The Ringer NFL Show - The Titans' COVID-19 Outbreak, Plus: Who’s Getting Better, Worse, or Staying the Same? | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Kevin Clark is joined by NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero to discuss the Tennessee Titans' COVID-19 outbreak and the NFL's plans moving forward (4:08). Then he is joined by Pro Football Focus’s Steve Palazzolo and The Ringer’s Danny Kelly to discuss which players and teams will perform better, worse, or stay the same in Week 17. The group discusses Josh Allen, the New England Patriots, Drew Brees, and more (33:00). Host: Kevin Clark  Guests: Tom Pelissero, Steve Palazzolo, and Danny Kelly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Good show today. The NFL has had its first postponement due to COVID. The Titans, the Steelers will not play this weekend or this week. On Wednesday, we found out it would not be played on Sunday. On Thursday, we found out it wouldn't be played anytime soon. to Adam Schefter with two positive tests on Thursday morning. The total is now 11 within the Titans organization, five players and six employees. If there's a take that you have other than this was the right move, I don't know what to tell

you, go drink some water, take a walk, whatever it is. This is what the NFL had to do. I think that there's obviously a lot of competitive things and competitive effects that will have to be sorted out in the next couple of weeks and quite frankly months. but that comes far after the health and safety of the folks in the Titans organization, the folks around them. This obviously is a human story as much as a football story. Luckily, we have Tom Palisera from the NFL Network to break it all down.

I don't think on the media side anyone knows more about this than Tom Palisera. We had him on a couple months ago, and I felt a hell of a lot smarter about this whole deal. And now he's back to sort of explain the process of this, everything that went into it, what happens next? Now, we recorded this before the announcement that it would be postponed indefinitely. So we knew that it was going to be postponed, but we don't know the exact date. There's some references to that. In the recording, you'll probably hear it. But everything else as far as the behind the scenes, the TikTok of it all, that still stands.

Really interesting chat. I learned a lot. But then we have Steve Paliselo and Danny Kelly. We're going to talk about predicting what's real and what's not, who's getting better, who's getting worse among some of the more interesting people in football. the first couple of weeks of the season, folks like Aaron Rogers, Josh Allen, the New Orleans Saints, Dallas Cowboys. We break it all down. Really fun segment. But here's Tom. All right. Tom Palliserow NFL Network. Great reporter crushing the COVID

news, but he lives in Minneapolis. So I got to ask about the Minnesota Twins. 18 straight playoff losses, Tom Pellasero. You probably have somebody at the ringer who can run the numbers on this. but I know that a friend of mine who works in a government job where his entire role is to run the numbers told me these statistical odds. If you just had a 50-50 percent, 50-50 chance of winning each playoff game, these statistical odds losing 18 in a row as the twins just did prior to me coming on the podcast are like 0.000-0-04 percent. Almost impossible. And the way that a offense-driven team no-shows in the playoffs, not real fun to watch. Not going to lie to you. Marvin Lewis, who we dunked on for a decade, was 0 and 7.

The twins have far surpassed that. And I would fairly guess, too, that the randomness of baseball versus just teams that are more talented and better in football would favor somebody somewhere, somehow winning a game. 18 in a row in a league where it's very rare for a team to win even two-thirds of its games or lose two-thirds of its games, the regular season. it is it's virtually impossible yet here we are all right let's get to football the NFL had its first COVID crisis this week that that's what you call it so the Titans had four players on the

COVID list um Karea de Kwan Jones brinkley and Tommy Hudson the game with the Pittsburgh Steelers has been postponed at the time of the recording we don't know if it's going to be played Monday or Tuesday but we know it's not going to be Sunday uh Shane Bowen the defensive play caller was diagnosed with COVID last weekend. So I guess the overarching question is how this happened? What's the timeline? And what is the biggest thing that fans should know about what's happened in the NFL the past couple of days?

The first thing I would say, Kevin, and thanks for having me again, is I wouldn't call it a COVID crisis. It is definitely the first COVID outbreak. You had teams at the start of camp with multiple cases, but they were all people who had shown up with it. They were bringing it from someplace else. This is the first example of, for lack of a better term, community spread within a team where you actually have an outbreak. And there are several cases that are all linked together based upon where these guys are. Now, there's a lot of work being done.

Again, this is where I'm completely out of my depth, but I try to talk to people who understand this. There are ways now that they can follow the gene sequencing and figure out who got it from who. kind of pieced together the timeline. What the NFL has really been focused on, and the clubs has been the contact tracing element of figuring out, you know, who is considered a close contact. They all walk around with these Knexion tracking devices all day, whatever they're in the facility.

You show up, you put it on. If you are standing too close to someone or you are near someone for too long, it basically sounds an alarm so you know to move, which the first couple weeks when they were doing this, now it's time to people in the lead being like, this is just unbelievable. Because some of these, one of the funniest stories I heard was in one facility,

the walls were thin enough that if you had two people both leaning back in their chair toward the wall, it didn't, the devices thought that they were together, even though they're separated by drywall. So there were a lot of those kind of, you know, those little hiccups you have. Yeah.

They also, and then every day you take off the next day on device, you put it in the bin, and there's a company that is contracted to read all the data. Same thing on Game Day, you wear it in the game. You also have the zebra tracking data, the chips and the shoulder pads. So they have a lot of ways to figure out who is near who. But because this is the first time this has happened within the season,

the first thing that the Vikings and the Titans in the league and the companies all had to do was to figure out, okay, we got a much larger pool of people now. We've got to kind of figure out, you know, all right, how do we keep this from spreading? Who do we need to isolate? Who is going to go into different areas of this rubric in terms of who is exposed with symptomatic individual versus an asymptomatic individual. They're all tested daily. The only day you're not tested is on game day.

And that's where we go to the timeline aspect of this that you brought up. So last week, and again, this is not to say that we have a full understanding of who is patient zero here or how it all started. What we do know is that Shane Bowen, the outside linebackers coach for the Titans, tested positive on Friday. He gets that result Saturday morning. They immediately do contact tracing. the Titans in concert with the league and the companies go through the data.

All the people who are close contacts with Shane Bowen and close contact being defined in a couple of different ways, but basically it amounts to if you're around, if you're within six feet, if someone for more than 15 minutes, that's kind of like a good baseline. But there's other ways that they can also define that, you know, because you have close contacts, then you have medium close contacts and have to figure out how to go through that. Anyone who's considered a close contact of Shane Bowen had a point of care test, an instant, a rapid result test on Saturday. They all were negative. They all got on the plane together.

Unwittingly, then they may have been exposed to the virus, whether it was on the plane to Minnesota, whether it was on the buses, whether it was on, you know, in the stadium, whether it was on the bus or the plane to get them back to Tennessee. because the incubation period for this virus is at minimum several days, which is where, as we sit here on, I think it's Wednesday afternoon, we can say the Vikings have had no positive cases. The Titans had one additional positive case this morning. It came out of Tuesday's testing to bring them to nine total on top of Shane Bowen, so 10 really going back to last Saturday. But you're still within that incubation period from the Sunday game,

from any exposures there. So really Thursday, Friday, those are going to be the test results that are going to be a little bit more telling. They'll continue to monitor this going forward. And that's where everything is fluid. Yes, the Titan Steelers game has already been delayed to at least Monday night, which is both to give them an opportunity to continue to undergo testing, but also the competitive aspect.

If you got one team that's been practicing the whole week, and then you tell the Titans, yeah, you can come back in the building on Saturday, have a walkthrough, and then go play a game. There's a competitive inequity to that. but this will all remain fluid. I mean, if there is all of a sudden, God forbid, 10 positive cases with the Titans or the Vikings or whatever, they're going to have to continue to adjust. But you already heard the Vikings with Rick Spielman and their head athletic trainer, Eric Sugarman, talking today about how they'll have enhanced protocols when they get back in the building tomorrow,

not just taking the PCR test, which is the one that you have 24 hours for results and you send out to New Jersey, but also these point of care tests will allow you to get rapid results. None of these tests are 100%. but if they are, let's say, 90%, the statistical odds of you testing negative two times in a row with the 90% accuracy rate and actually being positive are pretty low. So you add another layer to this, another layer of security, and you just hope that maybe the positive that comes out of all this, for lack of better term, I shouldn't say positive. But the good thing, it could come out of this is if there's no Vikings who end up testing positive at any point after the exposure on Sunday, you have a little clue here that maybe football is not the super spreader event that some people fear. Interesting.

