after that one start. All right, the second guy. This is the guy, Ruiz, who I was surprised that you want to, not because I know you like him. I like him too. Maybe not as much as you, but I don't know that anyone likes him as much as you do.

But I was surprised that after week one, he kind of made this list. And that is Justin Herbert. So what stood out to you about Justin Herbert and the Chargers? They get the win over the Raiders in week one. I think people saw the J.K. Dobbins, the long runs. The one run was like under center with a fullback on the field. And they were like, oh, we got a smash mouth run game back in LA. Like this is going to make Justin Herbert's job so much easier. Like, you watch the table or you watch this game. And I don't think it was any easier for him. I think he was in the same hell that he's been in for the last couple of years. His average time to pressure was 2.4 seconds. He was getting instant pressures. I thought the two tackles did well. Slater did well and Joe Alt did well, especially against Max Crosby. But they were having a lot of trouble picking up games, picking up stunts, and I thought there were a lot of free rushers there. And still, he only took one sap the whole game,

despite facing those free rushers. And it was on third down, where sacks don't matter as much. On first and second down, they killed drives. On third down, your drive is going to get killed anyway. No interceptions, no fumbles. He only missed two throws, according to sports info solutions. Two uncatchable balls. And both of those passes were in the red zone.

I don't know if you saw these passes, but one was to Hayden Hurst in the back of the end zone where I think if he throws it on target, it gets picked. It's more like everyone was covered and I'm kind of throwing it away but still giving my guy a chance. And it was the very next play. He has Ladd McCawney on like a corner route in the red zone.

And Max Crosby, they don't block Max Crosby. That's the one guy I feel like you have to block on this defensive line. They're like, no, let's just let them in. So Herbert has to rush the throw. And he has to throw it way before McCockney makes the break in his route. And he throws it to the back.

end zone, he keeps it in a safe spot, he keeps it in a spot where the corner who's kind of sinking off of his route on the outside can't undercut it. And McCockney kind of takes a different angle. He takes a flatter angle than Herbert thought he was going to take. And that's count as a miss too. And I think the two misses, quote unquote misses, were actually very smart plays that kept the ball out of the hands of the Raiders. So to me, it's just another example of him playing a near perfect game in terms of decision making and accuracy and all that and pressure management and not rewarded by it. Because like the numbers, and this is probably why you're surprised I wanted to bring up, the numbers are just not impressive at all. It's like 5.5 yards per dropback.

I don't even know what the EPA numbers are, but they're not that impressive. But I think it's just another year of us Herbert Apologists being like, well, actually, if you watch the film, he's a lot better. And I think it's just going to fall on deaf ears again. But I'm not enthused by what I saw out of the first week of the Greg Roman offense. Yeah, I like Herbert. I've been a Herbert defender and a lot of it goes back to the early Herbert where it was just showcasing. Like, that, what you just said makes me sad about Justin Herbert. Because think about what you were saying.

Well, he didn't take sacks. He didn't throw interceptions. He made the right play. He's like, all right, that's part of it. But I want the guy who's like week 18 against the Raiders. We need a drive. It's fourth and 11. I got to make this throw and I make it.

And everyone's jaw drops going, oh my gosh, that was an amazing throw. Josh Palmer dropped that through, though. You did that throw in the red zone. He did that throw in the end zone and Josh Palmer drops it. Yes, he did have one of those. To a tight window. Yeah, and Romo was making the point that that was perfectly placed because he's trying to protect his receiver from taking a big hit.

That was a nice throw. But that was like, one, the rest of this game, it's what you said. It's like, all right, he's making the right decision. All right, they're short of the sticks again on third down. Oh, he's getting hit, but at least he gets the ball away. And, oh, it's a four-yard game there. I mean, it was tough to watch. And if you're like a Chargers fan, I'm not.

set like you won the game. It's a new era. You knew this season was going to be the passing game was going to be tough. But yes, 17 for 26 for 144 yards. He was 29th in success rate, which was ahead of only Bo Nix and Deshaun Watson. And I agree with you. I didn't watch it going, oh my God, he left plays on the field. Like that would have looked bad with most quarterbacks, but that's kind of like, what is this Chargers offense going to look like all season? It's really the conclusion I came down to. I mean, they had nothing going downfield. They had one downfield completion all game long. It was kind of like get the ball out. Don't take sacks, live to see another down. Let's let the Raiders blow it. And the Raiders did blow it. It was like,

let's let our run game win it. Let's let our defense win it. And that did happen. But man, first half of this game, they had two first downs on seven possessions. They were four for 15 on third down. Like, it's hard, you know, when you win by 12 and you had the season they had last year, You're probably happy about that if you're a Chargers fan at the same time, if we're looking at this analytically and being like, is this going to be sustainable for a whole season against more competent teams? It's kind of hard for me to get there with what he's working with. I mean, you're talking about Quentin Johnson and, you know, Josh, Josh Palmer and Ladman.

