The Ringer NFL Show - Week 11 Recap: Chiefs' Comeback, Saints' Success, and Winners and Losers | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Kevin and Nora start by discussing another comeback win for Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs (3:50). Then they talk about the Indianapolis Colts' wild win over the Green Bay Packers (16:27). After that they give out their winners and losers for Week 11 (35:17) and answer some listener questions (1:16:45). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark, joined today by Noah Preciati. We talked Tua, Mahomes, Taysam Hill, the Colts, and Lamar Jackson. Today's episode of the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer podcast Network is brought you by State Farm. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate, that's like drafting a player that becomes an all pro, the real deal. State Farm agents provide personalized service so you can customize your insurance to fit your needs, like a GM putting together with their very own roster.

You need a team that supports you, and State Farm's got a great one. In addition to agents, the award-winning mobile app helps manage coverage, pay bills, file claims, and more. With a great price, even greater service, State Farm grows from strength to strength. Choose insurance that always brings its A-game. When you want the real deal like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Nora, tough day, Jets officially eliminated from playoff contention. It really, I thought they were going to hang in there a little bit, but then he just decided that it's not the Jets here. 2020 strikes again.

Tough, tough. It deals you surprise after surprise, and it came for the Jets today. This was an amazing day of football, but my niece, she's about eight months old, and she was in the room with me at one point, and I looked up and I realized the first game she'd ever seen, ever.

First football game she ever laid eyes on was Brown's Eagles. It was a tough moment. It was a tough moment. She was watching about 10 minutes of it. I wasn't really putting two and two together. But yeah, she watched a little bit of that. And that was, you know, it's a tough day.

It's a little different. I don't know if she's listening to Mozart, all those things that are good for development. I'm not sure that Browns Eagles is good for early childhood development. The first game I remember watching was Washington football team Monday night game. Yeah, I guess I would guess the early 90s. Okay. Do you know if it was a good game?

I don't remember. I mean, it was back when they were competent, so it was okay. But it could only go up from here, I guess you can say. I was born in, like, the O.J. Simpson car chase and all of that coverage was like right, right, right before I was born. And I love to bring that up to my mom because I love to tell her that she had like all of this crazy television to watch while she was super pregnant. And she doesn't like when I do that. Okay. that's all.

The OJ case knocked your birth out of the news is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to be A1 and then it kind of got pushed. Second page kind of deal. So we have a lot to get you today. Tassum Hill. It doesn't have to do with my birth.

Taysam Hill, Tua, Colts Packers. I mean, this is a very full show. Don't let the banter fully. This is a very full show. But we will start with what we just saw. a what would be considered great game for anybody else, great comeback, all that. It just seems down right. Normal.

It's a 35, 31 win for the Chiefs over the Raiders. I know this is Kevin O'Connor's bit, but I'm just going to steal it. I'm going to appropriate it for a second. Don't take this for granted. This is not normal. Patrick Mahomes getting the ball back within her two minutes to go, and it feeling inevitable is special. And I don't want anyone, I don't want any sort of fatigue to sit in where we go, oh, of course,

Patrick Mahom is going to score. No, this is not, this should not feel. normal ever. Nora, first takeaway. I am so glad the Chiefs won this game because if they didn't, in my heart of hearts, I would still believe that they are inevitable. And I would not really feel like it had changed all that much. But we would be looking at a situation where the Raiders would have swept the Chiefs this season. And Patrick Mahomes's only two interceptions of the season would have come against Las Vegas and we sort of would have had to acknowledge it, except I don't know about you, but I think I would

have been working through that and trying to figure out what happened and what went wrong and still feeling this little thing deep down inside me just going like we know they're going to be there even this even losing two games to a division rival is not enough to say that this formula which remains the best super bowl formula that exists which is a great passing offense and a defense that is better against the past than the run but good enough is still in play and then we just just see Patrick Mahomes do Patrick Mahomes thing. So we don't have to have that conversation. And I'm very grateful that we don't.

The best formula is to have a basic level of competence plus Patrick Mahomes. Yes. Absolutely. I would take that. I would take that in football. I would take that. I might take that in baseball. I might take that in like hopscotch.

