The Ringer NFL Show - Week 1 Recap: A Rough Start for the Packers, a Chiefs Comeback Win, and Notable Rookie QB Performances

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Ben Solak to discuss the Packers' poor start to the season in their blowout loss to the Saints (2:52). Then they hand out superlatives for some of the other major games of the day, including Bills-Steelers, Colts-Seahawks, and more (22:38). Then Kevin and Nora are joined by Steven Ruiz to discuss the debuts of the first-round rookie quarterbacks (1:14:45). Lastly Kevin and Nora wrap up by briefly touching on the remaining games (1:29:50). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guests: Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Court Fits is The Ringer's new weekly NBA video series hosted by Big Was, Waz, aka Wazney-Lambre. Each week, we take you around the world of NBA fashion and share can't miss style choices from your favorite players and keep you up to date on the latest news and releases in sneaker culture. Waz also talks to experts like Damian Lillard's personal stylists to give you behind-the-scenes looks at how the NBA's biggest stars choose their outfits. New episodes drop every Friday, so make sure you're subscribe to the Ringer's YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash the Ringer so you never miss an episode.

It is The Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast network. I'm Kevin Carr joined for the season debut of the Sunday night show by Nora Prince Idi. What's going on, Nora? Kevin, we're back. I'm so happy to be here. We've got football back. I went to a wedding yesterday.

Everything's in season ready to go. Just racking them up, getting started. We are also joined by Benjamin Solac. Ben, what's going on? Thank God. Football's back, man. I mean, this was like, I forgot what it was like to go seven straight hours. Just like eyes glued open, constantly checking something, some bet, some stat line, some tweet.

And then all of a sudden just reached Sunday night football and just like all that wired energy just crashes. And that's the joy of an NFL Sunday. See what one Eagles win does to a man. I've barely processed that game. All right. So we're going to get to it. But all right, so we're going to break down all the action from week one. Touching on every single game, I'll just give you a quick breakdown of how it's going to go,

just so everybody knows because it's week one. Nora and Ben are here to talk about the headline, and then a handful of superlatives. We're going to go out some awards here in the middle of just basically winners and losers of the week. And then Stephen Ruiz will be joining us midway through to break down one thing per week. Just going to do a deep dive. I swear to you, we're not going to call it through Ruiz report, but offline we've been calling it the Ruiz report, so that name will probably just stick. he will be doing this week the rookie quarterback.

So that means deep dives on Mac Jones, a little bit of Zach Wilson, a little bit of Trevor Lawrence, really cool, also a little bit of Lance and Fields and kind of what he saw from their cameos this week. So this is going to be a great episode. We will start with the fact that producer Isaiah was in complete meltdown mode about the Jaguars. Right before we got on, Ben and Nora weren't even on the line at this point. Isaiah was just yelling about the Jaguars. Isaiah, unmute yourself. and just give me five seconds on the Jaguars lost to the Texans.

I watched Brandon Cook's Moss receivers and wind jump off. It made me want to throw up. He mossed receivers. He was on the defense. Yeah, coronas. Oh, my God. I'm flushed it. I'm sorry.

I just heard him yell, we got mossed by Brandon Cooks. And I said, this is a man in pain. But this is the way you sign up for being a Jaguars fan. All right, so we will start with Packers Saints. And what the hell happened? One of the most shocking results of the past couple of years. It's New Orleans 38 Green Bay three. I, to be frank, thought that Aaron Rogers, even though I saw the entire thing, I thought his numbers were fake. I checked three sites. They're real 15 for 28,

133 yards, two picks, no touchdowns, his first red zone interception since week six of 2019. James Winston, meanwhile, threw five touchdowns on 14 passes. He only threw for 148 yards, but still eclipsed Aaron Rogers. We're going to talk about it from both. of these team's perspectives, Ben, but I want to start big picture. What the hell just happened? A lot. And I think that it's going to be very easy

to fold a lot of narrative explanations into why the Packers look so bad, which I think is why I say a lot. Because a lot happened in the offseason for the Packers. I don't really need to summarize it. Everybody experienced it. We all lived it.

What happened in the Packers off season? I was sure here or there, whatever. I actually had a really funny experience where I was writing about Roger's performance. And I went back to the RELAX, right, the Relax 1 and 2 start in 2014. And in researching and reading about that, I learned that Packers fans had theories about him dating Olivia Munn in the offseason being a problem.

And I was like, man, wait until they find out what he did his offseason and his romantic life. It's going to be even worse. But there was a lot going on in the Packers off season. And so you walk in with no preseason, right? Because Matt LaFle was of the school where you don't really play the stars in the preseason. It's like, okay, maybe it'll be a little wrong. rusty, a little discombobulated, the team's getting together.

But this was really just very uncharacteristically, Rogers and uncharacteristically the floor. Like, they were all vertical shots, like contested balls, to Marquezvold of Scantling, there were no layups. Then even when Rogers had some easy stuff, he was missing. And then when he had some hard stuff, he was throwing picks. Like, it was very uncharacteristic on all the levels. The Packers have some offensive line injuries. So they're shuffled around a little bit, which meant that their running game was difficult to establish even when they weren't down. 17 points right away.

The defense with Joe Barry, the new defensive coordinator, not only can't stop the run, which is the Mike Patton problem. They also can't stop the pass, which at least Mike Bent was doing that. And so it was really no joy in Mudville for Green Bay. Nobody was successful.

But it was the uncharacteristic. It was the oddity by which Rogers and that LaFleur offense struggled that really was eye-popping to me. Even in their bad games, you don't expect them to look quite like that. I didn't expect that at all. I mean, that was obviously,

I picked the Packers win the Super Bowl. So obviously, I wasn't expecting that, a loss at all, and especially a loss like that, which actually gives me kind of an existential sense of dread. It gives me pause on everything I've said about the Packers the last couple of months. I'm going to get to all that in a second. So Matt Lufler was asked in general what the Saints did to the Packers today.

His quote was, quote, absolutely embarrass us. That was the scheme thing that they did. Aaron Rogers said he played bad, obviously. He said his big regret was the Red Zone interception. He said he either should have thrown it away or hit Aaron Jones immediately. He just threw that ball. late and it happens. It was a mesh concept. That that stuff just tends to happen

in the same decision. Aaron Rogers, especially late in the game, he didn't want to be there. He threw an arm punt at one point. This was really bad. Aaron Rogers was asked if he thought the Packers were too full of themselves and maybe they thought things would be too automatic and coming together. And he said, are they to have full of themselves? Yeah, I think so. There's probably

some of that, unquote. Nora, are you worried about the Packers for the 2021 season after we've won? Well, you know, I think the main problem today was that they really couldn't get Randall Cobb going until the very end of the game when it was already garbage time. They're X factor. The offseason edition.

So what are you going to do? You know, you don't have your number one weapon working. Things are going to be tough. I think if you're looking for a silver lining, right? It's that the offense actually has done this. Now, Rogers is passerating, and we're not going to go bypass rating for very much here, but it's just useful in a small sample size to illustrate how bad this was. It was worse than if you throw the ball into the dirt every single play.

However, their game against the Bucks last year, he was actually worse. Statistically, the numbers were worse. So it's not as though a good- This is the regular season game, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah. When they got absolutely smoked. It's not unheard of that this would happen to a Packers team that can be good.

Even really good teams can have one-offs where it's disastrous. I would still say there are weird week-one things that happen every year. I have too much trust in Aaron Rogers, too much trust in Matt LaFleur in that style of offense to sort of figure it out. I think the defense was more concerning because it just looked

so discombobulated. At one point, I was writing, I was making a note where I was literally writing down that Kevin King looked lost in coverage. And then all of a sudden it was, it was not euphemistic anymore because he ran snapdab. He ran into Sullivan. They collided.

And I felt like, oh, that's not good. That's not where you want to be. And Ben just did such a good job explaining the issues migrating from problem defending the run to now they're having trouble in past coverage too. That's the type of thing where particularly when you're working with a new defensive coordinator, you start to be like, geez, is this going to be a problem that they can write in a week or two? Right. I'm less confident in that. then I would be the offense, just having a weird moment,

particularly after everything that happened in the offseason and the preseason and getting there. Look, when you're a team that has offseason drama, it's bad to be bad because then it starts, you hear it from all angles. Like when I turned off my TV to record this in the halftime show of Sunday night football,

the last thing I heard was Tony Dungey say something about, well, they had all that dysfunction in Green Bay. And they're going to hear that. They're not going to be able to block it out. Exactly. I also heard the Dunjee. These guys should really be playing in the preseason take. You got to love it.

Which is downriver from all of us. So Rogers was not sharp. And that was what stunned me because I had thought after the first, first of all, he's been accurate and automatic for the past few years. And he's the reigning MVP. And I thought that the weird aggressive energy from the offseason would be channeled into something good.

I thought that opening press conference where he aired out all his dirty laundry. And no, behind the scenes, they didn't love it. But I felt like there was no passive aggressiveness there. They knew where everybody stood and they could move on to play football, right? The whole last dance thing. That's the whole point of the last dance is they won a championship in 1998. And I had felt like this all could be channeled well and I was wrong. And that is what gives me the biggest probably reason for concern here is that there's a very fine line between aggressive energy being channeled well and losing 38 to 3.

Yes, Nora. Can I ask you both to rank the possibilities here? One, which of these is more likely? One, the offseason dysfunction, the tension between Rogers and the front office that has existed for the last couple of years came to a head this off season, the holdout, all of that. It was a distraction that hurt the team and they're not focused and that's why they played badly.

That's scenario one. Is that more or less likely than we have an Aaron Rogers, James Winston, body snatching situation. Well, I actually, I considered it. This was the type of game that would make you consider it. I agree.

So the DPs were awesome. By the way, Marshawn Lattimore's going to have surgery. That's a very important note. Right after signing a massive extension. Right after signing a massive extension, which is how you do it with a broken wrist. The day in Marshawn Latimore was a bit of a roller coaster.

Yeah. I do kind of like the idea that in New Orleans players signed contracts and immediately go get surgery. That's their number, the number one thing they love to do in New Orleans. Now, so Rogers is not perfect, but there were just errors on every level of the team this week. And the expectation should never be perfection from a quarterback. And as I've said many times, if you expect perfection every week from a quarterback, you don't really have a strategy.

