The Ringer NFL Show - Week 1 Trends, the Numbers That Matter, and Coaching Debuts | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Warren Sharp and Chris Vernon team up for an all-new episode of ‘The Ringer NFL Show.’ They touch on the upcoming 'Thursday Night Football' game (2:00) and discuss which teams surprised them after Week 1 (09:32). Then they review the Dallas Cowboys' recent performance (17:50), react to this week's controversial headlines (25:36), explain what to expect in Week 2 (50:45), and more. Hosts: Warren Sharp and Chris Vernon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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With a great price and even greater service, State Farm goes from strength to strength. Choose insurance that always brings its A-game. When you want the real deal, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Chris Vernon, and joining me, as he will, every Wednesday throughout the NFL season is Warren Sharp. Hopefully on this show, we are going to use it as a vehicle

to tell you what mattered most in the week that has happened. Also tell you what matters for the week ahead. I want to remind you before we get started, the NFL show has an unbelievable lineup now. On Sunday nights, you can listen to Kevin Clark and Nora Preciati. Tuesday afternoons,

Ryan Chazier and Cole Wright. Wednesday afternoons, you'll be able to hear me and Warren. On Thursdays, Kevin Clark and a guest this week, he's going to have Mallory Rubin and Nora on with him. And then Friday, for all the bets for the weekend, Warren Sharp and Joe House are going to be, talking about all the lines. But I'm super excited to get this one started off right. Warren Sharp

joins me. Warren. What's up, Chris? Well, we have a ton to talk about. And we're just going to dive right into it. You know, we had week one of the NFL season, Warren, and then we all look forward to, oh, what's going to be the Thursday night game for week two? And then we all look at our schedules and we see Bengals and Browns. And if I were going to pick one person on earth that could make me interested in this, I think I would choose you, Warren. Why should I be interested in Bengals Browns regarding what happened with those two teams in week one, though they both lost? Well, first of all, the fact that we actually get a short week Thursday night game is a blessing this year because we didn't know if we were going to have any football. So let's look at the cup half full.

All right. You're absolutely right. This is definitely a matchup of Ohio and two very disappointing teams from Ohio. Not that we have anything against the great state of Ohio, but their football teams have not been the best. And we weren't very enthusiastic about what happened from Cleveland last week. The biggest thing that I was looking at when I was looking at the Cleveland Brown's this offseason, Chris, is I was looking at the new head coach, Kevin Stifansky, and what he was going to do from a personnel perspective and how he was going to use much less 11 personnel. And this is what we assumed he was going to do because he used the least amount of 11 of any coach last year in Minnesota. And we knew that Baker thrived in his years in the

NFL from 12 personnel. And I mean, everybody here at the Ringer Channel already knows this, but let's just address it for the new listeners. 11 personnel means one running back, tight end, three wide receivers, 12 personnel, you have an extra tight end. The second number in that digit is a tight end. So you have one running back, two tight ends, only two wide receivers out there. They used way less 11 personnel in week one, as we suspected. Last year, they started out using 79% 11 personnel on their pass attempts through the first nine weeks. Last game, week one, only 36% Chris, way down. But Baker still wasn't good even even. in the 11 personnel that they used.

So he was actually good. If we wanted to look at the cuff app full, again, he was actually good from 12 personnel when he did pass the football, 9.4 yards per attempt, and 88% success rate. But the thing with Stefansky is they use a lot of other personnel groupings also. They use some three tight end sets. They use some two back sets. Baker struggled passing in those sets.

And he was predictably bad in 11 personnel. But I mean, this is ridiculous. He only averaged 3.9 yards per attempt in a 22. percent success rate from 11. So, you know, we expected them to lose this game. They were the underdogs to the Baltimore Ravens, a team that I think has a very good shot of going to the Super Bowl this season. So it didn't necessarily surprise me that they lost.

It surprised me that Baker looked lost at times on the field. But I do think that against the Cincinnati Bengals defense, he should see some success. On the other side of the ball, Chris, I'm looking at the Cincinnati Bengals. their new quarterback Joe Burrow, and some of the things that Zach Taylor did to make it very easy on him. I look at a lot of heat maps during the course of the season.

So many of his passes were short and to the right side of the football field. That's going to be a problem against Joe Woods, the new defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns. If they continue doing that and just throw the ball short to the right, it's something Cleveland can really key in on. Just one nugget on Thursday nights in general

is that it's very difficult for underdogs who are definitely the worst teams to cover on Thursday nights, primarily because normally for an underdog to cover a game, you have to do a lot of things differently. You have to change up. You have to sneak attack the other team. You have to come at it from some different angle because you don't have better personnel.

You don't have a better coach. Typically, it's very difficult to make all these changes on a short week. So we'll see. This is the first short week game of the football season, usually very difficult for that road underdog. we'll see if they can come up with the right changes. Let me double back to Baker Mayfield because this is now a third coach already. But that first year, Warren, he broke the rookie record for most touchdown passes in a season.

It looked like he was on a great trajectory. And so what is the explanation? Because at that point, he's throwing to the Antonio Calloways of the world. And I've wondered this because everybody crapped on huge. Jackson all the time. And now he has moved to Freddie Kitchens and now Kevin Stefansky. And, you know, it's routine that you watch them.