That's even maybe beyond sports. Any competitive thing. Any competitive thing. So in. in so many chiefs games, the only thing that matters is the one team bad at Patrick Mahomes. I would extend that on Sunday night

to Travis Kelsey. Eight catches 127 yards. Obviously, the game winner at the end, Mahomes is moving according to X-10 sets at 13 miles per hour. I mean, there's just,

it was just classic chiefs. And I understand that those sort of comebacks. Again, when I say classic chiefs, I don't mean to make it say, think that I don't want anyone to think it's not special. This is just what they do. And I think all, credit to the Raiders. But when I was watching that game, and I was watching the last Raiders

drive, the second last Raiders drive, obviously, where they scored with Jason Witten had that touchdown. I was wondering, okay, if this holds, do I think any less of the chiefs? Do I start to think about the fact that I've said that they're going to make the Super Bowl for a number of weeks? Do I come off of that a little bit? And the answer is no. The answer is, you know, there have been times over the past two years where Mahomes has looked mortal. But, you Listen, like the house always wins. And Mahomes is kind of the house here. Okay?

Like, this is, there's not really a lot of ways to explain it. Collinsworth at the end said, you know, he's stacking greatness on top of greatness on top of greatness. And that's it. And that is why this all seems to run together at some point. But I think that you have the perfect marriage of scheme and talent and players. And the fact that the Chief's defense wasn't perfect tonight is fine. You know, Daniel Sorensen did not play well today. Well, guess what?

He had the game ceiling interception. Like, there's a, there's a type of defense that they need to employ that doesn't require them to be perfect or requires them to create turnovers, be just good enough. You know, I think Derek Carr played his ass off tonight. We'll get to the Raiders in a second. But it's a weird thing to say. But even if the chiefs didn't come back in this game, I would have had the exact same opinion. I just, this is just more confirmation of what the chiefs are, which is making them miraculous look normal. there's a little bit of hope in this game that the Chiefs might run up the score.

They were upset because the Raiders did the lap around their stadium and the bus. The victory lap. To stick it to a bus driver, apparently. Yeah, that whole thing seemed weird to me, especially because if I were celebrating a big victory, do you know what I would not want to do? Getting a feud with a bus driver? No, just spend more time on a bus than I need to. Like, when have you ever been on a bus and you've been like, yeah,

let's keep this going longer. You know what we should do is drive around a big stadium one more time. We're celebrating tonight. Like, that makes no sense to me. The last bus bus I was on was after the Super Bowl and the bus driver got lost and took 90 minutes to get back. Yeah, that checks out. Yeah. And would you have asked it to do an extra lap around a stadium?

I don't think so. It did an extra lap just, but just by happenstance is lost. Not because that's what they do. That's correct. Just making sure. Anyway, my point beyond the, beyond Busgate was that there seemed like there was a little bit of potential for the Chiefs to try to run up the score, which I don't really care about. I think this was a good win. I think the Raiders are a pretty good team and they remain inevitable as we have discussed here.

That said, I think there is a little bit of a weird perception of them this year because they haven't had a huge marquee win what I think they've done. That is what good... Right. Everybody should read it. Thank you. What they have done that really good teams do is they've blown out bad opponents. They've blown out the Broncos. They've blown out the Jets.

And that actually, I think it's Pro Football Focus that's done a lot of research on this. Really good teams blow out terrible opponents. They don't necessarily not play close games against better opponents. But it's very telling if someone goes in and just knocks the doors off of of a clearly inferior opponent. So I think it's really good for them that they've done that. That said,

they haven't had a big marquee win and they are sacrificing some of the big explosive plays that we've seen from them in the past for a slightly more efficient, less mistakes type of offense. And it is changing to a degree, I guess the amount of hype that they're getting. But what I think is really important

to start realizing as we get toward the playoffs is it doesn't make them, any less potent of an offense. And I think this is as good as an example as we've had. Yes. I think they're going to win in Super Bowl. And I've said that flat out a handful of times, especially since abandoning my original prediction a couple of months ago.

