The Ringer NFL Show - Week 10 Recap: Patriots Dominate Browns, Washington Upsets Tampa Bay, and Cam Newton Returns

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to discuss Mac Jones’s impressive performance in a win over the Browns, the Chiefs offense getting back on track, the Washington Football Team beating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and much more (1:26). Then Kevin and Nora are joined by Steven Ruiz to discuss the Chargers losing to the Vikings at home as well as Cam Newton’s return to the Panthers in their road win over the Cardinals (1:29:07). Host: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guests: Benjamin Solak and Steven Ruiz Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer Gambling Show is here to help you place your bets on the biggest sports around the world. Join NFL analyst Warren Sharp on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with guests Chris Vernon, Ben Solac, and Joe House to guide you through the NFL betting landscape. Each week, they'll cover everything from spreads, game totals, and parlays, to player props, futures, post-game reactions, and more. Check out the Ringar Gambling Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Ringar NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Carr joined tonight to debate the Titans, debate. Tom Brady, debate Mac Jones.

It's Norris. You know what's going on? Hello, Kevin. Not all that much. We've got a lot of fun football. We got a new Taylor Swift album. We've got an Adele special. It's a busy Sunday. Ben, what do you think about the new Taylor Swift album or the new re-recorded of the Taylor Swift album?

I keep, I keep rooting for Nora on the timeline. Like, every time Nora's like, I'm excited about it. I'm like, I'm excited for you. And in my head, I'm like, what is what's going on, man? I really want to do. I wanted it in the pre-show to ask more like, give me a quick 30 seconds. I know what's going on, but we got sidetracked in the pre-shows we usually do. So I'm still just lost in the sauce.

It's okay. We're going to work it in. We're going to work it in. We got a number of questions actually about the record in our listener question segment. Who knows what we'll get to by the time that comes around. But we will start on another. And I want to back up here because I was better to say another weird Sunday. And we just keep saying that.

And at some point, it just becomes a weird. season and we need to accept that and every Sunday is going to be weird. We will start with Patriots 45 Browns 7. Mac Jones 19 to 230098 yards, three touchdowns. This was after two

wonky games for Mac Jones a real coming out party against the defense that Ben so like had talked up during the week. A lot to unpack here. Ben, where do you start? Yeah, real tough scene. The Miles Garrett boat, which he gave in the post game where he was basically, yeah.

They came out there. Let's read it. Do you have in front of you? No, no, go ahead, please. Okay, okay, all right, here we go. Uh, I think we didn't counter like we were supposed to. We didn't stop the bleeding and they kept attacking where we were deficient. Great play calling.

Mac Jones had some great throws. He fitted in a couple times across the middle. They were pretty much Max protecting and trying to get to the middle of the field and we didn't have any answers. And then he said that they didn't have any, we didn't make any adjustments on the sideline or when we had time to. Okay. So Miles Garrett basically said they knew what Mac Jones is doing the entire game,

and they didn't do anything to stop it. And here's the tricky thing. If you told me pregame, like, all right, you're going to have Denzel Ward, Greg Newsom and Troy Hill against Jacobi Myers, Nelson Nagler and Kendrick Bourne. What do you want to do on third and long? I'd be like, let's play man. That's our advantage. We're going to, let's man them up and let's rush. And we think our, we got a really good front, you know, Janeehaniqian Clowning and Miles Garrett.

We're going to get after them. We can man up those guys. and then after the first three insane Mac Jones third down throws where he's just lacing tight windows just blacking out on third down I would have gone to the sideline as a DC and been like yeah we're gonna man up because we're playing these guys super tight like we're out we're in their grill like we're moving them off the line like this is good we just this rookie can't just keep doing this he hasn't done this whole season and Mac was like screw you chief and just kept doing

it like the Kendrick Bourne touchdown was just a double middle bird to the sideline. Just perfect. Just perfect. Only one person on the planet could have put it and it was the guy who's throwing to. Yeah. Throw, I think we've seen from

from Mack Jones. Mac blacked out. Yeah. It was a confident, it was as confident as I've seen him at any level. At any level. Like even more in Alabama, like just the throws he was making.

He was throwing dimes. He knew what the windows were. He made them. I saw our buddy Derek Klaz and had the comp today that he looked like Philip Rivers if Philip Rivers wasn't cursed. I didn't see that. That's really funny.

It's really good, right? Because he's like taking that running back check down right away and it's like keeping you ahead of the sticks. He's getting to a third and long. He's like living in empty and he's got that like quick little zip release. Like obviously Rivers release was janky, but like he's getting the ball that quick. Sure. And then he just laces these intermediate windows.

There's just nonsense. Mac, it's very funny because everybody says he's been the best rookie quarterback. And I think that if you like look at like box scores and advanced metrics and whatever, it's easy to come to that conclusion. When I like turn the film on, in my opinion, I'm like, like Lawrence is making more impressive throws, Fields is making more impressive throws. Like,

I'm not sold on that. When Mac has a game like this makes you sit up in your chair, this is what, if it looks like this consistently, year two, year three, where it's all right,

we can run the ball, we can live in heavy personnel. And when we do get behind the sticks, if this guy gets a sliver of daylight, he will hammer it. Yeah, this will play. This will play for a long time.

It's not arm strength, right? It's not like big size or anything like that. It is just, anticipation decisiveness and precision. Jacobi Myers, far shoulder, nine ball, and third and eight,

they don't teach that, man. You just have it or you don't. And so if he's going to continue to play this accurately, especially on clutch downs, pressure in his face to be to a couple of licks in this game, we're cooking with gas. Like this is everything it was billed to be in a bag of chips. So to me,

this is a game where I felt myself buying it on Mac Jones. I felt myself fully going down the slope and saying, this is a guy I'll believe in long term. I don't like, I don't want to overreact me, prison in the moment, but it was as impressive as I've seen him. It was his best game. And he listened, he had two weird games before that. So let's not be, I'm not

going to just go all in on Mac Jones. What I am going to say is that I want to do the rookie quarterback thing here in a minute. But what I want to say is I think this raises the ceiling what the Patriots can be. I'm always going to overwrite the Bill Belichick Patriots, always. Because we've done it so many times and we've very rarely been wrong. Right? Like he's, when is he steered us wrong? So when I was on a flight yesterday, there's Tom Hardy movies available. I don't even know what they are.

just throw on the Tom Hardy movie, it's probably pretty good, right? That's me with Belichick. I, you know, there are things where I'm just going to default to saying, I'm going to trust Belichick in that spell because we've seen it many times before. But even within that sort of viewing it through that prism, this is exceeding my expectations. And I think that this is a legitimate AFC contender. And I'm curious, Nora, and this was, by the way, and there's so many things we can talk about impressive, you know, Stevenson, I think 75 is 100 yards, rapid contact today.

I believe that there were only two completed passes to wide outs on the defensive end. There were so many little things outside of Mack Jones that impressed me. Nora, the Patriots are where for you right now as far as contenders? Well, they're the team that they want to be. Earlier in this season, so they lose to New Orleans. And after that loss, Matt Judon's in his press conference and he's saying stuff like, we know what our record is, but we know what we have in that locker room. And a bunch of other players and members of the coaching staff gave quotes like that.

And it was weird, right? Because usually don't hear the Patriots telling you, hey, we're better than our record. We're better than our record. We're a better team than this. It's out of character. And it's also something that you kind of tend to take a grain of with a grain of salt when anybody says it. Right? Like prove it.

Go out and prove it. But they did. They said that. It was notable that they said that. They felt it pretty strongly. And then since then, Max played really well. They've gotten healthier. Big part of this game, look, Miles Garrett's fantastic.

This is not a Miles Garrett point. He had a sack, I think made as much of an impact on the game as any Brown's defensive lineman made on this game. But their offensive line is healthy, right? They get Trent Brown back. That's big. The point about they were just Max protect, Max protect, max protect, max protect.

I think they were just winning a little bit more than it's a particular scheme thing, right? Like if your problem is that you're getting chip blocked by Brandon Bolden, I don't know what to tell you, man. I don't think that's the reason you're losing by this many points. I think it's that they've got a good offensive line that's finally back together, healthier, performing better. They've got the downhill running game also to make it harder on those ends to a pressure. That's the formula that they want to play with. The fact that Mac is playing so well,

since that New Orleans game, his pass rating's been 101, 95, 111, 11, 70, 85, 142. Again, that's probably a better metric just to reflect how the offense is sort of chugging along as a whole, but 11 touchdowns, four picks. They've really come together. And it makes you go back to that moment when they were saying, hey, we're better than this, we're better than this, we're better than this, and think, okay, yeah, maybe there was something there. The other thing that I think is interesting

is you are starting to see a new core of the Patriots perform to, not the Tom Brady standard, but A standard, right? They hit this point

after the first three Super Bowls where they kind of needed to restock and they didn't get it done until the 2010 to 2013 draft. So they get Devin McCordy, Gronk, Natesholder, Chandler Jones, Hyattower, Jamie Collins, Logan Ryan, Duran Harmon. They get those consistent year-over-year guys in the first three rounds. And then they're ready to go for the second half of the dynasty. And they just didn't do that for years.

So it's not just, you know, Brady leaves. And obviously that's the biggest piece of this. But he left a totally barren roster. And there's been a, there's been plenty of misses. in the draft since then. But you're starting to look at, okay, Mac looks really good. Christian Barmore looks like a heck of a player.

Stevenson was really, really good. You're starting to see some guys that they got in free agency and maybe they overspent, but they're still good players to have. You're looking at a draft or two in a row, Kyle Dugger, is just insanely physical,

still raw, division. two guy, but just an insanely How to pick today of a Baker Mayfield underthrow. Blame O'Dell. Tattooed himself on Anthony Schwartz on a kickoff return as well. He did.

Yeah. It's just interesting to me to see, like, we were never going to see it immediately. Brady leaves and it's what's Bill Belichick going to do. But they really needed to just restock the cupboard there. And

these are not all provable caliber players. but they're good players. This is starting to be a roster that has... Yeah, it's better than what they had. Right. And you can...

Eventually there will be a time we have to quibble with the cost, but you've got Kendrick Bourne making an impact. Hunter Henry's making an impact. Judon, not a big impact on the stat sheet, but taking up a ton of attention. Adrian Phillips has played well. Like, there's just a lot of guys

who you look at and go, oh, that player is helping. And that has not been the case in a couple of years. So we're going to see what they can do now, right? They've got Falcons, Titans, Titans, Bills, Colts, Bills, Jags, Dolphins. Titans, Bills, is, that's a stretch when you got to figure out if they can actually hang and do this consistently. But if Mac's going to play like that, they probably can.

Okay. So, Ben, I want to ask you because today I kind of half jokingly said, that don't let the fact that Mac Jones should have been the third pick distract you from the fact that you should have been the second pick and the Jets fans Jets fans were my mentions I'm sure they were. Jets fans were my mentions, well, no, no, I mean, like some people were like,

you're an idiot, whatever, just the classic kind of stuff that you kind of just brush off. But actually the biggest argument was if he played for the Jets, he'd be hurt by now, which I actually took as valid. Someone actually said to me if he was, he actually would be in the ICU today. that was one in the line that I kind of thought was was was probably accurate. Take us through as someone who studies quarterbacks in the draft far more than Nora and I, take us to the nurture versus nature stuff on Mac Jones. And what does this hit him as a prospect?

What is this his surroundings and having the, you know, the money spent in the offseason, replenishing the weapons, the offensive line getting healthy, Bill Belichick, Josh and Daniels. How much of this is Mac Jones was actually the second or third best quarterback in the draft? and how much of this is, he went to the exact right situation. And if any of those guys were picked 15, this would be the situation. Yeah. So I fall on the side that there is nothing that is not nurture. There is nothing that is not touched by circumstance, by environment, by coaching, right?

And that should be said with a caveat, because a lot of coaches would tell you and be like, yeah, like, I can develop players. Like, 90% of them are wrong. Like, they think that they can. They think they can, like, take a guy who's got fun. It's what you tell an owner. It's what you tell an owner when you're trying to get hired. Yeah. Like players have fundamental issues and they're like, yeah, I can fix the guys' mechanics.