I'm not saying like any of these guys are horrible, but there just aren't a lot of answers in that offense right now with the scheme and the surrounding cast. I'll say Quentin Johnson is horrible at this point. I think we could call it at this point. He had a bad drop on a play, too. He was very involved. Yeah, maybe too involved, too is the same as the bizarre thing. Well, Sports Info Solutions has like a similar metric to PFF grades, but they format it so it's like EPA.

It's called points above average. Herbert had 14 positively graded plays according to this metric. Five of them ended in negative EPA anyway. That's like over half of his good plays end up in negative EPA. And that's just the margin for error that he's working with. There just isn't one for him. Yeah, they're definitely working. a lot of plays where he is like getting hit and just gets rid of the football. And it's not a big

game. But to your point, it's also not a negative play. So we'll see what it looks like as the season goes on. I mean, McConkey had a real nice play there at the end with the touchdown. So that was nice to see. And he was a good prospect. And so maybe there's more to it. The run game, I mean, you're getting 40-yard runs, 60-yard runs in the run game. So there are avenues there towards winning. I do, I do just wonder about this passing game, both. like you mentioned with Greg Roman and just what he's got to work with there, what it's going to look like. I'm almost like,

let's fast forward to 2025 with him and let's get like let's get some speed. Let's get some players at wide receiver and then see what it looks like. All right. We'll take a break. We come back. We got four more guys to get to. The next guy I'm very excited to talk about because you and Deontay were telling me about him on Sunday night.

And I'm like, all right, this has to be high on my rewatch list. So we'll talk about him when we get back. kick off this NFL season with a win on Fandul America's number one sports book right now. All customers get a profit boost every single NFL game day. That means you can pump up your gridiron winnings multiple times a week. Van Duel has tons of ways you can get in on the NFL action. You can bet on money lines, spreads, player props, and more. Guess what I'm doing after this podcast.

I got to look at the week two slate and see what my favorite picks are with super simple live betting, lightning fast bet settlement and instant withdrawals. Fandul makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. Just visit Fandul.com slash ringer NFL to download Fandul today. Must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in D.C. Opt-in required, bonus issued as non-mithdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including token expiration. See terms for both offers at sportsbook.Fandul.com. Gambling problem. Call 1-800 gambler or visit rg dash help.com. We are back on the ringer NFL show. And this is a special part of today's episode because this is sponsored by NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV. I'm going to let you all in on a secret. Any serious NFL fan knows that the best way to watch football this

season is NFL Sunday ticket. It is a must have with features like multi-view, where you can watch up to four live NFL games at once. Plus, there's a stats and fantasy view to help you keep track of your teams and top players. Best of all, when you bundle NFL Sunday ticket and YouTube TV, you get every game, every Sunday. It's the most live NFL games

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you, if you have one screen on a Sunday and you have the multi-view builder and the Indianapolis Colts are playing, they got to be in the multi-view. They do. They've got Anthony Richardson, and that's who we're talking about next year. This is the guy you and Deontay said, no, like you can have some hyperbole after this performance. And I looked at the box score and I said, nine for 19 at nine completions? I mean, how good could those nine completions possibly be? I watched them. It was a lot of fun. First of all, give me your, what your take is now after having watched the film of Anthony Richardson. My take is just don't overreact to completion percentage. That's what I'm imploring football fans. Just enjoy this guy. The numbers are ridiculous.

And, like, they don't make any sense. He finished averaging 9.6 yards per dropback. That was the highest in the league. Ahead of Patrick Mahomes against higher than Josh Allen, higher than Brock Purdy, higher than anybody. Finish six in EPA per dropback. His success rate was 37%. That's a bottom 10 number.