Interesting. So I guess my curiosity is from a competitive standpoint, you mentioned the competitive disadvantage thing. Obviously, once the test results come back for the players, the report came in within an hour. The NFL is shutting down the facility until Saturday in Tennessee. So I guess my question is, is there a competitive, I guess baseline you'd say, where, okay, a team is actually going to need one full practice and a walkthrough, two full practices and a walk through before they play. What is sort of the protocol there just as far as, okay, the facility's back open and how soon can a team play? And this is where this is the first time for everything.

So we enter this kind of this gray area and this unknown. This is why the NFL of Roger Goodell put together this. I call it this shadow competition committee, this group of former GMs and coaches and players who will evaluate this on a case-by-case basis. And that's because the actual competition committee is made up of current executives and head coaches who would have a vested interest. Mike Tomlin, for instance, is on the committee. Well, if the regular competition committee were deciding the Titan Steelers game, you would have someone with a very vested interest. Not that Mike couldn't separate that, but you want to take it out of the hands of everybody who potentially could benefit from it. Think about it this way.

I mean, the Titans, they play the Steelers this week. And then next week they have another, it's the Bills, I believe. They play two back-to-back undefated teams. So let's say this week, you only have one practice before playing the Steelers on a Tuesday. And then next week, you only have one or two practices before playing the bills. And how is that, how is that fair? So at every point here, you're going to have to have kind of meetings. I mean, what if some of these games end up getting canceled?

Somebody's going to have to decide, all right, this team only played 14 games. So they have a better winning percentage than the team to played 16 games. So they win the division? these are the questions that are going to have to be, you know, analyzed as we go forward. Part of the reason I don't call this a crisis is because they planned as best as they could for these situations. You mentioned that one hour of the facilities getting shut down. I mean, I would give you this timeline. I found out around probably 8 a.m. central time.

I'm on central time in Minnesota. And I probably found out about 8 o'clock a.m. on Tuesday morning that there were a bunch of of positive tests with the titan i didn't know it was it was eight but i knew that it was you know several positive tests so we ended up reporting that about an hour later so what was happening in that span was they got all the results back to the titans the vikings were alerted to what was going on uh the titans then based upon the protocols three things happen when you have an initial positive and i call this uh the matthew stafford rule because matthew stafford and what happened with him being put on the list and for a couple of days and his family was upset,

the team was upset and it ended up he was a false positive. This is why these protocols are in place. So the moment do you test positive and we call it a preliminary positive because this means that your PCR test, which is the one that sent out 24-hour results to a lab. There's several different labs around the country, but they're red and their return. And the teams get those at like 3, 4, 5 a.m. So what happens is when you have a preliminary positive, you immediately, they rerun that original sample, you take a point of care test, and then you also take another PCR test, which again,

takes 24 hours. So if your point of care test also comes back positive, you were considered a new positive case. It's basically confirming it, even before that other PCR test comes back, you were considered positive. What was happening was the Titans were getting those point of care test. They all came back positive. So everyone, all eight of the people at that time, were considered deposit. So that's where then the league had to communicate with the Titans, with the Vikings. Here's what we're doing. The Texans, Bill O'Brien, as already said, was alerted to what was going on because they're the next opponent. presumably the Steelers were as well. This all moved pretty quickly. When you think about this is an outbreak of COVID-19 and you still

went, okay, here's our protocols. Here's how we're going to approach this. You have to be flexible and data-driven, but I don't think that it's a crisis at this point because now you've heard Mike Grable say there's some people who have had flu-like symptoms. Yeah. As far as we're aware, there's nobody hospitalized. There's nobody with a significant outcome to this point. What you're trying to avoid is don't let the person who might have that more serious outcome contract the virus.

You isolate these people immediately. You had another positive test today for the Titans. That brings it to nine total, including four players. You're hoping that it doesn't expand. If it does, they'll continue to be, you know, dynamic in terms of their response. You know, you're not accounting for every scenario, but the other part of this is you're going to learn a lot from what happens here about, again, does the virus spread in the game? When, if you got it in the game, when might it show up? How long could that incubation period be? They're going to figure out all this stuff here as we go along. They're going to learn a lot from what takes place with these two teams.

Yeah, and it strikes me as interesting because when I had you on the podcast a couple months ago, I had you and Peter King and really smart people right before. the season and the pessimism, I guess is a word that was just kind of everywhere in football. This is from GMs, from coaches, from players, hey, we're not, we're going to have weekly interruptions. We're not going to play 16 games, all this stuff. And I certainly, at one point, you know, when you have a Miami Marlin situation, which we had, you know, obviously in baseball right before the NFL training camps opened, you can only make the leap with the NFL not being in a bubble, that there will be things like that with the NFL. And I think that if you would told the NFL and you told all 32 teams that it would take until a week four, and it would just be one game

being impacted. I think that most people would be surprised at how well this has been managed. And again, I was extremely pessimistic about it at the beginning. I always thought there'd be 16 games. I always thought to be a little more chaotic. But I thought it was going to be a little more chaotic. And hey, we might have to move this game to a fictional. Yeah, absolutely. It still might happen. I think that one other thing that this particular example with the Titans points out is, you know, we talked a lot about, I think we had this conversation a couple months ago with the travel. You don't have the same exposures that baseball does because you're not in a place for several days. You're interacting with fewer people.

You're not really leaving the hotel. Basically every team, there's limited exceptions, but almost every team that I've talked to was just like, people guys just you can't leave, period. You know, you're not going to interact with people. The one thing that was kind of perhaps underestimated, I know I underestimated it was if you had an exposure on a Saturday with in your building, which potentially that's where this began with the Titans and Shane Bowen. Well, you wouldn't test positive initially. Then you would be traveling together.

And if there's one place, as a GM told me last night, the one place we can't socially distance is the plane. Because you only have so much space. The NFL had told clubs, try to take two planes if possible. You still can, you know, try to do things. But on the plane, you're allowed to remove your mask to eat and drink. you've got guys who fall asleep. You've got, you know, you're supposed to be wearing a mask, but, you know, how strictly is that being,

I don't want to say enforced. I'm not saying anybody's cheating the rules, but it's going to come on and off as you're eating and drinking. And you're sitting by the same people. You're not going to get up every 15 minutes and go, all right, snowball and everybody just moves from different seats. You're going to probably be in the same spot. And so, you know, again, I'm not saying that's where the outbreak occurred,

but if you all sudden have a rash of positive test, for the Titans Thursday, Friday. It might not have been the game. It might have been the play. So, 100%. We still don't know this. You know, what we do know is that to this point, the NFL has done a pretty good job in terms of the protocols.

They continue to, we've seen people disciplined for not wearing masks. We've seen a lot of different adjustments in terms of how all this works. And they're going to have to keep doing this. I mean, the one thing that's been hammered from all the way back in the summer when the union and the league was having all these calls was, The virus is going to be everywhere, and you can't test your way out of it. Yes, by testing now, we know that there's a bunch of people who have COVID-19 with the Titans.

What we don't know now is are all these other mitigation measures keeping it from spreading, not just within the game, but within travel within the building. And then how many other occasions, you know, situations like this are going to crop up around the league? We made it to the last week of September without an outbreak within a team. That's six weeks since the start pad practice, because eight weeks since the start. training camps. But here we are. There's an outbreak. And it's not just these two, not just the one team that has the positive test. It's the team they played. And now the two teams that are playing those teams, are you

catching it? Are you doing everything possible to prevent the outbreak? What happens, going into this weekend? What happens coming out of this weekend? These are all the unknowns. Yep. And I think that the logical question that we might not know the answer to, the NFL might not know the answer to is now that they're faced with this, really the first time a game has been affected, is there a built-in kind of what we've talked about in the past, is there a built-in ability to, if this happened on a Friday and they just had to scrap the game and figure it out later,

is there a plan for that? Is there, you know, Roger Goodell told Peter King right before the season started. They're prepared for competitive inequities. Maybe every team doesn't play 16 game season, all that stuff. But is there a built-in plan where they can say, hey, we're actually going to move this game to week 17. We're going to move buys around.