You probably can't. Like, that's really hard to do. So just statistically speaking, you probably can't. With that said, when you arrive in a place like New England, you just expect optimal decisions to be made. And it goes back to Norris point of like we know we're better than this. Coming into the season, I would have told you that New England needs to be a 12 personnel play-pass deep shot team. because that's what Mac enjoyed at Alabama. That's what worked well for him.

And he wasn't a precise enough, strong enough, quick game passer to play a Brady-style offense in the league. They walked out, tried to run a Brady-style offense. Didn't work too well early. They started finding more deep passes. They started going more heavy personnel. Hunter Henry's a lot more involved in the offense. They found some more deep shots.

That got Mac in a better spot. He started to play better. AdDOT started to increase. We saw explosives come into the offense. Now all of a sudden, we're here the last couple of weeks. And they've blended those ideas. There are a three receiver offense now. They aren't as much 12 personnel.

They are playing from gun. They're not as heavy from under center. And yet they still have a downfield passing attack. They're still able to get downfield play action shots. It is the result of optimal coaching. It is a result of continued growth. Right? Like that offense of Lyme being healthy, huge.

But also it lets them unlock the screen game, which they really didn't have to start the season. They screened the Browns to death. Because if that's penetration front, they're going to get up field. let him get upfield. And we're just going to dump the ball off to Ramandre Stevens and let him bowling balls away for 15 yards down the field.

Ramandre was delightful today. I love that kid. Unbelievable. Yeah. So it is simply like it is it is not about like obviously it's about offensive line. It'd be worse to have the Jets offensive line than the Patriots. It's about receivers, but it's not. What it's really about is at the top, you expect from the Patriots

continued investment in what's working, continued investigation in what's not and a growth over time, right? Like Mina Kimes had today the tweet where it was like, oh, a New England team coming into their own in November, color me shock. And it's like, yeah, it's going to do this every year. They figure it out. You look at a place like San Francisco with Traylands,

who obviously hasn't played recently, but they are not finding a way to be optimal. They're not finding a way to grow throughout the year, right? Everything feels stuck in the butt. The jets with the whole Mike White thing, right? You just don't have the trust in those buildings, the way you do, the tenure that they've earned there in New England. They also have it had a biweek.

They've got a week 14 biweek. just nice to get everybody healthy. There's a scenario in which Mac Jones is playing well because Kyle Shanahan's just constantly pissed at him. Just in the doghouse. Yeah? Just hates him. Yeah.

Okay. So I think that there's, I think that, again, if you went to the Jets, everything changes. And that wasn't even really a discussion. There was, I don't remember anybody saying, I mean,

listen, we did pods after Mac Jones was linked to three. And it was an apocalypse. And so there was never any real discussion about him being the first pick or the second pick or the third pick or whatever. It's just an interesting kind of nature versus nurture debate. And it shows you and I'm not, I think the Niners are generally a competent franchise. I actually do think that Joe Douglas and Robert Sauer are smart guys who know football well.

But I will say that there's a reason that competent franchises find quarterbacks at a higher clip. And it's because they make them more competent early. They keep them upright. they keep them healthy. They hire the right coaches. They hire the right assistants at every single level. There's a reason that good team stay good and bad team stay bad is my take on the situation. Ben, you worry about the Browns going forward?

A little bit, right? I think that, right, to have the faith I did in that defense and to watch what happened to them against the Patriots is scary, especially in an AFC with a team like the Titans, with the team like the Patriots, with a team like the Colts, even, who if you're going to let them out physically you, they will do it for four-quarter and they won't care. The Browns built the offense were for power,

but they build the defense for speed. They are light, they are quick, they are invested in the secondary, they are light boxes, they are a heavy nickel team, a heavy dime team. The Patriots built the team for violence.

I mean, like everybody on that team just plays with their head on fire. They're top of the rod. And so when you get that Ramandre Stevenson bowling ball six foot 240, right? And you get that offensive line, Michael and Wenders 360, right?

You get these tight ends. You get Jacob Johnson. out on the field. You know what I mean? The Browns don't have an answer to that. And more teams than in the NFC, in the AFC, are built to play that way. Like Patriots Titans is going to be a bloodbath, just in terms of how physical and violent and aggressive those teams are. Cleveland can hang that way on offense. And I really, really like that about them. I thought defensively they had enough. And this game was just very jarring in terms of how easily they were moved off the ball consistently in the screen game, in the running game, right? The wide receiver stuff, like even the, the, the, the,

wide receivers for the Patriots blocking out against the corners of the Browns. It's just a huge physical mismatch. And so that lack of physicality on the Brown's defense right now is very worrisome. Because unless they pick a really easy path through the AFC North, right, Steelers are very physical. Ravens not so much this year. But like even if they pick a path to the AFC North get to the playoffs, they got to dodge, New England, got a Dodge Tennessee, got a Dodge Indy, in my opinion, if they're going to get through it. Because I just don't think they have the beef on the defense side of the ball.

Yeah. And by the way, the New England additions that Nora was talking about earlier, Those look different now that we know what the AFC looks like. Because I thought they were going to go from, okay, they were a mediocre team to, okay, they're the sixth, fifth, something like that, best team in the AFC. Those filling the holes in the roster using free agency, getting, you know, guys who they were probably overpaced almost across the board. That looks different now that the AFC is winnable. And there's not an elite chiefs team. And there's not an elite Ravens team.

And the Chargers are not making any sort of leap. And the Browns are not, you know, have so many question marks and health problems. that they're obviously don't look like they're going to be a threat to the Patriots in January. That's why the entire calculus has changed for me. Nora, the Ewing theory is canceling its watch

for O'Dell Beckham, Baker Mayfield. This is true. Don't disagree? Anything about the Browns worry you? Like going forward? Is this bad? A lot of things about the Browns. Are they going to make the playoffs still? Well, so here's the thing that worries me about the Browns.

Baker's not healthy. And he's just gutting it out because the contract thing probably. And I get it. It's a tough situation to be. It really genuinely is. But this isn't good for anybody. I mean, it's his knee. And then it's, oh, no, sorry, it's actually my other knee, both my knees.

And he's got the shoulder. And every week, it's just, ouch. I mean, there aren't that many injuries that would be worse that you can still play with. It's a labrum for a quarterback. That seems bad. Well, right. I mean, non-throwing, but still, yes. It obviously affects,

um, it's obviously affecting him. It affects every. You turn, turning your body hurts. This is like, I mean, look,

this is the thing that worries me about the Browns. I'm not sure what you do. Right? Because they are still, they can still contend. Things are wide open. In theory, they should be able to carve a path out if they solve some of the

problems. I don't know that all of the problems, particularly what Ben's talking about in terms of just being physical enough to hang with some of the other AFC contenders. It's not solvable in the middle of a season. They're not in a place where they can just say

shut it down. Baker would not want to do that. I mean, look, for all his flaws, he's tough as nails. Yeah, we saw that today when he was hobbling around when it looked like he was going to get knocked out of the game and he just came back in. He's like a 6-1 Ben Rathesberger. He's taking all of Ben Rathesbrer.

his punishment and injuries, except he's extremely smaller. So it makes it different. Well, I'm not, no. The thing that I struggle with with the whole, like, for the contract thing is, like, this, I'm worried about this hurting his long-term

earning potential. Like, if he continues to. It doesn't look good. Right. And, like, also, play, you know, be tough, play for the team. Sick. Love it.

You know, show that you're going to get it out, great. Right tackle right now is Blake Hans. Got nothing against playing pants, but there's a reason Blake Hans wasn't started. had June and showed us the reason for four quarters. You got to know a little bit where you are right now.

Like, no, O'Dell, like you get a past game script, and all of a sudden you've got to drop back, find like a very key weak point on the line against a team that's really, really good at attacking weak points in Bill Belichick's defense. Like, I'm not saying, tell the Browns you're not going to play. But there's a self-preservation aspect here that I think affects his long-term earning potential

in a really, really finicky contract situation. So I'm not sure this is the best way to be handling it in terms of future money for Baker in his camp. I totally agree. By the way, he was already the biggest question mark of any of those extension eligible guys. Like he was the one guy,

okay, we know what Josh Allen is worth. We know what Lamar Jackson's going to be worth with Ben to paper. Baker was the one where there was some serious, serious questions. You could argue for an hour based on that. There was no one else like Baker.

Now you add this in. That's why I think it's complicated. I actually, Ben, I think you'd go either way, frankly. Like, if you did shut it down,

I don't know. I mean, I think he's going to get a contract that if it's, If it's a mega deal, quote unquote, mega deal, like one of those huge extensions from the Browns, I think it's going to be extremely team friendly. It would be my guess. I will say the Panthers also knew what Sam Donald was worth.

They were positive, baby. Fifth year option. Pick that puppy up right away. 18 million smackaroos. PJ Walker had like five incultations today. They scored 30 points. You know, Ruiz is not here to defend himself. He's going to be on later.

Yeah, we'll get him. We're doing Panthers talk. We're doing Panthers. All right. Now it's time for superlatives. We're giving the looks like Patrick Mahomes award to Patrick Mahomes. It's Chiefs 41, Raiders 14.

I'm officially, I hate Twitter straw men a lot. I'm officially going to walk in. I'm on the West Coast and I'm going to walk into the Pacific if I see one more tweet that's like, oh, I thought Mahomes was done. We're not allowed to tweet that.

There's a lot of daylight between Patrick Mahomes looked bad and Patrick Mahomes was done. There were no earnings. Patrick Mahomes is done takes or he or he you know he wasn't going to get right or whatever like we've been talking about how he was going to the Super Bowl for the past couple weeks some of it was sung in cheek but we knew that this kind of performance was extremely possible and tonight it happened um there were a couple of things that were astounding to me next gen stats had this and i've been thinking about it for like the past 20 minutes they have something called in rhythm throws

which is when you throw between 2.5 and 4 seconds after the snap just kind of what you see normally what you think of when it's in rhythm. Patrick Mahomes' touchdown at Tyreek Hill was the first time he'd thrown an in-rhythm touchdown since week four. But what? Like, he was just playing a different style. And we've talked so much, Ben,

over the past couple of weeks, about the problems. And, you know, I think it was oversimplified into, oh, this was, oh, he couldn't deal with two safeties or whatever. I mean, there were so much BS around the struggles. And most of it was just that he was, missing throws. Most of it was that they hadn't made good adjustments that Kelsey was strolling a little bit. That all seemed to turn on its head tonight. Ben, what did you think? Yeah, I think the

the big like fulcrum to me was Kelsey's play. There's obviously like a lot of meat on the bone for Mahomes. There's a lot schematically that's been talked about that we can talk about and you know, Gus Bradley sticking his guns and running cover three to the cows come home. It's just just awesome. We just love to see it. But to me, if no matter what structure you're getting, no matter what you're doing it, at wide receiver 2, how you're running the football, Kelsey's been it. Kelsey has

been the guy for Mahomes throughout his career. And Kelsey had been struggling, been playing tough ball. I talked about this a little bit on the Wednesday show, talking about where the chiefs were. Kelsey tonight, 119 receiving yards, he had eight receptions. Most of his targets close to the line of scrimmage,

all under 10 air yards. in 2021 he has 523 receiving yards after the catch over expectation is the only player over 440 for next 10 stats this is how they've been using him with these deeper structures with these deep safeties. They've been using him as their underneath guy

and asking him to do work for them after the catch. He has been struggling to separate. He's been getting physically gloved up. They put out that great clip of him versus Brandon Fation where Fasian went to grab him and Kelsey just grabbed him back and then chucked him and then broke into his route. It's like, if we're going to play physical, we're going to play physical,

that's how I got to do it. Mahalms able to buy a little bit of time with Andrew Wiley trying to survive against Max Crosby, get the ball to Kelsey, let him do the work for you. So the screen game come back. It took the chiefs a couple of weeks, but they seemed to have settled into the pocket of having Mahomes just to be like a lower A-D guy, living more near the line of scrimmage, taking that underneath stuff and then producing after the catch.

It was much heavier on Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelsey, and and Damien, Darrell Williams, Darrell Williams targets. I suppose like, Miko Harman only had three targets, right? They've kind of like settled into what they want to be now. The Raiders, for all the cover three they play, don't blitz.