Those are contradictory results. And I can't believe he's able to do this. And then the other, my favorite staff from this game is he was pressured six times in this game. He averaged 10 yards per play on those snaps alone. Like, he is so good at managing pressure, throwing the ball downfield, and completing passes at a high rate when he throws it downfield. There are accuracy concerns.

But the funny thing about him is when he misses, he misses wildly, but all the other throws are just like right on the money. It's like he's either the most accurate quarterback you've ever seen or the least accurate quarterback you've ever seen. I'm going to cite another SIS stat. They have two accuracy measures. They have catchable pass rate and then they have on target rate. Catchable pass rate is what it sounds like.

If the ball is catchable, you get a checkmark. On target rate is more like ball placement. Like, did you put it in the right place? Did the receiver have to adjust? So the on target rate is always lower or always higher than the completion rate, obviously. He is like one of the few quarterbacks where it's exactly the same. So it's either, like I said, he's either missing it completely or he's putting it right on the money. So he's just like such a fun quarterback to watch.

And I know there are questions about it because I feel like. because I feel like down to down, there is inconsistency. He does miss throws. He missed two throws to A.D. Mitchell that would have been touchdowns. But he's just so much fun. And I feel like when he, when that flip switches for him, he's just going to be a great player. It's all about health with him. And it's all about accuracy.

If he could figure those things out, the rest of his game, I feel like he's fully fleshed out. And he still has a lot of room to grow. It was as exciting as you guys told me it was on Sunday. I mean, in a league where at least this week, it was just. like check down, you know, I hate so much to take what the defense gives you. Oh, they're playing too high. Like, he breaks the rules of the defense. I mean, he, that, the, the play they had, not the first Alec Pierce one, but I think it was the second one where they're playing like Tampa too. They're too deep. And they run the post over the deep safety and he launches it. Like,

the safety is like, no, that's not a throw. Like, you don't go over that in practice. You don't go over that in meeting rooms that the quarterback's going to attempt that pass. And he's attempting those passes. I mean, he had over 20% of his past attempts went downfield in week one. I mean, how can you not love watching that? It is a roller coaster. Now, I do, I agree with what you said, because I remember this, I had this take with Josh Allen early in his career where, like, he would get made fun of a lot.

And I understand why. But like, when he missed, he missed so badly that it almost made you cackle. Like, oh my gosh, like somebody in the front row might have a bloody nose after that. And Anthony Richardson has some of those for sure. You know, you see that you saw those even in those 10 incompletions. But I was watching him wondering like, and I asked you and Deonté this, like you mentioned the accuracy. The accuracy bar for him is not going to, is never going to be as high as it needs to be for other quarterbacks because he, he wants to hit on the big plays. And he's going to take more of those attempts probably than any other quarterback.

And then there are going to be defenses obviously who come in against the Colts and are like, make him, you know, put together a 12-play drive. And he might not be able to do that with his arms right now, but he is a dynamic runner, like the design run game with him, the option run game. I mean, good luck with that. So that can kind of be their crutch rather than,

whereas we talked about Joe Burrow, and they're trying to like complete six-yard passes and have a 12-play drive. For the Colts, that's more going to be, all right, run game, run-game, throw, that kind of thing. So the physical traits are just so, so rare. When we are always looking at these guys going,

no one can do this. Like for him, it's just no one can argue the other side that these physical traits aren't rare. Not only that 60-yard touchdown to Alec P. I mean, he's pressured, he's moving to his left, he's got pressure on him, and it's 60 yards, like you mentioned. Just when you question the accuracy, then it's a perfect pass, like a high degree of difficulty, perfect pass. So yeah, I don't think you guys exaggerated at all.

That was a very fun experience about two hours ago when I went through this film. I have a stat to back on what you're talking about, especially like about the zone. coverage thing checking it down. His A dot against zone coverage was 17.4. The league average is 6.9. He doubled it up. He almost tripled it. That's insane to me. Like, Baker Mayfield, who we're going to talk about later, his A dot against zone coverage was 2.8. Wow. Yeah, it's, yeah, like you talk to coaches and this isn't what they say about how to, oh, when they're playing, you know, too high or they're playing zone. You know, the whole purpose of zone is keep everything in front of you. Even those Legion of Boom teams, it was like, that's it.

make them work for it. And that's the point of playing his own coverage. And it just doesn't matter with him. He's going to take those shots downfield. So yeah, overall, his average pass went 16 and a half yards downfield. That was on average five more yards than any other quarterback, which is just wild. And to your point, what I really couldn't believe rewatching it is I'm like, they left like two 40-yard plays on the field where I don't know if it was just a bad throw, whether it was a

miscommunication on one of them. I think the guy got bumped a little bit. The timing was up. but like they really weren't far off from this being like, what would it be, 11 for 21 for 300 yards or something like that. It could have been the weirdest stat line. Those are like 1960s, AFL numbers. Like those are not real numbers in today, especially today's NFL.