We might move, and this was brought up a couple times, we might move a couple of games around, so that teams who need to reschedule a game have the same buy week, whatever it is. Are those plans being drawn up, or is it more of a case-by-case basis, Tom? The one thing that they avoided doing, and this was, to my understanding, intentional was they didn't create a bunch of hard and fast rules. They didn't say if you have more than five positive cases, your game is canceled. And that was because they knew they were going to learn more about this as you went along.

The last thing you want to do is enforce a rule in week three. Then you get to week seven and go, you know what? That probably wasn't the right thing to do. Now you change the rules. Now you have impacted the competitive piece of this. That's where they tried to get these unimpeachable character type of people, former GMs and coaches and players who would understand, okay, you're only going to have one practice potentially.

Like for the former players on this committee, what does that, like, what would be the impact of that? You know, could you play in this scenario? For the coaches, is this fair? The moment you start moving around games, you potentially are impacting the competitive things for other teams. I mean, I know there was the whole theory of you could shift the biweek around and move, you know, basically make the Titans buy this weekend, which was definitely something that the Titans thought was a possibility. But then now you're moving other games around. This is impacting other people's buy weeks.

You know, you're moving this game up and this week back. And what if I've got this guy who was heard he was going to be back for the game now he's not? All these things are interconnected. And that's where, yeah, I mean, they're approaching this on it. There definitely are, I mean, there are reams of protocols. God knows how many memos have gone out and how many, you know, pages of this stuff I've read and the clubs have read. I mean, that was kind of the running, you know, joke in the off-season was just like the volume of memos. You would get memos on memos and they were coming out at times where people would go, you know, we already, you know, are preparing for a game here.

And we're getting memos about game day protocols on a Thursday before the game. How is this? But it's just, that's kind of the environment that we're living in. So they've made a lot of plans, but everything, and they've been very up front about this, which is this stuff is going to change. We're going to learn more about the science. We're going to learn more about the impact on the games. And we've got to be ready to adjust as the season goes up. Yeah. And the biweek thing is a little bit easier said than done because true biweeks are really important to the bodies of football players. I mean, it is a brutal game. And, you know, I'm sure you remember 2017. I think it was the Florida.

teams lost their biweek because they got a week one by week because of Hurricane Irma. And there were a lot of players in December who was saying, man, I didn't know how impactful that biweek was. And there are also teams that build their training plan around those biweeks. So we're trying to ramp up here. So how are we doing this? And you're trying to time things up. They've already had that complicated by losing the entire off seasons.

Now you had this compacted training camp where you had like 12 padded practices in the span of 17 days. I'm forgetting that those specific numbers. but it was something like that where all your padded work happened in a very short period of time, and then we were right into a game week. So all those plans are out the window now. So you're okay, we feel good about how we're trying to do this. Now, oh, yeah, your buy just moved from week seven to week four. Oh, and by the way, if you're the Steelers, you were practicing during your buy week.

Right. And that's the problem. It's like, it's fine. If they were just taking the week off, it would be fine. They would get the rest or whatever. But the problem is you got the Steelers out there who now, if you told them their by week is now, it's like, wait, we've been practicing for four days here. We did not exactly get some rest here.

The first text I got from a coach who was involved with one of these four teams that are involved now, you know, the Titans, the Vikings, and the two teams they're playing. I got a text from a coach with one of them after the initial delay was announced that it was, it was postponed in the Titans Steelers game, but not to an undetermined date. The text I got was, well, I would love to know when we're playing. These coaches have everything. They're so routine oriented. And now this is one more disruption in the routine.

You know, the weird thing is because they've all been doing Zoom meetings, like the Vikings yesterday, I know, basically just had to get all their coaches up and running at their houses again. So they've got, you know, whatever was, the IT folks or whatever, like getting, okay, we got to get all this stuff that we had in the off season reset up. Once you're actually doing it, it almost feels normal in this backwards best universe that we're living in right now. But it's still, it's still an adjustment and everybody, the teams that, I mean, it's true.

The teams that adjusts the best are going to have the best chance here. But you still can't adjust to if you've got your star players affected by COVID. We haven't had a star player. Superstar, yeah. I mean, Isaiah Wilson from the Titans has been on the list for weeks now, the first round traffic. AJ Terrell, you know, got put on the list after a positive test last week. I mean, we don't even talk about that situation anymore.

That was really the first big one. You know, Friday morning, AJ Terrell test positive, finds out on Saturday. It's kept out of the walkthrough, but then they headed the same thing. They had contact tracing, test everybody. We still potentially, based on the incubation periods, can find out later this week that if Falcons players positive and it might have been related to AJ Terrell. To this point, that has not happened, which is a good thing again, showing potentially that the mass and the social distancing and the education and all those things are working.

But until you actually go through this, we don't know. Yeah, Ryan Tannahill was asked about the Zoom stuff and he was like, well, it's not new for us. We're just to hop back on Zoom. And it's like, the NFL has changed so quickly. There's such creatures of habit. It's like, oh, yeah, we'll just go back on Zoom again. If you said a year ago. Did you see my post game interview with Tannahill after the Vikings Titans game?

I mean, that, a shout out to Craig Allrick and Steve Van Osdale and Jane Hurd, our crew. I mean, Craig Allerick's got big forearms and he's holding this 50-foot boom mic that he had to get specifically for. It's basically like, you know, like the thing he did as a kid where, like, you'd attach a bunch of straws. I think that's basically what he did with a bunch of like 50 feet, and he's holding it down to Tana Hill, who was great. He played along with it. Titans PR was great. They brought him over,

but Ryan's walking up. And PR is clearly explaining what's going on. He looks up at me. I'm like, what's up, Brian? He goes, like, okay,

this is what we're doing. It's like, all right. And then the longest zoom of all time. I asked the first question, and that's this like eight second zoom into Tannahill's face. I mean, this is all, man,

And this is all, it's very different, you know. But, hey, then I find out that there's eight COVID cases with the Titans. I'm like, all right, good thing I stayed up in the stand. There was a GM. This is how quickly everything has changed. It was a GM. I needed to talk to a couple of weeks or months ago. I got an email.

He'll call you at this the time. And I get a text by an hour before. And it was like, I'm so sorry. I'm on the go. We can't Zoom. And that's to be a phone call. And I was like, you know, we use the phone for like 100 years of NFL football. Like, we're okay.

But these guys are, once these guys figured it out, like this is all they want to do now is Zoom and do the social distancing stuff. They've got it down to a science. Yeah, I had the same thing happening. You know, so right now for NFL network, we're not, because the facilities are closed to people who are not in the protocols. Normally I would travel on like a Thursday, maybe a Friday morning to a game, stay through the game on Sunday, be in the building. Well, now we can't do that. You can't go in the locker room. So everything has to be, you know, done remotely.

So week one, I texted Jason Wallers from the Packers being like, hey, you know, can I get Matt LaFleur? Can I get coach on a Zoom? He's like, a Zoom, why don't we have to do a phone call? I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what we used to do. That does make a lot more sense than doing a Zoom. But like, it didn't even, my brain didn't even like go there that that's what I was going to have to do. And then, you know, two weeks ago, I was, you know, because we're not really, we're limited in terms of flights.

So really, I'm just doing Vikings and Packers game. So I'm driving the Lambo for another Packers game. And Matt Patricia is supposed to call me. And again, it was like we were going to do a Zoom, but then that got, you know, there was scheduling issues or whatever. So I was told him, like, Matt's going to call you around whatever time was. I think it was like 1.30 on Sunday before they went to the airport. So I had to pull over into a gas station.

You know, Matt calls me. He's like, where are, you know, what's going on? I'm like, well, parked at a gas station in Boyd, Wisconsin. just waiting for you to call because I don't know if I'm going to get cell service for the next 30 miles. I think I know that gas station. There's very few, but that's driving right by the prison. If that reminds you, it's the only things in Boyd, Wisconsin, I'll get some hate mail for this, are the prison and the gas station that has McDonald's attached.

The one thing, the one thing when driving through America, and I've done that Green Bay to Wisconsin, Green Bay to Minnesota drive often, but I end up, like, stopping at the same places over and over again. And you realize that they're once you're there, like the same rest stops, whatever, Ohio is a big one of these. And then you're like, wow, what a coincidence. It's like, well, you know what? In huge swaths of America, there's like two places to stop. So it's not a surprise.