And he looks worse than he did his first year in the league. So what is the big difference? He's got a lot better weapons. Did the league catch up to him? Was he better coached his first year? How does a guy go from holding that record? I mean, and it's a record that is alongside Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson. So it looked like great things might be ahead for Baker-Mayfield, and it certainly

has not looked that way. No, it hasn't. But this is one of the things where in this type of an off-season without any preseason games, we really have to be careful of two things. Number one, we can't jump to too many big conclusions, but at the same time, we have to be willing to change our thought process and our expectations of these teams quicker than we have in the past because we're getting this data and it's all we've got and we have to figure out what's real, what's not, and make some pivots if we want to try to find value in future weeks from a betting perspective or just stay ahead of the game. The goal is always to stay ahead of the game, be able to better predict. In this particular case, I have moved on to the fence. On Baker Mayfield, I was optimistic

with Stefansky. After what I saw from week one, I'm partially attributing it simply to the great Baltimore Ravens defense, an offense that was very good, which Baltimore had kept the football a long time, put the Cleveland Browns in a hole. And when you're in a hole, it becomes very predictable from a play-calling perspective. So I'm not still beating the drum that I think this could be a big-time resurgent season for Baker Mayfield, which I was doing before. But I'm not selling him either. I'm on the fence right now. I think this game and his next game, I'll be able to make up my decision as to where I'm going to go. I'm not going to leave it entirely up to this game, even though, Verna, because this is a short week game, difficult to make changes from week one

to week two for coaches. So I don't know this to Fancy's going to have a lot of time here. The key that I'm really paying attention to is what does he look like in week three when he has a mini buy from this Thursday game all the way until the next week's game to make some corrections and adjustments. If he looks bad in that week three game and this offense does not look good, definitely start sending out the red flags big time. But for right now, I still believe that this is the right coach for him. And in terms of why he fell back a little bit, I think there were some issues from personnel perspective and things like that in his season last year. I really think he's going to get back on track this year. All right. Let's talk about some of the things that

surprised us the most in week one. And especially from a play calling standpoint, I know you dive deep into this on regular occasion and pay attention to all the play-by-plays from all of these games. Whether it be new offensive coordinators or offensive coordinators that might have changed a little, maybe changed their philosophy, and it seems like they've changed their philosophy already. What stood out to you the most from these different teams in week one? Yeah. So, look, on this show, I think we're going to try to attack things from a slightly different perspective than your standard typical NFL shows.

sharing information. And what we want to try to do is uncover things that people aren't discussing. One of the biggest things for me, as you'll find out over the coming weeks, is how much I value coaching and how much I think coaching contributes to player production on the field, as well as ultimately wins and losses. A lot of people just attribute to, oh, wow, Lamar Jackson is so great. And they don't look at Greg Roman and how much he does for that offense. So we're going to talk a lot about coaching. And there were a number of changes from a play calling perspective that we saw this season that really helped steer some of the places where I was the most surprised or happy, things that I was happy to watch. So a lot of people are talking about Russell Wilson's

great week one. The key there, and this is more like low-hanging fruit because it's pretty obvious, is how well Russell Wilson was doing based upon the fact that they threw the ball a ton. Last year, they were only 52% pass on early downs in the first three quarters of games. In week one, they passed the ball at a 70% clip. One of the highest in the NFL is actually the second highest rate of any team in the NFL. Looking at their data from last year to this year, you're not going to see a whole lot that's really that different from that week one performance. Russ is tremendous.

And he was tremendous last year when he passed the ball. He was tremendous this year when he passed the ball. The key difference is they just passed the ball. more. And that just adds to more efficiency and expectations from this offense raises their ceiling. And so the biggest thing is not, wow, Russell Wilson was amazing. He is amazing. He was born amazing. He's been playing amazing since college. What the key was was that they finally let him cook, so to speak, and started passing the ball more. And yet we see a headline, I saw a headline this morning that it was something to the effect of Carol promises to get run game going in week two.

And I'm like, for what? Yeah, they, they, so Carol, you know, Carol obviously has been like a millstone around this team's neck from a, from a, you know, old school mentality of trying to run the football. That being said, he was intelligently very coy about what they were going to do this season from a passing perspective. They did not tip their hand. He was asked about it in the offseason. He mentioned multiple times about how the run game is very important. important to them, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know, and I hope this is the way because the coaches I love the best are the ones that you can't get any information out of that have deception,

because it sucks for like journalists, but what more would you want from your coach than to hide game planning information and not share much for other teams to pick up on? I hate coaches who talk about, well, we're going to try to use more of this personnel or get this guy involve more and just like basically lay out the game plan of what they're trying to do. So I'm hoping he's playing coy and not doing that. Another one that was very surprising to me was the Buffalo Bills. And this was in a positive manner. They only used on early downs in the first three quarters.

And if you are listening to this, you're like, why the hell does Warren keep talking about early downs in the first three quarters? One of the key approaches that I take to football is analyzing things in a more contextual manner. And if we want to try to understand what coaches are trying to do, it's pointless to look at third downs because that's reactionary. They're calling plays based on the distance to go to get a first down. And we also don't want to look at fourth down because they're very much so calling plays to just try to win a game or get back in a game at that point. They're either desperate or conservative. So the key is looking at early downs in the first three quarters. And that's how I tend

to analyze things. So if you keep hearing me say that, it's just because I'm trying to give you the basis of the statistics, but that's the reason why. And Buffalo only used 11 personnel, which is the three wide receiver sets, or 10 personnel, which is zero tight ends out on the field, four wide receivers. That's all they used on early downs in the first three quarters. They also really ratcheted up their pass rate. They went 68% pass from 11 personnel up from 57%. Now, if you're looking at why they would do this with Josh Allen and you're really down

on Josh Allen. The key to understand is that a coach actually helps his quarterback when he gets him to pass the ball more on early downs. It helps prevent this quarterback from being an obvious passing situation. So the fact that Brian Daibald used a lot more play action, which they weren't using before, which also helps the quarterback, and pass the ball more on first and second down to avoid these third down situations that are obvious passing downs is going to benefit Josh Allen in the long run. So it was his first 300-yard game in his career. And I really think that this is the beginning of good play calling from Brian Dayball up in Buffalo and a more efficient Bill's offense. Does that somewhat explain the Bears comeback? Because at that point, I mean,

when you're getting your ass kicked, you can't line up and run the ball anymore. And so the fact that Trubisky is in that situation because he looked like a dud at the beginning of the game. And honestly, if you stopped watching that game after three quarters, everybody would have the same trope. Mitch Trubisky sucks. And instead, the game ends and people are like, hey, now, are we on the right path with Mitch Trubisky after all? I mean, I've got to think part of that is him throwing all the time, right?