Like you said, like everything today is about keeping things in front of you if you're a defensive team. And he just does not comply. He's not going to comply. Yeah, no, it's, I can't wait to watch more of him. Like you said, the health thing, he does take some hits because he doesn't get a lot of plays off. I mean, he's involved in the run game. And I thought actually their offensive line, which is very good last year. I didn't think it was great in this game.

Like he was making plays under pressure. He was taking some hits. So that concerned me a little bit too. But maybe that's a credit to the Texans and they're going to have a good pass for. So yeah, keep Anthony Richardson healthy. And we will be watching him every week for sure on NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV. Thanks again to our friends there at NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV. Don't miss a moment of the action.

Watch every game, every Sunday when you bundle NFL Sunday ticket and YouTube TV. Sign up today at YouTube.com slash ringer, local and national games on YouTube TV. NFL Sunday ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital-only games, device and content restrictions apply. All right. Next quarterback on the list here. A little bit different, I would say, his Sunday. than Anthony Richardson's was. And this is, I want to hear how deep into the panic meter you are getting

because the next guy is Kirk Cousins of the Atlanta Falcons. He goes 16 for 26, 155 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, two sacks in an 1810 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. What stuck out to you about Kurt Cousins' debut in Atlanta? Honestly, the most concerning thing has nothing to do with what I saw in film. It was the play calling and the splits afterwards. He threw one pass from under center and it was a spike. He threw zero play action passes.

This is Kirk Cousins we're talking about. This is the under center play action guy. And the fact that he isn't doing that makes me believe one thing and that's that he can't move, that he doesn't have the mobility to get under center and take drops and then run bootleg. They didn't run any boots. this is a Sean McVeigh offense. That's the whole point of the offense. That's why you bring Kirk Cousins in

and give him all that money that they gave him. And the fact that they're not calling those plays is very concerning. I think that's the biggest red flag from this week, even bigger than anything you saw from Bryce Young, anything you saw from Aaron Rogers, anything, you saw from maybe Jalen Hertz. This was a huge red flag to me.

And then the interceptions are really concerning to me. The second one was just a clear examiner. of a guy that doesn't have the arm strength to make those tough throws in a tight pocket. Like he had bodies in his face. He kind of double clutch. He had the guy wide open. It was a little wheel route down the sideline. And he just leaves a throw inside and he gets picked off by a defender off the ball, basically.

And then the first interception, that's the one that really frustrated me. It was to Drake London. So let's rewind a little bit. The drive before, they're in the red zone. They run this little concept where they have one receiver to the right. He runs like a little quick five-yard stop route. they have a crosser from the other way going like over top of that. So it's kind of like a high-low read.

And then behind that, they have a little post route into the end zone. The Falcons are playing man coverage. So that little stop route is covered. The safety, the one safety deep jumps on the crossing route. So the post is wide open. What does Kirk Cousins do? He rushes through his progression, just throws the stop route into a double coverage, basically, and dirts into the ground. The next drive, and this is where the interception come.

It's basically the same concept. It's not the same exact concept, but it's the same thing. thing, little stop route, little crossing route, and then a little post in behind. This time he throws the post, but the defense isn't the right look for it. They're playing too high safety. They're playing quarter safety, and it's the easiest interception you're ever going to see. This is Kirk Cousin. He's supposed to be the processor.

He's supposed to be the smart guy. He's supposed to be able to make these decisions in a hurry. If he's not doing that, and then he doesn't have the mobility anymore, like even, and he had no mobility to spare, mind you, what do you do? And if you can't run the play action stuff, like, you're not going to ask him to be Joe Burrow, you're not going to ask him to be Anthony Richardson, and I'm going to ask him to be 40-year-old Aaron Rogers. I don't know what the viable option

is here. What my hope is is that as he continues to play, the Russ will come off, and maybe he will be able to run those under-center play actions. So I'm not totally like writing them off, but that is as bad of a showing as you could possibly have expected from him.