But the DBs were awesome and they just didn't have a second pitch today. And the defense was awful. And I just, I don't, I didn't know what I was looking at. He was hit seven times. But again, none of that should matter. Just because the Saints defense looked good. Aaron Rogers should play better than he did. Benjamin Solac, are you reconsidering your takes about the Packers?

No, because I think, right, the team's still very good. As Nora said, like, having faith in Aaron Rogers, having faith in Matt LaFlor, oh, look at the limb I'm climbing out on. Like, these are the back NFC championship team, you know what I mean? Like, we have trust in them to be good. But the point that Nora brings up about is the offseason at fault for the Packers being bad in week one, is an important one? So I don't think it's like, all right, we had a crazy offseason, so now we're a bad football team.

But I do think it's very legitimate that like the Packers face, the Lions, and then they have the Niners and the Steelers whose defense looked like pretty gnarly against the bills. If this stays weird, if this stays difficult and it becomes time to like, all right, let's look to our team captains to rally us. And our team captains on offense are quarterback who very publicly does not like the team and wide receiver who did not get. get an extension and then hit the last stance coordinated Instagram post with said quarterback, that's where I think this gets concerning. Because I don't think Rogers is going to be like, nah, I don't care. I'm not going to try. He's like he cares about the locker and he cares about those guys.

It's just when you underperform early, there's a circling of the wagons that usually relies on your cornerstones, right? Your Rogers, your Devante Adams, your Matla floors, whatever. Those guys are at odds right now. So if everything were hunky dory, we wouldn't have to worry about sussing all this out. But if it's not, they got to rely on those pieces to, like I say, circle the wagons, rally of the troops. And that's where I would start to get really concerned.

Can I offer a sliver of hope? Yes, please. Pop quiz. Who's the last team the Saints beat 38 to 3? Well, they beat the brakes off the bucks last year. Was it 38 to 3? I believe so, yes. Wow.

All right. So this is kind of the Wolf of Wall Street moment, me walking up to the microphone and letting you all know, I'm not leaving. the Packers is still winning the Super Bowl. All right. Let's talk about the Saints here for a second. Nora LASIC James, five touchdowns,

14 passes, baby. So R-E-L-A-X is out. Yeah. L-A-S-I-D-S-T. Yes. Is then. I just almost misspelled LASIC in my own spelling. It would have been fine.

It would have been fine. I'm having more of an Aaron Rogers day than a, than a James Winston day. you know what? Five touchdown zero picks. Now, if I owned a Lasic surgery operation, I would be starting a new marketing campaign

right the heck now. This is probably your window. I don't think it gets better than this. It doesn't get better. You've got to really strike by the iron's hot. Drew Breeze was joking about they needed the deep ball and kind of poking fun at himself because obviously there was not a lot of deep passing

the last couple of years with Breeze. I looked up the stats. James had about almost two yards, a yard and a half maybe, average depth of target longer than Breeze did for all last year. So it's, you know, he was able to stretch the field, all that stuff. I was impressed with the offense that Sean Payton built around him. Winston didn't need to do a whole heck of a lot because the backers were imploding. Ben, what did you notice about this offense? Right.

That's why I say, like, you got a strike with the irons hot now if you're the LASIC surgery company. because James playing well is great news for the Saints. However, this feels like fools gold, even if he's going to continue to play well, because good James isn't going to look like 14 for 20, 14-for-20, 148 yards, 5 touchdowns in the Olympics, right? Which, firstly, no one's ever looked like that. It's the first ever performance with 5 touchdowns

and under 150 yards in NFL history, right? But secondly, James has never been efficiency, high-complition percentage, mistake-free football, right? he took no sacks. He threw no picks. Like, even when James will be good for the Saints to give them good performances, it'll be with volatility.

That's his play style. That's his nature. So I think you like what you saw from your rushing attack. And you like what you saw from your offensive line dominating up front. I mean, if they can run the ball, they were sitting on it.

22 of the first 30 minutes of the game, Saints possessed the ball. They had, I think, 20-odd carries for 140 yards. They were dominant up front. If you can do that, you're keeping yourself out of long and laid-down situation.

now you're able to keep the bridle on James a little bit. But you're really not going to see a player like this have these sorts of games, these mistake-free risk-resort of games. I think that he's going to go back to being his nature and his character. With that said, 50-yard touchdown bomb to Deonté Harris is 50-arth touchdown bomb to Deont de Jareis. That is what he brings you. So that really pumped up his Adi and picked up that number. So this is a little bit of a fool's gold game.

It's never really going to look this good or this way for the Saints passing game. But certainly, you're really happy with the offensive performance altogether. I think it's instructive too that the deep ball to the touchdown to Harris, that was in the fourth quarter, right? The ball that made Drew Breeze go, oh, that's that deep passing game. They've been missing for the last couple of years. They're up 31 to 3, Drew. That may have been the first in five years, any pregame show where there was genuine laughter on the set. Any pregame show on any network.

Genuine actual laughter, because it was a good joke. It was Drew Breeze poking in front of his lack of arm strength. First real laugh in many years. somebody tracking the metrics on that. Okay. It was a good joke. I'm sorry. Yeah. It was a good joke. That could have just been because they were blowing them out and, you know, Peyton felt totally comfortable taking whatever liberties that would make James happy.

That said, if that is any indication of the possibility that he will be increasingly willing to open it up for James as they get more comfortable with each other and if he is playing well. And I mean playing well for James, which is not going to be. in this style, in this, you know, five touchdown, zero interceptions, 148 yards, totally weird stat line. But it is kind of a saint'sy stat line. Like that's much more something that you would think Breeze would have had recently than James.

James, if he gets a little bit more freedom in this offense and isn't necessarily mistake free, but is not wildly mistake prone, I do think that this was a step and a big enough step in the right direction and just looked good enough that, first of all, I would like to know if the alleged quarterback competition was just like a big fake joke. Because if this is the James Winston that we're getting this year, then I really don't understand what was going on there. That is an aside. It's water under the bridge, but it was just something that I couldn't help but think a bunch of times this afternoon. The more important piece is, I think we've all been looking at the Saints this offseason and going into the

season thinking they are probably going to take, at least in some areas of the quarterback play, a step back. And that's not because Drew Reeves was all that spectacular last season. He was really, really limited in a lot of ways. But he didn't make a lot of mistakes. He understood the offense. He could get guys in good positions so that they could have an efficient, you know, low mistake offense. It does seem possible that Jamis can add more. explosion than he is detracting from by potentially being more mistake prone going forward. What this game made me think that I hadn't really thought before was the Saints could get overall better quarterback play this season than they had last season.

Do you guys think that's an overreaction or is that within the realm of possibility here? Ben? No, I think that's what we've always been expecting, right? Is that the exchange in explosives will be worth it in the event that we're able to keep the negative plays down, right? That's always the, that you always get both edges of the sword, right? That's the cost of doing business in the NFL.

Just to clarify, I was not convinced of that. I think the, in the event that felt very big in that to me. As a proud believer in St. Seven Seat and the NFC going back to the preview show, believing in it from the jump. Yeah, I had that trust and that faith in Sean Payton. What I think for me was, is really surprising and really encouraging,

is the fact that the running game was so effective, which the Rams offensive line is certainly a top-tier offensive line, and exciting to see that again. But they're willingness to rely on the running game. Tony Jones, Jr., who's the backup who ousted Latavius Murray, really looked quite good in relief of Alvin Camara, which is important because Camer gets a lot of volumes. You'd like to have that change of pace guy.

When you can run the ball effectively, and running against Green Bay is like, you know, we'll keep checking in on that running game after a couple more defenses. But when you can run the ball effectively right now, you're not relying on James as much to drop back and throw, and then you're able to cut down on those negative. So I was always there. Welcome to the bandwagon.

We're going to have a good time. I just want to shout out before we get out of this game. Alvin Kamaris has stood. Like the Saints didn't punch in the first half. He was catching balls that maybe shouldn't have been caught. There were a couple screen grabs there going around Twitter of just like, it's a hopeless situation. And he turned into either a gain or a touchdown.

He is value added at the running back team. He's what people talk about. He's the exception to the rule. And he matters quite a bit. and I, I, you won him on your offense, like point blank. Uh, anything else in this game, guys? Yeah, we should, we should just, um, hop to the defense quickly before we totally move on. Because they were really good.

And I don't know what the prognosis is on Latimer, but Paulson Adibo was fantastic. Uh, and look, the saints, one of the stories of the saints for the last several years has been, they go big or go home and they make a lot of risky moves. and they have gotten themselves out of jams by drafting really, really, really well. And history tells us that is not something you can rely on as a franchise. However, through some combination of good decision making, and I'm sure some luck, because again, we know that luck is involved in this. The draft is a crapshoot in a lot of ways.

They find these guys. Yep. And if they've found another one or another couple, then the recent, and history of the Saints tells us that that is that's going to help them cover up for some of this stuff. And it, you know, that struck me today just going, okay, well, now if they do have to be without Latimore for a couple games, maybe they have another corner who's looking good. And all of a sudden you just, you see a deeper and deeper roster. And that's really, really important because they have lost so many guys because of how they manage the cap. There was a play there where Kim,

Jordan had his hand up and Rogers just basically looked like in the backfield. He just decided to become like the Tim Robbins. I don't want to be around anymore. He was just like, I don't want to do. I just threw a bad pass and was just like, screw it. I'm done here. And I think that they were in his head,

quite frankly. The second interception is 100% a, I don't care interception. Like he just, he's like, I have one-home post. I'm not going to check the week's safety at all. I'm just going to throw it.

Not having a good time. Yeah, which like when you're down by 18. Yeah, or 24, whatever they were down by the time. Leave your dreams, brother. But like,

no, there were 100% parts of his game where you're like, that dude don't give a hoop. All right. Let's do superlatives. We're going to go to Browns Chiefs. Nora, what do you got for us? All right.

My first superlative that I'm handing out, it is the moral victory of the week. I'm not going to give one every week, but I'm going to give one this week. And I'm giving it to the Cleveland Browns. Who lost? They did not get a literal victory. They lost to the Chiefs 33 to 29.

I think the Browns gave Kansas City their best shot. and basically ran into the best team in football, who even though they outplayed them in the first half, when Patrick Mahomes turns it on and is, you know, hitting deep bombs to Tyree Kill at the end and is running in the most casual, just like snaking through defenders touchdown run of all time.