And so that's kind of how it has to be when there's seven dropping back and there's eight dropping back and how you've got to do it. This is the pendulum swinging the other way. We now watch for the rest of the season because all of a sudden, and it like legitimately pisses me off to say this,

that after all of this, the chiefs are leading the AOC West. The chiefs currently have a playoff. Why does that piss you off? off. Because it, no, it pisses me off because they're just, they're so good. They're so immortal, right? Like, everything.

Inevitable. Yeah, coming into the season, right? It was, oh, the chiefs could have this problem and that problem and this problem and that problem, but it doesn't matter because Mahomes is amazing and Reid is amazing. And then, like, there were times where Mahomes wasn't amazing. Dog, but it's like, but, but the thing is like, did you just dog me? Yes, yes. I am going to dog you because it's like, it's like, it's like about airplanes, right?

where everything can fail like a hundred times. And that's like, that's why it's built that way. And it's like, oh, alternating systems or whatever. Like the reason the chiefs are such a good franchise is because there are huge parts of it that can fail and they can still land the plane safely. That's different between the chiefs and the Broncos. That's different between the chiefs and the raiders that we saw tonight. That's a difference still for all of Herbert's greatness that the difference between the chiefs

and the charges is that from a franchise standpoint at every level, they have the capability to erase, to make huge problems be almost meaningless. Now, if they're not firing on all cylinders, they can win 14 games and get the buy and all that stuff, but they can still be a really good football team because that's how they're built. Now, the defensive problems have points made it so that they couldn't erase that, but they can still be a really, really competitive team with the offense, with the coaching, with the personnel.

So I'm not surprised that they can struggle this mightily points of the season and still be this good. And still be, and that's just the difference between. between the Chiefs and everybody else in the ASE West. So I'm not surprised at all. And that's right. Like, that's the thing is I blame,

like, Joe Lombardi and Vic Fangio and Derek Carr and like these guys who like have had like nice moments, but have largely failed to take advantage of this opportunity. And to follow that, you know, their inevitable idea, it very much is like the, all that for a drop of blood sense, right? Where like you do all like,

oh, there were all of these issues with the Chiefs. The defense was historically bad. That Mahomes finally looked like he was. slowed down by something that was replicable. Teams were doing the same thing week in and week out. The Chiefs were like beating the giants by one possession. It was like, they are mortal again. We have a window.

They're six or four. They're leading the AFC West. They're probably going to make the playoffs. And it's just like, frick. I think they're going to win a playoff game. Yeah. I didn't even want a playoff game. Yeah. Defense right now is playing playoff levels. We got to see the offense do this against a bunch of teams.

I do think that Gus Bradley's obstinence is really frustrating. I think the other teams will go right back to what we've seen with two deep stuff and whatever, but that I don't think is going to be enough. I think that the Chiefs... The single high stuff, I really enjoyed it. As soon as I saw the first play was in single house, like, this is some beautiful stuff.

There were a couple reps on third down where they played two-man. And Chris Collins was like, see, two-man. And that doesn't count because if the Chiefs get single-high in first and ten, they're going to throw it. Like, it's not like, oh, you only do it on third down. Like, once you, once you, what it is, is once you bring that safety down pre-snap and you show single high, they're just going to run RPO's on you until the cows come home.

because that's what you're telling them is you say, we're not going to rotate anybody. We've already done it pre-snap. So you're giving them exactly what they want. Very frustrating on Gus on Gus Bradley's part, but also not surprising whatsoever. Nor what you think? Well, the lesson, right, is, look,

turnover luck will regress at some point or another. And that's not to say that Kansas City didn't have a weird turnover in this game because they absolutely did AJ Cole forced a fumble. Raiders recovered it. very odd. Don't see that every day. But for the most part, you saw it go the other way

where there were 50-50 balls where you went, ah, but in the past. And Sean Jackson. Right. John Jackson. We have to talk about that. But the lesson is that's a

don't get too high, don't get too low thing. And I think when we talk about the chief's offense, that's the type of thing that, look, nobody has said they're terrible, they're done. Mahomes is cooked, totally done.

But if there has been any overreaction to their struggles, that's been the basis of it. And when that flips, you're looking at something that looks an awful like the Kansas City Chiefs, right? So food for thought. Things to remember.

I agree. I mean, listen, I thought, as Ben alluded to earlier, I thought that getting the screen game going, lowering the A-DOT, and doing things closer to line of scrimmage was always going to be the cheat code. That was always there. I think that they were just wondering,

they just wanted to see they were poking the deep ball with a stick a little bit. And even tonight, if you look at the passing charts, I think deep, like over 20 yards, I think Mahomes connected for the one touchdown and then they had three incompletions. They're still going to make sure that that part of the game is totally taken away

and they're still going to prod. But they're also, I think there's going to be some realization. Mahomes had 2.9 seconds of throw, I think I saw. But I think that they're just going to literally take what the defense gives them. I don't know if they've always done that in the Mahomes era because they were able to set the tone so easily. They were able to do things that you're just not supposed to be able to do. But I think that they've realized that kind of counterintuitively that they are mortal. They're immortal because they're realizing that they're mortal a little bit.

From the Raiders side, Ben, disappointed that they didn't put up a bigger fight after being a pretty good team these last few weeks. Yeah, I think the plan coming in was, okay, because you got to remember, Gus Bradley was the DC the Chargers in 2020. In 2020, the Chargers had a pretty good game against the Chiefs early in the season. Joey Bosa, Melvin Ingram, ate it up, four-man rush. So we're going to do that because Max Krazy is playing outside his mind. Yanukkah is playing outside his mind. We're going to play our coverage behind, and we're doing what we did last year. First half worked. Like, Max Crosby just beat up on Andrew Wiley for Andrew Wiley for example. Andrew Wiley, tremendous offensive line performance when we grade on the holding without getting called for its scale. Love to see it.

Very important skill for an offensive lineman. It's so important. It's blocking is holding, just not getting called for it. There's an old offensive line joke that when they say that a veteran offensive line just means you can hold very well. Yeah, that's right. Congratulations, Andrew Wiley. Yeah.

So first half worked, but Mahomes are able to get rid of the ball quickly. They said they're very good with the shallow stuff and getting rid of the ball, get back, Williams with nine targets. So it wasn't as easy to execute the second half of that, right? And they simply don't have the coverage guys to do it. And that's always been what smells, with the Raiders. It's like, oh, the defense is playing well. And then you look at how it's playing well. And it's like, right, the pass rush is at a unbelievable clip, the amount at which

they get pressure on early downs without blitzing. If that isn't sustainable and buddy, it does not feel sustainable. The coverage talent on the back end, we saw Jonathan Abram with mistakes. We know Denzel Perryman's a guy that people circle that linebacker. This, this simply just doesn't feel like it can get held up. So they give up 40 points to the chiefs. Offensively now, the first couple weeks of the Greg Olson experience felt better. They're using play action at a higher rate, and that's cool. But they've scored 16 against the Giants and 14 against the Chiefs in the last two weeks. I don't like that.

That's bad. And I understand that they've got a formative shift in Henry Ruggs no longer being available for the team. They bring into Sean Jackson an effort to kind of replace the field stretching. But they seem to have lost the thread on what they were doing early in the year. the Derek Carr control, the constantly being in the right play, the ability to stay aggressive because he feels confident in the offense, that seems to have waned. And I'm not as sure as why that's going as I'm like the defense. Like I can tell what's regressing.

Offensively, it just feels like they've lost the threat. I don't know where they find it again. Bengals, Cowboys, Washington, the next three games. Those aren't easy defenses to play. But if they want to write the ship in the AFC playoff race, Carr and Olson got to sit down and say, all right, we've had a lot get weird in this office. offensive room over the last 10 weeks. What works for us and what doesn't? We got to find a way to get back to that because they're nowhere right now on that side of the

ball. It's almost the opposite of the chiefs where if you just look at everything that's happened to them over the past four or five weeks, it's hard for them to sustain the level that they were playing at, just sort of psychically, just from a, you know, I think that there's, whether that's the Gruden thing, whether that's the Ruggs thing, I mean, there's just been such a, it's been one of the strangest seasons ever. And it was interesting because I was talking with somebody else the other day on a different show, but, you know, David Carr sent that tweet a couple weeks ago that was totally over the top saying that when the

Raiders win the Super Bowl, Derek Carr will be the most valuable player in the history of football. Yep. And that has nothing to do with their shared last names. And it was just, it was just totally objective. What's what are you saying? He's an NFL network analyst, Ben. Why would he say anything? I can't think of it. of reason. But he deleted the tweet, but it's, in a weird way, the point was so over the top, but it actually,

it actually tracked in this regard. Like David Carr, excuse me, Derek Carr has been extremely valuable this year. And the problems that he solved on the field have been remarkable. And that point, obviously, is hyperbole and they're not going to win the Super Bowl. And Derek Carr is not the most valuable player in the history of football.

But his ability to make the team win, games. And obviously, it gets in concert with a lot of things. It's in concert with Max Crosby being unbelievable. I think you led the team in pressures again tonight. I was looking at some of that. There's so many things that have gone right for the Raiders this year to win games. But the fact that they are actually even have a winning record, the fact that they even had the capability to compete with the Chiefs talks about the individual talent that's been on this team. So I think that that run is coming to an end a little bit, but it is pretty impressive.

Nora, what did you think about this game from the Raiders perspective? Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, there've been moments right when, when Derek Hars looked really great this season. It, it just feels like, look, they've had a lot go on and it is understandable to me that things would be a little bit off kilter. Obviously, the rugs piece of it is difficult because not only, you know, talented player, but also filled a specific role. you're sort of having to adjust on the fly in circumstances where you are already adjusting to something else. It's just, it goes back to what we were talking about with Kansas City, right? Where, look, in the same way that I don't want to,

that nobody ever was, but that the idea of, oh, people were bearing the chiefs, people were bearing Mahomes is ridiculous. That wasn't really happening. I do think there's also a degree of danger in just going, oh, the Chiefs are back. The Chiefs are every bit as good as we've ever seen them. I don't think that's true either. But Ben's point, I think, is the operative one where no one else was able to take advantage

when it wasn't going right, right? Like, I think the Chiefs very well could go lose to the Cowboys next week. Right? That's going to be such a good game. No doubt. And the Raiders could beat the Bengals next week. Right. And then the Cowboys.

but we are looking at what it looks like when Kansas City and Mahomes have some of the flaws that they had before, but also have some of the things that were a little bit unlucky go back their way, a little bit. And it just seems like there was a missed opportunity for any of these other teams, the Raiders included, to just grab onto it while it was there for the team. taking. And now particularly with what they're dealing with off the field, it just feels a little bit like your, your, your white knuckle in your way through every, every down now. Yep. Um, all right. Let's get the next one. Nora, Washington 29 bucks 19. Taylor Heineke. You know what I want. This is the, this is the, this is the Eli Manning Award for

Taylor Heineke. I like it. Eli Manning. Owning, Tom Brady? Tom Brady. Yeah, the two best games of Taylor Heineke's career against Tom Brady.

I love it. I love it. Equally dirty facial expressions, I would say. Yeah, I think this is, I'm actually really into this comp. I would love to see him on the Manning cast.

I think they could have a good time. So. I'm looking up as facial expressions just so I can, I've never seen a weird facial expression from Heineken, I'd like to. Because Wikipedia page,

is the photo is pretty strange, I've got to tell you. But go ahead. Yeah. Well, okay. You're going to have to keep us posted because here's the deal. The Washington football team beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Ever heard of them.

29 to 19. Our guy, Tom Brady. He's on a two-game losing streak. He's thrown five interceptions. Two today. One of them wasn't his fault. Got tipped. Bruce Ariens kind of said it was his fault anyway.

Yeah, I actually want to talk about that. He said that quote had nothing to do with the receivers. It was him. I don't know, man. It, like, completely got tipped up in the air. And then, yeah, it was like, it was ripped out of, says, the, the, Aaron's just looking for a reason he mad at Tom Brady. And I want to unpack that way.