I do want to talk about the writers for a second because I've been hugely impressed with them this season. I was on Cowher on Friday and he was talking about Gordon for Coach of the Year. And I said, you know, I don't know if he deserves coach of the year, but he deserves an apology from me because the way that they've built their offense, well, they've built their franchise, has really impressed me. and I thought there was, oh,

they did well tonight, obviously, I mean, the fact that Nelson Aguor is a competent receiver. I mean, this is, we're going to dig into the Eagles,

I mean, really dig in. We're going to stick a knife in them, in fact, a little bit later. But Agalore, being a competent wide receiver right now for this team,

just shows you the fact that they can not only build a roster, but unlock value, I guess you could say. And that's what I like to see. I think Mike, bank's a good gym. I think John Gruden's good coach. I think that the way that they're playing with Josh Jacobs and Devante Booker and the fact that they're able to, you know, marry some of

the old school concepts that Gruden always wants to do with running down your throat with whether that's RPO's, where that's motion, whatever it is, how they mix it up. Like, I've just been so impressed in general with the Raiders coming into this game. Okay. And so I wasn't surprised by any of this. And I'm hugely impressed with Derek Carr. You know, Mina comes me at the point tonight that he's basically playing better than he was in 2016. when he was getting a MVP buzz. I remember us doing a halfway show in 2016, and I think a couple of us had predicted Derek Carr

was going to win the MVP. It looked like that. And obviously, that was more of a narrative thing. I don't think he was best quarterback in football. But with Carr in particular, one thing that I've always liked about him, and this is true of this year, I like seeing like third down passing, because I think the third down passing is everyone knows you're going to pass

and can you get better, on that down. And he gets better on every single day. First down, it gets better on second down, better on third down. Okay. And I think that there's just, there's something there where, and I know, I know this sounds like junk science, but I actually do think he, he can make plays when he needs to. And I remember doing some reporting around him a couple years ago, talking to his brother, talking to him, a couple other people. And he's got kind of, you know, his idol is Kobe Bryant. And I know he talks about the momentality and all that stuff. But I think he really likes these kind of close games. And I don't think he's the best quarterback in football. I don't think he's ever

going to be the best quarterback in football. But I like him in these sort of games. He got Mahomes tonight. There's no shame in that. I'm just saying if they play big games in December and January, I like him as a guy who can make certain plays in big spots. He's not going to overcome a ton. He's going to have to take advantage of the considerable talent they've put around him. But I like Derek Carr. It's funny. You talk about their performance on third downs because a couple of weeks ago, did a story about some of the punters on these teams that have been really good on offense this year who just haven't gotten to punt. And one of the guys that I interviewed for that was A.J. Cole, who by the way, was just a hilarious guy to talk to. You don't necessarily have a good gauge

if you get some time lined up with a punter, like what he's going to be like. But A.J. Cole just had me in absolute stitches and offered one of the best football takes that I've ever heard, which is that holding for an extra point is the most fun that you can have on a football field. And he actually kind of got me to buy in on it. He was like, no, no, you don't understand if it's a different year, like the crowd is going wild and I'm high fiving everyone. And I get to, this was a little bit sort of sad punter. He was like, I get to high five the quarterback. And I was like, okay, okay, Sparky. But he was really charming. However, one thing he said that made me laugh was he was like, I try to actually convince myself to be a little bit pessimistic.

And when it's third down, just assume that I'm going to have to go punt because I don't want to be caught not ready for that situation. But he was saying that this year, there's like a little thing in his head where he almost can't do it. And he said something along the lines of every time we have a big third down, I just feel like Hunter Renfro is going to convert. And I was cracking up because third and Renfro is kind of a media thing. And it's something people like to tweet about and joke about. But hearing that from a player is something that's kind of infiltrated how they think about it. To me, was very funny.

And it goes to your point about them relishing those moments and not minding being in those situations, which if you are a team like that that has a high-powered offense is not as strong on the defensive side, kind of has to be willing to play in those games, particularly when you're, in a really good division like they are with the chiefs. So I think they're a really fun team, but I also think that they're better than, than I thought they were going to be. And they would not be fun to be matched up against in the playoffs.

I agree. I agree. Six to nine on third down tonight. And listen, let me go back to analytics mode here. The best third down efficiency is never having third downs, getting the first down on first down, getting the first down on second down. I understand that. What I'm saying is the Raiders are not a perfect team,

and Derek Carr is going to have to make plays, and he's doing that. this is a team full of badasses. I don't want to, you know, obviously the chiefs played an amazing game today. The chiefs are much better than the Raiders. For me, when I look at this game, I have the exact same opinion of both teams as I did five hours ago. And so I don't think that there's a huge pendulum swing. The Raiders are still a playoff team.