And throwing even on early downs when you're trying to come back. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that 100%. The key from that game, I mean, I was on the Bears. and having watched that game very closely and seeing some of his misses, he was still very inaccurate. Like a normal quarterback, an accurate quarterback is going to make a lot more throws early in the game, and the team is not going to be in such a deficit.

I mean, they have many opportunities where they should have picked things up that he was just throwing way behind guys and incompletions. He finally got back on track. One of the things that surprised me about that game, they have a new OC in the building, Bill Laser. Now, he's not calling the plays. the head coach is still calling the plays, but they used two tight-end cents.

Remember Chris, this is the team that had like 10 tight ends on the roster at one point during this off-season. They used two tight-end sets on 20 snaps on early downs in the first three-quarters. They did that last year the entire season, only 81 snaps. So there are a quarter of the way there

just by playing in one game, which they were trailing most of the way. I think we're going to see more two tight-end sets from them and get better efficiency. but that absolutely goes a long way to explaining how they got back into the game and were able to pass more efficiently because he was doing that passing on first down. And then if we want to talk about the Patriots, for instance, the thing that surprised me about the Patriots was the fact that so many questions about Cam Newton's passing ability, that they were going to, he was going to have success running the football, but not really passing the football.

He was actually more efficient than Tom Brady was on early downs in the first three quarters. He averaged 8.5 yards per attempt with the 76% success rate. Brady was below 50% success, only averaged 6.6 yards per attempt. They did a great job of being productive on early downs, really schemed everything to maximize what he was going to deliver on the football field. They were running a lot on third down because they weren't third and manageable, or Cam was scrambling the football. So I thought that they did a very good job.

It's going to be really interesting to see if they can be as productive on early downs. Sunday night when they take on the Seattle Seahawks, because that's important. If they get forced into too many third downs, I think this offense will struggle. If they stay productive on early downs, keep Cam out a third. I think they're going to be in for good night. All right. Let me ask you, since we are talking about coaches and the way they have called these plays, Warren, it is not an, it's not something that I like to talk about out loud,

But I have grown up a Cowboys fan. I have lived through the Jason Garrett era. I was sold the bill of goods that everything was going to be different. There was going to be a bright new day ahead. And I must tell you, in week one, my first impression of Mike McCarthy, not great, Warren, not great. And so you can either tell me that I belong on this cliff or that I am foolish to be on top of this cliff. But, I mean, I wanted it to be so much different. And at least for week one, it was the same old, feel the euphoria only to end up have your heart ripped out at the end and have people bitching about play calling at the end of the game.

That's what I thought that that's what I was done with. I thought we weren't going to have these grand discussions about the goofy decisions a Cowboys coach made. And yet, we're one for one. So tell me, am I? I overreacting to my first impression of Mike McCarthy week one? It's proper to be frustrated because the issue with the Cowboys is that they had the talent and they could have won and probably should have won that football game. But it was their own decision making from a play calling perspective.

Look, they were slightly more aggressive in their passing, but it was on a very small percentage of passes. This was a team, like Mike McCarthy, my early impressions is was from in terms of what I thought was going to happen. He was the number one most pass heavy coach with Aaron Rogers in Green Bay. And I thought we would see more passing. We still were at a league average pass rate. I thought that they would be above a league average pass rate.

Dak crushed it when he was passing on these plays. On first down to the first three quarters, he had 10.8 yards per attempt at a 92% success rate. Much, much better. I mean, ridiculous numbers, best in the league, better than last season by far, just pass the football a little bit more. And then the other thing that frustrated me a little bit was the depth of target, especially on second and third downs, very, very close to the line of scrimmage,

very small depth of target. He had, they had 21 plays on second down. And when he passed the ball, he only threw the football four yards in the air down the field. So they struggled on third down passing. They needed to be more productive on second down. They needed to pass the ball a little bit more on first down. The good news is this is all correctable.

All of these things is not like, well, crap, we don't have the right personnel, so we got to make these wholesale changes. Yes, they lost some alignment, as I'm sure that you saw. But this was something that I think that they can correct and make some adjustments to. The good news is they're playing the Atlanta Falcons this week. Russell Wilson, when he played the Atlanta Falcons last week, did not throw a single ball into a tight window. This Falcon secondary is terrible.

That should give Dak Prescott the opportunity to find open guys. I really think that Mike McCarthy needs to let him pass the football more. Maybe this is like a little bit of a let Dak cook now that Russ is cooking. We need Dak to join him in the kitchen and cook some things up because he's got the weaponry this year and their efficiency is good. Just pass the ball a little bit more. So you talk a lot about this philosophy that you have about what teams should be doing. League-wide, let's talk about what the trends were in week one.