Bruce Arons also said, we're a very dumb football team. Bruce Arons is wild. He's just a wild man. This is a wild game. I mean, look, I think I'm going to get Brady. Bruce Aaron is getting my Branden's Daily award for actually being a podcaster award. Can we do this every week? Which football coach is actually a podcast?

Who's a podcaster? Who's a secret podcaster? All right. Bruce Arias is a secret podcaster. Just like absolutely said not nice things about his football team after this game. He also, I want to get back to our central point here in a second. He went out of his way to criticize how they've been doing in practice. He made it like exceptionally clear.

It's been terrible in practice as well. They've been committing penalties in practice. They don't have to practice. They don't know to do anything. They're so sloppy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's amazing. I think the result here offensively,

for the bucks is a little fluky. They're four of 10 on third down. Three drops. Brady gets the, the, um, one pick that was tipped. It's not great.

But look, apparently every MVP candidate quarterback is just going to have like a midseason stinker. And I don't really know what to say. So I'm just going to throw up my hands and say, fine, whatever. The concerning thing here,

I think of your Tampa is, is defensively because the defensive line just isn't getting any pressure. Secondary is so banged up. It's not a good formula. Taylor Heineke has a good game or two in him. But if he's going to do it, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes. Balls over and over again. This game, he's got an 85.2 adjusted completion percentage.

He's got over three seconds in the pocket. Living in the world where Taylor Heineke is going to kind of like dink and dunk and just bide his time all the way to a significant win against you. Yeah. That's not a good place to be for Tampa Bay. They go on a 10-minute game winning drive at the end of this. Healthy. 80 yards, 19 players.

I have to be honest. I said to myself at the beginning of this podcast, I was not going to turn this into a Taylor Swift point. Taylor Swift releases a 10 minute song, the 10 minute version of All Too Well, Taylor's version. Taylor, Heinkeith. Ah. Leads the Washington football team to victory on a 10-minute drive,

Taylor's version. I think there's something there. Anyway, I'm worried about the Bucks defense. What do you guys think? Oof. Okay, so I thought that the Ariens thing was really interesting. And I do want to unpack the Arians saying it was terrible in practice thing because coaches never say that.

They are always like, I don't know, we looked good in practice. Incorrect. A lot of coaches never say that. Bruce Ariens says that all the time. Yeah, because he's got 45 minutes to fill in his podcast. All right. So Brady threw two interceptions in the first quarter for the first time since 2012. That's not good.

One of them was not his fault, though. This is just sloppy, but I would also say that, not according to Broussarians, but it was sloppy, but I'd also say that they went and made everything from last year not matter at all. And I think that there's,

I think that there's going to be some hesitancy in criticizing anything the bucks do because of how much they stuck it to everybody last year and it got better in December. Like, they weren't, I was expecting them to get better by November. They were fine in November. They still got thraccy for the Saints. December.

whatever January, they caught fire. That's kind of what I expect him as better in team. That's why I'm going to be the last person that sort of start to criticize them, but I did see some cracks that absolutely worried me. Ben? Bucks are one and three without Antonio Brown. And I don't know if that's real.

You know what I mean? Like, oh, they're one and three again without Antonio Brown. Okay, well, they played like the Rams, the Saints. Right. They played Chicago. They won that game, like 38 to 3. That wasn't real. And then they played Washington,

and they lost the Rams Saints at Washington games. So like Saints are real tough out. Rams are real tough out. And then this Washington game feels stupid. They scored 27 and 24 in the previous games. I don't know if it's like super real. But it does feel as if losing Brown kind of changes the complexion of the way they want to be as a passing game. We know that Brady just likes to target dudes out of the slot.

He likes to have those guys with those middle of the field option releases to be able to work inside and out. Like when he first came to Tampa Bay, there was that. concern of how was he going to fit with the receiver like Mike Evans. And that never really panned out. But Brown has been an important part of this offense. And I'm, I'm curious to, like, looking and see if that's a real thing. But they're really banged up, right? There's no gronk as well. And the absence of Bronc is certainly hurt them in the passing game. And then on the defensive side of the ball, obviously the absence they've had in the secondary, Levante, David. They've had absent. He was back for this game. They lost Vita Vaya like late in the fourth quarter. Like game

decided in the fourth quarter, like maybe don't have Vita Vaya out in the field in the fourth quarter, fourth quarter. And he said he felt something in his knee. If they lose him for an extended period of time, that really, really sucks. We saw how that negatively impacted their defense last year. So in general, in summation, I think the bucks are just really banged up. I think that the team was number one in the year and adjusted games lost last season. They were extremely healthy. And this year, they aren't. And that's the truth of Super Bowl seasons. You almost invariably get some injury luck along the way. This really sucks. If there needs to be major changes made in terms of like how much bowls is blitzing to help the secondary

or how they're changing the offense to help with the abscess of Brown and Grunk. I don't really see anything. And I would imagine we would have seen that over the by week. I would have guessed that would have been what they did last Sunday. And it doesn't really seem like there's any changes. So I think their hope and plan is just simply to get healthier and avoid Taylor Hineke at all costs because he becomes a really good quarterback when he plays them for some reason. The Bucks lost three of four in November last year.

They lost to the Saints by 35 points, then beat the Panthers. Sorry, Stephen. And then lost to the Rams and Chiefs. So again, I don't know. The Antonio Brown thing, I mean, it shows you, this is a separate category, but you made this one pen. Like, there's no such thing as a luxury signing in football.

And Antonio Brown, everyone was like, oh, why did they need him? They got all these weapons. Like, this matters. You saw that with the chiefs this year and the third receiver question. Guys like Antonio Brown matters. It shows that you need more receivers than you think you do.

Yes. Yes. It's important. Yeah. All right. Anything else on this game? By the way, analytics moment. they kneeled on the two-point conversion

because the analytics guy told Ron Rivera that the only thing that could possibly go wrong would be the bucks running it back on the two-point conversion, getting two points making it a one-score game. What a moment for the Booth analytics guy there. Yeah. And then they all had to go and watch

Brandon Staley kick the ball within the five-yard line just three hours later. What a terrible shame. PFF Ron. Riverboat Ron. He's back. Yeah. Riverboat Ron became. wrote Ron because he was obsessed with the New York Times for a down bottom.

There's a stone hole fact. One thing, yeah. One thing I will say is that we were getting Antonio Gibson timeshare with J.D. McKissick and Jared Patterson before the biweek for Washington. And he was dealing with like a foot thing. He had like 24 carries today. It looks like he's like 95% of the snaps again, which is if it's going to work for Washington, they've been a disappointing team in general. The Ryan Fitzpatrick injury obviously hurt that. But if it's going to work for Washington, they need that guy to be for real. And he wasn't high efficacy, but he was high. volume and that's what they want him to be. So if he's getting

healthier, that's good news for that offense altogether. The Bucks have the Giants next week on Monday night and then the Colts, the Falcons, the Bills. Bills to me is interesting. December 12th. They went undefeated in December last year. The Bucks did obviously to a sort of precursor of their undefeated January. So I'm intrigued to see that one in particular. They get the Giants off a buy? Yeah. That's a little

annoying. Giants defense been playing not too bad last few weeks. Is there a Banniecast? Shabby. Seems like that would be a Manning cast. I feel like it would be. Just Peyton, just throwing his hands up with Daniel Jones. Although I don't know how much Eli enjoyed doing the last Giants.

And John Stewart roasting him? Just roasting them. You're putting me in a really tough position, John. Great moments in Eli Manning history. There's a lot of them. All right. Ben Solac. Hello.

Seahawks, Packers. Yeah, so this is my bad superlative. It's the Mr. Limited award. It goes to Russell. Oh, no. Self-monicored Mr. Unlimited. I forgot to do my titles last episode, and I was pretty proud of them,

and I was very excited about that. So I'm remembering this week. Russell Wilson falls in his return to Seattle Seahawks. They score precisely zero points against the Green Bay Packers. Lose 17 to nothing. Russ in the day is 20 for 40, 161 yards, and two interceptions.

I watched the game live and I thought Russ was horrible. I watched it back for the pod. It really wasn't that bad. But to me, but most important thing is you kept the, you kept the mean nickname. Well, yes, because it was objectively limited.

Pete Carroll said after the game that the reason they didn't take any snaps from under center is because Russ tried to take snaps from under center in the pregame warmup and just didn't feel good on his finger. So he lived out of the pistol. Yeah, pistol in the gun. Like, you know, you're some breaking news. here for you. If you can't go under center

in the Sean McVeigh-Shane-Waldron offense, you can't really run the Sean McVeigh-Shane-Waldron offense. This is home base. This is foundational. This is Keystone. We're going to run the football from under center. We're going to go wide zone. Then we're going to go play action off of it. They did out of the pistol, which honestly was kind of fun. I dug it a little bit. And like it helps for us because he's short, whatever.

But that's not how they built it, right? That's not how the playbook is built on. It's not what they want to be. So they don't take any snaps from under center. in an effort to replace the running game, they were very heavy early down pass, quick game. The Pete Carroll, Seattle Seahawks on 45 early downs, that's first and second down, had 36 called passes and nine called runs.

That's 80% pass on early down. I don't even need to look back into history to tell you that's one of the highest, if not the highest number of Pete Carroll's tenure in Seattle. It's a bananas high number. Worth remembering, this game was a three-nothing game, up until 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter. So for 49 minutes, this was a tied to one score game.

There's no game scripting here at all. They had to be extremely early down pass because Russ could not go under center. And then I said like Russ wasn't as bad as I remembered. He was a little bit off accuracy-wise. He definitely didn't feel like he could drive the football as strongly. That was clear. But overall, I thought he was delivering the ball generally pretty accurately.

But you see those mistakes, third downs. So MECAF get frustrated with a couple of ball placement, whatever. all of this comes to, the quarterback was not ready to play. No. And, you know, we talked about this with Baker a little bit. We've touched on it before.

Awesome that you want to play. Awesome that you want to fight for your team. You say, I'm going to come back. That 19 hours a day of rehab. Right, absolutely. Just awake at 2 a.m. in your bedroom, just like curl, curl, curl, curl, curl, with your finger.

Awesome. Love it. Got like a tiny little baby dumbbell. It weighs like four ounces. You're just like, ah, let's go. I don't know what finger rehab looks like, obviously. What it is to say. How do you do 19 hours a day of finger rehab?

I don't know how we're talking about anything other than that. Also, what a ridiculous story. Are we getting five hours of sleep before a football game? Wasn't he tired? Are we physical peak, baby? Listen. I would like to talk to the Seahawks sleep doctor about this rehab plan. Somebody should have been able to say to the franchise quarterback who, you know, made a little bit of a kerfuffle because he wanted more input in the franchise.

how it's run this offseason. You're not playing. You aren't. Before the game, once he can't take snaps from under center, you have to say you are playing against the Cardinals next week. Win the game against the Cardinals. We'll be fine. We're going to put Gino out here.

And you might say, oh, but Russ gives him the best chance to win. They scored zero football points. That's right. He did not. So I am not concerned long term for Seattle's offense. I know there's people who are frustrated with Shane Waldron. I don't see how you do this if you did. didn't know you couldn't go on her center until like very recently before the game.

I don't know when he knew, but like even if it was a couple of days, that's really, really tough. So I'm fine with Waldron and how that whole offense works, whatever. Defensively, Seattle's been playing pretty well. 17 points against the Packers, nothing to sneeze at. They obviously had an unzoned pick. They had a missed field goal. It could have been worse, but still, they generally played pretty good ball against Rogers' offense.

I think there's enough on this team that they can win a few games, go 500, still be in the wild card race, whatever. if Russ needs to be healthy and if forcing himself to play and practice is going to prevent the finger from healing somebody needs to sit him down and tell him not to because he's the only shot they have 100% healthy to maybe make a playoff run here

and this this was a complete waste of a game because he could not execute enough of the offense to get the ball moving down the field okay so I agree he was limited I agree he was still hurt I agree that he didn't give him a chance to win but I kind of feel like this comes to the territory of having a franchise quarterback who, as you said, one and more say,

and I don't think anyone was going to sit there, whether that's John Schneider, Pete Carroll, ownership, obviously. It was a weird ownership structure, but I don't think anyone was going to say you're not playing this game. I just think that Russell Wilson said, I'm playing this game,

and there wasn't much questioning of it. He was shut out for the first time in his NFL career. Last time the Seahawks were shut out was week two of the 2011 season. They got shot out by the Steelers that year. This, to me, was an incredibly disappointing game. On both sides,

This was an extremely boring game that should have been one of the most exciting game to the year if everybody was healthy. And Aaron Rogers had practiced over the past two weeks and Russell Wilson was healthy. I did get a great listener question. I want to throw this out here. What in Russell Wilson's game today did you guys see that you think transferred over from his imaginary reps? He checked a run to a pass on a first and 10. It comes from imaginary reps. With vindication, man.