I don't know what you do about that. And I think they played particularly in the first half of the game. I think Stapansky was pressing all of the right buttons. They converted two fourth downs. I thought Baker looked fantastic. Now, Ben in particular, I'm curious to hear what you have to say because he did have the pick at the end of the game. There was some Browns turtling maybe going on late here.

But overall, I just thought they looked really, really, really sharp. And I know the conversation here is if you want to compete in the AFC, you have to get past the Chiefs. But I think because Cleveland's roster is so well constructed, they are at a lot of, you are team that I'm willing to put a lot of faith in in terms of how they are going to progress through this season because look, everybody's going to get hit with injuries. They're someone that I would put a little bit of stock in to be able to withstand it depending on what happens.

I thought that particularly because of the quarterback play, this was still a step in the right direction and not a disappointment even though, you know, look, you're a contender, you lose your first game. No one's happy. What did you think about Baker, Ben? Ben, be our mouthwash and wash this loser mentality off of our show. show. Get it out of our mouths.

I don't understand this analogy. Baker. I don't understand it either. Listen, but this is, it goes back to the conversation we had when we were first talking about Baker, we were ranking quarterbacks. There's neutral scripts. I get to run play action. I get to run rollouts, Baker, and there's drop back.

I'm down by four. They know I'm throwing at Baker. And those are two different cats. And rollout Baker is the boss. And absolutely, like they were dominant running the football. The Chief's defense got problems in the front seven. They're taking advantage of them. The Nick Chubb touchdown run, I mean, holy molly.

There was a Chiefs defendant on the screen, right? Like they were doing tremendous work. And also, it's so much fun. But with an offensive line coach in a running game coordinator like Bill Callahan to watch them go wide zone, wide zone, wide zone counter pitfall, and then just start knocking kids out. Like, they are delightfully diverse and unbelievably physical in the running game. And that gives you your boot action.

And then you had some really nice seeds. I mean, he was hitting David and Jopold on scenes. He was hitting the corner route. Like he was delivering with velocity. There's all that great stuff when he's on those rollouts and he's outside of the pocket. Then you get through those last couple of drives. And you do have the pick on an outbreaking route, which all died on. And that's the limitations of Baker a little bit when he's just in the dropback game.

And he doesn't get the additional juice, the additional edges afforded him by the ski. I thought Baker overall played well. but it's certainly the case that when Baker is in passing scripts, he isn't as effective. And that's where he needs to improve is straight in the drop-back passing game. Odell would have helped tremendously. This is the truth of last season. I think it persisted into this game as well. I mean, unchanged in my opinion of Baker, though I certainly thought he played well

and he rose to the occasion. The Browns can walk out of that game saying to themselves, right, if our punter successfully catches a long snap, we were in that. We had that thing born. That's probably a lie. But it feels good, and that's why it's more of it. Cool, cool. I'll talk by the team that won the game. So she asked me how Baker was.

I know. I'm, I know. I just like, I just like winners, I guess. I guess I like winning. Winning and winners. You guys should try it. You guys should try it. Well, it's a long season. I didn't say week one champion, did I? Did I? So Patrick Mahomes is now seven and four since he became a starting quarterback when he's trailing by double digits. I can't really tell you how completely insane that number is. I believe at one point, no one had had more than two in that time frame.

And I think that's still the case. There's a reason they're able to come back. It's not just that Mahomes is amazing. It's their aggressiveness. It's the fact that they're just so process-oriented, something Nate Taylor and I talked about last week on this podcast. But they're just really like, everyone says they're about the next play, but the chiefs really are.

and they're not afraid to take deep shots. They don't make... Patrick Holmes doesn't really make mistakes when he does take those shots if they're able to make up ground really, really quickly. After the game, Mahomes said that the Tyreek Hill

75-yard touchdown pass, he did not see Tyreek Hill on the play. He just saw his little head sticking up. A little hand sticking up is what he said. In fact, he said it was an effort. Tyreek is down there somewhere. It was what a stop process was.

I think that... Somewhere exactly in the spot the ball's going to... Somewhere, somewhere. I don't know. I'm calling bullshit. on that. John Johnson draped on top of it. And the ball ends up back shoulder on a route that doesn't even have back shoulder

throws. I felt so bad for John Johnson. Hey, do your job perfectly and also be embarrassed by everyone. Sucks. So I came away impressed by the cheats. They didn't have Honey Badger in this game, which was obvious early. Ben, you shouted out Juan Thornhill on Twitter in the middle of the game. He was making plays all day.

I really enjoyed what he looked like today. and I think that their, once Honey Badger comes back, their second, I mean, Mike Hughes was, what, a seventh round trade, a sixth round trade, like for him to get the game selling pick, showed that they at least have some depth and that he's working in the system. So I came away with this feeling pretty good about the Chiefs.

The Browns, obviously, the Browns should have won this game. And like every Browns fan, although I agree with Inor, they'll probably take a moral victory in secret. I think that they probably know they were a handful of things that could have led them to win this game. it's the chiefs are not the Terminator here. There's a reason why they went down. There's a reason why they came back.

But the Browns could have closed the door and just didn't. So I'm impressed with the chiefs. Yes, Nora. One, disagree. They are the Terminator. Two, it should not be lost. They lost the last game they played before this one. Terminator.

No, he gives a thumbs up. Kevin, how many terminated movies do you think I've actually seen? Well, are you talking about two? There's like nine of them now. There's a whole universe that I'm not. not familiar with. Again, how many Terminator movies do you think? The problem with the Terminator is they all switch

roles and stuff. So there's really, they're six. Thank you, Regina. They all switch roles and stuff. So Schwarzenegger is a different guy in the first one. So it's not anything. It's like there's scheme diversity within the Terminator franchise to the point that you're not really sure who's winning and losing. No, I would just like to have your second point.

I just want us all to know this one piece of information. Andy Reid is no longer calling the Honey Badger, the Honey Badger. He just calls him the Badger, which I think is badass. After the game, he was like,

I sat the Badger. The Badger wanted to play, but that was on me. The Badger will be back soon. I love it. I just love it. I wanted that on the pod. You interrupt a Terminator talk for that,

Solac? Generally, Badgers have a long-headed snout, well, Honey-Badgers are small-headed snows. I'm looking up differences right now between Badger. No, talking. You don't want to run into either. They're, they're,

even, even the non-honey variety, they're, they're crazy. All right, Nora, give your bad award. I're going to say,

give your, like, give your badger take. I was like, Kevin, I am bluffing here. I am out of badger facts. That is all I know.

You really got one sheet of badger notes. Make it until you make it. Uh, my other superlative, is the I'm not going to have fun on Twitter this week award because Josh Allen regression watch is on.

Josh was 30 of 51 for 270. He threw a touchdown, no picks, but he was not accurate in this game. They lose to the Steelers. We have a good defense. So that's where your hope is, right? Bill's fans, you know, hoping that if you're not,

playing a really, really good defense like Pittsburgh's, then maybe it looks a little bit different. But some of the bad Josh stuff was there. He overthrew Emmanuel Sanders really badly on one play. And it's just for any, this is kind of what we were talking about with the Packers, right? If you're a player or you're a team where the tendency for the discourse to revert back into the narratives is so strong, it just makes you white knuckle your way through the games. a little bit. Now, there was one drive before halftime where, you know, they went 90 yards, scored. They looked really sharp. It's not as though this was like an abject disaster, but neither offense in

this game looked very good. That said, I think the Steelers obviously have more ways to win just given the strength of their defense, whereas if the bill's offense is not clicking in the way that it was clicking last season or at least something in that ballpark, they're really in trouble. They have a good defense, but I don't think a great one. And now they have to brace themselves for the Josh Allen discourse, as we all do. So, Kevin, are you ready to be a part of the Josh Allen discourse or will you be abstaining? I might be abstaining. I'm going to be part of it.

I'd like to have a stay of execution here for about a minute and a half. And I'll let Ben Solac dive deep into the Josh Allen discourse. So Ben, we talked a bunch about what the potential Josh Allen regression would look like. And I admitted I didn't know what it looked like because I don't know, frankly, would a B plus Josh Allen looks like. I don't know what a B minus Josh Allen looks like. I know what a C minus Josh Allen looks like and an A plus looks like. And I'm curious after seeing today and, you know, it was a 2316 win for the Steelers and

what we will get to the Steelers here. But he had 5.3 yards per pass a test. He had accuracy issues all day long. He threw to Cole Beasley's feet at one point. I think he missed Emmanuel Sanders. I think that was the receiver wide open in the first quarter. I am still a Buffalo believer. That was the bad overthrow.

Yeah. I'm still a Buffalo believer. I'm still a Josh Allen believer generally. But did in the same way that I felt you picked the damn bills to win the Super Bowl. In the same way I picked the Packers to win the Super Bowl, is it give you a little bit of pause here. Yeah. This was a C-minus dropped down.

This was straight bad, Josh Allen, which honestly, like, makes me feel better. Because if it were somewhere in the middle, you'd be like, ah, this is what he's going to be. Because it's what he used to be. Like, I got he's gotten out of this before. Like, we've got passes. We're going to be fine. Which has no credence. It's just my hope.

But this was really, really bad, Josh Allen. And you saw him devolve back into habits, which I'm going to talk about Carson Winston, as indeed a little later. and that's what it always comes back to it with the quarterback, especially when they make massive changes, and we have these outlier seasons, Sam Donald's another one. Quarterbacks have habits. Quarterbacks take reps.

They throw the ball. They do it a lot. And so they get habituated to the way that they go about their process. And there were ways that Alan cleaned up his game in 2020 that were so delightful and so surprising. We don't have to really see these jumps in accuracy, these jumps in ball security. And to the first game of 2021,

like Alan would three-step drop, and the second he got to the top of his drop, he would separate his hands, right? So it's now holding the ball in one hand. He's dropping the ball to his belly button. He's dropping his shoulders. It's not in a throwing position, right? He's going to, I don't know what I'm about to do position.

I'm a deer in headlights right now, which I'm really excited to see if Pittsburgh was just pitching him chaos on the back end because they were able to get a lot of pressure with four. They were getting after them. They were getting after him, man. And that's the thing is the bills once again said, we're going to live in 10 personnel. We're going to live in four open formations, right? Running back and that no tight ads, everybody spread out. you're telling defenses we're protected with five maybe six but we don't actually do that that much so if you've got a t j wott and melvin ingrove who looks really good which is support for pittsburgh uh if you've got those players you know they're gonna be able to win quickly against soft edges on so he looked like a guy who got at the top of his drop didn't expect to throw anybody open didn't expect anyone to be open it was just getting ready to run and you saw him run into sacks you saw him run into hits on the strip sack to t j watt he was had no sense of in pocket awareness.