The Chiefs are still going to make the Super Bowl from the AFC. If the Raiders were in the NFC, there's a totally different conversation. But this is, I felt like this was just a fun game that taught. me almost nothing because that's just that was just the nature that's that's just a cheats game did you see john gruden rub andy reed's belly at midfield after the game i did you know i've told this story before but i i once saw in or randon uh john gruden do the uh or andy reed do the the the tap on the shoulder walked the other way thing and john gruden didn't didn't react so they they have they have an unusual relationship is all i'll say um all right one of the weirdest

games of the year, Colts versus Packers. I think I learned a lot. Nora, so first of all, I want to go to 35,000 feet here and say that in the same way we've had a full year to look at the Brady-Belichick thing and say who was responsible for the Patriots dynasty. We now had that with Philip Rivers and the Chargers with who was responsible for that curse. And the answer, as with Brady and Belichick, is both.

So the Colts win this game in overtime. they outscore the Packers 23 after half time. It was not normal and there was a lot to unpack. Where do you want to start Nora? Well, let's start with the Colts defense and then

we can get to the Rivers Chargers thing because I think that's a little bit more variable and harder to parse still at this point. This is variable and harder to parse the nice way of saying that. Sure. With the Colts defense, I

thought this was a really interesting situation for them because they had played some bad offenses and played really well against them. So going up against Aaron Rogers and the Packers was, of course, expected to be very telling. And I was sitting there when Rockiesin picked off Rogers in the first quarter tied 7-7 on a throw to Marcus Valdus Scantling. And I had expected Rogers to kind of get the better of this Colts defense in this one honestly. And I just remember sitting there going, wow. And it's just one play. But this defense to me has been opportunistic all season, but to see them keep it up against

a quarterback as good as Rogers, an offense as good as the Packers, I think was really impressive. And it shows me that opportunistic is actually a really good place to be as a defense in the NFL in general now, and particularly. in 2020. But if they can pull that off and get that kind of play from their secondary against a quarterback who can make those tight window throws, then that's what you need. And so I think this was a really impressive win for them. I think their offense was super good in this game, although I would say that they probably will have a tougher time matching up against defenses that have better

linebackers. But overall, I felt like this was a huge test. for the Indy defense, and they definitely passed it. Okay. So I hate, hate when people say, we got to talk more about XYZ because we're in the media. And if we so choose, we could just start a campaign and people would talk more about certain people. And it's kind of a weird angle to play.

But I'm going to do that now. I'm going to be that we have to talk more about these guys guy. Is it Julian Blackman? Well, a couple of people. Okay. So Julian Blackman is number one. He obviously forces the fumble in overtime that wins the Colts the game. again, they probably should not have won

A. Listen, I actually don't understand who should have won this game. Okay, let's leave that aside because there were so many different, it was just such a seesaw game, but so Julian Blackman's number one. Darius Leonard, I didn't know this. I missed it during the week, but apparently Darius Leonard said he was going to

leave his mark on Rogers because he took it very personally when Rogers said that Fred Warner from San Francisco was the best middle line backer in football. So he put that, on his proverbial bulletin board, he put that there. And they told the media about it all week. I actually missed that. But obviously, Darius Leonard is one of the best middle line backers of football, whether he's better than

Warner, that that's a different podcast. Rocky Sin obviously made that play. We know about DeForest Buckner, but he showed up today. And so I just think that this Colts roster is really good. And I think that this is the kind of game that I wanted to see them play. Now, this was not perfect. This was the first time. I think six years they gave up 28 points in the first half. So for me to be, for the Colts be making a victory lap here, it's a little weird, but they made enough plays against a quarterback who obviously has the capability just absolutely burning you to a crisp. So about the Packers here. So Rob Domovsky makes the point here that there have been two games where they've played teams with winning records at the time. This does not

include the Saints because they were one in one. But every time they played a team with the winning record, it's been the Bucks and it's been the Colts and they've gone own two. They have not played a lot of great teams this year. And I want to see, as for a team, I keep wanting to crown the Packers. I love the Packers. But I want to see them in these sorts of games take control and win.