I've done eight camp tours. And I've probably been to the same gas station that you've been to eight times. Because that's where you get cell phone service. And it's like, I love it. I love the peace and tranquillity. of it all. And then there's the one gas station. I get, you know, Ohio. Every rest station in Ohio looks the same.

So my eyes may have been playing tricks to me there. But yeah, that's America. And it's, I wish we could do the camp tour of this year. Last thing for you. So Troy Vincent comes out today and basically says that they're threatening, loss of draft picks, suspensions, all that stuff. if you don't treat COVID seriously and you don't wear the masks and you don't have the safety safety regulations put in place and don't respect those.

How serious is this? Is the NFL upset with, and this is not Titan specific, obviously, because there's a lot of coaches who have been fined by this. But is the NFL disappointed with how teams are viewing this? No, I think it's more so just a week. I mean, he sent a memo, I think, three times now. There was one. it's a per my last email for troy vincent yeah i mean it was the monday after week one or you know

the monday uh the next day after week one was the first warning shot then there was a second one uh sent the following week after which there were fines this is just like the slightly escalating it's i mean these are obviously grown adults but it reminds me a little of like when my six and three-year-old daughters like won't go to sleep and you start up by just doing like the encouragement, hey, all right, we're going to get to bed on time. And the next one is, girls, if you don't go to bed on time, all right, we're going to have problems. And then the third time, it's like, girls, I'm taking away the stuffed animals.

Like, that's kind of, we're kind of along that same type of track here. Really, the mask wearing has been very good. But there, it's the, you know, part of it is optics without question because they want to set a good example for the country. But it's also, you know, the reality that, okay, if a Titans coach, didn't know he had it and then was pulling his mask down every time he talked to players, he could have infected players. Right.

That's where you can't, again, you can't test your way out of this. It's all the other things that you're doing here. I mean, if a team actually lost a draft pick or someone got suspended for not following the masking rules, that would obviously be a very serious outcome. And I don't know at some point whether, you know, you're actually going to change behavior by that. I mean, if you're not worried about getting fined $100,000, are you worried about getting suspended? In other words, geez, $100,000, that's a lot of money. I'm going to try to do my best. Then you still pull it down a few times because you're not thinking. And then you get busted and then

you lose, you get suspended. Like, I don't, I don't know at what point, it's just like you've done all you can. Obviously, they feel like they can do more. That's where you're continuing to get the threat of escalated discipline here. But this has been a weekly point of emphasis. And it, it pertains to on the field, it pertains to off the field as well, where you've had, you know, other issues cropping up, the Raiders players getting photographed without mass at an event, which there's a long story that goes into that. You're, I'm sure you're going to have other things that crop up along the way here. They're just, they're trying to make sure that they're doing all the other things because

the testing is great because it tells you who's positive. Ideally, you want to keep fewer people from testing positive. And you do that by all the other restrictions. all the other rules that they have in place. And one of them that just happens to be really, really visible is are the coaches wearing the masks and the face coverings on the sideline? There have been some interesting ones. Very interesting masks, as I'll say.

Tom Pellasor, nobody breaks it down like you. Thanks for joining us. Got it, man. Okay, coming up, we have Danny Kelly and Steve Palazzoa to break down the futures of some of the most interesting people in football, but first a quick break. All right. Joining us. Steve Palazzo, from Pro Football Focus and Danny Kelly, the Dark.

from the ringer. Steve, how you doing, buddy? Doing great. Thanks for having me, guys. This is awesome. Yeah, no, I mean, this is going to be really fun. Steve, you're one of my favorite analyst. Danny Kelly is my favorite person in the world, so I'm just happy to chop it up. What a crew. What a crew. All right, so we're going to play a game very easy. It's a good jumping off point for some of the hot topics in the league right now. It's better, worse, or the same. Okay, that's pretty simple. I'm going to name somebody, and we're just going to say, is this them? Are they going to stay like this for the rest of the year?

Are they going to get better? They're going to get worse. There's no one else to start with other than Josh Allen. Steve, Josh Allen, better, worse, or the same in week 17? Let me pull out my PFF contract here. And according to the terms, I have to say that Josh Allen gets worse. That is just the rule. That's just how we do.

I think he's going to get worse. only because I've been so impressed with what he's done. He's just been much more accurate than we've seen in the past. He's always had that natural playmaking ability. But I think he's playing at a level that we haven't seen previously. So I'm going to lean on the data that just says, okay, there has to be some regression there. But I also think statistically, he's going to keep it up to a point because he's got those guys he's throwing to.

He's got four legitimate receivers to throw to and some tight ends. And he's got that rushing ability. So I think statistically he'll be all right. But he has to regress at least a little bit for as far as how, he's actually playing on the field. Danny Kelly. I mean, I couldn't have said it any better. He's doing things that are so absurdly, you know, like,

past what he has been doing his whole career. Touchdown rate right now is 8.8%. His career average is 3.8%. He's averaging 9.1 yards per attempt. Career average is 6.6. Completion percentage, which we talked about before the preseason, they're, like, undefeated. If they're, if they pass over a certain amount of,

If they complete a sober amount of passes, he's 71% career average is 56. So, yeah, I think he's going to get worse, but it's a marginal thing, obviously. He's just not going to be so incredibly efficient all season long that I just can't see him keeping this up against like good defense. He had a couple of good defenses coming up. He gets the Patriots twice this year. The Titans, Chargers, Steelers, 49ers, Chiefs. The 49ers are obviously really banged up. And I include the Chiefs in there because I was very impressed with the Chiefs against Ravens.

So, yeah, I think just naturally he's going to regress slightly. But I see him continuing to have a very good year and, you know, having this breakout season that we're seeing through three weeks. I want to point out, you know, that you talk about the Chief's defense. DeSpegnolo's performance against Lamar Jackson really, really impressed me. There was some creativity there. And obviously, the Ravens made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes. But I kind of liked it. I mean, as someone who was obviously, they won the Super Bowl last year, so there's a baseline of competence.

there. But I remember at the beginning thinking when they hired Steve Spagnol, there was a ceiling on that defense because I just didn't think he was, you know, the best if it's coordinator in football. But I was definitely impressed with what I saw last week. As for Josh Allen, I'll let you guys take the heat. I'm not answering. Okay. That'd be great if I just set you up on all of these and just say, oh, my mic's not working. My mic's not working. All right. So the answer is he will get marginally worse, as Danny said, which still makes the bills a, a contender to be a top team in the AFC. I still think they're going to win the AFC East. I still think there are a really damn talented team. And I think the team building job has been amazing. Daniel Jeremiah said this on his pod this week that the throws he's making are indicative of trust. And I think that that shows you, A, he's just throwing better balls, but B, the team around him is so good.

And he's just really jelling with that team really well. Peter King caught up with him over the weekend and Josh Allen and basically said that he, he tweaked his mechanics to the point that he throws a more catchable ball. He worked with Jordan Palmer a lot. He got some advice from Tony Romo. So I think that, you know, there was a study done on PFF that I cited a lot and leaned on a lot that quarterbacks don't necessarily take a leap from year two to year three. They take it from year to one, year two, and year two to year three is more of who they are.

And I'm starting to think that Josh Allen might be the exception of the rule. I just don't think, I mean, every single stat I see right now is, you know, X amount of yards, X amount of touchdowns, no interceptions. And everybody he's in a group with is Patrick Mahomes and Peyton Manning, right, in the third year. And the last 14 games, 33 touchdown, three interceptions. I think he's a heck of a, a heck of a story. But the problem with all of this is we're in the same season where he just two weeks ago through the ball directly to a defender in the flat that was dropped. He's what should have been an end zone interception against the jets. He had the most wide open miss of any quarterback in the league this year.