I felt that. I was like, yeah, we're checking. Let's do it, baby. That's from the dream world. That is. Nor, what do you think this game? Well, the run-pass balance, I think, that is straight out of Russell Wilson's dream world.

That's exactly right. Very much, so. I think somebody should have told the quarterback. I don't care about the structure. Like, players have to do things they don't want to do because of their health quite often. Put it in a sling or whatever and go to bed. Is this a sleep take or a rehab take or not playing take?

Both. It is all three. Should he have slept during this game? You know what? If he's been doing finger crows for 19 hours a day, then yes, he should have slept during this game. He's got to make it up. I want Russell getting eight hours at least,

and I want him not playing football until his fingers all day. I don't think I've broken a finger before. So I'm trying to think there. Yeah, I don't know what finger rehab would be. It sounds like putting a little weight, like one of those little weights. Your finger and just like it's not really a dumb boat, it would be like a slip kind of thing.

A vest. A vest for your finger. I mean, maybe it's like, so people who rock climb have really strong fingers. Yeah. If we're going off of Wilson's like social media, it's like doing cross lunges and throwing the football. That's what rehab is. With like hype beat music behind it. It's actually the way that you rehab your finger is you make TikToks.

Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, really hype beasty stuff. Nora, what do you think about Aaron Rodgers is the time? turn to football. Well, you know, it didn't look great. It's not the best version of Aaron Rogers I've seen, but they've got such a good running game. I think five.

Look, the package are good at one, right? Yeah. I'm enamored with AJ Dylan. Oh, baby. Every time he gets on the screen and I go, oh, that's a big boy. I can't stop myself. Is it because of his thighs? Is it because of his thighs?

It's because he's built like a Greek God. Yeah. He's huge. And he's mean. and I love him. He's a huge person. His proportions are astounding. Yeah.

I showed my wife. I was like, this is quad father and this is quadzilla because he named his quads. And I was like, you got to, these are really cool. And she was like,

learn the difference. Yeah. It's like I will not learn the difference between this man's quads, actually. I'm going to go back to my life. Everyone talked about Sequin's legs and then AJ Dylan came around

a couple years later and just put him in a trash can. Yes, sir. Get get some real quad Is one of Sequins named Seiquad? We don't have to check with that. I think there's something like that that he did. If not, can we get F.C.

On that? There was a shoe thrown in this game. And it got a flag, right? Yeah, Carlos Dunlap. It's a gator thing. I think they said that on the broadcast too, right? Like, oh, he's from Florida. It's your thing down there.

We're big shoe throwers down there. Although Dunlap's from South Carolina. He's from South Carolina. He just went to school there. All right. So you're going to say a lot of weirdness in this game. I mean, this is just a product of both quarterbacks being a little bit on, you know, not their best.

Well, yeah. So Rogers was fine. I will say, and Russ, not healthy, not playing well. I do also think we've talked about this before. But the Packers defense, I think, is kind of for real. So that's part of it, too. I think it's sort of a moot point just because if the quarterback shouldn't be playing, the quarterback shouldn't be playing, particularly in that offense being so hamstrung in that way

is kind of a non-starter. But no, Rogers did not look great in this game. That'll probably change. 292 yards, zero touchdowns, one interception. The interception, obviously being the one to Jamal Adams, which is pretty bad. Yeah, which is bad pick, bad throw, bad decision. but I still come out of this thinking, okay, the Packers are really looking like, you know, maybe we're going to see Packers Cowboys, something like that.

And we'll do a whole week of Aaron Rogers McCarthy nonsense. But. And then Aaron Jones is, it looks like it's just going to be a sprained MCL. So it's not everyone was very in the worst after his injury because I guess they'd gone and talked to his family or whatever, but it looks like a sprained MCL, which I think is, He's had before and it's kept him out a couple of weeks. So it's the best news possible. More Dylan, maybe.

Yeah, more Dylan. Anything on the Packers are back? Besides AJ Dylan's big bottom and quads. No, they are physical. Right? We're talking about that earlier with the Titans and the Patriots. They can be really physical in offense defensively. Which, again, like this, this exceeds the mind in terms of how the Seahawks were playing this game and running this game.

from Next Gen stats, Seahawks had a light box rate, which is six or fewer defenders of 97%, the second highest by any defense in a game this season. They had an average depth of deepest defender of 16.1 yards. The average entering the week was 13.8, which 2.3 yards difference in this metric is a huge difference. Yeah, and that's the 10th deepest number by any team of a game this season. That's all from Keegan Avenue at Next Gen stats. the Packers defensively, Brandon's Staley philosophy, we're going to ask you to run the football on us.

They've, with corner injuries, really found a nice comfort playing that approach. That defense has gotten better quietly as the offense is also improved and they've settled in. They're healthier, defensive lines playing better.

To me, best teaming the NFC is the Packers. And they don't win games super sexy and there's obviously a lot going on off the field with them right now. now, and it's easy to miss that I just think they've played quality, quality ball week in week out against a pretty tough odds as well in certain cases. That's impressive to me. The Packers are going to win the Super Bowl.

Okay. Okay. I've just been saying that for a number of months now. I love burying the Super Bowl winner 45 minutes into the show. I say it all the time. I say it all. I've been saying it for months. Someone said someone asked me the other day, oh, it's John Stremski was like, change your pick. You have a mulligan. And I said, well, I said that Packers are going to win beginning of the season. and they're still going to do it. Imagine not picking the Packers preseason. Ben Sips his coffee.

Wait, I did pick the Packers preseason. Oh, what? You said it was a Mulligan, so I assumed you did it. No, no, no. You Stremsky tried to give me a Mulligan. And I said, no, we're forging ahead. The Packers have the Vikings Rams after that on November 28th, then the Bears and the Ravens, which was my, I believe my, no, no, I had the Chiefs.

I have the Packers and Chiefs. Now I have the Packers Ravens. I did take an AXC. Bengals winning the Super Bowl? I didn't have the Bengals in the playoffs. That's called, let me tell you something. Let me tell you how the content game is done.

It's about the product. It's about the process. It's about getting aggregated in the headline and saying the Bengals are going to be pretty good, not a playoff team, just pretty good. And then being able to throw it out there every time they win, but not to the point that I said they were going to make the playoffs. The process is undefeated. All right.

We have to debate the Titans now. And it's going to be a funny debate because I actually don't have much of argument, but I just think that they're better. And the Titans consistently winning makes Benzolak so mad. And it's just another level of shithousery that I just really enjoy. So it's Titans 23, Saints 21. The Titans are out 8 and 2. It was not a game where anybody stood out on really anything.

There was another awful rough in the passer penalty on the Saints that Sean Payton was extremely mad about after the game, but wouldn't address and wouldn't talk about. There's no explanation. Put that aside, we'll acknowledge it. We're sorry San's fans officiating. He's gotten real, real bad. Jeffrey Simmons in this game, two sacks, 14% pass rush win rate. I think he had a couple more pressures as well. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. In a league that's so flawed right now, having a player like that who can dominate

can be just good enough to change sort of the way that the game is approached. Trevor Simeon, real slow start, struggled. I don't know what the situation with him will be going on. I saw a couple beatwriters wondering, kind of allowed if Trevor Simmons is going to be the long-term quarterback for the rest of the time. But this team just, this Tennessee team just keeps winning.

And I understand what the Saints, Alvin Kamara was not there. Toronto said it wasn't there. Obviously, they were down to their backup quarterback who was, who was probably a stopgap anyway. The Saints haven't been healthy. But this Titans team just keeps winning.

And in a flawed conference, I think that that's pretty good. And I think that there are legitimate AFC contenders. Ben, you think that if they made their the Saints could make field goals or kicks that they would want to be. The extra points? I don't need fuel goals, man.

And I just think that I just think that's called toughness. Toughness is the other team missing extra points. Is that what toughness is? That's right. Coaching. The Saints lose by two on a failed two-point conversion attempt

to tie the game late. after missing two extra points and also the aforementioned roughing the passer call was a seven point swing because it was on a ball intercepted in the end zone which subsequently became a touchdown.

The Titans' ability to win tough games is impressive. I've talked about the adjustments I'd like for them to see on offense and while I don't think they're like 100% where I'd like for them to be, impressed with the decision they're a little bit more balanced

They're a little bit more skewed on run-pass. They're now on early downs. They were 22-called early passes, 23-called early rushes. 50% for the Titans is, like, good. Like, that's moving in the right direction, moving in the past direction. And then secondly, they have replaced the running game with the quick-passing game. Ryan Tannenhill, perennially one of the league's leaders in depth of target, intermediate targets, had a 5.3a-dot in this game.

He had a, I think it was a 3.8-a-dot, forgive me, if I misrecall that, in the Rams game. they're using the quick passing game, get a ball into AJ Brown's hands, get the ball into Nick Aquino Westbrook's hands, get the ball into Anthony Furkser's hands, let them go pick up four yards behind a quick tunnel screen. That's our Derek Henry run for us.

That's what we would expect to get from this first and ten. We're just going to do it in the passing game. And that's been effective for them through two weeks. It's one of those things that we always talk about, that very quick, very shallow game. It's tough for that to feel sustainable, especially when we see playoff defenses.

And the Saints generally buttoned it up pretty well. The Titans did not, again, have a good day offensively. They got a couple of chunk gains and then they were really, really effective in the red zone. And so going back to what we talked about with the Rams game, they can continue to be really, really good in short yardage,

really, really good in the red zone and win these tight games, that's awesome. It's just that's such a narrow road to walk. It is so hard to do that all the way into December and then into January against three playoff teams back to back to back. That's just really, really

difficult. When it happens, it's so fun, but it's It's difficult to trust. And so I like that the Times are 8 and 2. The names that they've beaten on their schedule is delightful, right? It makes it very easy to make a strong case for them. But you remember how they beat the bills. You remember how they beat the Rams and how they beat the Saints.

And it just feels a little bit fraudulent to me. Yes, and the short passing enemy is interesting. Matt Waldman was doing some breakdowns earlier of Marcus Johnson, who had 100 yards day, by the way, and the rub routes and sort of what they're doing close to the line of scrimmage. Eagle great, Marcus Johnson, please and thank you. And I just think that what they're doing has just gotten more creative every single week. And I think that I would prefer them to have Derek Henry.

But, you know, I think that the ability for them, if you're not going to have Derek Henry, the best thing to do is kind of what you say is making these adjustments and opening it up and understanding the passing can be your friend. You don't have to replace it with trying to make Adrian Peterson, Derek Henry. Please don't try to do that, Todd Downing. And so I like what I've seen in the last two weeks. I like that the wins are coming. Their schedule is pretty interesting.

They have the Texans next week. So they're going to be nine and two. Then they have the Patriots and then they have the Jaguars. So they're at least going to win two of the next three games. Easiest schedule left by win percentage. And we're probably going to overrate whoever wins at Titans Patriots game. They have the Steelers after that, the 49ers, the dolphins, and then the Texans. They've got some real gimmies.

At this point, I'm starting to think. And Nora, we've talked about the math problem stuff. for a long, long time, um, I'm starting to think that this is going to be a team that gets to buy just from a schedule standpoint. And once that happens,

that is such a massive advantage. That is such a massive advantage in a conference where advantages are very slim because they're just not an league team. If they get the buy that is incredibly significant, Nora, where are you in the Titans? Well, I'll tell you where 538 is on the Titans.