And he invited the pressure. He had a scramble where he just took Melvin Ingram directly in the chin, even though Melvin Ingram was very clearly about to hit him. When Allen's at his worst, he loses his vestibular sense. He doesn't know what's happening around him. He's kind of gets this like tunnel vision 30 yards down the field. And he's enraptured by the idea of the downfield pass and cannot process anything outside of it. There was a third and eight where he tried to throw like a quadruple-covered scene ball to

Emmanuel Sanders. It's like 5-11, right? He just gets this tunnel vision. And that's what returned. We've seen him exercise these demons, but it is scary that they're back. Because like just inaccurate, Allen, like, okay, whatever, fine. You know what I mean? Like more inaccuracy than we had last season we can deal with.

Straight bad process, Alan, as you've been third and eight to third and 13s. And that's not where you want to be as an offense, regardless of how talented your passer is. So those are the couple drops. Offensive line didn't play up to 2020 standards. There's a lot that has to go wrong, but only score 10 meaningful points than a garbage on touchdown. But this was bad, Alan. This was legit 2019 Allen.

This is where you think that that changes, though, when you don't have a player like Minka Fitzpatrick. It's not just Mika. It's the Steelers defense as a whole. But you watch them and, you know, he's eating up so much space there and doing so much where you can see Josh Allen like scanning the field and kind of go, nope, can't go there. No, no, no.

And then that's when he's, you know, patting the ball down over and over again and looking like he's just staring into the void. losing his contact with reality. How much of that do you think is really dictated by what you're seeing from a defense, what the quality of the secondary is where we should maybe be couching some of this with, look, they were playing a really good defense that seemed to be firing on all cylinders and does have those type of players in the secondary who can eat up that space and cause that type of confusion for quarterback?

Pass until Wednesday when I get to watch the phone. And it's a lame answer, right? But it's always tough to understand what a safety is doing on broadcast. And yeah, Mika is a problem solver, right? It's really a problem creator because you do on defense. And Minka, right, has an influence over the middle of the field that really is matched only by a few safeties thrown Matthew, one of them. What I noticed most, but that I was impressed by it,

which is a lot easier to see is the corner play because you're able to get that on broadcast on replays. Sure. Pittsburgh just wanted to punch bump over the years of the mouth. And you saw a really excellent level of physicality. Cam Sutted. They have a big amount of faith in. Let Stephen Nelson walk.

Let my guilt walk. Cam's saw it look good. Gabriel Davis, Colbyzie. Those are tough asses. So they had an A8. They did great work there in mugging up looks, forcing out of the throat of tight windows. He had the touchdown to Gabe Davis. Gorgeous throw.

But you are making him to take some aggressive throws. He was trying to throw a pick. Pittsburgh going to catch anything, but he was trying to. So I do like what I saw from the secondary, but in terms of right how much like changing looks and a player like Mika is taking away everything that they wanted, it's tough to tell without being able to just see the film. I haven't read the posting comments either,

so I don't really know what Alan was talking about in terms of what he's seeing. So I can pull coach mode. Nora, I need to ask you this question. Because the discourse, I think the reason that Alan discourse was such a third rail was because of the criticism, that were really harsh and somewhat personal at the beginning. Just like he shouldn't be in the NFL, he shouldn't be a first round pick, whatever.

And I saw some of them. I made some of them, quite frankly. And I kind of feel like after last year, where he's established what he can do, I think that with that discourse, we can see the ball and hit the ball. He played really bad today. I don't think we need to hide

from the Josh Allen discourse anymore. We can say Josh Allen was awful today and not make excuses for him or anything like that, but then keep the door open for him. because we've already seen that. I think that it's now more, what much more nuanced and can be much more nuanced than it was two years ago, a year ago, certainly. Like, I don't think that, I don't think Bill's Mafia is going to go out in ratio

a bunch of reporters if they're like, man, what a bad game from Josh Allen who objectively played bad, said he played bad. Everybody was like, this game sucked. Like, I think we're, we're okay, right? Or is this just still just a completely untouchable subject? We live in a society. I'm just kidding. I think...

You know what? There's only one way to find out. There's only one way to find out, and we're doing it right now. Is everything that you're saying true? Yes, absolutely. Is that what I think is exactly going to happen? Not quite.

All right. Let's talk about Ben Rothsburg and Mr. Dewears' offense here. I was playing around with some of the next-gen stats and doing some deep bad in some of these games, and I was just filtering, and I thought this was funny. There were four. quarterbacks the NFL on Sunday before Sunday night, who had average and tender to air yards

with meeting how far they threw the ball under six yards. Ben Rathesberger was one. The other one, the other three, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan, Jalen Hertz. Yeah. Hertz was really short. I don't actually remember the exact number, but I know it was real short. Eagles are going to see if you could build the entire plane out of screens this year. It's going to be fun.

It might have started with a four. It was 3.7. Yeah, there you go. There we go. There we go. So what do we think about what the Steelers are going to ask of Big Ben that we saw today, either of you? Boy.

Well, firstly, you know the whole like, oh, the Mac Canada offense. I'm going to run some play action. I'm going to put my back to the defense. I'm going to be under center. Oh, God. They didn't do it. Rothesberger cannot put his back to the defense. He can't do it.

It was a lie. If he was not to do the same. Robin St. Again, but he's got a lot of shit on him. And if he turns around, he's not turning back around. It's the, we made it up. This is a fabrication. Like, all they did was talk about it. And that it looks exactly the same, right?

And so it's... No, no, no, hold on, hold on. They did just talk about it. They did it during the stupid preseason. And yeah, and the thing is like, they pitch it as a change up, which is fun. But it does, it's not impactful. It's not meaningful. And so you end up, like, they had like 30,

five third and fours. It's just not a winning formula, right? With the way that they methodically move the ball down the field. And then you've got to be picture perfect hitting Najee Harris on the flare route in his hands. If you can turn up the field and pick up a five-yard gain, so if it's a little bit inaccurate, he has to slow down or adjust to the catch. So it'll be a three-yard gain.

And that's how small the margins are in this offense. Arm looks like it was at 2020 levels. So there was a lot of talk about how the elbow was going to maybe be better this year. It doesn't really seem like that's the case. And then at left tackle, they were starting fifth-frike Dan Moore. It didn't go well. They have struggles on the outside of the offensive line, which means it's difficult for Rothens.

We're going to take deep drops. And even if we were taking deep drops, it's difficult for them to get the ball down the field. This receiving court is so good. And we don't know. We don't get it. Deontay Johnson, unbelievable concentration touchdown catch. Juju Smith-Schuster, multiple tough catches in traffic.

Chase Clayball mossing Tradavius White. And a tremendous play-by-white, Claypoolers ends up the better man. Like, this is such a good reception. Stephen Corps. They erase a lot of the problems in this offense. And it is fun to think about what they would look like with a much more modern approach and a quarterback who could access all the areas of the field. All right. Ben, it's time. Give you for a superlative. All right. My, uh, I know, I know, I know, I know superlative, which is my good superlative is the 49ers offense. And I know, I know, I know they were playing the lions. Okay, I get it. Nor are circling. We are circling.

The lions are the heel of every joke. I understand. And you had six. second year corner, Jeffrey Okuda, just getting absolutely reamed out on the sidelines, but defensive backs coach Aubrey Pleasant. Just go into town. Do your job, right? So they're having struggles up there. Amani Arro Warreier was the opposite of starting corner. I don't know if PFF gives negative total grades might be the case in this performance. So yes, it's rough in Detroit. I'll give you that. But Jimmy Garoppelow starting, everybody's saying, right, you know, Shanahan's just chomping at the bit to get Trey Lance in there to move on, right?

they need to improve. They need to bring the rookie and fix the offense. Gravlo is 17 for 25. Not that great. 314 yards. That'll play. Through a touchdown, no picks, only took one sack. And he looked like he did in the past seasons in this offense when he was successful,

which is like the ball is a little slow. And he is a little late. But the windows are so big that it does not matter. Debo Samuel had nine catches for 189 yards, which healthy Debo is something that you don't get really get for 17 games. But if you get those healthy games, as many of them as you can, he is one of the best young receivers in the NFL, very unique blend skill set.

George Kittle, back from injury for reception 78 yards. They were firing on all cylinders. It was the classic Shanahan offense, down to the random sixth round rookie running back, Elijah Mitchell, who gets forced into starting action with Trey Serman, is a healthy scratch, and Rahim Loster who goes down with injury early. 19 carries 104 yards and a touchdown.

they were moving a pretty decent Detroit defensive line off the football. The Niners are going to be able to score on anyone. And even if they get better defenses, this is how it was always supposed to look with Jimmy. This is exactly how it looks now. And it can keep looking that way. Like Brandon Ayuk wasn't even really accessed. They didn't have their top running backs in place. It can even look better with Jimmy in hand, which gives you the long runway for Tray Lance in the event that you need it.

So I think the Niners are going to be able to score on top defenses with Jimmy, not for as long as they want. but in the way that they have in the past with Kyle Shanhan. They could follow this model and be very successful. They may need an extra offensive boost with Lance because of the defensive problems. They let the Lions back into this game with 23 second half points. Jason Barrett, unfortunately, is suspected to tear his ACL. They have no corner depth behind him. So they may need to be winning shootouts, which means, okay,

maybe they experiment with Lance to find even another edge on offense. But the Niners were appropriately priced as a, an NFC West favorite as a top contender. And it's because offense is absolutely legit. A 40 Burger is nothing to sneeze at even if it is. Yes, I know, I know against Detroit. Okay. So it was 4133, Niners over the Lions.

I'm sorry. I just have to say it was against the Lions. I just, I under, there's just not a lot of roster talent there. The team for the first half seemed like it was imploding. As we talked about, there was a tough coaching moment with their, with their first, with Jeff Okuda. And I just think that they're, I think that the fact that the lions were able to come back in this game

in a game where they had no business doing so is a bit of a red flag. I, I'm 40, 40 Burger against NFL team is very impressive. I just didn't come away all that impressed. Nora, where do you fall? So I'm actually, I'm totally with Ben on this one. I mean, I picked the 49ers in, in that division in the first place. So I'm super high on them. I think two of the most underrated things in just as we've been thinking about teams going

the winning culture of this podcast. We've done a moral victory for the Browns now. And now we have the Lions, the Lions being a tough defense to score 40 points. That is, that is not my takeaway? Would you like to talk about the Bengals' glorious victory over the Minnesota Vikings?