And I think that this frustrated me from that perspective. Now, there's a hundred things that happen in this game. There could be its own discussion. Number one was the fact that Colts should have put this game away in the fourth quarter and had five penalties in eight. eight plays to keep stopping the clock and essentially give Green Bay the ball back and then they were able to have that miracle driving force overtime. I don't know how you do that. Holding, first of all, throughout the league is just not called anymore. We've decided, we've, societies progressed

past the need to call holding. And yet the Colts have gotten every single holding penalty this year. Okay. I thought that was amazing. The second part of it is, and this, again, not to bring up Belichick again, but if the Patriots have done that, I'd be doing the 4D chess thing. I'd be wondering how exactly. Belichick was outsmarting it. Turns out the Colts just were holding on every play. It wasn't a strategy. At first I was like, something's going on here. No, no, no. The thing that was going on was that the Colts were just holding all the time.

You know those tweets that are like you could call holding on every play? People love to talk about this. This was the literal representation of that tweet. Yep. Yep. So the Packers have six turnovers in two games.

And I want to see more out of them on Sunday. And I start to look at the NFC. Okay. And I don't really, after Sunday, love any of these teams. The Bucks play like absolute weirdos every three weeks, the four weeks. The Saints X factor is Drew Brees and when his ribs heal. And I don't even understand the Breeze reports at this point.

It's like, oh, good news. He's optimistic. Oh, by the way, he has 11 broken ribs. So I don't know. I don't know what that looks like. If he comes back and he's healthy, the Saints are the best team in the NFC, I think. right? I had to ask in our production call how many ribs are in the human body, and it's 24. 24. So he's got over half, you know, so that's something. Come on, Drew. That's something.

So, again, I'm trying to crown the Packers because I just don't know about that Brie situation. And I want him to be healthy. He's over 40 years old. I don't take no risks there. And we'll get to the Saints here in a minute. But I don't know, a little bit of weirdness. Defense obviously let the Colts come back. Aaron Rogers does not blow leads in his career, but he blew this one. In the third quarter, they ran six plays in the third quarter, two, three and outs. Rogers, again, generally had some really good moments on Sunday. But I came into this game saying, okay, they're playing a really good roster.

They're playing a really good coaching staff. I'm ready to crown the Packers. It didn't happen for me. Well, so look at this game. And I think you said something a couple minutes ago about how it was a weird game overall and kind of difficult to parse in that aspect. The Packers lost three fumbles,

including the one Julian Blackman forced in overtime that set up the game winning field goal. Rogers threw a pick. The Colts were also two of two on fourth down. So those little plays have big swings in terms of who's going to win and who's going to lose. So this was, it went to overtime. It was, of course, a close game.

But it was especially close. And if those things go, in different directions. We're probably having a different conversation here. So I don't think that it's legitimate to look at this and go, the Packers aren't who we thought they were. They're playing a good team. Oh, no.

I'm not here to call them fraud or anything. I'm just saying, I'm stopping short of saying, here we go. It's Go Pack, Go, right to the Super Bowl. I wanted to do that. I wanted to have that discussion today. Maybe I'm bored. Well, but one,

it would be fun, right? It would be a nice little chat that we could have. But one thing that's stopping us, that is the type of thing that we don't end up having conversations about until this time of year and these types of games, the Packers came into that game with the 24th ranked special teams per football outsiders. And Jay Scott had a horrible day punting. And that matters when you're in games like this.

That matters when you're having trouble against teams with winning records because you're putting an offense like the Colts, which is not built like the Packers to succeed in basically any situation and can really, really get a boost when it's in favorable. spots like that, you're giving them short fields over and over again. So stuff like that is what's getting in the way of us being able to have that Packers conversation. Now, I would still rather be the really good offense with the questionable defense that Jonathan Taylor and Jordan Wilkins combined for 111 rushing yards and over four yards to carry.

So the Packers run defense is a little bit suspect. They were also just sometimes they play, especially on obvious, passing downs. They play off in a way that I just find so frustrating. Like, they were getting absolutely torched on crossing routes. I think Michael Pittman Jr. had the 45-yard touchdown. Next-gen stats had that over the last two games, he's caught all four of his crossing route targets for 121 yards in a touchdown, which is 50 yards more than the next closest player. The Colts are an offense that needs stuff like that to go right for them to have games like this. the Packers still ultimately are the team that I would view as more trustworthy because of their offense.