That all happened in this MVP caliber season. So I want to give Alan credit, but he's still a roller coaster ride of emotions where everything up at the top is, you know, good. And it's, he's getting some luck in there too. The difference between Mahomes and Alan, when you take out obviously the statistics is just the eye test. I mean, like if you, if an alien came down and you showed them the two quarterbacks, they'd probably figure out what the differences are. and I just, Alan just makes mistakes

that a clip Mahomes doesn't and that will bear out of her full season. Still love this Bills team. Still think they're going to win. A lot of games, pesky out in the playoffs. But I think we're all in agreement here. Josh Allen,

not the MVP. Correct. Yeah. Okay. All right. Speaking of not the MVP, Baker Mayfield, Danny,

we'll start with you. I'm going with Same on this. And this is, I guess you have to talk about, the last two games more specifically than the first one against the Ravens where he looked really, really bad. I think they're going to continue to kind of mitigate his impact on the game and try and, I mean, and I say that it's like it's not necessarily.

I know what you're saying, but it's, it's a compliment and that's not necessarily a good thing for Baker Mayfield. I'm not indicting him necessarily, but I'm just saying, you know, they're not asking him to do a ton in the passing game. Yeah. They've taken some pressure off of his shoulders. put it on Nick Chubb, Kreme Hunt. They're really,

really relying on that run game. And I think that's, you know, that's how they're built. And that's what I think we thought Kevin Stefansky could do or would do. I think they're doing it at a little bit higher rate than I thought they would. But yeah,

I mean, he's 60 out of 23 exactly in those last two games each. So, you know, 23 passes. He's been efficient. They've used a lot of play action and getting him out of pocket and sort of defined reads,

giving him a couple of guys that every, level, you know, just I guess I see that kind of continue. I don't think I'm going to see like a huge, huge jump from him necessarily. I have to pull out my contract again. Yeah. By the way, I forgot to mention that the Josh Allen stuff, so the Bill's Mafia knows, not only does Steve get to keep his contract intact, but Danny and I get paid by Chris Collinsworth directly every time we dunk on Josh Allen. It goes right. Our direct deposit is set up. So, It is a conspiracy. I just want everybody to know that.

All right, Steve, what is your contract saying about Baker Mayfield? And we have to talk good. We have to speak, you know, well of Baker Mayfield. He's going to be great. I mean,

I would probably lean a lot toward the same, but I think he'll play a little bit better. I think the production will be similar. I still have faith in him as a pastor. I've lost a little bit of faith of his ability to play within structure and trust within structure. I'm going to compare him to Aaron Rogers over the last couple years, not because he's at Aaron Rogers level,

but the difference with Rogers this year, is playing within structure. I think you can get that out of Baker Mayfield. You talked about trust, Danny, I think, or Kev with the bills, right? I think Baker just needs a little bit more trust, a little bit more trust. And I think this system is going to help them. I looked at it coming into the year like, hey, if you're going to drop back 35 times in a game, it's not 35 times of Baker making plays.

This system's going to allow it to be, you know, 15 times where you go play ball. But the other 20, we're going to get the screens and the rollouts and some of the easy stuff. So that's how I viewed it. He still has to ball out for those 15. and I think he's got that natural playmaking ability, but I think there'll be continued pressure alleviated after that first week, which didn't look anything like what I thought

Stefansky's offense was going to look like. The last two weeks were much more in line, you know, and I think more of the same, I'd say from Baker, but maybe he hits a few more throws than he has. Yeah, and Baker makes mistakes. And so if you look at the snapshot of the season so far,

if you use quarterback rating, which I don't think is anything other than just a snapshot of his performance in a very, baseline way. But 65 rating the first week, 110 rating the second week, 117 rating last week against the football team. Obviously, the 65 came against Baltimore, and we'll set that aside here. But the game we had 117 rating, he also had a pass that was so bad that O'Dell Beckham played defensive back and celebrated breaking up an interception. That's almost disqualifying to me. Okay. But there's a couple, there's a couple of things to know here. Number one is that you guys,

the PFF have Baker with his ball placements getting much, much better. His accuracy is really good in the last two weeks. And they have an easy schedule. We've seen it obviously the last two weeks where they beat the Bengals and the football team, but they have the third easiest QB strength of schedule, according to PFF fantasy for the rest of the way. We'll see a little bit of what Baker looks like the next couple of weeks. They play Dallas at one point.

They play the Steelers at one point in the next couple weeks. So we'll see. I think they play the Colts. So we'll see a little bit more of a sample size. But I'm generally an agreement that this is probably Baker, a pretty good quarterback on a team that can be extremely inconsistent from week to week. All right. The New England Patriots.

Steve Falliselo, they're two and one. I think we're going to see a lot of the same in that they're going to beat the teams that they should beat and not beat the teams that they shouldn't beat. And the way the schedule lays out, it's kind of week to week. like are they going to beat the chiefs this week? Probably not. Beat the Broncos the next week. Yes, 49ers and then bills back to back. Maybe they grab one of those, right? Jets win,

Ravens, lost, Texans, win, Cardinals, who knows. I mean, we're back and forth as you look at the schedule. I think the Patriots are a pretty good team. They want to win with this run game. Cam Newton was not good on Sunday, but they still put up over 200 yards on the ground in one. So, you know, they can win in multiple ways. But I just think they're so limited in the past game,

despite what Newton did in week two, very impressive against Seattle. But I think they're limited in the past game compared to where they were previously, not just because of the quarterback, but because of the playmakers in the depth there as well. So I think it's a good, not great team that ends up, you know, 10 and 6 or something maybe for the Pat.

So they're pretty good in competing with the bills in the AFC East. Danny? Yeah, I agree. I would say same. What I jot it down is I think we kind of know who they are at this point in terms of, you know, And, you know, if they get behind, it's going to be, you might see Cam do what it did against the Seahawks, but the Seahawks defense is just so incredibly terrible that, you know, you can't really expect it all the time.

So, yeah, I think what they, I think they're limited in some ways, but definitely a competitive, good, strong team, coached extremely well. I think, you know, maybe their ceiling depends a little bit on the development of some of their young guys down the rest of the season. Like, if they can get McKeel Harry going and, and, and, get him to finally break out and be the guy they thought he's going to be when they picked him in the first round. Maybe that could be a big impact for them. Maybe a guy like Damian Harris comes in and helps them in the run game a little bit, though they have some good running backs right now or okay running backs right now.

But yeah, I don't know. They have a generational first rounder day. Gosh. They have a first rounder on the first rounder on the roster. It's like an offensive lineman in the open field. I was thinking of JJ Taylor. More like he's like interesting to me. And then Damien Harris.

No, I know. I know. Like, yeah. When you say running backs down with the Patriots, you think JJ Taylor or not Sony or Michelle. And James White. James White's good in the past. James White. So anyways.

Yeah, like I think, you know, overall, um, very good competitive team, but limited in some ways. Steve, if you're a, if you're a good team in the AFC, I'm, and these are all good teams. But if you're the Ravens of the Chiefs, would you rather play in the playoffs, the Patriots or the Bills? Man, that's a good one. one. I think I'd rather play the bills just because Josh Allen's still trying to lateral the ball when he's not supposed like those those things are happening and you're going up against a Belichick team. You mentioned like they're going to win on the edges, the Patriots with, you know, coaching divisions and a couple little things there. But the bills or the Steelers, both of those teams in say one game settings with a quarterback who can make a ton of plays with a defense that could play. Those teams are scary, but I have to probably lean the Patriots just because of the Belichick history. Yeah, so there's obviously a floor with Belichick where he's going to have an amazing game plan.

There is talent there. There's veteran presence there. And they're just not going to make that many mistakes. And so I think that in some ways, to answer the question in the exercise here, I think in some ways they'll stay the same in some areas to probably get a little bit worse. Mike Giority had a really interesting point this week when they played the Chiefs that basically the Patriots are not having nearly the success in man-to-man as they did last year. obviously this time last year, the Patriots defense looked as good as any defense it looked in the modern era, quite frankly. A lot of that was there playing crappy quarterbacks.

A lot of that was just they were playing out of their minds and obviously didn't have these opt-outs like they do this year. The talent was unbelievable. I mean, I went up in November to report a story about how damn good this Patriots defense was. And I taught all these guys. And by the time the story was ready to run, the defense, the story kind of lapsed. You know, I mean, the story wasn't there anymore.

I was writing. I was talking about being a dominant defense. They ran into good quarterbacks. And it's fine. And one day I'll run those quotes as part of something else. But this story just didn't,

just didn't work because the narrative changed. And so I'm intrigued to see how this season develops. I'm with you, Steve. I'm seeing 10 wins for them. And I think that Cam Newton, the weird thing to me about Cam Newton is he's the only person who I am in agreement with when he says the only stat that matters is wins.