Did you find that more teams are falling in line with the way you view they should be playing? And is it a dramatic change from what we have seen in the past? It actually is. And, you know, I used the term nerd. very positively. I think that's a very good thing. Back when I was in elementary school, you know, being called a nerd was an insult. But once you start making money for a living and your nerdity is making you money, then that's actually a good thing. So we're going to nerd out through some statistics here. I do think that nerds are impacting the way that football is being

played. But that is actually a reassuring thing for the general public. That's something that's positive because what we're going to see is more efficiency in football and more exciting games. It sucks when you're just sitting there running the football into the line of scrimmage and then punting the football and it's back and forth, tons of punts all over the place. Nobody likes that. So yes, let's allow the nerds to get involved and make this game more intelligent and thus more fun to watch. It's guys like you. It's guys like you. It's guys like Aaron shots, right? Like you guys are. You guys are on the front lines of this, which is the insurmountable sport.

Warren, I know that you are all football all the time, but you may have noticed the nerds took over baseball and then the nerds went to basketball and took that over. And now you are telling me nerds are on their way to take over football, which would be their greatest of all achievements. It's the hardest thing to impact for a nerd, I think. it's the hardest thing to change because there's so much that's involved in this sport. And I know that like, I don't know, I've never watched baseball, right? But I know basketball, watching basketball is different now than it was before. And I don't know if you like it better or you think it's just a little bit more predictable as to what these teams are going to try to do because of the efficient, everybody knows what the

efficiencies are. But in football, I think it's going to be really interesting. It's not going to be quite as clear and this is a slam dunk. So let me just go through a few of the things. the things that have changed specifically in week one. And very small sample size, this is what I tell people, though, football is a small sample size sport by nature. There's only 16 games. So you can't just throw out one game or two games. Just how this is meaningless because it's such a small sample size. If you don't understand how to take that into consideration, adjust for the sample size

with some variance, then you're not going to go very far in the world of football analytics. But play action is one thing that's very important. It really helps raise the ceiling. That was at 32% last year in week one on early downs the first three quarters. That was all the way up to 40% this year. So an 8% increase, very dramatic increase in play action. That's a very positive thing. Pre-snap motion is also something that helps increase efficiency, whether you're running the ball or passing the ball, having guys moving across the football field prior to the snap helps dictate coverage, helps the quarterback steal information. That increased.

It was down at 7% in 2018. It doubled so far this year. It's up to 14% in 2020. And then the other thing that I think is great because we hate punts is the fourth and short going for it for the various different coaches who are saying, yes, let's get aggressive. Let's go for it. In 2020 so far on fourth and one to two yards to go, 56% of those play. were not punts. They were actually teams going for it. That's up from 49% the year before and from

45% the year before that. And back in 2017, it was all the way down at 34%. So we're 22% higher already so far in 2020. We'll see if they continue to do that. But definitely a very, you know, three statistics that help increase efficiency, that help make the games more interesting and exciting and positive. The teams were all using these more this past week. All right, let's talk about some of the overreactions that we have heard since week one. I'm going to throw mine at you that I recoil against and you tell me how you feel about it. So it felt like after the end of the Colts game, which was not a game that anybody expected them to lose, heard a lot of gamblers, killed survivor pools, the whole nine.

that I kept hearing it's same old Philip Rivers, same old Philip Rivers. And I don't buy that, Warren. He made the horrible error. There's no doubt about it in that fourth quarter. But I was watching the end of that game. And I felt like he was leading them straight down the field to go win that game.

I don't think they ever punted in the game. He's leading them right down the field. He hit Ty Why Hilton in the hands twice. I mean, that's not the same old Philip Rivers, right? Like he made the big mistake where he tried to fit it in a tight window and he threw a pick. But they had a million yards of offense. They never punted. They missed the field goal.

And like I said, he hit TyWye in the hands twice on that last drive where I thought they were just going to march down the field and go win the game. And then the game ends. And it's like, ah, same old Philip Rivers. I don't buy that. I'd let this thing play out. What do you think? A hundred percent agree with you, Chris, on this one. look, they did not punt a single time, as you mentioned.

They made five trips into the red zone. They only converted two of those. So that's obviously a negative. They had an interception that wasn't Philip Rivers' fault that's at one point during the game. This is a team that Frank Reich had to actually go very dramatically different than last season, had to go a lot more 11 personnel, which is three wide receivers. That's because Eric Ebron's now in Pittsburgh. They don't have as many multiple tight ends.

Reich likes having multiple tight ends. they went from 58% usage of 11 personnel up to 85% in week one. They also did something really unique where they weren't having a ton of success running the football. They only averaged four yards to carry a 36% success rate. So what they were doing was they were designing a lot of running back passes underneath. It's not the most sexy thing to watch, but sometimes it can be efficient. And Naheim Hines caught 8 of 8 and Jonathan Taylor caught 6 of 6. So we're talking about 14 of 14 from Phillip Rivers just like that with a 50% success rate

and close to probably nine yards a carry, nine yards a pass attempt. This is a way to run the football without actually running the football to get these running backs involved in the passing game. I am not going to sell Philip Rivers in this offense. It is going to take a little bit of chemistry for him to get on the same page with some of these receivers. I think that that will come over time. Several of those offensive linemen were banged up entering this game.

They all toughed it out and played through it. But we were dealing with some back spasms and back issues from some of these guys and some other things that were had them questionable on the injury report. Some guys weren't even practicing but still played the game. It was obviously a little bit more so on their defensive side of the ball where they allowed Gardner Minshu only one in completion. I think it was like 19 of 20. So I think their defense needs to step up.