Is that what we should be talking about right now? I'm going to, I'm going to bring in Dan Campbell to coach up, coach up everybody on the podcast. He's the team that lost. How was he coaching us up? Because he's building something. Arjuna and Isaiah,

can you make sure that we have access to these clips for the next time that Kevin drops a bangles process point on us. It's that nervous laugh. No,

it'll be way worse than that. We're going to have this. It'll be way worse than that. It'll be way worse than that. It'll be way worse than that. You might get a bangles process thing. The way, bangles won today,

by the way. No process there. I don't know if we can call that a win. That seems charitable. The Bengals played to that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know Mike Zimmer

criticized Kurt Cousins at halftime? It's week one. It's week one. Hey, Ben. Yeah. I'm going to venture a guess. Mike Zimmer criticized Kurt Cousins before and after the game as well as it during the game.

Electric. I love it. All right. But here's why I'm with you on the 49ers. Two things. One. Kyle Shanahan with access to a quarterback who influences the run game. I'm going to say it over and over again until I feel like it's sunk in how to borrow

a reference, Terminator-level shit that is. Okay? And it doesn't matter if they're doing it every play. He has access to it. And everyone should be a free. Second of all, the issue with Jimmy Garoppolo, it is twofold. It is staying on the field and it is, can he win you a Super Bowl? It is not, can this be one of the best offenses in football with Jimmy Garoppolo as the primary quarterback. They've done it. We've seen it. There is proof of this. Then you add in the wrinkle of, okay, not only do they just have access to a quarterback with more athleticism,

they also are forcing their opponents to plan for that. And to me, what it adds up to is this offense should be incredible. Like I just, this to me is like, yes, absolutely. I don't care that it's against Lions because it confirms all of my priors about the 49ers. So I'm perfectly happy to stick with the take. And I'm with Ben on this one. Okay. You got to watch the Debo. I've drank the juice.

I was watching the game because I'm invested in the Dan Campbell experience. So I picked the Niners to make playoffs. I think they're a very good team. I think Kyle Shan is one of the best offensive vines. I'm not giving out awards right now for Lions victories. I'm TBD on that. All right. next award. All right. So my

poor superlative, which I think Kevin named this the Carson Wentz 2020 award for a quarterback who looks like Carson Wentz in 2020 is Carson Wentz in the first week of 2021. Correct. Congratulations to Carson Wentz for winning the Carson Wentz 2020 award.

Yes, a big win for him. Carson Wentz up against the Seahawks. They were able to score 10 meaningful points, got an extra touchdown in garbage time, which is fun for them. The big stat here is on 41 dropbacks. this from Zach Kiefer of the athletic. Carson Wentz had 15 quarterback hits and four sacks.

Zach also, who's a good beat on the game, said this wasn't on the quarterback. Officer Line didn't get it done. He said the offensive line for the cold sign to play this poorly in years. He wasn't wrong. Eric Fisher, the projected starting left tackle, still coming back from the Achilles injury,

left Julian Davenport, responsible for starting at left tackle, which anybody's ever watched a team with Julian Davenport and off tackle will kind of understand where the ship's going. He gave up two sacks, gave up four quarterback hits. He's a replace.

level player. That's why he's out there. But the rest of the starting line was the projected starters. And the reality is that we have enough data of Carson Wentz over the last five years of his career to know that he's a high-sac quarterback. Other quarterbacks, when they get high-pressure games, they have a week left tackle. They're able to work around that. Wence doesn't. And it was pretty stark to know. I think Wenz started nine for 10 at the top of the game. And the Colts offense was a little dink and dunk heavy. The Naim Hines and Jonathan Taylor were their two most targeted players. So they were a little bit shallow, a little bit more Philip Riversian, than maybe they hoped because they brought in Wentz

with the idea of pushing the ball down the field. Of course, no T.Y. Hill makes that a little trickier. But they were shallow team. They were getting rid of it quick, easy completions, get him in rhythm. And then he started getting hit. And once he started getting hit, he started holding onto the ball longer and leaving his feet tethered to the ground. It was very reminiscent of the player that he was in Philadelphia in 2020.

They also completely eschewed the left side of the offense. Wentz had no completions beyond the line of scrimmage, beyond the left hash, which meant they were a half field offense, which is exactly the limitation that he had in Philadelphia. Wenz doesn't like making full field reads because it means he has to move his feet in the pocket. He has to reset his throwing base, and he likes to be tethered to the ground. So they had to live on the right side of the formation, throwing to the right areas underneath and throwing to the middle of the field. And he threw more crossers and threw more inbreakers and he had some moments of nice accuracy and nice velocity. We also fumbled a fourth and one quarterback

sneak, which goes back to an often cited problem with Wenz, which is that he isn't particularly careful with the football, and he also tends to make turnovers in really back-breaking situations. And so, yeah, the Colts, which Frank Reich is 0 and 4 straight up in week one games, looked like the Colts often do in week one games, discombobulated, not ready to play. And they're obviously dealing with injury. I think the offense is going to get better. But the reality is that the Wendt's rehabilitation effort has been very first.

focus on his throwing mechanics. He's going to get a more narrow base. He's going to throw better with his whole body. The ancillary problems, decision making, pocket awareness, ball security, have nothing to do with mechanics, and they persist. So even if you got him more accurate and more willing to get rid of the ball quickly, once he starts getting hit and starts getting down, gets in those passing situations, he reverts back to habits, kind of like we were talking about before with quarterbacking. So I see much the same player, as I saw in 2020. Doesn't mean it can't get better. Doesn't mean it won't get better and certainly a better supporting cast will help. But for the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, big effort here in, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I feel, I, I fear, I am

so glad we have been so lack here. And I think he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, I, I, I, I, I, I, Stephen Ruiz, all the people we've Even Kaelin Jones last year. I'm so happy with everybody who's part of the ring run afl. I'm worried how much Ben Solac has studied and knows about Carson once. It's not good. I'm worried about that. Nor did that pain you to realize how much this man has studied Carson once? You've experienced such deep pain in your life, Jim Benjamin?

Listen, I've seen the light that is Dak Prescott, all right? We emerged from that 2016, 2017 debate, knowing the truth, the good word. Have you heard the good word of our Cowboysburg back? a lot. That was just a lot of Carson-O-Wence. I'm sorry, Nora, you were going to say? I was, look, this is a brutal start to the season for the colds. I don't mean this, I don't, I don't mean this one game. The schedule that they have for the first couple months of the year is just really tough. And we've talked about it in a number of, of, from a number of angles. But to Ben's point, there's still a lot of this stuff that is a work in progress with him as a quarterback.

And look, he was one of the worst quarterbacks in the league last year. And they're trying to, through a change of scenery, through, you know, Frank Reich, magical pixie dust, try to make it better. Problem is, that clearly still has to be happening on the fly. And it's going to be happening on the fly in incredibly difficult circumstances. I really, really, really love the 30,000 foot view of the Colts as an organization. I would say that I was never particularly high on the chances of the Wendz acquisition. I think it made sense just because they didn't spend a whole lot to do it. And I believe in, you know, throwing arrows at the dartboard at the quarterback position.

I still feel like the optimism there has trended, if anything, downward. It's also worth remarking the Colts Matt Everflew's defense, which the book's kind of out on a little bit. Ah, too high. Short completions. We're going to make you Nicol and Diamus up the field. Yeah, Russell Wilson had five incompletions to four touchdowns. was throwing downfield with impunity. And no Xavier Rhodes hurts, certainly. But they can't stop good passing offenses.

This defense looks really good statistically against average passing offenses. And then they run into good ones, and I think the Seahawks passing offense might be a really good one. I was very excited by what I saw in week one. They shred them up. The Russ had the most air yards in the NFL on Sunday.

And after the game, Gerald Everett, who Russ was really excited about in the offseason, said the whole thing, obviously the whole Waldron offense, it's the same McVeigh stuff. It's to make every play look the same and it up differently. Tyra Lockett was talking about just the different, just the different checks, just the different looks that they can give and the diversity within the scheme and how much you can switch it up.

And it was a pretty, I don't know if it was a direct shot, but obviously they didn't have that in the second half of last season. It was just the same stuff over and over again. And so I hate to use the term, Ben, but the floor is yours. are they letting Russell Wilson do a hobby that involves food?

Their opening drive, they had like seven rushes to two passing attempts and it was an incompletion and then the Tyler Lockett touchdown. So certainly they still want to be able to run the football. Chris Carson looked really comfortable,

wide zone fits him nicely. People think wide zone you have to be fast. If you're just smart with your feet and then really big, you can run wide zone well and that's certainly the case with Chris Carson.

But they are letting Russ cook and also Russ is letting Waldron cook. When I talked about my concerns with the offense, my concern was with Russ taking layups because Russ likes to extend. It likes to hold on to the football. He likes to make big magical

plays down the field. And we love that. It's really fun to watch oh, how delightful. However, in this Waldron offense, off of boot action with quick, you know, Gerald Everett into the flat, if that's open on time, you have to take it. And it's an A dot of zero. It's not a big, it's not a big,

you're supposed to play. It's not a rainbow to title lock and on a deep post. But if you hit that on time, it's replacing a running play. It's a six-yard pickup. You're here to second and four. And guess what you get to call in second and four, the big play. That's where you get to sit back there and go. And so even with an offensive line that in my opinion, they didn't look much improved. Gabe Jackson seemed like he was having a rough time out there. Russ was doing what Russ was supposed to do, which is when he has the easy stuff, getting rid of it and letting the offense work for him. You brought up his A dot. He had a time to throw of two point. which isn't tremendously fast, but for Russell Wilson, 3.01 last year, 2.88 and 2.99 in the years previous, yeah, if we're getting rid of the ball quicker and still leaving the league with ADOT, we're doing something right.

Very important question for you both. Yes. What if Russ was cooking last season in that offense versus this one, what was his signature dish last year and what is it this year? Ben? No, I don't give this analogy. I need you to go first. Neither do I. You want us to know, okay. No, no, no, no.

No, no, no. I get, I get, I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. Last year, he had those Trader Joe's chicken dishes that got the job done. For me with Trader Joe's chicken dishes, they get the job done.