But when you start giving those little edges, that's how you lose a game like this. So they're not far away from us being able to have that conversation and crown the Packers, but they're also not there. And I don't know what else to say about that beyond the fact that it's just a little bit unsatisfying, but they haven't earned it. Can I tell you my problem with the fact that we're not able to crown the Packers? anytime soon. They play the Bears next Sunday night. First of all,

next Sunday night. I said that. I said the bears are going to play their next game on national television. That's the actual problem here. But let's put that aside. Let's put a pin in that. They play the Bears next Sunday. Then they play the Eagles in a 425 games. That would be on national television too.

Can't wait to watch Carson Wentz and Doug P. In that national window. Then they play the Lions. Okay. Then they play the Panthers. So we got bears, eagles, lions, Panthers. So if my concern is, I want to see them, I want to, and listen, this is mostly, this is not college. There's no reason for style points. It's just me trying to figure out the puzzle pieces and fans trying to figure out the puzzle pieces. So, I think the next,

because it gives us stuff to gab about. Which gives us absolutes, which in this crazy world, we're just trying to glam on. too. I'm all about style. Any questions? I think this Packers team can make the Super Bowl very easily. I don't think there's any question about that. I'm not going to hot take you here. I'm just saying that if we're looking for answers in the NFC,

I don't think we're going to get them until January 20th or whatever. And there's something to be said for that. It's like looking for meaning in a Polly Shore movie. It is. Is it like that? That's from the movie Clueless. Oh. It's like searching for love in high school is as pointless as looking for meaning in a Polly Shore movie.

Sharehorwood said that. I don't remember much of clueless. Clueless is my favorite movie. So I remember a lot of clueless. Okay. I didn't know that. It's good to know. It's good to the listener and I learn at the same time that little fun fact.

All right, let's go to Joe Burrow. So this is not a fun fact. Joe Burrow is likely out for the year. He tweeted he will see us next year. Ian Rappaport reported that Joe Burroughs suffered a torn ACL based on the initial diagnosis, according to a source to talk to Ian, there may be additional damage, and the MRI will apparently confirm the heat towards ACO

and then what additional damage there may be. I think that there's a pretty obvious takeaway here. Number one is that this is just awful, and this is one of the true bright spots for the Bengals franchise in a number of years. And this sucks. He came into the game, according to Joe Reedy, with 72 hits that was tied with Daniel Jones

for the most by rookie quarterback in his first nine games since in the last 20 years. I don't think anyone, some torn ACLs are pretty random, but the more pressure and the more hits you take, the more you're going to get hurt. And this was a situation where Joe Burrow was getting the crab knock out of him. Yeah, Mallory Rubin and I were having conversation about the rookie quarterbacks a couple weeks ago. And I was kind of thinking about what Burroughs season's been like as this 10,000 hour rule test where they were just having him drop back and throw. I think he was second in the league in pass attempts and third in time sacked going into this game. And it was a question of whether or not all of that pressure was going to be this trial by fire where he could develop or he was going to get crushed under it.

And just like you said, a torn ACL is a random thing. There's not a one-to-one correlation between the weakness of their offensive line or the number of times that they were asking him to throw and the fact that he got hurt. But it also probably isn't a pure accident. And just by virtue of being the number one overall pick, those quarterbacks go to bad teams definitionally. And that's the kind of situation that makes it really, really hard to be a high draft pick rookie quarterback because of the infrastructure is just not going to be great around you. And I was looking over the cap cap has the bangles with $46 million in cap space for next season.

There's guys like Brandon Sher for Joe Tuny who are going to be hitting free agency's guards. Most of the high-end tackles are older guys like Russell O'Kung or Trent Williams, but they will probably have to spend there or they can go to the draft. But the future of Joe Burrow is tied to what they can do to support him.

And that is a little bit of a scary place to be, particularly for a quarterback like Burrow, whose performance should be pretty stable, right? Like his skills are accuracy. He's good in a clean pocket. He's performed really well in the areas that are generally stable indicators of future performance for quarterbacks. But the thing that you can't boil down is what's the organization going to do around him?

And the Bengals don't have a great track record of being able to provide for guys in that way. So while it's completely random, and I think, we should leave any sort of discussion of whether or not he will be physically changed by this injury until we know if there's any damage beyond basic torn ACL because not to be flippant, these are horrible injuries, but in general, guys can come back from those pretty well if you get into additional types of damage. That's maybe a slightly bigger conversation. But it's a real reality check for what it means to be a rookie quarterback on one of these teams that was picking really high in the draft. And it's also just a huge bummer.