They have a 75% chance to get the first round by. Now that's just that's, that's, that's, a mathematical snapshot in time. That win against the bills, baby. That's a big win. That's big. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm also on 538. And the old geniuses over there at 538 say they have the highest percentage chance to win the Super Bowl. Ever heard of it so long? I thought the Packers were going to win the Super Bowl. No, there are 15%. Also, by the way, by the way, guys,

and look, we're recording this Sunday night. the Chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl because Daniel Sorensen got an interception. Yes, that's correct. And I called this in our group chat. I said Daniel Sorensen, baby, when we were just listing Daniels in the NFL, so I'm claiming that.

Earlier today. This is something that happened because of a typo by Kevin. This is going to, this is going to sound completely insane. So I said DAC in a group chat, and then it auto-corrected to Dan, and I didn't realize it. And so then people just started asking me, about what Dan could be.

And we just kind of riffed on it for a while. Daniel Sorensen, Dan, Daniel Kelly, Danny Kelly, our buddy. You know, Daniel. Hifetz. Regular, regular listeners of this show will not be surprised here that we just listed Dan's at each other for like 90 seconds. They're like, yep, that tracks. Producer Isaiah says, Dan Arnold in all caps, very upset.

We forgot Dan Arnold. 75% for the first round buy is significant. And that was something I was talking. I actually don't remember if I said it was on the pod with Deonti and Stephen because we were talking about this the other day. But I was talking to someone in NFL executive the other day, and we were talking about that. And they literally said, like,

everyone in the AFC is freaking out over the buy as an AFC executive. And they were just trying to say there, you know, there's a path there. And actually, until I looked at this here, I just threw out the buy thing a minute ago without looking at it. This is a real thing. It really does look like the Titans are going to get it. Because of that schedule stuff, this is important.

It's going to be hard. Titans have played some really good January football. It's going to be hard to get an edge in January. And if you're popped to play in Nashville, that's big. So, Ben, tough break for you to have lost this argument. Yeah, man, you know, just take it on the chin. You got to keep moving forward. Hopefully we hit our actual points next time.

We? Are you just a fan of every team that plays the Titans now? We here being the non-the-opponent of the Tennessee Titans. Oh, my favorite part of the Titans right now is that Dante Forman changed his number from 45 to 7. And because of the Titans' font, seven looks kind of like two. And he's got dreads

and he's a big guy. And so objectively, he looks like he's cosplaying Derek Henry. And it's the funniest thing in the entire world to me. It looks exactly like like a Captain America cosplay. Passable, but not as Jack,

not as big, not as imposing, not as clean. Dante Foreman and Derek Henry. Don't tell Tom Brady. I do have to say, it's pretty funny to me that we've spent so long being like,

are the Titans good for like six years, just back and forth. Are the Titans good? are the Titans good. And now they are going to get the buy in the AFC. They're going to be like 13 and 4. And all we're going to do is are the Titans good? This team cannot catch a break.

The point of this is to win football games. And technically speaking, they have proven themselves the best so far at winning football games. Solek leading the anti-Titans. Goodness is relative. Nerd, right? It's unbelievable. He's going to be in L.A. on a field with the Super Bowl, just walking around.

badgering John Robinson. That's cool. I think so. I love Jay Rob. I know we were going to invite you until, you know, J.R. Robinson, like, over the bad of times I've been doing draft work, no general manager has drafted more appropriately relative to my board, like, as I rank them than Robinson does.

So, a big fan of Robinson. He's my favorite GM to talk to about draft stuff because he has all these completely insane analogies about hunting dogs and stuff. Yeah. See, that's my speed, baby. He has. I've told this story before, but like,

he'll be, whenever I'm on the phone with him or whatever, he'll be like, he'll start talking about some hunting thing, and I'll be like, absolutely. And then I'm just furiously Googling it trying to have any idea what he's talking about. That's awesome. That is the opposite of Beach putting things

in terms of Formula One. That's my guy. That's my guy. There's a huge Formula One contingent in the NFL, and those are my people. I think there's a huge Formula One contingent in the world. because of going abroad on the Ryan Russela-low podcast. Absolutely. All right.

Nora. Can I tell you guys about a weird football game? Oh, please. My favorite game of the week. All right. So I'm giving this that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything award, except that's not what I'm going to do.

But I am going to say one nice thing about each one of these teams. before I say other things. For the Lions, congratulations to Jared Goff for having completed six of eight of his screen passes. Over half of his screen passes completed for 32 yards.

Congratulations to Jared Goff. Congratulations to Jared Goff for having made $108 million in his career. That's my congratulations, Jared Goff. Anyway, go ahead. How many million dollars is that? per screen pass.

Business is booming. Business is booming. All right. And congratulations to Mason Rudolph for having 40% of his passing attacks go past the first down marker. It's just great to see. It's fantastic. This game was very bad. It ended in a tie.

There were six possession changes in overtime. That's not normal. That's so bad. That's not what you want to see. But the Lions punted, Ben Deontay Johnson fumbled. Lions get the ball at the 45. Gough throws a pick, but then it's wiped off the board by holding.

Lions drive into field goal range. The backup kicker, yes, the backup kicker for the Detroit Lions, so you already know how this story is going to end. Misses, the weather's terrible. Steelers ball. Possession ends with a Pat Firemouth fumble with eight seconds left.

Nobody wins the game. I don't know. I think we should just sort of punt this three-ish hours of football into the stratosphere and never speak of it again. The problem is that this tie technically goes on record as the only game of the year that the Lions have not lost. I'm not sure how one should feel about that. Dan Campbell said that it felt like the Twilight Zone. But I guess the other nice thing that you can say is that the Lions, broke their losing streak.

They did not break it with a win, but they broke their losing streak. Has Dan Campbell ever seen the Twilight Zone? This would be an awful Twilight Zone episode. I've never seen the Twilight Zone. It's an amazing show. It's an amazing show. It's one of my favorite shows of all time. I don't think most people know what they mean

when they say it's like the Twilight Zone. I think that just means it was weird. It's weird. I think I will offer one big picture takeaway from this. We got to get rid of the Steelers. We got to do something about not having to do this anymore. It's not fun. So let's back up here.

So Ben Rothesberger was placed on the COVID list. Jay Glazer reported that he's not expected to play next week as well. He is vaccinated, but I just don't. He had symptoms according to the team. He's symptomatic. Right. He self-reported his symptoms. And that's sort of what happened.

There was no spread in the building according to Ian Raff report, all that stuff. So that's kind of why this game changed into a slog is because, Ben Rothesberger, even at 2020 Ben Rothesberger levels, is still better than Mason Rudolph. So we've been in a different game. Having said that this was a sloppy game. This is an awful game. The Steelers still should have won it.

Ben, what did you think about this game? This is from Bill Barnwell. Our good buddy, the ESPN. The Lions had allowed 9.33 yards per pass attempt before Sunday. So 50 passing attempts against them, on average, would have produced 466.5 passing yards. Mason Rudolph had 50 passing attempts.

He had 242 passing yards, which is like if you took 466 and then just removed half of it. So just a delightful, tremendous reminder that in 2018, the Steelers were like, let's get our quarterback of the future. And they drafted Mason Rudolph in the third round. And then three years later, having seen this guy for an extended period of time, because Walthusberger went down during the 2019 season, Mason Rudolph is still their backup quarterback.

That's correct. Cycled Dwayne Haskins in there. They did the Duck Hodges things for a while. But in general, a great solid reminder that there's not a glimmer of hope for the post-Benn era currently on the Steelers roster. Just rough, rough, rough day from Roodle. It also serves as a reminder, and I cannot believe I'm about to say this, how Ben, like, helps the offense work a little bit just in terms of how quickly he gets rid of the football. like knowing your limitations is a good function of like being a past your peak athlete and Ben gets that and he's able to get rid of the ball quickly and then you're more likely to

get your explosives out of that. Najee Harris continues to be tremendous. Pat Freyman continues to be tremendous. They've knocked all their draft class out of the park as we've always talked about. The infrastructure is still good, but it is a good reminder that this isn't a situation where you can just take like a average NFL quarterback and just plug him in there and it's going to be fine. Like Rudolph was extremely rough.

in this game. The other thing about this game that was awesome was the fact that the broadcast said multiple times that Dan Campbell had said during the week, said in the pre-shows that he was going to take a primary role in offensive play calling. He was on the headset calling in plays. And then the Lions had one of the most run heavy scripts you've ever seen against an objectively good run defense. They ran it on third and goal from the 10. They ran on third in 10 and got it. They ran on third and nine, got that. They ran it on third and 12. Didn't get that one.

That one didn't work. They ran the ball in every possible down they could, including the ones you're not allowed to run the football in. They had a 42-yard rushing touchdown from Godwin Igboecki, who was a safety at Northwestern. He was running behind Jason Cabinda, who was a linebacker at Penn State before he became a fullback. They were in the fourth string running back was out there doing stuff.

They were so determined to keep the ball out of, golf's hands, the moment Campbell got involved in the game. So shout out Dan Campbell, whose fever dream is being like a 1970s team with just like five running backs and a quarterback who generally gets out of the way. No PFF, Dan.

Yeah, well, I think that would have been quite the comfort behind if it was PFF Dan. I will never expect that. What do you think would happen if the Steelers put like a jugs machine on wheels lined him up behind the offensive line and use that for quarterback.

Chase Claypool would lead the league in receiving yards. I will go to my grave. Wait a second. Wait a second. Obviously the Stewards have a better infrastructure and all that stuff. As you said, then Chase Claypool would feast. Pat Firemuth would feast. Would the steal, how many games with the Steers win,

how many games with the Lions win? Are the Lions allowed to keep playing golf a quarterback and put the Jocles was seen a place kicker? Well, I don't know. I say yes. No. No. Kevin says no. If yes, they would have already won like three games this season, like that we've already

seen. Lions win a couple games. Steelers win a lot of games. Steelers won a lot of games. Yeah. Could you imagine? Listen. And Nora, we both had Kevin Colbert as one of our top GMs.

I had him number one. I think you had him number two or number three going into this year. But I just don't understand the thought process. When you look at Ben Rothesberger, who looks. Like he's on the verge of his career ending at any moment and saying, you know what? We're just going to have Mason Rudolph. We're going to sign Dwayne Haskins as kind of a flyer. We're just not going to go out and sign like a guy.

And I understand Ben Rothler makes a ton of money. I understand he's got a hold on the franchise and all that stuff. And he's put in a lot of good years where he solved a lot of the problems. But like, come on. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, they've been good. So it's not like they've been in a poll position to draft a guy. I don't know.

it would be a lot better if they had a good backup quarterback. Presuming this is Rathsburgers last year, they're just going to have to do a lot of overhauling next year. And the way their roster is set up right now, I don't know. I feel like you'd want more of a clear answer going forward. Ben Zolak, Eagles Broncos. Yeah, this is my good award.

And my good award in this case is called the number one offense by EPA per play Philadelphia Eagles, baby, go birds. Eagles win this game, 30 to 13. they're now four and six. As you may be able... That was a perfect line. What just happened? Just from start to finish.

Just weird shit talking, a sound effect, and then they're now four and six. Yeah, baby. They're improved to four and six. It's important to note that that last three week metric there is very selective because it does include the Lions game, as previously discussed. But yeah, the Eagles over the last three weeks are leading the league in EPA per play. Sheel Kobadi tweeted that out from True Media. if you go to RBSDM.com, you see the same thing.

EPA per play at 0.202. What an inside job by Eagles media? Just you and Shil Capadio digging up stats, figuring out how they're best an EPA per play. The fix is in. Now, the running game has been very important to them. They have run the ball more on neutral downs. They have gotten Jalen Hertz more involved in the running game.

All of that is tremendous. And rushing down success right now, rushing down EPA right now, they're both top five, top eight. But over those three weeks, it's the dropback EPA, 0.388, which is an astronomically high number. Next closest is a 0.219, which is the Mac Jones Patriots. Jalen Hertz is playing some of the best ball as a quarterback, as a passer from the pocket

that he has played in his career. And, of course, you know, it's important to remember this is his 12th career start, right? So, like, we just saw one of Mac's best games in his 10th career start, right? This is, Hertz is kind of right along that timeline. So it's always good to remember and recalibrate to that. but Hertz was a player who was willing to avoid the middle of the field, didn't want to throw intermediate. He's doing that more frequently.