Absolutely, but we should absolutely not be selling the Indianapolis Colts or Phillip Rivers just because of that loss in Jacksonville. All right, Warren, we'll get right back to it. We do want to remind everybody today's Ringer NFL show is brought to you by Fanduel. We're teaming up with Fanduel again this football season, but we've got something new this time around. All season long, you can play the free Ringer NFL Megup contest on Fandual. Here's how it works. Just pick five NFL games against Sliq. the spread, including one double-down pick.

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disgusting. On the other hand, I looked at that game, and I know our own Ryan Shazir on the NFL show, said that people should be given credit to the Saints. And with that, I read an article that this was not uncommon for Mike Evans to be shut down against the Saints. And in fact, Latimore has shut him down completely. And so I kind of view it like, hey, why don't we, how about we wait until we see them against a team that can't completely shut down Mike Evans? And who knows if he was hobbled or not? And I think some people write it off as he was hobbled going in. The truth is, hobbled or not, he has not been able to do anything against Latimore. And that's been year over year. What happens? Should I be nervous about Brady or is that more of, in your opinion, a Saints thing? And let's check out when Mike Evans doesn't get shut down how he looks.

I agree here as well. I think that the thing that we should be worried about or most interested about is simply how Brady reacts to the criticism, the harsh criticism at that from his head coach in the postgame presser, right? Like Bruce Arons really went after him with some of his comments and some of the public disappointment that he expressed in his quarterback, which is something that was very distant up in New England. Bill Belichick did not express such emotion after a football game. So that's the interesting part for me. On the field, I agree with you in that, look, Tom Brady had very little support from the rushing attack. They did not run the ball very well at all. You take one of your number one threats out, Mike Evans.

You're not going to have success, especially you targeted him four times. You only caught one of those balls. What I look at is the positives. He had very good chemistry with Chris Godwin. He had very good chemistry with OJ Howard and Scott Miller. High success rates, high yards per pass attempt. These are things to build on for Tom Brady and the Bucks. We should never expect a new quarterback with tons of new pieces

and new head coach that he's working with come in and just hit the ground running in an offseason like that. So once again, just like with Philip Rivers and the Colts, we are not going to be selling Tom Brady and the Bucs. Bucks right now. I think we're going to let him work his way into this offense. We're going to see what happens when Mike Evans has a little bit more production. And I mean, the good news is their defense actually played pretty well. We obviously know that there were three turnovers that led the Saints points. But Drew Brees looked terrible against this Bucks defense. His Bucs defense also shut down the run game, held the Saints to only 2.4 yards per carry. So I was optimistic from what

I saw from the Bucks defense in general, I think they're going to get back on track and be okay this season. Is there any overreaction over the course of the past couple of days since week one concluded that has stood out to you? I think the one thing is everybody is just completely sold to Philadelphia Eagles. Like, oh my God, what the hell? How could you lose to the Washington football team out the gates with a new coaching staff? It doesn't make any sense. You're up 17. Nothing. How do you blow this? What's going on with Carson, Wend? to me it's yeah carson needed to play better especially down the stretch but you have an offensive line that is severely depleted with injury lane johnson says he's going to play no matter what this week

he was out last week and they had multiple other guys that are injured that aren't going to be there for the rest of the season they're going to have to overcome that lane says he's going to be back but you're going up against one of the most underrated i don't think anybody around the nation really pays attention to the Washington football team with the exception of Joe House. Most teams around the nation don't care about the football team's defensive line, but they are one of the best in the NFL, and they showed it against the severely depleted offensive line for the Eagles. The Eagles did not have their number one running back, okay? So they couldn't really run the football very well. And so what they were resorting to do more of, despite having the 17 to nothing lead,

is past the football and you're just setting yourself up against such a good pass rush to stumble and to have problems. And that's exactly what did. Did them in multiple turnovers that led the points. Washington, here's the nugget for you on this game. Washington didn't score a single point from a drive that started in their own territory. So all of their points that came in this game, this big deficit they raised, came from starting in plus territory. That's not going to happen every single week. So I like Washington. I think that they were on the right track. I like their coaching staff. I knew Dwayne Haskins was going to look better. I am optimistic about them, big term, like long term, big picture. But don't sell that the Eagles are dead right now just because

they blew this lead to Washington. Man, I got to tell you, Warren, watching that game. I don't know how much you pay attention to college football, but Jonathan Allen and Chase Young are two of the best defensive college lineman I've ever seen, like, honestly, ever seen. And this is like in the last couple of years, the last five years of college football, and they got both of them.

They have both of them on that line and to watch them, you know, take turns teeing off. I mean, that is going to be, and obviously, it's still got a carrigan on that other side. I mean, that defensive line, you'd put that up against anybody because

that is the blue chips, of the blue chips. And I know Alan had lost time already in his career to injury. But with both those guys healthy, I mean, that is a bitch to deal with. It's extremely nasty. It's going to be a problem for passing offenses all year. We'll be interesting in this division, right, the two best teams. Dallas had a little bit of turnover from last year's line. They have a guy right now on IR. They had another guy get injured. So their O line isn't completely healthy. We know the Eagles have problems with their O line, and we obviously know the Giants don't even have that good of an O line to begin with. So Washington can cause damage just in their division with this defensive line.