I thought it was one of the more alarming performances from week one because of what you said. Not anyone can have a bad game. But they were deciding to play a very certain, you know, a very certain style to all the points you made about not moving him, no play action, nothing under center, no bootlegs. I mean, he made one play, it seemed to me out of the pocket, which was the touchdown to Kyle Pitts, where it's kind of a second reaction play. And they busted the coverage and it was a wide open guy in the end zone. So you didn't have any of that.

Wanted to get, I mean, this was catch the ball and shotgun and get rid of it. Like they didn't attempt a single pass over 20 yards or more. We just talked about Anthony Richardson. 20% of his passes went downfield. Kurt Cousins and Daniel Jones were the only two players in week one who did not attempt a single pass that went 20 yards or more. He didn't want to get hit. The ball was coming out quickly.

He barely moved. By the way, he was pressured at a pretty high rate in this game. I mean, if that offensive line isn't going to be good, that's going to be a problem. The Steelers blitzed at the lowest rate of any defense in the NFL, and they still pressured him at the sixth highest rate. That's bad if you're an offensive line. Like the ball's coming out quickly. that's a no excuse type thing where this should be very easy to protect him for two and a half

seconds and they couldn't do that. So it looked like a QB who's not confident in himself physically. And, you know, that's understandable on some level. You know, you're 36 years old, coming off in Achilles, new team, new coordinator, all those different things. But like with this version of cousins, you're very limited. Like you said, maybe next week we'll be having a different story and it'll look different and we'll say, okay, they were just easing him in. But they're going to Philadelphia on Monday night, and if that offensive line isn't playing well, we're not that far away from a Pennix watch, Ruiz.

I'm sorry. I'm not coming in with a hot take, but I don't know how far away. If that's the version of cousins you're getting, I don't know. I'm with you. And I'm not like the biggest Pennix fan, but I think you have a more viable offensive setup with him than you do with cousin.

At least he could push the ball downfield. He's going to throw the ball more than 20 yards downfield. We even saw that in the preseason. I'm still shocked they didn't play him more beyond that. first game in the preseason. They were saving him. They knew he had to play. Maybe. Maybe. But the problem with him is he's not very good at throwing on the run either. That was one of his big weaknesses at Washington. So you can't even really run the boot action with him and expect efficiency at a high level. So I don't know. It could be rough for these

Falcons. I was high on them. I picked them to win the division. But I don't know. They could be the third best team in the division. Yeah. It was not a, again, it was one game. We We'll see, but it certainly was not a promising start for Kirk Cousins and the Atlanta Falcons. I mean, that's the number one thing I want to see when they play in week two, just like, what does it look like? What do they try to do? Are they trying to play this exact same way? Because that's going to be a problem. Or do they have different wrinkles and they say, okay, we can't play that way.

Let's at least try to play differently. So that's going to be very, the other. The Eagles gave up the most explosive plays of any defense in the NFL in week one to the Packers. They gave up seven explosive plays, and now you have a guy who didn't throw the football downfield once in week one. So, yeah, something's got a given that Falcons Eagles match up on Monday night football. Next guy up, speaking of the Philadelphia Eagles, is Jalen Hertz played on Friday night in Sao Paulo, Brazil, went 20 for 34 for 278 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions.

I didn't think the performance was nearly as good as those numbers indicated. I have a hunch. You didn't think the performance was nearly as good as those numbers indicate. What stuck out to you about Jalen Hertz? Oh, well, one thing, we didn't get to see them against cover zero. So we didn't get to answer that question that was lingering from last year. The Packers ran, according to the true media, they didn't run any cover zero. I thought they ran one play that I would have charted as cover zero.

They had two guys drop out, so maybe that confused the charters. I don't know. But his reaction to it, it was actually, I think it was the 20-yard, A.J. Brown, where he catches the ball, breaks the tackle, and then runs. for a first down. It's a positive result, but the results are the process is the same as we saw last year.

Their reaction to covers here was to throw short of the sticks and then their receiver would get tackled. They'd have to punt the ball and third down. So I don't know. We didn't see any progress there, but I'm just concerned about the same stuff that we talked about with Hertz last year,

like the pocket presence, the decision making. I think there are throws there that he just doesn't see. There were a couple plays, especially on that two-minute drive, which might be the worst two-minute drive. from a quarterback that was technically successful because they get a field go at the end. Like the first drop back, he dirts a throw to a wide open, not wide open, but an open AJ Brown over the middle on a little dig route.