But they're not anything special. You wouldn't cook them for someone else. You would consume them and move on. Now I think you're looking at more ingredients. you're looking maybe at you went out and bought the ingredients or making it yourself, that kind of stuff. There's more, as Gerald Everett said, and as Tower Lockett said, you can have a bunch of different looks and it can turn out differently.

So you're just adding a little. You have the ingredients now and things are going somewhere. So I think that that's where we're at, Ben. Can we improve upon that analogy? 2020, right, he opened the chopped basket and there was just one ingredient and the ingredient and the ingredient was two high coverages. He's had no idea what to do with it. And he kind of threw it on at the end and the judges, who is the real,

really mean, bald guy. He was like, this is ridiculous. And that was bad. And then he got to go on chopped again, I guess, if we're going to run the metaphor this way. And this time he's better prepared and has answers for that particular one difficult, like it's like gummy worms or like boys and berries or something stupid. He's prepared for that ingredient. They've got answers to too high. Nothing's ever going to go wrong ever for the rest of time. He also didn't throw over the middle of the field again, which he has to do that. But other than that, we're fine. I will say that in the middle of both of us talking, producer had Juna sent us a time update, which is probably as glaring an indictment of a segment as you could possibly get. All right. I'm going to move

on here. So any other things about that game, Nora? The right answer to the analogy for 2021, hopefully is really, really, really good pizza. Because it's, it's quick, it's efficient. but if it's incredible, it's incredible. And it's always going to look like pizza, but you can take it in wildly different directions, right? You can have like spicy, meat, whatever. You can have a white pizza. You can have all vegetables.

True diversity contained within a package that looks sort of standardized and you always see the same thing. That is actually, you had an unfair advantage because you clearly either thought about this. Next time, don't ask us the question. Or no, you take your metaphor. No, that was not in my head before we started talking about it. No, it was not.

I did not. No, I did not. So you needed us to work out our take while you came up with your take. Yes, my advantage was time. Yeah. You were like a tennis player who's just tiring out the other, the other player the whole time. Okay, Arjuna has now slacked us, but is pizza a sandwich. And we definitely don't have time for that.

Is now extending this, Arjuna. Time, time updates in the middle of a segment. Okay, so I'll do this quickly because we just got a time update. Chandler Jones gets the UCU Manora Hassan Reddick Award. And the reason I say that is apparently Hassan Reddick also had five sacks in a game rush. Yeah, last year, Kevin. So Chandler Jones only tied the franchise record with five sacks. But the Cardinals beat the brakes off the Tennessee Titans in a game that I kind of think says a lot about both teams in a very weird way.

So first of all, Kylo Murray was a last. I don't think I could do justice describing some of his plays. He was elusive all day. He had an incredible end zone throw to John Drew Hopkins. He had one throw where he just basically ran around for 10 seconds and then basically found a hole somewhere and completed a 20-yard pass. With the quick game, by the way, it's not just an he was extending plays. With the quick game, he completed 14 of 18 passes but three touchdowns 174 yards.

Taylor Lulan went on Twitter. He had to do the literal apology for getting his asses. ass kicked. He said, he's just going to learn from it. I've seen tackles get, uh, get spanked before. Uh, Taylor is, is among the best, but I, among the best who have I seen just get abused like this. But on the other hand, uh, coming back from an ACL, really hard to simulate contact. Uh, I don't, I, I, I'm not going to freak out and declare Taylor-O-Wan's career over. Uh, and Chandler Jones is a machine. Ben, would you see from this game? Yeah, the, you,

The Jones Woodchipper experience was, first, he beat Luan five different times of five different ways, which is sick. Like when Redick had his five-sack game, he was facing the Giants and he was just sprinting every single play. And Matt Peer couldn't get back there fast enough. And that's the whole story. Jones went inside of the one, outside of the one, through Luan. He rushed from the guard.

Like, it was a full demonstration of just how good he can be when he's on, which obviously he was a little bit rough to start 2020 and then he had the torn bicep. the idea that the Cardinals would spend decent veteran money on AJ Green and JJ Y.J. And then Chandler Jones would be like, hello, I would like more money. And the Cardinals would be like, what are you talking about? And then he goes against five sacks when he's one is to be very indicative of where Chandler Jones head is at. Like there was a training camp Holden, I think it was. And he was talking about potentially being traded.

Yeah, it's the trade rumors there for a while. Yeah, this to me was a big stamp of like, hey, yeah, I tore my bicep. I'm still Chandler Jones. I can win in 10 billion different ways. That Titans offense looks nowhere. I don't know what they're trying to do, right? Arthur Smith, very clear what we're trying to do. Todd down.

Todd Downing. Wolf, buddy. I mean, at like halfway through the third quarter, I think A.J. Brown and Julio Jones had like five combined targets. That's your whole offense right there, Chief. You don't have anybody behind them. Like this, that the ship has to be made out of these guys. And so for me, I was really concerned about the Titans coming into the season

in terms of offensive identity, in terms of offensive line depth, the Derek Henry Cliff, potentially with the amount of volume he's gotten, and then, of course, that defense, which, oh, all of the Titans fans in my mentions in the summer, telling me the defense got better, I will be just combing through those tweets later this week. Get them. Get them. Because still bad. A lot of times I want to do that, and then I can't find the tweets.

Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to be able to not. And then I just kind of move on. Something Nora and I've talked about before. I just kind of forget who I'm mad at. and then I'm just not mad at anybody. All right, Nora, anything on Cardinal Ceytons? Well, just, I mean, Ben's talking about sort of the lack of identity and diversity in the passing game. Derek Henry averaged 3.4 yards at carry.

So we do see sort of the fragility in we know what they used to do when they were firing all cylinders and they had it going. I think when you lose that identity and you can't figure out, okay, what is going to make this offensive? go, this is to Ben's point, one of those teams where you worry like, okay, that's just going to, they could get exposed that way really easy. And it just seemed like from all different angles, you're kind of like, okay, if that's not working, then maybe they'll lead on the run game. But, oh, the line's not in good enough shape to do that right now. And Henry's not finding the holes for whatever reason. Okay. Then you got to target your guys and try to make something out of that. It just, it didn't seem like they were effective doing any of that.

I think they, you know, should be able to particularly lean on those receivers a little bit more, right? You would, you would think you went out and got Julio. You might want to try a little bit more than that. But we'll see what they come up with as a counterpunch because it just didn't seem like, I don't know how good they would have been in this game, even if they had done. some of that stuff, but it didn't feel like they were using every, every tool in their bag, if that makes sense. Yeah.

All right. I agree. All right. My last one, I'm giving, given the Washington football team, the Florida State versus Jacksonville State Award for, I don't know what you're doing in coverage. So there's a couple of things here. So first of all, the Chargers converted 14 of 19 third down attempts, including, I think, three third down attempts on the closing drive by Justin Herbert.

Justin Herbert played amazing. I'm going to get you that in a second. But the football team could not get out of third and long. And there was one in particular play that it was, I think, third and 16, could have given the football team the ball back. And they played a zone and they just totally forgot about Keenan Allen. I'm not a smart man. Many things go over my head in sport of football as they do, everybody,

including Bill Belichick. But I do know that if I was a head coach or a defensive head coach, certainly a defensive coordinator, I'd be saying, let's get eyes on that Keenan Allen fella on third down when it's, when the game's on the line. And it felt like the football team, they talked about this after the game. They, they could not handle this. And the coverages were weird. I think I saw Mark Bullock post this.

Basically, the game clinching third down was a concept of the Chargers had already gone to a handful of times in that game. And so Jewellyn Herbert played amazing. He was freaking awesome. sorry to Terry McLaren. By the way, Brian Fitzpatrick out with a hip injury. We'll see what happens there. I didn't expect the football team to win after Fitz goes out. Tara Heineke played okay.

But they had chances to get the ball back. I'm using this really as an excuse to talk about the Chargers and Justin Herbert and how well he played. Ben, so what did you see from Herbert? And especially when you consider he had one bad interception in the game. But when you consider his expectations, what did you think on Sunday? Yeah, no, and very much in the same way that like, oh, maybe Alan will step back and, you know, how much can you survive on the explosive plays and with the ability to create outside of structure and having this strong arm that solves problems for you.

And obviously, we had some rough play from Allen. Herbert looked like all that in a bag of chips. It definitely looked like you hoped it would be in year two. Though I thought the Washington secondary, I mean, it's a tough, it's a tough ask. Keenan Allen and Michael is a pretty good duo. I thought they did generally well sticking and creating tight windows, creating contested throws. And then Herbert would just put his ball in those only catchable spots. And you love to see that. Incomplete passes can be some of the best throws in a game because if you're throwing to protect the receiver from hits

and protect the ball from being played on, only the receiver has a chance at it. And that shows a detailed understanding of how your receivers are going to get into the routes, how they're going to react to coverage where you can place the football. And that was the case with Herbert. So the stat line wasn't as sexy,

maybe as it might be for a really high caliber play, but I think that Washington defense is for real. They generally avoided problems, like you said, had the one bad pick, had a couple fumbles. I think they were able to land on them. So they invited mistakes. You know, it's still a young team and whatever. But generally, Herbert looked like the guy that you want him to look like

if you're going to make a playoff run. I think that this charge is a passing game is a lot better than it would appear. And once they get away from the Washington football team defense, we'll start to see that. Totally agree. I mean, this was, again, I have such high expectations for the Washington football team defense. And in part, they did play well, but they, they, I think them to win the division is a reason for that.

But some of those third downs, I just couldn't get a handle on. After seeing Washington play and seeing Dallas play this weekend, does your NFC picks, excuse me, NFC East picks change at all? Well, a lot of that rides on the Fitzpatrick injury, I think, because, look, Dallas has the higher ceiling because of DAC. I think if Fitz were healthy or we're not going to be, was not going to be out for an extended period of time, it's really hard for me to sort of let go of the ability to be balanced in Washington.