And that's the key to rebuilding a program is having success in the division. You know, you can't control the out of conference and out of division schedule that NFL rotates into your path. But if you can beat some of these teams that are in your division, you're going to be able to have some success. All right. Let's talk about some of the injuries that have. have taken place. And the biggest names are Martin Mac, because he's starting running back for the Indianapolis Colts, the Saints, losing Michael Thomas,

the Cowboys, losing Leighton Vanderresh. And then we have all manner of other guys, Levy and Bell, Blake Jarwin, Devante Parker. We're not going to go through every one of them, but which of those do you think augments what is going to become of these teams in the coming weeks, especially with those significant players out the most? well i think of all those so i'm going to scratch lavi on bell off the list right lavi on bell was terrible last season i can't help with that the gm completely overpaid for him he sat out a season of

football trying to make more money comes back is terrible and then this past week he was bad before he got hurt um i took the under in his yard rushing yards and he was going to hit that whether he got hurt or not so i i don't think that levi on bell is a real big factor here even though like that blows people's minds because of how great he was in Pittsburgh. But he's just not a big factor here. Same thing with Marla Mack because of his replacement level back. I mean, first of all, he's running back. So those are generally replaceable.

But you go out, you spend a high draft pick on Jonathan Taylor, who is a complete stud. I think they're going to have success running the football even without Marla Mack in there. It does stink because in a COVID NFL season, you don't want to lose a back as talented as Mac because you may need some depth there at very. different points. Jonathan Taylor could get nicked up, be out for a couple weeks. Who knows what could happen from the COVID perspective. So it's going to hurt them potentially longer term as to not having a guy like that. But I don't think it's anything that we need to be adjusting from a power ratings perspective at this point in time. The two for me, the biggest one, I guess for the best team,

like the team that we think this could factor in most is Michael Thomas for the St. simply because he's their key number one. And, you know, he thought he might be able to avoid the ire. He thought he might be able to avoid having to sit out for a while. But they're going to, they realize it's a long season and they want to get him healthy. So he's not going to be playing for a little while. Obviously, we know the chemistry that Drew Breeze has with him. Drew Breeze is a very good quarterback still, even at his age.

And it's so good that they went out and got Emmanuel Sanders last year from the 49ers. he's a very underrated player. I love Emmanuel Sanders. He's a different type of receiver, though, than Michael Thomas, and he needs to work on the chemistry more with Drew Brees. But thankfully, they still have him there. Otherwise, they could be in some big problems. But certainly losing Michael Thomas of all those names that you mentioned is going to be

the most impactful. For me personally, I know you probably care about this. Like, I really was looking at the upside that Blake Jarwin was going to provide for this Cowboys passing attack, getting rid of Jason Witten, who, was a reliable guy and could be in the right place and Dak knew where he was going to be, but he had zero upside after the catch. Blake Jarwin is a very reliable, like, well, let's say Blake Jarwin is a far more talented tight end at his stage in his career. And I think the upside for him could be very high long term. But this injury is going to hurt Dallas because now they have to go

and throw the ball to tight ends that don't really have the same type of skill set as Jarwin did. So you know more about Jarwin. What did you think about that loss? You know, it's funny because my son and I, who is 10 years old and watches every game with me and my father, we usually go down to my dad's house to watch the games. And we have this running joke that every time Blake Jarwin catches the ball, it's like a big play. Like every time. We're like, who caught that?

It'll be like a first down and we're all hooting and holler and we're like, who? And it's Blake Jarwin, right? Because he didn't get the ball all that much. He doesn't catch the ball. but it feels like so many times when he catches the ball, it is impactful to the game. Like they needed it. And you are surprised that that's who they went to at that moment.

But so, yeah, I mean, this was going to be the first time that we really get to see the guy. Everybody's out of his way. And they're probably going to use him a lot. And then all of a sudden he's gone. I mean, I hate it for the kid because it's, it was finally going to be his 16 game. I'm actually going to get targets opportunity. And in the low amount of catches he's gotten over the years, I've always thought he's been very good.

Yeah, no. And Dalton Schultz, who's his replacement, he only caught the ball once. There was a couple of drops that he had. It's just something when you're Dallas, you don't use a lot of two tight-end sets. You're mostly utilizing your 11 personnel, particularly this season with the acquisition of CD Lamb via the draft.

And I thought that there was, tremendous opportunity for Blake Jarwin because this defense is going to be difficult to defend. If you think about it from a defensive perspective, you have to play the personnel that are out there. So if you know that this offense, the Cowboys offense is going to be an 11 a lot. You've got a lot of DBs out on the football field. And, you know, if that means some of these coverage linebackers that might be on Blake Jarwin, he could have the advantage over them from a mismatch perspective. And sometimes they could flex him out and he'd be on a slot corner or something like that.

And there's just some opportunities for Blake Jarwin here with the rest of this offensive surroundings. And so that is a big loss for Dallas. But it's not insurmountable. You know, the Michael Thomas one is more impactful over the next several weeks to be sure. But Blake Jarwin for the entire season, something they can work to replace,

but it's still definitely a downgrade. Well, and as he's always gotten overshadowed, I will tell you, all of my conversations are the devastation of losing Vandreche again. I mean, and he was the guy that was wearing the dot on his helmet to call the defensive plays. I mean, he is, he's amazing when he plays, but he can't stay on the field. And for a franchise that went through, you know, is Sean Lee playing this week for the

last like decade, it feels like, you know, the kid just, he lost so much time to that neck injury last year, comes back wearing the huge role around his neck and doesn't even make it through the first half without busting his collarbone. Yeah, and with Sean Lee currently on the IR with the sports hernia, you know, they are some, they are thin at linebackers. So that is definitely an impactful injury, particularly when you're talking about them taking on the Eagles and what the Eagles like to do with multiple tight ends and how some of these backers need to be able to move and predict where those tight ends are going. And that is going to be challenging.