Scott Piole said something about the correlation between obviously quarterback health and playing on a bad team. And the fact that, and this sort of feeds on itself because, so essentially the thing you put out there was that the most, the teams with the most percentage of past plays this year. Chicago, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, the football team, Dallas and Cincinnati. And his point being that most of those teams have banged up quarterbacks or quarterbacks throughout for the year. And obviously, bad teams are going to pass more. Bad teams are also going to have worse offensive lines. And if you're Joe Burrow, they are going to tee off on you. And that is true of all of these quarterbacks. And it just really, and I was just thinking about

it tonight, it just really, really, really sucks to play quarterback for a young or a bad team. And I just hope Joe Burrow comes back stronger. I'm with you. I hope that they just, they spend a ton of money fixing the situation. And, and there's a better infrastructure when, when he comes back. So, you know, they, they had one, I was reading Ben Baby on ESPN.com. And he was saying, you know, they had one thing to do this year. And that's keep Joe Burrow upright. and he's now out for the year. It's awful. And we'll get to this discussion broader,

and more Broadway with Tua later. But I just, I hate this. And I don't know. I hate you be this guy, but I hate this for the league because I think Joe Burrow had had franchise changing potential for a franchise that needed it quite badly.

Well, he'd made the Bengals fun. Yes. They were fun to watch, which was an accomplishment in itself. Could you imagine doing that? And you just thought, the way that not that there's any ranking

of people who get people who get injured that's not what I'm saying at all but there are some guys and part of it has to do with him having played quarterback at schools that have a lot of players who go on to the NFL

but you see Chase Young go over to him and just have a moment and how hard it hits people all sorts of quarterbacks were tweeting out just thoughts to him and you know we got a taste of who Joe Burrow is in the NFL and he was really fun to watch.

It seemed like he was really fun to be around and it's just a bummer. We don't get that for the rest of the season. But hopefully if the Bengals do everything they possibly can, right, we will be back there as soon as possible. All right. Let's get to our first winner. Never a doubt. It's Sean Payton.

So he kind of won the weekend, Nora. Like he kind of won the last three days. starting Friday when he names Taysam Hill the starter over James Winston a total shock to the football world. I don't think anyone's talked about anything other than that for the past 72 hours. I feel like Sean Payton is just like,

I wish I could have a little fly on the wall cam of Sean Payton just like probably fist bumping all over the place. So nothing I love more than a good Twitter beef. I don't know if this really counts as beef, but Roddy White, former Falcons receiver, had tweeted, The Saints are about to get whipped trying us with Taysam Hill

quarterback and immediately after the game ends, I'm sure he was still in the locker room. He certainly couldn't have gone far. Sean Peyton retweeted it. So he right in the joy of victory pulled out his phone and it was like, I just want to dunk on the Twitter haters. Do you think he bookmarked it on Saturday? I'm going to say, I'm just like, I've got this ready to go. It seemed pretty specific.

I mean, no offense to Roddy, right? But that didn't come across my radar earlier in the week. And I feel like I probably spend more time on Twitter. better than Sean Payton does. So I think he was, I think he kind of had designs on that. And good for him because Taysam didn't necessarily light the world on fire, but he threw a pretty clean sheet. He was 18 of 23, 23 yards, 51 rushing yards, two touchdowns, 10 carries.

He lost a late fumble, but he didn't have any picks. And he put a pretty complete team in a situation to win pretty easily as their defense totally shut down Matt Ryan. So Sean Payton, proven right. So, yes, and the Saints won, Be the Falcons 24 to 9. You know, Steve Smith has a podcast. I listened to it a couple weeks ago,

and he was talking about how when he played Sean Peyton, it was just a trash-talking war for the entire game. And the Sean Peyton was just a completely different. Remember, he was trash-talking the Vikings fans a couple years ago before the Minneapolis Miracle. Like, he's a different guy. I mean, he's kind of, I guess weird is the wrong word, but he's definitely different.