I think they can be a very good team. I also think that when you look at this game, once the quarterback goes down, like you said, I don't think that they're probably not going to win the game, right? And I think their defense did play well. And I think a lot of defensive coordinators, if they're being honest with you, they're going to tell you something like if the quarterback is being, is having that good of a day and is accurate and is going out there and, you know, third and 16, third and three, third and seven, just making it happen, then you shake the guy's hand

and say, okay, you beat us. I think the maybe more frustrating part of this, if you're a Washington football team fan, is, is there something, you know, in your, your heart and soul where you watch Ryan Fitzpatrick get hurt and you're thinking about the long-term future of this good, talented young roster that has, you know, a good coach, an infrastructure that was really, really bad, but seems to be improving in significant ways. Now, you love your defense. You love Chase Young, but you're looking across the field of Justin Herbert and going, man, do we want to, would we want to do over with that pick if we could have one? And obviously, you have to change a lot of things about the history of that team and Dwayne Haskins and, and a lot of decisions that were made there

to have made that something that would have entered into the conversation. But I think more than the way that they lost or the fact that they lost, it's more about, okay, we've got a lot of the secondary pieces, but it just hurts you to look at another team that's got, you know, someone who seems like the guy. So Washington allowed 14 third down conversions on Sunday, and that was the most,

and they have since 1994 against the Philadelphia Eagles. And I'm frantically trying to figure out, I think there was a Washington, football game in that range there that was the first NFL game I ever watched. And I'm trying to figure out if it was just the Eagles just putting on a show on third down. Anyway, 14 of 19 third down attempts. It was it was bad. Washington had chances to win this game.

I still believe in Washington not going crazy. It fits is out for the year. We'll have a different conversation. But that's it. Ben, Tsook, any lasting thoughts? I can't wait to watch those third downs. When you're that good on third down, I mean, you know what you're doing. That's going to be a lot of fun.

I think Washington gets to be good with Heineke. I agree. They played Tampa Bay as better than anybody with He said. That's good point. Yeah. So you think the third downs are more a function of Herbert than the WFTD? Yes and no. Well, firstly, right, depending on down and distance, we know we expect pass.

What I'm most interested to see is Joe Lombardi. Right. Right. In third down, you're going to know generally the pitches the defense wants to throw. especially guy like Jack Del Rio, been around forever, Washington returning most of their starters. Like, it's going to be as it looked last year. So if Lombardi's making good calls off of tendency, good, you know, those custom one-off route designs based off how Washington wants to go about things, that, to me, is a really,

really good sign for one of the biggest question marks to me coming into the season, which is what's show Lombardi's offense going to look like. If the first and the second down passing game isn't that good, but the third down passing game was great, I'd rather it be that way, and we have to figure out early downs as opposed to it being flip. So third down success for the Chargers has to be really excited. Do me a favor. Don't say that to Warren Sharp.

What's that? You can figure out the early downs later. Well? He's a big first down on first down guy. No, you should be throwing on first down. But I'm saying schematically, if you're doing good stuff on third down. Yeah. That's indicative eventually doing good stuff on first down. All I'm trying to do is

promote the ringer gambling show. Hey, it's on a Wednesday. You should come sing by. It's three days a week. You're only on it once. House is on it. Berno's on it. Warren Sharps in every episode football season.

You're also on the Friday show with Kaelin Jones and Stephen Ruiz. And you're writing a bunch. Wrote about Am Rogers today, writing about Josh Allen, hopefully for the middle of the week in the event that Game Pass gives those old 22. That'll go well.

Yeah. Beseech, see, Nora? He's falling on the grenade. He's writing about Josh Allen. Anyway, Yeah, so sacrifice whatever lamb you need to sacrifice to get game bass to give us all 22.

And I'll write that on Wednesday. All right. We're going to get you out of here. Stephen Ruiz is coming in. See you later, buddy. Later, Ben. Bye, friends. All right, we're bringing in Stephen Ruiz, Staff writer at The Ringer.

He's going to be joining us every single week for one deep dive. This week, we're actually deep diving into a handful of games because there was so much to dig into. It's the rookie quarterbacks. First of all, Stephen, what's going on, buddy? I feel like Trey Lance. I'm getting, I got the Trey Lance package. coming off the sideline. Not the Justin Fields package?

Yeah, Fields' package has been more effective. I'm going to take the guy that doesn't have to play for Matt Nakey. Oh, wow. Shots fired already. Okay, so we're going to dig into Mack Jones and then Miami and New England in general. Get as dorky as you want, Stephen. Mac Jones did what on Sunday? He did everything we expected him to do.

Like, he looked like early Tom Brady to me. And that was the hype coming in, right? Like he's going to get rid of the ball quick. In the what on earth? Okay, just keep going. You've been on for 10 seconds. Just keep going. And I already called him Tom Brady.

Now I'm saying, Nora, I just know. I know what you're saying. You have the four. You have the four. 2001, Tom Brady, where I thought they leaned on the run game early. And they just needed Mac to make the short throws, make short accurate throws, get rid of the ball quickly. Kevin has walked off. and I thought he did his job well.

He was accurate. He dealt with pressure well. The only thing I will say is there were no explosive plays. And I don't put that on Mac. I put that on the receiving core. I just don't think the Patriots have enough weapons to stretch the field. And I thought Mac did well with what he had to work with. Kevin, you okay, everybody?

Where do we take this one? Kevin needed to take a lap in the middle of that. No, I was incidental. I was going to get a banana. but if I didn't need a banana, I still would have just needed to stretch my legs after that one. Nora, I'll tee you up. I think we should leave

I think we should leave early Tom Brady just out of this. Oh, I thought you were going to say we should leave the runner. Okay, early Tom Brady doesn't always become, like if you put Tom Brady in 2021, I know what you're saying. He doesn't develop into the goat every time. We don't want to take your take in bad faith here.

Okay. I will say early Tom Brady, at least historically has always become later Tom Brady. It's kind of a one of one situation. That is a good point. Maybe Mack Jones will become later Mac Jones and he'll be the next goat. To your point, though, Mac looks good. I thought he looked really crisp.

He looks comfortable. He wasn't doing anything spectacular, but he was playing against what we expect to be a good defense. And he was running that offense crisply and efficiently. The thing that this made me think, of more than anything else in the world is if you are, and I think we'll get into this a little bit, if you are Jacksonville, you didn't want to think about interviewing Josh McDaniels. You don't want to give a phone call.

You don't want to just see if a conversation there was worth having because, yes, they absolutely can add more or can try to add more explosion to the offense. I don't think that's ever going to be what they try to rely on, what they try to make their calling card with the personnel that they have this season. You know, they want to run it through the tight ends. They're going to rely on the running game and the offensive line pretty heavily, at least as long as they can, you know, not have the running backs fumble a couple times a game, but they can try to figure out ways to stretch the field there a little bit more.

And one of the things you hear coaches across the league, but New England uses this a lot, is that you want to make the defense defend every blade of grass, right? They're not quite doing that. But it's a step really in the right direction. And I think if we look sort of big picture at the rookies here, it is really impressive to see a player in Jones's situation just look like he knows what he's doing out there. And I think that because there was sort of a new generation of quarterback whispers,

offensive gurus, those coaches who are great, McDaniels tends to get lost in that shuffle a little bit just because he's been doing the same thing for forever. to me, the good parts of New England's performance, which were mainly Mac Jones looking good, that had Josh McDaniels written all over it to me. So that was my main takeaway. Stephen, if you were coming into this totally blind,

just a blind taste test, so to speak, would Mac Jones be the most impressive quarterback you saw on Sunday from a rookie standpoint? No. I think he was the least physically impressive, which we all expected. Okay. it was just a mental, from a mental standpoint, he was ahead of Lawrence. He was ahead of Wilson. Those were the two other guys that played a lot.

His accuracy was way better than both of those guys. But I will say this, whenever Mack had to drive the ball and put some heat on the ball, I think his accuracy suffered a bit. But on touch throws, it was just perfect placement every time. And I will say, I think he handled pressure well. He didn't create plays, but he didn't make bad plays, except for that first play where you, like, turned around and spiked it into the ground. Right.

Where did that go from? I think he might have blacked out for a second. Possibly. It was a James Winston-type moment. Oh, no. You weren't here earlier on the pod. Yeah, you weren't here on the pod. Come on, Stephen, catch up.

He's back. Okay, quickly, either of you guys have Tua Dolphin Saut since they actually won the game. Yes, I thought Tua was okay. Tua does this thing where he kind of gets nervous in the pocket and just like, he kind of blacks out too at time. So maybe it's an Alabama thing. but Tua was...

Now we're talking. Nick Sabin doesn't tell guys what to do in the pocket. It's on saving. But no, Tua was as good as I expected him to be. The Dolphins defense, I thought, was very good. I thought it would have looked better if Mac Jones looked more like a rookie. But he handled all their blitz stuff. Like, you remember last year when the dolphins played the Rams

and they just blitz the hell out of Jericho off? Like, they tried to do the same thing to Mac Jones. It just didn't work because Mac Jones knows how to play quarterback. Nora, if he's... Teams played 10 times. Is it 5 in 5 right now? It's probably pretty close to it, but I think I just have to imagine that if this is Mack Jones, year one, week one, then the last five of those games, I think New England's

winning three or four of them. I agree. I was impressed by the Dolphins. I thought the Patriots are going to win this game. So kudos to the dolphins. Hats off the dolphins. They're going to be in the hunt, maybe more than I anticipated. I thought the Patriots going to get that seventh AFC spot.

And I wasn't, I kind of made the dolphins an afterthought. Maybe I shouldn't have. We'll probably talk about them later in the week. But yeah, they definitely got on my radar. All right. So Stephen Ruiz, if Mac Jones isn't the number one quarterback, rookie quarterback you saw, who was? Oh, it was Trevor Lawrence.

And I know he threw the three interceptions. And one of them was really bad. the third one, I don't even know what happened. I still don't understand that one. But in terms of physical ability and making high-level throws, like, I think if you put a highlight reel together of every rookie quarterback's best throws from this week, Trevor Lawrence has the best highlight reel.

But if you put together a highlight reel of the worst throws or the worst plays, he also has the worst highlight reel. But I think this, I think he's going to have like a paid manning-type rookie season where Peyton through like 28, 29 interceptions, where he's just trying to figure out what he can get away with in the NFL. He threw a lot of tight window throws. Some of them made it through.

Some of them got picked. But he had like five throws where I was like, good Lord. Like he is living up to the height. Nora, do you think we were headed toward a Josh Allen comp there? It seemed sort of in the periphery. I'm glad that that's not where we ended.

I just have one follow up for Stephen. So does that mean that you do not agree with Skip Bayless's tweet that the Jacks could have used Tim Tebow today? No. I was kind of on fire today. He was.