Yep. All right. Let's talk about some of the coaching decisions that were made. We talked about play calling earlier. I want to talk to you about time management because this hit center stage with Vic Fangio taking to the microphone and taking responsibility for his clock management and not using his timeouts. And that's not all that common. Usually you hear guys get very defensive about, you know, their gaffes that they have made or try to out. act like it wasn't a gaffe. Instead, Vic Fangio took total responsibility. And I'd like to get your thoughts on that. And also, it feels like this comes up all the time, Warren, regarding clock

management and these coaches. And a common refrain is people saying, look, little kids can do this on Madden. How can there not be guys on NFL sidelines that can manage this clock well? And I've wondered if there are, is there any quantifiable, like an analysis on this on coaches being good or bad at clock management and how much it can actually cost their team? Because there we had a coach after week one saying, I cost my team. Maybe, maybe they don't win, but certainly they're in a lot better spot if he manages the clock correctly. 100%. There's no excuse for that. In this day and age, there's zero excuse for that. I don't know of any quantifiable research that I have seen which lists out which coaches are the

worst at this and which are the best. But what I can tell you is from just my recollection, many of the coaches that are good at this are those that have an analytics guy in their ear. And I mean that like literally, well, not standing in there, but in the earpiece, talking to them during the course of the game to tell them when they should be taking their time out. Some of the teams have these analytics guys up in the booth sharing this information down to the head coach to help him manage the clock and call timeouts at the right time. So those are going to be the teams that do a better job at this. The other thing that I have seen sometimes is that some of the defensive minded coaches, right? Like Vic was a defense coordinator.

He comes from that side of the football. These guys typically when the offense is out on the field, they're sitting with their defense working on, what we need to do the next series that we're out there. They're not watching as much football. And that's one of the things that I think we're going to impart on this show and on the Friday show is when you watch a lot of football or like you said, when you play a lot of Madden, but I don't play any Madden, sorry, but I can give you the perspective from having watched a lot of football because I watch every single game that's played every single season for over a decade.

You get a better handle as to when to call timeouts and when you don't call timeouts. a lot of the guys that bet on these games, every little second matters so much. Every little thing that happens is so precious to us as sports bettors that we become very adept at being able to kind of understand situations and what needs to happen, what should be happening and where our coach might be messing up. And so we're easily able to call those types of things out. These defensive coaches, they are sitting on the bench, not doing anything, working with their defense.

All of a sudden, they're coming back and watching the offense now. he's a head coach, he has to make these decisions. He has very little experience. He doesn't have the experience of an offensive coach who's out there watching and studying the offensive calling plays and looking at the clock and doing all these types of things. He doesn't have any of that experience in his background. He can't pull anything out of his repertoire that he's done before or situations he could fall back on. That makes up even more vital that he should have an analytics guy helping him out in these situations. Clearly he does not, that's a colossal error on his part to not just not have called the time out,

but not to have somebody advising him of these things due to his lack of experience being a defensive-minded coach, who's now a head coach and in charge of these types of things. Well, and even more egregious, Warren, because I was reading yesterday, that was the fourth game that he has coached. I mean, hell, he's only coached, what, 17 now? That's the fourth where his team has been winning

with 30 seconds left to go in the game, and they have lost. I mean, that's like impossible. It's like a fourth of the games the guy has coached. They have been winning with 30 seconds left and lost. So I think it stands to reason. I mean, after it happens to you three times last year, and it's already happened once this year,

I think it makes it even worse because clearly at the end of these games, you have gotten yourself into quite the situation where you've lost four already in your short tenure, where you're up. And there's only one other team that has even lost multiple games like that. And it's the lions, who everybody thinks suck.

And they've done it twice. But I mean, you're just, you're not losing games typically that you're up by, you're up with 30 seconds left. And this guy's already lost four Vic Fangio. Yeah. And I think the unfortunate part is most of the nation, well, that's good for him, I guess. But most of the nation did not get to see that

because it was a late game on Monday night football. that started what, like a 10-20 kickoff. So most people didn't see that, but I encourage you, if you've got the NFL game pass on your computer, go back to, you know, just before the two-minute warning at the end of this game and just watch the whole thing through and see if you would have called a timeout there because I bet that over 50% of just the casual fans would be looking at the clock and thinking we should be using a timeout. And interestingly, right after the game, he kind of defended his usage of them.

the next day he realized, I actually messed this up. And then he accepted responsibility. Let's talk about some of the games, or at least one game that is coming up this weekend, because you guys are going to be going through all of the numbers on Friday with Joe House. But there is one spread that I wanted to circle going into this. And it just so happens, it works out perfectly because you guys aren't going to get to talk about this on Friday. Warren, we talked earlier, we started off the show talking about that Browns-Bengles game. When that number came out, and I'm not talking about the spread, because I probably wouldn't mess with that. But that over-under number seemed crazy to me.

I think it's already been hit down. I think it opened it like 44.5. I saw this morning before we were recording, it's like 43 and a half. I look at that and go, all right, it's a short week. And what is the maximum amount of points I could see that Bengals scoring anyway? And then it didn't exactly look like the Browns are going to be some high potency, high-octane offense. I am shocked that that number is so high. Talk me out of this.

Or is that a shocking number? No, I don't know that I would say it's shocking or not. My model is still cranking. So I can't tell you what my number is on this game from a totals perspective. But what, because I want to have multiple weeks of data from this current season to be able to start using that model. But what I can tell you is, I don't disagree with your initial analysis here at all. Coaches, you know, Baker Mayfield, right? And that Cleveland Brown's offense clearly needs to adjust some things. But you can't do that on such a short week. We talked about it at the top of the show.

So when you have a situation where you can't make these changes that need to be made, it is going to be challenging to increase the offensive efficiency from the prior week to a Thursday night game, especially when you had zero preseason games. So I think from Bakers and Cleveland Brown's perspective, that is going to be challenging. I do think their defense is probably a little bit better than what it appeared to be on Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens. So if their defensive performance can improve here a little bit, being back home, you know, I don't disagree with you there.