Because every other quarterback, And he said it this week and last week. He said, oh, the only thing that matters is wins. The every other quarterback, I look at the stats and I say, okay, well, you know, you're not playing this well, you know, whatever. And statistically he had kind of a bad game on Sunday, but he did just enough to win. And I think with the Patriots for now with Cam Newton, he's never going to have, he's never going to have Mahomesian numbers. But he can be dominant on, on a single play. And when you have Bill Belichick, that's what matters.

You put enough of those into one game, even if you're having a quote unquote, off game. He threw some real bad passes on Sunday. You're going to, he's going to throw enough great passes to get the win. That's all. Dallas Cowboys. So when we say stay the same, this is a tricky one because they're one and two right now.

They're tied with the football team for first place, but they're still in first place in a weird division. And I think even them staying the same as kind of a compliment. Danny Kelly, where are we at? I'm going with better. I think they're going to get better. I still view them as a playoff team. I had that before the season.

And obviously, you know, they've had their bumps first couple of weeks of the year. But I think there are a few balls, like a few bounces here and there from having a different narrative. You know, obviously they've played in a couple really close games. They have a very strong offense that I think can score points with anybody in the league. And I think their defense has been bad, but can be better. So I see them, you know, they're actually not that different than like a team like the Seahawks with a really good offense that's won three games like in on two of their games they've won essentially on last play of the game. So I think the Cowboys narrative would be a little bit different if things have gone different in, you know, the end of like a couple of their games. So I don't know.

We'll see. I think it's still going to show that they are a good team. Their schedule lightens up quite a bit over the next six weeks. So you got the Browns Giants, Cardinals. I think the Cardinals is a tough matchup, and then they got Washington and Philly. So, you know, they could, they could win four out of those five games, I think, and be looking a lot better, you know, in a month or month and a half. Steve.

I agree with a lot of that. They're the same team that's going to, but they're going to be better record-wise. You know, I just, their offense is as explosive as we thought coming into the year. I think that is really important, right? People like the Cowboys because they said, okay, Dax's coming off his most production. of year. He's been completely different. That offense has been completely different since Amari Cooper showed up. Michael Gallup emerged and they added CD Lamb and we're starting to see that. Plus, the Dalton Schultz even emerging as a reasonable tight end. So I just think that's,

that's just how you win in the NFL, right? You pass the ball. You stop the past. Now, right now they're not stopping the past. They're not even close. The secondary, but I've always looked at their secondary is just this middle, middle of the pack type of group that if they go up against Seattle or they go up against Atlanta, they might get torched a little bit. But the, next few weeks, they're going to look better against the Browns Giants and some of these other teams, right? So I think they'll be okay. I think that offense will carry them. I don't think what Bucky Brooks is saying that they need to run the ball more is the way to go. It's absolutely not. That's not how you protect your defense. You protect them by scoring points and then defense,

hey, go make a stop at some point. I think Dallas is built to win. Plus our friend Mike McCarthy's making more good decisions than bad when it comes to game management. So they'll be all right. Yeah. So I said it on Sunday and it bears opinion, but I, I, I, I thought that the Eagles were playing badly for a good team. And then I realized on Sunday they're just a bad team. And they deserve to be 02 and 1. I just don't see much improvement there. Carson Wentz,

I think has the worst, the worst rating from a clean pocket in football right now, which is a particularly damning stat. Under 70, which is not good. Quarterback rating, not a great stat, but that tells you a lot.

That tells you a lot. It's getting in the ballpark of bad. It's there. We're there. So I think that Danny and Steve, you put it exactly correctly, which is that I don't think this Cowboys team is nearly as good as I thought they were going to be, but they're about to pick up record-wise and it's not going to matter because the Giants, we can write them off. The Eagles, I just don't.

I normally with the team like the Eagles, I look for every excuse to figure out how they're going to turn it around and I'm just not seeing anything right now. so I'm just, I'm pressing pause on them. I'm not even going to try to do the optimistic thing. I'm just, no. So the football team doesn't really do it for me. So I think that this Cowboys team is just going to probably, and it doesn't matter if they do,

but probably back into the playoffs. So they have the Browns this week, the Giants, the Cardinals like Danny was saying, then the football team and the Eagles. And the schedule gets a little hairier on the back end. You have the Steelers, you have the Ravens, teams like that. But I'm seeing a lot of easy wins in teams.

in games they should win. I think they have enough talent. And there's a baseline of competence there with Mike McCarthy that they'll get there. So they're a playoff team. They're just not. There was a lot of Super Bowl buzz for them in the off season from some really smart people,

including on this podcast. And I'm just, I'm opting out of that. I just think that they're a playoff team that is, is not very good, I think. In relative to other playoff teams, they're better than a lot of crappy teams. All right, we have Russell Wilson and Aaron Rogers

coming up next, refers to quick break. All right. Russ Wilson, MVP candidate, Steve Palozoa. More of the same from Russ. Not 139 passer rating, same, but a lot more of the same. And this is how he played last year. The difference here this year with Russell Wilson, the reason why his stats are off the charts is Brian Schottenheimer,

the scheme, the system, the play calling, the run, run passes out the window. And now all of a sudden you actually have to give credit to your offensive coordinator and like, wow, dude, Russ is just racking up stats. It's like crazy. All these easy bootlegs in the red zone and screens to Chris Carson and wide open drag routes to Freddie Swain. You kidding me?

So Russell Wilson's playing at a ridiculous level and he's getting freebies. He's getting the Mahomes treatment, easy stats. So I think Seattle is built to continue to attack, you know, to win through the past game. My concern was always with Pete Carroll and his comfort level, right? There was a game in 2018. I always joke against the Lions, right? when Russell Wilson threw the ball like 17 times. And they ran the ball 42.

And I'm like, they spend every game aiming for that. And you fail 15 times, but you get that one and you go in every week. And it's like, we're going to have this game where we run at 42 and we throw at 17. And I always was worried that Pete Carroll wouldn't change that mentality, that you would chase that.

And him and shot he would just be on the same page. And that's what they do. But they've changed. They've evolved. And that's why I think this continues. There might be an ugly one in there here and there with Wilson. He's not perfect. but he's playing pretty close to perfect right now.

And I expect another, you know, the rest of the year, him just to light it up like he is. We'll do the early season MVP conversation after another candidate in a second here. Danny Kelly, Russ Wilson. Is he cooking all year? I initially wanted to put worse just because I don't think Russell Wilson's going to pass for 72 touchdowns this year. But I'm changing my answer to the same in the context that in the context that I think that this is to the Seahawks. I think their offense can be very, very good. And I think their defense is bad, but it could improve marginally enough to make the Seahawks like a competitive team in the NFC.

So I think they got lucky a couple moments during the first couple of games, you know, in the end of games, they had, you know, they made a stop against the Patriots to win the game. And then they held strong against the Cowboys last week, if I'm remembering correctly, you know, all the Seahawks games kind of meld together to me. It's like all just just one giant cluster. When does that start for you? When does that, is it like 2011 to now is one big game? 2012-ish, yeah, I think. So, like, eight, you know, solid like seven, eight years of just one long, me going into a fugue state in the fourth quarter because it just, like, is too painful. And I don't want to go back to it.

But yeah, no, I think, you know what, I think the, what Steve said is absolutely right. Like, you have to give so much credit to Shottie. We're calling him Skybox Shottie, by the way, in Seattle. he's up in the skybox now calling plays he's not on the sideline. Provision. He could see. Also, he doesn't have Pete breathing down his neck. I mean, I know that he's on the headset and everything, but he's like, you know, he can

always mute Pete if he wanted to. Are we letting shotty cook? Let him shot. See, letting shoddy cook? But yeah, I mean, he's, he's got guys running wide open. Sorry, Kevin. He's got, he's got guys running wide open all the time. I think the Seahawks offense is getting continued to be very strong.

their offensive line is protected really well. So that's a huge improvement too. I am worried about the defense. I think they're going to have shootouts every single week just because they just can't stop anybody. Right. Question for both of you. So, Danny, you said you leaned worse at the beginning

because he thought he wasn't going through to 72 touchdowns, obviously. But if we're to set an over under for touchdown, so he has 14 through three weeks, that's the most ever. He's never had more than 35 in his career. He did 35 in 2018. the let's say number 10 for all time touchdowns in season is 41 so let's put the over under at 42 does he get there safe i was going to say yes as you were talking i was going to say just because of his start here and he should have had another one ddk dropped it 45 was

reasonable right um i think he gets over 42 dk dna k i'm dk not not his dk different Yeah, I didn't celebrate before I got past the goal line. I'd be sprinting that out. No, I don't know if you saw Justin Jefferson's celebration. He's Justin Jefferson's quarter to touchdown. He started like celebrating from like the 20 yard. He had some spatial awareness of where the defender was.