He has a bad turn down, a couple of plays later where I think Devante Smith is open in the seam and he's kind of dropping his eyes and dealing with the pressure and ends up throwing the ball away. Later in the drive, he has Devante Smith on a little option route where Smith can either break out, he can break in or he can sit down if the defensive back is sitting off of him, Smith sits down, Hertz doesn't throw it to him for whatever reason. He's looking right at him. It gets outside of the pocket and throws it away. And then in the red zone, they had a play set up that was similar to the Sequin touchdown pass, but it was Goddard kind of leaking out,

kind of running a wide-leaked style of play. He initially stumbles out of his br-or, out of the snap, but he is wide open in the quarter of the end zone. If Hertz just sticks with it and just stays in the pocket, it's a wide-open throw, an easy throw. But he runs into a sack and takes a six-yard loss instead. And somehow they end up with a field goal anyway. I think that speaks to the margin for error that this guy is working with. And too often for me and for a guy that's making that much money, he was that margin for error. That would be my big concern if I was an Eagles fan is we didn't really see the progression in the areas we wanted to see progression from Hertz in this week one game. Yeah, the Blitz point, like, if you're a Packers fan, I mean, hopefully someone's

talking to Jeff Hathley about that. I mean, they, Blitz hurts only 19.5% of the time. It was like a bottom 10 rate in the NFL. And to your point, last year the blitzes that killed the Eagles were the big blitzes. Rush six or more. They couldn't,

they were a disaster. We watched it a week after week. They didn't send one big blitz at Jalen Hertz in week one. You have the entire off season to game playing for this game. And you don't do that once. I thought they were going to do it every,

like, third down until the Eagles burned that. It was insane. It was wild. That was a mind. boggling game plan from the package. I guess at BC, they didn't have the multi-view. They didn't have the YouTube TV package until he was missing the games at BC.

Yeah, maybe you're right. The thing that I thought Hurt was terrible at, I thought his decision-making in this game was atrocious. I think you and I will talk about him throughout the course of the season. There are probably going to be weeks where I say, no, I don't think he was as bad as year where I didn't have the same issues you had with him here.

In this game, the decision-making, I mean, both interceptions were bad. One of them's in the red zone. in the fourth quarter in a tight game. And I had Sean Syed on who comes on the Philly special every week. And we did a big Hertz breakdown. And I thought his point was fantastic, which is that from the moment Hertz decides to do something till the point the ball actually gets to where it's supposed to go, that takes way too long.

Like he doesn't have, he doesn't have the armed. Like Josh Allen can be late and it's okay because the ball's going to get Anthony Richardson. Jalen Hurts doesn't have that specifically when he's on the move. think of him as an athletic quarterback, but when he's scrambling, he doesn't have like that, those physical traits where he can just gun it in there and the ball is going to get there. So when he's late, it looks really bad. And that happened way too much in this game. And really, that's happened way too much over the course of his career. So his decision making was bad. I wrote down, he looked uncomfortable in the pocket. Now, you can say, all right, maybe he's playing his first game

without Jason Kelsey. And now he did do that at times last year. But yeah, I thought in this game, especially in the second half, he was bailing from Chris. clean pockets as well. So yeah, I thought it was a very uneven performance like the things he does well, accuracy downfield. It was a nice touchdown pass to Saquan Barclay. He had a nice one to AJ Brown down the right sideline where then AJ Brown can catch it in stride and take off for a 60-yard touchdown so he can still do those things. But the other stuff, and the thing you didn't even mention here because you're talking about him as a passer, him in the run game has been a problem now for over a year. Like their run game with Jalen Hertz. And I'm not talking about the

motherly shoves. I'm talking about like the zone read, the shotgun stuff where he's supposed to be involved in it. I mean, if you watch that game, the RPO game, the option game was a complete mess. So I think they need to rethink what they want to do with that because I do think for you to get the best version of hurt, he's got to be doing something with his legs. Is it more inside runs? Is it more like the Cam Newton stuff from back in the day? Because the option stuff right now looks like a disaster. Yeah, I tweeted this out on on game night. It's a quote from Kyle Shan. It's from his time in Cleveland when he's talking about Johnny Mansell. And apparently, like, I guess there was clamoring from the fans to run more zone read for

Johnny Mansell like he did for RG3 in Washington. And Shandah was like, they're different athletes. RG3 runs a 4-3. Johnny runs a 4-6. And I think that's the point with Jalen Hertz. Like, in order to get the most out of him in the run game, you have to run him downhill. You can't do the zone read, pull it out and run to the sideline because he's not going to beat linebackers to the sideline.