I don't know if I'm going to find myself on it, but what I will tell people is this game right now is sitting at 43 and a half. and for years, 43 had been one of the most key numbers in betting on total. So if you did want to take an under on this game, the time to do it would probably be when you could get a 43 and a half. Yeah. And to me, and maybe I look at this too, basically, I go, all right, do I look at the end of the game and there's been six touchdowns scored in this game?

Like, and then how do those diby out? You know what I mean? Like if I think of Baker Mayfield throws four and Burrow throws two. I mean, they could score six touchdowns in this game, which I'm. I think is high and still hit the under in this game. So I don't know. I mean, maybe who knows, maybe goofy stuff can happen on Thursday night games. But everybody, this just feels like everybody is not excited about this Thursday night game

and then is going to watch it and bitch about it even more when it's 10 to 7 at halftime. Well, yeah. And the other thing, too, I will tell you on this, like, let's just think from a strategic perspective, if you're sitting in Kevin Sophansky's shoes and you had a quarterback. Jarvis Landry is a little banged up. Odell Beckham is, I don't know if he actually requested a trade or that was just a rumor.

He wasn't super happy with what was going on now. I wanted more production offensively. But obviously Baker didn't look great. If I'm Stafansky, I'm going to try to run the football a little bit more here. I'm not saying that's the right move. But what I'm saying is what I think he might do is try to shift a little bit more to the ground attack, it's unlikely that Joe Burrow is going to jump out to an insurmountable lead, which the Baltimore Ravens were able to do, forcing Baker to pass more. I would expect that we're

going to see a much higher run rate from the Browns in this game, particularly in the first half of this game than what we saw last week. All right. And last thing, before we get out of here today, it is week two. There are the teams that have dropped to 0 and 1, including both of those that are going to play on Thursday night. How important is it to get to? to one in one for those teams that lost their first game. And do you think that this year, given that they're going to be more playoff teams, it actually matters less. It used to always be, you'd look and you would go, God, I know the numbers are bad

if you start the season 0 and 2 in terms of making the playoffs. Do we look at it and now say, hey, if we're adding, there's going to be more teams make the playoffs, maybe it's not, it's not as ominous as it's felt for so many years. Well, the way that I always look at this, and it is good to know and it's important to discuss, but the way that I've always looked at this is chances are if you're a good team and you fall 02, you're going to be one of those that are in like the 10 to 11 percent that are going to be able to get back and actually make the playoffs. It's not a death blow to you. It certainly doesn't help whatsoever. But if you're one of the bad teams and you start out 0 and 2, I mean,

you're done for it, right? Like literally, historically, only 11 to 12. 12% of these teams, even in the new format looking at it, you're still going to be right around that same amount. 11 to 12% of these teams are going to be able to make the playoffs. If you start at 1 in 1, however, 49% of the time that you're going to be able to make the playoffs. So that's a big 39% difference, sorry, 38% difference from 11% up to 49%. So it's vital for some of these teams that maybe on the fence this season, they are the ones that can't go to 1 and 1, or can't go to 0 and 2. So here you are talking about a team like the Cleveland Browns, right, who was like projected

to finish in third in the AFC North. And if they dropped this game to the Bengals, you might be able to start betting against them to make the postseason. But it is interesting to note that 0 and 1 teams versus 1 and 0 teams. So we've got a number of these matchups. I'll list them off here in a second. But when you start 0 and 1 and you're playing a team that's 1 and 0, the 0-1 teams have actually won 59% of their games against these 1-0 teams over the last decade.

And they've actually covered 63%. They're 41 and 24 against the spread unless they're massive underdogs of over like a touchdown or more. So the teams are qualified for this that have historically gotten off to Schneide a little bit, done a little bit better, the giants who are taking on the bears, the lions who are taking on the Packers, and then two teams at home, the Miami Dolphins and the Philadelphia Eagles. And I just think it was announced while we were recording that both Miles Sanders and Lane Johnson are expected to play in this huge game for Philadelphia against the Rams because this is a home game. I know it's not a division game. But that's a big deal for them to be able to

try to come out and win this game against the Rams and they might have a couple of weapons back. All right. I'm going to chart those. Giants, lions, Miami and Philly. Right? Yep. Those are the teams this week that are 0 and 1 and are going to be catching points. That has been a successful trend to say the least over the course of the last several years.

Warren, you are the best, brother. I am so excited to be doing this show every week this season on Wednesdays. And I'll be listening to you. house. I can't wait to, you got to give me some picks on Friday. That's for sure. Yeah, we will. We'll be giving you some information analysis, things to look forward to for the weekends games from a betting perspective, but also from kind of just like what we think from a coaching perspective. What should we be looking for that these coaches are going to do? Where could we see successes or failures? Trying to predict those types of things can help you

lead, help lead you to some better betting decisions when you're trying to figure out where to throw your money down on the game. So I'm really looking forward to that show, but I'm also excited, buddy, to be with you every single Wednesday going over what we learned from last week and spinning it ahead to try to figure out what we might be talking about this week in terms of storyline. So it's going to be a great show. Hopefully people are going to learn a lot from it and enjoy it. And I'm really happy to be doing it with you. Super excited for week two coming ahead. we do want to remind everybody to go to Spotify and subscribe to the Ringer NFL show

because tomorrow we are going to be handing it off to Kevin Clark, Nora Princiotti, and Mallory Rubin. Thanks, everybody, and we will talk to you next week.