That's true. But yeah, I, it's funny that you actually put it at 42 because when you started talking, I was like, I think it's going to be like 42. I'm going to go slightly over. I'll say 43 because I think it'll slow down. He's not going to have four or five. touchdowns every single week. They're not going to have games with that type of game script, probably every week, hopefully,

or else my heart won't take it. But yeah, I'd say I think he's going to hit the over. I think this is his year. The variables are adding up. They're not calling holding. You know, the NFL wants offense. The Seawks defense sucks, so they're going to have to be playing. They have turned into the chiefs in terms of first and second down passing.

It's incredible. It's like my dream come true as a long time let Russ Cook proponent. So, yeah, I think they're going for the over. Did you see who runs the ball? I think Ben Baldwin had this on second and long more than any other team in the NFL by a wide margin. Yes. It's the New York Jets. If you're the jet, give the fans something, Adam Gase.

Don't just run the ball on second and long all the time. Don't run the give up draw play on second down with Frank Gore. This is, you know, back to the Josh Allen conversation. Even last year, Josh Allen wasn't even that accurate last year. And they were still doing a good job of passing early and not protecting him. It's not protecting him by going run, run pass. It's protected him by passing when they think you're going to run. Gase is still trying to protect Donald because, yeah, he's thrown at Braxton Berrios.

But man, that is, that's ugly. By the way, the single season touchdown leader Ford is just a disaster. Like, Bordles is on here at 35. The garbage time. The people I respect are like George Blanda, who had 36, 1961, Wyatt Tidal, 1963 at 36, Steve Berlund's 1999 season. Because everything else is like, with exception, obviously, of Marino and Kurt Warner, everything else is, I'll take Cole Pepper, though. Pretty impressive.

39, 2004. Everything else basically is a product of its era and then Brett Farron, obviously. All right. Other MVP candidate, Aaron Rogers. Danny will start with you. And then we'll get into the broader MVP discussion. Aaron Rogers, better or worse. I think I'm having almost the exact same conversation with Aaron Rogers as I am with

Russell Wilson. I think that what they're doing offensively is sustainable from a, like he's like the way he's playing in structure, all that. Steve brought up earlier. Like he's not trying to, you know, run around and do everything he can. Every single snap. He's playing really awesome. That said, I saw this stat actually from your colleague Mike Renner today. Yes. Three, three point seven, three points per drive. So much more than the 2007 Patriots. Yeah, I don't think they can keep that up. So from that percent, it's like, it's my exact same answer as the CX. Like, I lean worse just because they can't continue to score at this clip. They're going to score 40 points in game, probably.

They're averaging 40, over 40 points a game through three weeks, which is absurd. But I do think what they're doing has a level of sustainability that I think they're continued to be a very good offense. So I know that's kind of couching it a little bit, but I don't see them getting better. I see this, this is something that they can do that sustainable. I mean, literally, it just has to be worse because, and it's almost a compliment to their first three weeks that it's going to be worse. Because 3.7.3 points per drive is outrageous. So just to continue on with Mike's chart here, 3.19 is the Patriots in 2007, so about half

a point more per drive. 2018, 2018 Chiefs is 3.12. Saints and Packers in 2011 were just below that. And then last one on the list is the 2013 Peyton Broncos 2.83. So 55 touchdowns that year, right? Yes. So Peyton Manning through 55 touchdowns and the Green Bay Packers right now are averaging almost a full point per drive to move.

That is amazing. That's a testament to Aaron Rogers being all the way back. That's a testament to Matt LaFleurr's play calling and all this stuff. But it's just sorry like that at some point that goes down. So with all due respect to the fact that they are. absolutely an NFC contender and absolutely going to be dynamic offense all season long. Obviously, the defense is good too. This Baron Rogers has to get worse or else he's going to break the game or else he's, he's

Bryce and D. Chambot all of a sudden. Okay. Steve Belzo, where are you? Yeah, I agree. It's got to get worse than that. Here's my thing, right? You mentioned two of the teams on that list, 2011, Hackers and Saints. Are we forgetting what happened in 2001?

The offensive explosion, the first three or four, weeks was ridiculous. I mean, Brady was averaging like 420 yards a game the first three. He went for 500 the first week and everybody was incredible that year. And a lot of people said the similarities with 2011 and COVID this year, maybe the defenses are going to be a disaster. So I think there will be some offensive regression for everybody plus the weather, all that stuff, right? My thing with Rogers, like when Brady comes out every year, I like to just, his first couple passes, you just think, okay, did his arm fall off this off season? You know, what's he going to be? And you watch Brady. And it's like, okay, he can still play football. With Rogers, I just say, I just want to see if he's going to play with Instructure.

I want to see if he wants to play his 2011, 2014 brand of football where he could win any way. You call the right play. I hit it. You call a bad play. Nobody's open. I still create a play like he did on Sunday night. Like, hey, Mercedes-Lewis, you're not covered at all, but I'm going to throw this up and you're going to score a touchdown anyway because I'm awesome, right? So Rogers is playing at that level. I'm going to get rid of the ball fast. I'm going to find open receivers. We're using motion. First off, I want to know, like, where were you the last couple of years? If you had this in, I wasn't this here. But secondly, like, while it is here, like, Roger is going to play at this level this year. I just, he's short stuff is great. Instructure is great. Outside of structure has always been outstanding. He's always taking good care of the football. It's always been like that middle four or five hundred plays where you just have to, you have to be good for 700 plays as a quarterback, not just 50. He's always had the 50, but the middle

grouping, the majority of the plays Rogers has improved upon this year, and that's why he just looks so special again. Yeah, scoring on 43% of the drives. Same. Have not turned the ball over at all, at all? Like, that's, I mean, between throwing that many touchdowns and not turning the ball over in any way, that's, that's amazing. So, yeah, I think that they're a disciplined team that can play like this all season long.

I think that Rogers is Rogers again. and again, it's almost a compliment that I'm choosing worse here. All right. Actually, before we get to the last one, because I do want to talk about the Saints here, I do want to just quickly get into the MVP debate because we just did Russell and Rogers. If we're handicapped in this right now, is it such a narrative award? Do you guys think that Mahomes, if he just dominates the way he normally does, are going to win this award? Do you think that they want to give it to Russell Wilson because Chris Collinsworth couldn't get his vote in and lost his vote?

Where does this sort of play out? I mean, is Josh Allen in the race? And obviously Aaron Rogers is right in there. How does this play out? And what are we talking about in week 17, Steve? I hate MVP discussions in general. I think there's like if you put Wilson, Rogers, and Mahomes, let's just pretend that they were the top three.

Forget Alan for a second. Sure. And you said Mahomes is third in the MVP race. And then he has a great week four. And then they'd be like, well, you flip your go from third to second. It's not, it's not, you're not like one spot. away from everybody every week. This happened with Lamar and Wilson last year, right? There was a point where I thought Wilson was like three steps ahead of Lamar, but he had a bad game and all of a

sudden you just flip them and you just get to deal with this every week. So it really is like, who had the most recent primetime game and, you know, what have you done for me lately? And we're going to talk about it every week. At the end of the day, I think the Wilson narrative might win out. But the competition is just so heated. You know, Mahomes could end up with 40 touchdowns at the end of it. Rogers could too. There could be three of them. Lamar, could still put up ridiculous numbers. But I think there is a little bit of voter fatigue with, we've already voted for Mahomes. We've already voted for Lamar.