We've seen that. Like you said, for two years now, you have to run the downhill stuff where he's like the inverted reeds where he's running downhill behind a pooling guard and like the running backs is the one that's supposed to run around the corner. The problem with that, and this is what Kyle says, you get injured with those. You don't avoid hits with those. You have to take hits. And when you're paying a guy $50 million a year, like it's hard to call those plays a lot. So it's kind of a tough spot to be in if you're coaching staff because you don't want to expose him to danger with that money invested into them. But at the same time, running these zone reads, like you said, I just don't think

it's a viable option for them. Yeah, we'll see. what they decide to lean into what version. I mean, my big takeaway from the game was that, yes, they can get away with so much because of AJ, eventually AJ Brown, Devante Smith or Sequin Barkley, like someone's going to make a play. Like they start the game with two turnovers and you still scored 34 points. And you had a red zone turnover later and you still score 34 points.

And you look at his numbers. I mean, he was fifth in success rate. He was fifth in EPA per pass play. But those are, to me, more symbolic of the office. offense than his individual play. Now, I thought last year, the coaching was atrocious and it was more on the coaching than it was on Jalen Hertz. But that's why I've said at the end of this year, we're going to get a very clear picture. Like, they didn't throw the ball in the middle of the field in week one. So now you can't tell me that's a coaching thing when the quarterback's the same and the coordinator's different.

Stuff against the Blitz. I thought they had more answers in this game. I mean, it was, again, it was a very small sample, but at least the ball was coming out and he wasn't just scrambling and it's complete chaos back there. So those were positives. But yeah, the decision-making has to be better from Jalen Hertz going forward. There's no doubt about that. All right. The last guy here.

I did not watch the film of him yet. You wanted to talk about Baker Mayfield. The numbers were nutty for Baker Mayfield. I mean, I said it on the Sunday night show. He's saying, look, look at what Cadillis did in week one. And look at what I did in week one. Who was carrying who last year? Baker Mayfield goes 24 for 30, 289 yards.

Four touchdowns, no interceptions. One sack, he was first in EPA for play. He was second in success rate. Ruiz, does the film back up that this looked like a very good Baker Mayfield? Or is there some flukiness to it? It did in a way. Like, this was the classic Good Baker performance. This is the Good Baker we saw in Cleveland, how he performed.

The Good Baker we saw last year, I thought Liam Cohen, offensive coordinator, first year offensive coordinator, was the star of the show. And maybe it wasn't that he was the star. or maybe was that Dan Quinn was kind of the goat of this game. But I thought Cohen did a good job of keeping Baker-Mayfield in rhythm and specifically without breaking throws where he was able to give him clear throwing lanes. He created clear throwing lanes between the offensive line,

between the pass-rests where Baker didn't have to throw over the line. I think that's when you see Baker's mistakes, especially with accuracy and decision-making. Over half of – or no, nearly half of his throws were either out-rout or corner routes. Like in the NFL, the average is around like 15 to 20 percent. That's like double that. That's how often he was throwing these outbreaking routes. And they were all against man coverage, cover one, just one safety in the middle of the field. So no help on the outside.

Like I said earlier in the show, his A dot against zone coverage was 2.8 yards. So when he was throwing it downfield, it was against man coverage. And when you play a Dan Quinn defense, you're going to get a lot of cover one. And I think Liam Cohen did a really, really good job of exploiting that. I would say this was more about play calling, the game play, and then it was about Baker, but Baker did have to make the throws, and he made the throws. I mean, some of these deeper throws, Mike Evans, who I just think is the most underrated player in the whole NFL.

Forget about receiver. Most underrated player in the NFL. It's still the Mike Evans offense. He's still the one carrying the team on third down. He's still the one making crazy grabs on third down. I think you had some skepticism about this team because of their third down success rate last year. That's usually a thing that regresses.