He's throwing the dig on the backside, right? And they'll roll him out now to try to get him on intermediate crossers. They have taken on, as they figured out the offense a little bit, they have moved a little bit away from Frank Reich, who's a difficult guy to say, like, this is Frank Reich's scheme, because Reich does everything. And they're a little bit more like John Grudonyy Raiders, where they'll be like condensed sets with bunches,

and they run a lot of jet motion across. the Eagles have been one of the league's cellar dwellers in terms of pre-snap motion. You know, early games in the season, 21%, 17%, 27, 27. Over the last four weeks, 42, 30, 19, and then 34% against the Broncos. They've started moving guys around a little bit more. And now with Zach Ertz out of the building, instead of going heavy to run, they go light to run. So they'll be an 11 personnel team. I've Dallas got it out there.

They'll spread those guys out, and then they'll use Jalen Hertz to control the box numbers to hold an M&A line of scrimmage. Boston Scott and Jordan Howard, who are running backs like three and five on the depth start entering the season, have been the bread and butter of the running game. Offensively, Nick Siriani's got his finger on the pulse. Took about seven weeks, and that's okay. You know what I mean? Like, it's a growing process. They've found something here.

Hertz has never felt like a clear-cut NFL starter, but he's always felt like a guy you could build an offense around. He has too many physical gifts for that not to be the case. Eagles have found it. They found it against the bad defenses. They've got a little bit of turnover luck. but they seem to have found it. And that's really good news for the Eagles long term, because if they can sustain this over the back half of the season,

you can take your three first round picks, one from the Dolphins for the Jalen Wattel trade, one from the Colts of the Carson Wentz trade, and then your own pick, and invest heavily in the positions that needed outside of quarterback. And you can go at least another year, assuming that you can get an offense out of Jalen Hertz. That helps their rebuild a lot.

So first half was amazing for Jalen Hertz. should have been even better. Second half, he kind of fell off, tried to throw a pick through another pick. They were kind of on a run heavy script, so the numbers dropped a little bit. But the first half was very promising. If they can build that into more and more games down the stretch, the Eagles should feel confident going into 2022 with Hertz as their starter. And that allows them to invest in other positions on a very depleted roster.

It's very, very good news for them. So big, big, bright sign in Philadelphia, I say, as somebody who's been looking for one for a long, long time. I want to take the listener behind the curtain here. So when we're figuring out what games we're going to do, we had an opening. We had for the sixth game because we have, for Ruiz,

he took the Panthers and Cardinals game, and he also took the Herbert Vikings game. And so I had said to Ben, I was like, hey man, maybe you should talk about the Eagles because, you know, you might want to just break them down

because you haven't talked about them at all. And I figured maybe he's got some, some thoughts on the Eagles. I've never seen someone with so many thoughts. We're just ready to go. You were just bursting at the seams, ready to hype up Jalen Hurth there, but.

Here's, here's how it goes. I'm prepping for the pod I'm watching the games and I'm always like right just like don't put the Eagles game on it's gonna be bad we're not gonna be bad and then I always put it on because the Eagles want to root for the Eagles and then stuff happens

and I go and I go downstairs and I have dinner with Mayer who has never watched a day of football in her life and I just expunge every Eagles take from my being usually very frustrated over dinner and then for the podcast I'm like clean you know what I mean like I've like done my juice cleanse

and I have no eagle stuff to get off my chest. You told me in the pre-share, like, we're talking Eagles. And I was like, right, hold it, save it. You got to bring it for this moment. I hope I delivered. Wow. This seems like great news for your marriage. Yeah, I was going to say, how does your wife react to any and all football takes? It's very funny. Like, she enjoys, like, learning about it, just because, like, it's fun when people talk about things they're passionate about, right? And so what I like to say is, is, you know, mayor has, like, very little football, And then she has these, like, massive spikes of, like, what I consider to be, like, good football knowledge, right?

Except I'd talk about on the podcast, right? Like, we'll be watching football. And I'll be like, oh, that's like a safety. She'll be like, oh, my goodness. And then, like, five minutes later, she'll be like, oh, like, you know, Mahomes isn't scrambling as much because defenses are trying to prevent him from doing that. Because that's what makes him so dangerous. And I'm like, yeah, baby. Though you should, you should know what a safety is also first.

We should do that and then do that. But yes, good. So it's very funny. She has kind of, like, weird polar knowledge. My wife goes like one sporting event a year and she usually has some pretty good insights, kind of what you're talking about, because she just views it with no prior knowledge whatsoever, including the best line she's ever had, which is I took her to a Chargers game at the soccer stadium they played in, and she asked me halfway through if the game counted.

All right. Nora, anything on this game? Or was that just the Benzolak show, presented by Benzillac. It was beautiful. I actually have no, I have no thoughts. I have no thoughts on this game. I've no thoughts on this game. I will be honest.

I did not see this game. I saw a couple of plays. Barring anything unforeseen, I will not be talking about the Eagles this season. My only other, like, you know, take if we want a touch point here is that the Broncos against the Eagles had the same problem. They've had this throughout the season that the Chargers are having with their Brennan's daily defense and that the Browns are having with their two high fronts. you've got to have a nose taffle who can play. I mean, the dude's got to be a stud to get the job done. The more I watch those defenses,

the more I appreciate what Sebastian Joseph Day is to the Rams. And I think all of these teams are going to watch Jordan Davis out of Georgia this year and just say to ourselves, we need to get this guy. I don't care if he's only playing two downs. If we want to live in this structure, the dude in the middle of our defensive front has to eat people. And then none of those teams have that guy right now, and it gets them killed in the running game.

All right, let's get to Ruizance. we'll see you next week, Ben. Yeah, see what the Eagles do then. All right. So we have a great listener base, great fan base, and they're very creative. And I've been getting a couple of DMs, probably a couple of weeks,

with names for this segment, because the joke is that we're going to change the name every single week. Ruiz's Razors, the suggestion earlier had been 13 Ruizans Y, which is our personal favorite. We got two this week. One was Rui Lewis and the News,

and then the second one, which Nora took a liking to and Stephen and I tried to dismiss out of hand was, uh, what is, I can't remember, Ruiz it or not.

Ruiz it or not. Ruiz it or not, which is an awful. Stevens Ruiz it or not. Ripley's believe it or not. I, I applaud the creativity, but I actually am dismissing both of those.

Yeah, I think, I love Ruizzer not. I feel like at a certain point, you guys are harsh. You should tell people to just stop. You're not talking about. No. No, don't stop. Don't stop. I'm so happy. I thank both of those contributors. I thank them privately.

And I did, I'll do it here publicly. And they sent, for some reason, most people send me DMs and don't tweet at me. One person, the person who said, uh, Rui Lewis in the news said they purposely didn't want to tweet it because it was a pun. And they didn't want to associate that with their brand. What is their brand? I don't. I don't know. Not puns. I'll tell you that much.

All right. So you're here to do two games. We were supposed to do one. You've done one the entire season. But then Cam Newton came back and scored two touchdowns. And we just needed to break it down. We're going to start with the Vikings and the Chargers. And Justin Herbert, who at this point, we have to have a little bit of a conversation about.

According to the pro football reference, his passer rating, obviously, this today was 72.5. It's a third time in the last 30 days. He's at a pass rating under 75. Before that, he only had one game in his career under 75. What's going on, Stephen? Nothing with Justin Herbert. And I say this every week. I really think he's one of the best quarterbacks in the league.

Last week I was saying he was the best. But now I think he's firmly top four. It changes every week. Okay. And the thing is, like, this is, like, the maxed-out version of Joe Lombardi's offense. and it's still not good enough. And I think that's an indictment of him. Because when you watch the tape,

he's making the right decision every time. Like, he's throwing to the open guy, the guy he should throw it to. So I'm not sure what else he could do other than will other guys open, which sometimes he does that. He did it a couple times. He had one throw to Keenan Allen

where I still don't know how he got to throw up and over the Vikings defender. It was one of the best throws I've seen. And at this point, I'm used to it. when he makes these wild throws, like at least once or twice a week, and I don't even react anymore.

He's like at a Patrick Mahomes level in that regard. All right. So what do we need to do to solve this Justin Herbert thing? Well, I think Joe Lombardi needs to watch a little Joe Brady tape. See, I'm mixing the games. I'm bringing them together. We've had Dan's. Now we have Joe's.

Right. Joe Lombardi, I feel like, wants to be Sean Payton and wants to run the exact offense that Sean Payton ran for Drew Brees all those years. and when you look at the type of quarterback Justin Herbert is and the type of quarterback, Drew Breezes, they couldn't be more different. I don't know why they're still running this offense.

And then you look at Joe Brady, who's also a Peyton disciple, runs a lot of their stuff. But it looks different. The base of the offense was different for Sam Darnold. It was different for Teddy Bridgewater. He adapts to his quarterback. He's not going to run the same offense.

He would have ran for even Joe Burrow at LSU or Drew Breeze in New Orleans. Orleans. It's a different offense. And you're not playing to Justin Herbert's strengths, which is that strong arm. Like, throw the ball down field, please. Stop throwing these like intermediate corner routes. Throw down the field in the middle of the field. You have one of the best arms the NFL has ever seen and you're not using it. I don't get it. All right. So he threw an interception to Eric Kendricks, almost got returned for a touchdown. I think he got tackled on the four. What happened there? That was just an amazing play. Eric Hendricks, he's doing what's. He's doing what.

called a robot technique. And this is what linebackers do against play action. If there's a play action fake and the linebacker usually takes a step up to defend the run, but if they realize it's a play action, then they're taught to immediately turn their back to the quarterback and find the crossing route. And that's what Keenan Allen was running. He was running the crossing route over the middle. Kendrick finds it.

His hips are turned opposite of where Keenan Allen is running. And I think that's when Herbert hit the back of his drop and that's when he threw the ball, which a good decision because you have one of the best route runners in NFL going in the opposite direction of a linebacker. But Kendrick just flips his hips, turns around and dives and catches an interception. It wasn't a great throw. Like he left to throw like two yards, one or two yards behind Allen, but an amazing play by a linebacker. Like all, and this is how all of his interceptions are. Watch all of his interceptions on a reel and they're just amazing plays by the defender.

All of his interceptions are fake. He's never thrown a real interception. What a take by you? I think we might need the sound effect. Yeah, play the sound. There we go. Justin Herbert has never thrown a real interception. Wow.

What about the college level? That doesn't count. He was a different quarterback. He was a terrible quarterback at Oregon. I don't care what anyone says. Go back and watch that film. He was a totally different quarterback. The Vikings won this game.

Any thoughts on that team? This was like the most extreme Kirk Cousins game I've ever seen. It's like he leaned into all the Kirk Cousins. doesn't mean. There was like, there was this weird fumble where he kind of just threw it backwards. There was a couple plays where there was one intentional grounding where he just threw it at his left guard's helmet. There was no receiver around. He just threw it at his helmet and, you know, he got flat. It's like, he's effectively wild. He's like a baseball pitcher. Right. And then, but on third and 20, he's like, he's completing every pass. Like they had like,

yeah, he's picking his spots. They had like three, three times where it was like second and 20, third and 20 and they convert it every time. I don't understand. Actually, I do. The Chargers defense can't tackle. That's the problem. If you're looking for a problem with the Chargers defense, they cannot tackle.

Like, Jerry Tilleri, I've never seen to make a tackle. Like, I've never seen Justin Herbert throw a real interception. What is the ceiling on this Chargers team? Like, we talk so much about who's good in the ASC and all that stuff. Like, have the charges in this conversation? Are they limited by the offense at the running and all that? I think they're more limited by the defense, to be honest.

Like, they just don't have the front to run the type of defense. that Brandon Staley wants to run, the type of defense they hired him to run. I don't know if it's the smartest thing to keep running that defense, but he's doing it. And then on the other side of the ball, like I said,

I think Lombardi is holding this team back from where it could be. I'd say it's Lombardi, and then they don't have a field stretcher. Like, I really thought they should have went after Deshawn Jackson. I think he would have been the perfect piece for them.