I didn't not notice any play. Kevin posted that in our chat and I just was not letting us get through this conversation without that being. He had, so Skip had, uh, Jaggs could have used Timbo and he also had put in Jordan Love like really early in the game, really early in that practice game. First incomplete pass. By the way, I, did you guys notice that I compared Mac Jones to young Tom Brady and I just compared Trevor Lords to young Peyton Manning?

I'm on a roll here. This is why we brought you in for the Ruiz report. We got to change that name. Okay. Anything else on? Arjuna says do Drew Reeze next. I was going to my homes. Can you quickly explain Ruiz what the hell happened in that game in general?

Like what did Houston do to win that game? I saw, obviously, I was watching a little bit of red zone in the first half, but like, what on earth? You are out of your mind if you think I actually watch that game. The NFL put up a video of every Trevor Lawrence play, and I watched that. It was like five minutes. Shout out David Cully. I made fun of him. He got his first win, beat one of the best college coaches of all time.

Herbs in the mud is what I'll say about that. Off to Baton Rouge, buddy. All right. Zach Wilson, I feel like got the least amount of help from his coaching staff. Like, they would not let him throw on first down at first. His first seven passes came on second and eight, third and 23, second and eight, third and eight, second and eight, second and eight, second and eight. Those are obvious passing situations where the defense can just do all their funky blitz stuff. And that's why I think he struggled initially.

I think they leaned into the protector quarterback with the run game thing a little too much and put him in bad situations. Then they started letting him throw on first down. I think he looked more comfortable. But he was what you would expect Zach Wilson to be. based on his tape at BYU. Like he did the stuff where he escapes the pocket and makes a throw on the run. But there weren't a lot of big plays in structure.

And I think that's what you want to see from a young quarterback. He can make the wow throws. But Sam Darnold could do that too. And he almost, he probably could have had like three or four turnovers in the game. And I think he escaped with only one. But it was a Sam Darnold-esque performance.

I'll say that. But I think he's better than Sam Darnold. Nora, what did you think? that's really horrifying. That's a horrifying thing to say. No. He lost the same. Don't upset.

Don't upset. Don't upset Jets fans like this. He was great. You can't, you can't, Stephen, you can't go Mac Jones's Tom Brady-esque

and then go to Sam Darnold ask for the Jets fans. All right. Zach Wilson was Patrick Mahomes. Thank you. It's all they wanted. Sean Fennacy, all those guys.

That's all they wanted. all right so trey lance and justin field play sparingly any of them stand out to you the one thing that stood out from tray lances like four or five snaps was the the touchdown pass when he did the little play action fake and the second level defenders from Detroit they bit on it so hard in a way that they wouldn't bite on it if jimmy g was doing play action from shotgun because you know he's not going to do like a zone reed type play and i think that's why kyle wants to play him in the red zone because he can get into the zone read stuff and then do play action off of it

where you can't do that with Jimmy G. Interesting. And then Fields. So the son of that game just ended a little bit ago. I know you probably haven't watched all the tape, but he does get in. He gets his rushing touchdown. There seemed to be an energy there

that was interesting to me. It's obvious to me that a huge percentage of the Bears players would rather have Justin Fields there. Oh, without a doubt. And his touchdown run was actually on the same play. Same formation, same pre-sat motion as Trey Lance's preseason touchdown run against the Raiders. And I tweeted that out and someone replied to me,

do we think Nagy is just watching what Kyle Shanahan is doing and just copying his homework? And I'm like, yes, that is exactly what's happening. But that's also what you should be doing. Right. That of that. Yeah. I'd rather outsource all my plays to Kyle Shanahan if I'm Matt Nagy than be like, what do I got today? Me? The problem is the Bears are going to play a lot of one o'clock game. and the 49ers are going to play a lot of four-clock games.

So he's going to be a week behind. That's okay, right? You take him for the week before. Look, that's why it didn't work out in week one, is that he didn't have 49ers tape to crib from. Yeah. It'd be funny if they play on Halloween, and it'd be funny if after every single series,

the Matanagie just runs whatever, Kyle Shadah just ran. They play on Halloween. It would be funny if Matt Nagy shows up in a college and shows up as Kyle Shanahan. He's got to wear the hat, the, uh, the flat brim hat the flat bill oh my god free idea matt neggy free idea buddy um all right stephen anything

else uh catch your eye about what you watch today with the rookie quarterbacks or just in general just in life any other stray thoughts i am as a person who thought as a person who thought rothusberger was washed last year and had some anti-josh allen takes before last season i'm like saving the bills Steelers game for like a special night when I could just like, you know, relax and watch the game. I'm, I have a glass of wine. I might watch like a quarter every week and like treat it like it's a mini series that I get to savor.

It's like I watched one episode of Lost in my entire life and some guy was talking about how he didn't read the last. I think it was Charles Dickens book because he just didn't want to be done with Dickens. And you could do that with this game. It's just like, I don't want to watch the last quarter of this game. I want to have it. And then one day in 30 years, I'll pop

it open. So you can just savor it. a little bit. Awesome. Stephen Ruiz. This has been not the Ruiz report. We're coming with a better name for it next week. Nora, can we do that? Can we make that our number one goal for this week? You and I come up with a name for us? Yeah, I can make it one of our biggest goals. Okay. I think a top five goal.

Got to think a little bit. Yeah, it's a top five goal. She sounded as enthused as the Bears players probably were when they realized Andy Dalton was starting. I don't think she wants it on her plate. It's something I just, I just gleaned from that conversation. might be a solo effort might be a solo effort I gotta come up with a name

for the Thursday show that Mallory and I do okay so let's get Stephen out of here thanks buddy we'll see you next week he's on Friday's I just talked about it

with Solac but you're on with the Friday show and you're writing a bunch on the ringer.com and we are thrilled to have you thanks guys it is time for the hurry up Isaiah

boom all right we have two minutes to talk about Minnesota versus Cincinnati. Joe Burrow wins this one with about 20 seconds left in overtime. It was a play that Minnesota said they knew was coming. They practiced it. They just couldn't stop it. Are we worried about the Vikings nor?

Yeah. Don't tell people that. Don't say that out loud, guys. It's not a great look. The Vikings have a lot of issues here. In particular, I think they probably really hope that Christian Derasa recovers from his grand injury pretty quickly

because they could have used some help on the line. Okay, so the couple things, number one, Joe Burrow made some big time throws. I knew he would. I always believed in Joe Burrow. I'm so happy for that, that whole core there. Like, I just, I just said a lot of things that were a little bit optimistic, and I'm happy to be proven right. Bengals process take. Bengals process take.

I just, I'm excited about them beating teams that they should beat. I'm extremely worried about Minnesota has capability to get off the rails really quickly. All right, Philadelphia versus Atlanta. Philadelphia wins. Nick Siriani exceeds all expectations. I did not expect Atlanta look this bad. Arthur Smith would have Matt Ryan ready to play a little bit more. This was bad.

Your thoughts, Nora? Yeah. So the concerning part is that Matt Ryan was basically like quintessential quarterback running an Arthur Smith style offense. A ton of play action, not throwing it deep. PFF said it was the fourth lowest average depth of target in Matt Ryan's career. Problem was it didn't work. in particular, they also didn't get Kyle Pitts going very much.

The encouraging thing is that they did move him around a lot. He was in the slot. He was in line. He was out wide. So maybe they'll do some more creative stuff with him going forward, but it didn't work in this game. The Denver Broncos beat the New York Giants. The Giants are real bad. Daniel Jones can't stop fumbling. Teddy Bridgewater is 77.8 percentage is the highest debut in Broncos history. 115 rating, your thoughts. So Daniel Jones might actually be kind of decent, but if he doesn't stop bumbling, it's never going to match.

matter. Jerry Judy has a high angle spring. That is the information I want our listeners to know about those games. I'm not allowed to go over the two minutes, but I need to say this. We've been saying for 18 months like, oh, you know, Daniel Jones could be good if he stops giving the ball away routinely at a higher clip than any quarterback in history. We may be presenting a binary that does not exist. One day.

If only. Although, listen, we thought that James would never stop throwing. in receptions and look at him now. Arjuna threw a delay of game penalty on me. So now it's time for listener question. Daniel Aguilar asks, how many MVP votes more will Matthew Stafford get than Russell Wilson? How many voters are there? I don't know the answer to that question. All right. Let's do it. Let's say there's like, I don't know, 50. Does that sound right? That's my ballpark of how many people. That seems. So Aaron Roder's got 44 votes. last year. Josh Allen got four. Patrick Mahomes got two. So we're looking at 50. It's around 50. Okay.

He's going to get a lot more. It seems like people want to, thank you for, want to give it to Matt Stafford. Thank God you asked for how many votes they had and then didn't give a number. Appreciate that, buddy. That has never been my four day, okay? Also, So we watched half of that game. So, um, it's, Matthew Staff is going to get more votes.

I feel like, I think Russell at some point is going to get a pity vote just to get, just to get that narrative out. I think that's going to happen. So hold on. I actually, I sort of disagree with the premise of this question if we're, if we're making season long predictions,

necessarily. But if, if we're basing this on Matthew Stafford is going to get more votes than Russ, it tends to be incredibly lopsided. And also, Russ tends to get shortchanged in these discussions. So in that case,

there hasn't been a close vote. Matt Ryan got 25 votes. Brady got 10. Rogers got 31 and 2014. Watt got 13. There really hasn't been, Agent Peterson got 30, Peyton got 19.5.

That was really the close. Those were the three. close ones in the last decade or so. And that's like a positional value thing. It's a positional value thing. All right. Here's the rundown. Next up on this NFL feed is the Tuesday show.

It's the debut of our new players podcast, Brian Chazier returns. He's joined by former Packer star James Jones and new ringer pod host and host of the full go, our great Chicago show, Jason Gough. I'll be back on Wednesday talking about. a big NFL topic. It's going to be a really cool episode this week. Nora will be back on Thursday with Malawi Rubin, the unnamed, untitled Malay Rubin and Nora Prince Adi Project. Friday show, Ben and Stephen alongside Kalin Jones talked about a little bit earlier, preview in the week two action. This show will be back next Sunday and every Sunday breaking down all the action. It'll be just like this.

Slow Newsday is coming out on Tuesday with a very, very special returning guest, one of our favorites. I don't want to say who it is. I don't want to jinx it. I know. It's good. Thank you to Nora, Ben, and Stephen. Thank you to production. I say Blakely for production on this episode with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramkopol.

It's been there and a fellow show on the Ringer podcast network.