The idea that Wilson doesn't have an MVP vote besides the fact that my boss apparently tried to last year. Like it's not crazy. There's no year going back that Wilson should have been MVP. And there's only 50 voters and they get one vote. You know, that's not. They get one vote. Yeah.

It's not ranked. You don't vote for a 10th place guy. It's kind of absurd that that's the way they do it. But it's not crazy that Wilson's never had a vote. But people are still talking about it. I think at the end of day, if I had to pick someone, I'll say it's Russell Wilson. But I think this year it's absolutely heated because the numbers are off the charts. And you can't screw up.

You've got to be perfect every week if you're going to stay atop the MVP race this year. Yeah. And Jackson, again, this is something that we've talked about in this podcast. I always expected Jackson's numbers to take a little bit of a regression. He might end up being a better quarterback this year. And they're trying to do some different stuff. And I've made this case on a bunch of different pods. It's not worth bringing up anymore.

But after Monday, it's going to be really interesting to see. if he's in that discussion. Danny Kelly, MVP, very quickly. Yeah, I mean, I think it is like such a narrative-driven award, and we don't know what's going to happen down the line. I think it's the Seahawks lose a few games. That's going to hurt Russell Wilson's case.

If the chiefs just continue to go scorched earth and end up with like two losses or one loss or even if they go undefeated, yeah, like, then there's no chance for Russell. So it's absolutely one of those things where, you know, it depends a lot on how these teams do down the stretch. I do think if everything else being equal, say they both win 13 games,

just throw that out there, Seahawks and Chiefs. Russ kind of has a good narrative working in his favor. They finally let him play, and now he now look what happened. But you know what I mean? And so maybe that'll be enough to kind of push him over the edge. But yeah,

I think it just, how these teams end up playing actually does really matter. So it's too early to know. shoddy for MVP Skybox Shattie maybe Skybox shoddy for MVP Topic cat league everybody get to the skybox Everybody get immediately

Up to the skybox All right Last team because we wanted to pair this with with Aaron Rodgers and the Greenway Packers It's New Orleans Saints Wolf So Alvin Kamara is amazing Looks like one of the most dynamic

Weapons in football Drew Breeze is not playing well I don't know where this team is going. Steve Fowler's O' will help me out. I don't like to be the dance on the grave of the 40-year-old guy. I just, I hate it. I think it's lazy analysis, right? 40-year-old throws a duck, therefore he's old and you can't do it ever again.

And I never want to jump on Drew Brees too early. It can't be that guy. But it really doesn't look good right now. They're just so limited. And he still has ridiculous stats because Alvin Kamara's turning, you know, negative five-yard passes into 52-yard touch. downs. That is unsustainable. That can't happen. So I'm very concerned about Breeds's unwillingness to throw the ball down the field, his inability to do it effectively when he tries. I think,

I think there's just a ceiling that Breeze has never had before. His last six PFF grades are all like 58 between 58 and 60 dating back to last year. So it's starting to get close to, yeah, this is rough. Now, all that said, they did coming into the year, they built one of the best teams in the NFL. That still exists. They're not playing great, but that still exists. They're another team that's going to win 10, 11 games, be in the mix. But at some point, you get into the playoffs and you're facing all these other guys we're talking about. You got to go head to head with Wilson and Rogers and, you know, the Brady in this explosive

NFC. So I don't think they're the Super Bowl contenders that we thought because Breeze is limiting them at this point. Danny Kelly? I put better on this one because, and I agree pretty much exactly with what Steve was saying in terms of their offense. It just looks limited, you know, Breeze when he's back there. This is not necessarily new.

Like he mentioned last year, going back to last year's grades weren't very good either. This isn't like a brand new offense or problem for them. But I just think, you know, if they get behind early in the game, it really can hurt them because he can't push the ball down. You have to like engineer a 15, 15 play drive or have Alvin Camara break six tackles and whatever. I do think they're going to get better, though, because I think getting Michael Thomas back will be big. It sounds like he's practicing this week, which is kind of crazy. but, you know, say he's back in two or three weeks, like full strength or closer to full strength. That'll help them a lot.

I think defensively, they'll probably get better, too. It's always hard to kind of figure out exactly what's going on with the defense, but their defense just hasn't been that good. I think I saw a stat. I wrote about this on Sunday. I think it was like 16, 13 of their last 16 drives. They've given up a score or something like that. It's in that ballpark.

And Cam Jordan, you know, he's, he's. struggled, Marshawn Lattimore, his statistics aren't very good right now. I think those guys are too good. I think they'll clean that up. I think their defense will start playing a little better. That'll raise their floor. That'll get them a little bit more competitive than what we've seen the last couple of weeks. And so I think there'll be marginally better.

But I agree with you. I had them as a Super Bowl team. They were my Super Bowl pick prior to the year. And I'm pretty much off that at this point. They don't look that solid anymore to me. I think there'll be a contender, but I don't know. it definitely the offense worries me. Breeze was supposed to be the narrative MVP guy.

Sorry. Yes. No, no, no. Go ahead. I'm just saying that was like that was what was supposed to happen and you don't, you don't really know. Not every quarterback falls off like Peyton Manning in 2015, but it's just not promising right now the way Breeze looks.

Yeah. And it's not like the Oscar week and just say, oh, you should have won for this. Let's give it to him here. Like if someone, it's pretty obvious who the MVP is every year or who the group of candidates is. So you can't just randomly assign it. and just like, oh, yeah, he had a pretty good movie three years ago

a block to this guy. I will say this, Danny. You said that this offense has been like this last couple of years. And again, no Michael Thomas. The Saints had no offseason, had no offseason. They didn't do like a COVID Zoom thing. Sean Payton just said, everybody go home. We'll see you in July.

Okay. They obviously had the same chaotic August as everybody else, so much testing, limited training camp. So, and this is the caveat I say before I bury anybody, which is that this is just the weirdest season history. And drawing any conclusions after three games can be slightly foolhardy and especially with Michael Thomas out. Having said that,

the air yards for Drew Bruce have since 2016 been extremely low. Okay. 28th in the league in 2016, last in 2017, 29th in 2018, 30th in 2019. However, he is about a yard and a half, and in some cases two and a half yards, air yards down from even the worst marks. Oh, boy. During that time.

Yeah. So this isn't, this is, Drew Breeze is always throwing short, but now he's just throwing way shorter. Maybe that works. Maybe that works. And, and,

I mean, this is like, this is Drew Breeze leaning into being the final form of Drew Brees, right? This is like, this is Adam Gase calling 100 straight second and long draws. Okay. Like,

this is, Drew Brees finally leaning into what he needs to do. And maybe this works. Maybe when Michael Thomas gets back and he throws it out and Kamar for two yards, they have dynamic enough weapons. You know, the line, all that stuff.

Sean Payton is a top five play caller in this sport and has been for 20 years. Maybe it works. I'm just saying in a league where there are guys who can throw downfield without making mistakes, it's harder and harder to compete. And that's my point. And I just don't think that the Saints have the horses this year

to be an elite NFC team. This is Greg Maddox at the end of his career going from throwing 88. Like he's below average velocity, 88, pinpoint accuracy. But at the end of his career, he's thrown 84. And you have to be that much more perfect in pinpoint. I mean, that's Breeze at this point. You just don't have the margin of error that he's had previously.

Yeah. The last thing I would add is kind of like a repeat what I was saying, but I'm just picturing like, you have to be so good to engineer these long drives that would like eight, nine, 10 play drives. And doing that multiple times a game, it just adds so much more, so many more variables that you have to overcome,

I think, during the year versus like Mahomes or Wilson or whatever. You go five games of Jamis, little load management, save breeze up. Five games, six games of Jamis and save Breeze for the stretch run. Steve, Doc Rivers is available. Bring him in.

Get him in. Get him in. It's like, Load management. Load management consultant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like how the chiefs hired Chris Alt to teach them the pistol formation. Just have stock come in and say, just let your breeze go on a month-long vacation. It's totally fine.

James starts and three sits. There you go. I mean my money. We're not even going to do the Bears because it's all, we're all going to say worse, right? They're not going undefeated. So, yeah, worse. Yeah. I was just texting with Mays and he was optimistic.

And that's all the Bears optimism I need for this week. We would talk about it on Sunday if they went again. All right. Thanks, guys. This has been the Ringer NFL show and the Ringer Podcast Network.