They just don't have a guy you could take the top off of the defense. It's Mike Williams, who runs like a 4-5, 4-6. I honestly cannot The Chargers are kind of The perfect AFC team for me And that I just I can expect anything

Like if they won two playoff games They'd be like yeah, that checks out It's just it'll develop And I also think that we shouldn't kind of Prejudge when we're talking about A first year offensive coordinator And a new head coach And as impressive we've been with Brandon State

Like these things do take time Especially in the modern NFL Like I do think that they might be a team That gets better in December but I'm withholding judgment. All right. The real main event. Cam Newton is back.

They gave him $10 million for the rest of the year. You're number one Panthers fan. This is a moment for you. Not just because you're a Panthers fan and that team's been reunited with the former MVP and NFC champion. But you're also like one of the last Cam defenders. Was this heaven for you?

Was this a peak for you? Apex Mountain? This is a top five. moment as a cam slash panthers fan. Yeah, I would say it is. I'd put, I'd put 2015 NFC championship game up there beating Seattle in Seattle that year. Uh, his first game when he threw for 422 yards against Arizona in Arizona. Against Arizona. Yeah. Circle of life. A feat not brought up until the days of Mike White. Mm-hmm. That's a, that's a great point. Some are saying he's the next Mike White. Hopefully he doesn't throw four interceptions next week.

Uh, but yeah, this is, this is, this was really, we're not going to mention this anywhere else in the podcast. Mike White was terrible today. And he's going to get benched because he looked as bad as Zach Wilson's looked this year. Zach Wilson this week. Maybe not the quarterback of the future. Zach Wilson this week said that he wanted to be more like Mike White and I feel like Mike White

came back to him. And it's like, I'll make it easy for you. Mike White was like, no, no, no, no. I've actually admired the way you play Zach Wilson. How's a 37 quarterback rating sound? I don't even know where I was. A great moment. Great Panthers moment. I I haven't felt like this since 2011 as a panthers fan.

I'm going to be honest. I haven't been this excited about the team. I was checking like playoff standings today. It was. What's the situation there? They're the, they have the 70s. They got some winnable games coming up.

They play the Dolphins. Are out now, right? Yeah, Falcons are, I think they're ninth, the Vikings are eight, actually. Phew. Yeah, Vikings back in it. Is it? this real?

Probably not. They do have a brutal end to the schedule. Yeah, and we should put in context that the Cardinals were obviously without Kyla Murray and Dodger Hopkins. And they ended up losing Colt McCoy. And Chris Treveller, Chris Trevler, is that is, I don't even know if that's his first name. I mean, it's Streeller.

I'm not pronouncing his last name wrong. I don't care. I'm not pronouncing it right. I've always said Strebler. The four times I've ever said, I watched the game and I don't know. When are you been talking about? Strebler enough to say his name.

I know I've said it before, but probably like two or three times. And those two or three times I've had, I've said Strebler. Never said it out loud. Not intending to. I think we said it last week. I certainly didn't. Like who's backing up cold and boy. Oh, it's Chris Streepard. But let me say this. Like, I think people throw around like the Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite meme way too much for quarterbacks. But he actually throws like that guy.

Like look up his throwing motion and look up. the gifts of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Diamond. Same guy, same throwing motion. One of the worst quarterbacks I've ever seen play in the NFL. So the Panthers now, it's pretty obvious what happens here. Cam Newton is going to start. They asked him how much of the playbook he knew on Sunday, and he said two touchdowns worth,

which means obviously he knew the package of plays he was going to have. He ran them. He ran them effectively, but it wasn't like, you know, PJ Walker was a starter for this game. what do the Panthers do with Cam Newton? And how long is it going to take to click, Stephen Lewis? I think it's going to take some time. Last year, Cam admitted that he had some trouble picking up the Patriots playbook just because of the nature of the offseason.

And then he obviously missed a game with COVID. And I think you're basically replicating that situation by coming in in week 10. But I will say this, Joe Brady was running the most simple offense you can run for Sam Darnold. I don't see any reason why Cam can't run that same exact offense. It's basically like boot passes, some quick game, and then option routes to Christian McCaffrey. And they ran like 10 of those today, by the way. Like Christian McCaffrey is the whole offense right now. And I think adding Cam Newton to that is going to take some pressure off him.

And I think it will make him a lot better. And I have to say this about Robbie Anderson. I was watching Panthers film before today's game. You could see that he like actively despised playing with Sam Darnold on the film. Like every time Sam Darnold made a decision. look at the film. He was screaming at him on the sidelines. But I'm saying just from the film alone. You don't need all 22 for that. Right. Okay, go you could see it. And like he was glowing today. Like he was so excited and so happy and I'm happy for Robbie Anderson.

Team building problem. Sam Darnold's 22, 18.8 million dollar option. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to do with. That was a mistake right when they made it. Like even before they made it, people were like, they're not going to pick up his option. Are they? Then like a month later they did when no one was paying attention. And the dead of night, which gave Sam Donald, $18 million. They, like,

leaked it to Rappaport at, like, 3 a.m. I just made that up, by the way. It reminds me, this is a little separate, but it reminds me of,

like, when Andrew Luck retired, the Colts just gave Jacoby Brisset more money. They were just like, here's the starter now. Here's a bunch more money. It was just kind of like, you didn't really have to do that,

you know? I just kind of feel like sometimes teams want to give a starter money so that everyone respects them as a starter money. So that everyone respects them as a starter money. starter. Yeah, that was like a thing with Nick Foles in Jacksonville, too, right? Famously. Famously. The Jaguars say he needed to be paid like a starter, so they gave him a ton of money. It turns out just giving a guy money so he's more respected in the locker room is not a market and efficiency that needs to be exploited in the NFL. Who knew?

Could you imagine? Turns out that handing out bags of cash in the debt of night. It's a bad quarterback. When Holmes was on his rookie deal, he didn't even get his fifth year option because they signed the extension before that. Nobody respected him in the locker. room because he was only making you know four million dollars after one of the super bowl the players were just like who is this guy he makes four and a half million dollars he's going to make 18.8 next year come on anthony hitchin's made more than mohomes for the first couple of years probably more respected russell wilson made less than the long snapper uh when they won the uh the the 2013s rule the baby many one well did you see

him today and he brought a coffee every morning maybe that was a good decision hey uh i want to you out on two more things. Number one, anything else on the Panthers? Uh, no. No, I got nothing. Wait, I've got something. All right, go. So I just want to read you a tweet from David Newton, Panthers reporter. It just says, PJ Walker understands if Kim Newton is the starter next week. Yeah. I bet he does. They give him a $10 million one year deal. Um, Stephen, you had Travis Kelsey on washed watch this week. I got a new person on was,

watch watch. Okay. Okay. So is the Wash Watch Search Committee calling off at search for Travis Kelsey? It's over. He's off the list. No, from what I saw, I felt like they were like helping him out. And I think that's kind of proof that the Chiefs kind of know

he's washed. Like they're lining them up in the backfield and running routes to avoid and getting jammed. So we're putting Andy Reid on the Wash to Watch Search Committee. Yeah. Yeah. He's on. Okay. I'm sorry. You were making a scheme point and I interrupted you. Go ahead. No, but I'm saying like they're hiding him because he was getting jammed at the line a lot

And he was having problems getting off the line And now they're kind of like hiding him behind the line And like putting him in stacks to avoid that So I think that's an acknowledgement That maybe he's not as good as he was At getting off the line of scrimmage before Isaiah get the sound effect ready Who do you have a watch watch right now?

Steve Norris I already hinted at it Russell Wilson And I got a stat for you This is like a real stat that I think is interesting his pressure dropbacks are turning into sacks at 25% of the time this year. Okay. Only once before in his career has it been over 20. And that was 2018, and he had a hamstring injury for about a month and a half.

So if Russell Wilson can't escape pressure as we're used to him doing, I just wonder what this offense looks like. And I wonder how his game ages because he is a guy that isn't the most comfortable in the pocket. I'll put it like that. and has relied on that creativity to make plays downfield, and we're not seeing that anymore. I think that's something to pay attention to. Russell Wilson on Watch Watch, Isaiah, where is it?

One more thing. You said last week that you just had a list of hot takes that you just wanted to get off. Give us just one. All right, I got one. I'm going to give the Brown's secondary a break because I have to imagine it was a hard adjustment going from playing Joe Burrow last week

to a rocket arm quarterback like Mac Jones by comparison. Oh boy. Thank you. Burrow, huh? I had a sneakdown in there. Burroughs just trying to have a nice Sunday. I know. He was on by.

Still caught astray. Sorry. See you next big buddy. Thanks. Listener question. It's from John Brazil. Brassel. Do the last three weeks put an end to Brady?

MVP talk. If so, is the frontrunner, now Josh Allen. Okay, so that seems to be a pro Josh Allen question disguised as a what's going on with the MVP race discussion. So Josh Allen lost the Jaguars last week and looked awful. So let's pump the breaks in that a little bit. Having said that, Brady losing to the football team puts him in the race with everybody else, which is to say there's just been a lot of stinkers by people we've been talking about. as MVP candidates over the past month. Nora, where do you stand on this? So I think the answers to those questions are no and no.

If you're, Brady statistically has been a very good quarterback this season. He had enough space that I think he can can withstand a couple stinkers if things pick back up. If you want to make an argument against that, it's that things might not pick back up because of the health of the team. I don't think that Tom Brady will continue to play poorly just because he's been playing so well through the beginning of the season. I also think that the fact that basically every quarterback who's in the MVP conversation has had a stinker is meaningful to that end. If we are to say that the answer to the former question is yes and consider Brady out of it, I think the person who moves into the driver's seat is Kyler. because, okay, Lamar had a tough go of things.

Kyler's just injured, right? And we just saw, whereas in the first game, the results without him were good. We just saw what it can look like without Kyler Murray. And he hasn't had just the terrible stinker of a game that we've seen some of these other top contenders have. So I would say that he moves into the driver's seat a little bit more than Josh Allen. Or maybe, look,

before the last game, I would have said Lamar, again, I think there's room to sort of pick that back up. Can we not give it to a non-quarterback this year? We can't ever give it to. We just, it's just, I'm just done with that. It's been 2012, they give it to Adrian Peterson. Yeah. Okay, if like the Bengals make the playoffs, can we just give it to Jamar Chase? Like, Cooper Cups breaking all these records, but they're not going to give it to him because it's a McVeigh-Stafford situation. Like, we can't give it to anybody just outside the box. going to just figure out who the best of these quarterbacks to keep having stinkers is, or they're injured or whatever?

Yes, because this is the NFL MVP award. I just wish we could just do something a little bit different this year. That's all. I'm going to start the movement. The problem is there's no, like, dominant, like, J.J. Watt style from a few years ago where he decided Troy and Sacks, the Trillion Pressures, played it run well. Like, there's no, like, I think Miles Gareth's leading the NFL in Sacks, but the Browns aren't really good enough for that.

He's not, those stats aren't just like eye-popping and dominant. No, there's an award for that. It's called defensive player of the year. Yeah, there's an offensive player of the year, too. Right. That's going to be Cooper Cup. The offensive rookie of the year will probably be Jumar Chase. What about Mack Jones?

Another few games like that. He's coming for it. But I just, I just hate that we, I just hate that we're just going to keep going around and saying, well, this quarterback. in a bad game. He's out. Like, let's just do something else this year. This is my take. I agree with that impulse. I just don't think that it will happen. I wish Trayvon Diggs was better. Like, I liked the fact that he has seven interceptions, but then he just, he just gets destroyed all the time. I really hear you on that. I really hear you on that.

If he was just like a little, like above average on certain other parts of his game, I would, I would start a movement there. But that's not that I feel about Ryan Fitzpatrick. There's nothing else we can do. All right. We'll be back next week. Next up on this feed is the player's show with James Jones, Ryan Shazier, and Jason Gough. I'll be back on Wednesday, probably with the show Patrick Mahomes ahead of the Cowboys game. I have to figure that out. Slow News Day is back on Tuesday.

We have another debut guest. Really, really excited about that one. Nora and Mal are on Thursday. Do we know what we're talking about yet, Nora? Nope, that's TBD. Very exciting, though. And then the Friday show, obviously, Ben, Stephen, and Kaelin. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely for production help with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramkeball.

This has been the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer podcast network.