But when you have Mike Evans, maybe it's not. not a thing that's going to regress him. Just throw the ball to that guy. He's going to catch it every time. And that was more of the same in this game. Yeah, that was my big thing before the season was that if you looked at the buck's numbers last season, they were great on third down. They were like bottom five, bottom eight on first and second down. And typically, that's hard to sustain one year to the next. But what a start. I mean, I was skeptical of Liam Cohen. I mean, even if it's like you said that it was more him than Baker Mayfield, like, that's still pretty good. You know, if you're if you're the buck, Like if you have an OC who can dial stuff up, I was just looking at some numbers. And to your point, the aggressive way that the commanders played, they blitzed Baker-Mayfield a lot now. I don't know if these were just five-man pressures or more than that. But when they rushed five or more, 10 for 13 for 14, 14-146 yards and two touchdowns and

one sack against the blitz. And the ball was coming out. I mean, he got rid of the ball in 2.36 seconds in this game. So it sounds like a lot of wasted blitzes where you're not getting rid of it in 2.36 six seconds, you're probably not going to get there anyway. And he was obviously finding guys downfield. The stat line was probably the best of any quarterback here in week one. So, hey, if you're a Bucks fan and you say, stop doubting us and no one thought we're, hey, stick your chest out. You won. Week one, you're defending NFC South champs. The Falcons look terrible.

And you got a nice win there against the Washington commanders. All right, that was fun. This was, I'm glad we did this because it forced me to watch. So like I was, you know, I probably wouldn't have like watched the film of Herbert. I definitely, I was like, oh, that looked like a boring game. I don't need to watch the Herbert film this week. But very fun to watch Richardson, which I had to watch. Anyway, cousins I wanted to watch because they're playing the Eagles for the ringers

Philly special. By the way, a little plug for that again. We had a deep dive on Jalen Hertz and more stuff about the offense and what Kellyn Moore did. If anyone wants more Jalen Hertz talk. That's the place you can find it. All right. It was fun, Ruiz. Any closing thoughts?

Was there a quarterback who just missed the cut where you're like, ah, he was kind of interesting, but we'll talk about him in a future week? Yeah. You felt good about these six. We talked enough about borough on Sunday, but I'm very concerned there. I'm very concerned with how he's playing because it's not the burrow that we saw in 2021.

And even during the hot stretch in 2022, like this is 2023 borough, which is very concerning because he apparently doesn't have any injuries he's dealing with, although the wrist is a little questionable. You know how, you know how like our, phones just pick up everything we say even when the things off. So we had that conversation. I defend Burrow, you know, on the Sunday night show and even in my column today on the ringer.com. And then I, and then I open the old X app. And you know, it starts with the for you tab.

First thing, Joe Burrow can't pick up a water bottle. He's like doing this thing with his wrist. And I'm like, oh no, they heard me. My phone was next to the mic when I was talking on Sunday night. It's looking out for you. Usually they're trying to sell you. something. They're trying to get you some, some takes. Yeah. Maybe they're just like, take the L, cut your losses if he plays crappy against the chiefs on Sunday. But I don't know. I wasn't trying to be contrarian. I was watching that game on Sunday. And yes, they weren't throwing it downfield, but I didn't know if that was because he was choosing not to throw it downfield or whether it was just something schematically or what. But like he was making the short intermediate throws. He was moving

around. So I don't know. Yeah, we'll talk about that Sunday night, I'm sure. He didn't miss, he didn't really miss anything. It was more of a decision-making and aggressiveness problem, which we've seen from him before. I think he's going to figure it out. And as they get the receivers back, too. I got a lot of takes tied into that Bengals team. So we will see when I'm asking the producers, hey, can you delete this podcast from like August 24th? I just, you know, I had said some bad words. Don't want my mom to hear it. Whatever. All right. Well, thank you to Stephen Ruiz. Thank you to Troy Farcas. for producing. He's going to produce this midweek show all season. Glad to have him on board.

Additional production supervision by Connor and Evans and Arjuna Ram Gopal. We'll be back in your feeds later this week for the big week two preview show. We'll have our picks. By the way, I don't want to spoil it. But our three, our picks Ruiz on Sunday, seven and two combined. Me, Ruiz and Deiante. So listen, if you're jumping on the old fan duel after, you might want to listen to that episode. So we'll do that later this week. Appreciate everyone listening. We'll talk to you next time on the Ringling NFL show. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gambler or visit RG dash help.com.

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