any other coach in football. He's fun. Sean Payton can come to brunch. I was not surprised when this happened. Because in my book, actions speak louder than words. And if you give 21 million to a guy, including $16 million next year,

there's some commitment there. And it's not like James Winston was some great, obviously consistent player. I mean, James Winston had 30 interceptions last year. And according to football outsiders, he led the league and dropped. receptions. Okay. So like this this would have been a miraculous turnaround if he was a competent quarterback and was going to take care of the ball and all that stuff in week 11 this year. Okay. So I

it's not like I would have guaranteed this, but I was not surprised on Friday when this happened. Okay. I still think long term James Winston's probably a better NFL quarterback in, you know, 2025 than Taysam Hill, but that's a different discussion. So I think this was about first of all, Sean Payton, because he's now six and oh over the last two years with the backup quarterback. Teddy Bridgewater last year, obviously, Taysam Hill this year. And I think his ability to win games when other coaches would screw it up is phenomenal. And I think that he deserves a lot of credit here. The fact that James Palmer tweeted out before the game that Taysam Hill was also practicing being in on punt protection made me more excited than anything I've ever seen in my life.

If Tiger Woods showed up in my door at like 1250 today and he was like, hey man, the private jet is gassed up. We're going to go pounce my PAs and we're going to go play a gusto. Let's go. I'd be like, I don't know, man, Taysam Hill. Taysam Hill starting in 10 minutes. That's where I was at today with Taysam Hill.

And so the fact that he looked competent, he had two rushing touchdowns. He looked a little better passing the ball, although we've seen him pass. And this is a guy who had more tackles than completions in his career. Okay. That's kind of all you need to know.

And the report was Ian Rappell. had this couple of people had this that Sean Payton quote just wants to know if Taysam Hill can be the franchise quarterback and I don't know if you necessarily learn anything I'm obviously the the Falcons are a bad team but I kind of think that A you sort of know what he's capable of I guess you could say in the short term and I also think and I think this is this is broader than anything is if he develops in the next let's say Breezes out for a month I don't know if he develops into something competent then what he gives you when he's on the field in January as a tight end or as a running back or as a change of pace

quarterback. That is going to stretch the defense so much. And, you know, he had that one deep ball that was negated by a penalty. But if he could consistently throw a deep ball, I'm not saying he could, but if he develops into something like that where he just puts a couple plays on tape, that's going to scare the hell out of defenses for January. I think that's really, really important because I think what you can do with defense and the stretch you can put on a defense, even if you're playing tight end or whatever, wide receiver, whatever the hell they want to do. If they can strike a little bit of fear,

I think that is so huge in five weeks when that kind of stuff matters. And it would be really significant for other offensive personnel for them, right? And my argument here is certainly not that they wouldn't rather have Drew Brees, but it's not as if they weren't functioning with some offensive limitations in the first place. And so if he had a little bit more downfield ability, I mean... You're calling for a quarterback change. Sorry. You're staying on the bench, Breeze.

have a controversy. We have no, no controversy and it will be good for the saints if they can get Drew Brees back healthy as soon as possible. However, they have, the basic point is that they have such a good team that the most important thing is to not screw it up. Like, don't upset the apple cart for everybody else. And so I wonder if Peyton, who we got to give him credit for, he has some of the best quarterback intuition or evaluation ability or whatever it is, it seems like of anyone in the NFL. And I wonder if he looked at what he knows of Taysam and, and James and where they are right now

and figured that Taysam was less likely to turn the ball over. Because then you... How do you figure that out? It's not a high bar, okay? He used big data. He took one look at James. They were working around the clock. They were working in shifts to figure out who was going to turn the ball over less.

they had they had all of the Pfizer scientists take a break from working on the vaccine to take a look at James and go you know what I think this guy might throw the ball to the other team but that's not bad logic right because their defense had nine sacks Cam Jordan had three sacks they've held their last three opponents age under 14 points so it's not as if you need all that much and he gave them plenty so then the question becomes they have the Broncos falcons Eagles, Chiefs, Vikings and Panthers left. So when does Breeze come back? And what, or does he? And what do they do in the meantime? Because they're 8 and 2. And they could conceivably not have to care all that much about the Chiefs game and still have a real shot at the top seat here.

So they're going to be playing, I think, a little bit of sort of scheduled parsing. And figuring out how Breast. his health is going to factor into it. But they, it seems like their path, shockingly enough, when they're starting quarterback has 11 broken ribs, is not necessarily thrown off all that much by this. So I will say that there are,

first of all, our brains are broken by the fact that we're looking at 11 broken ribs and be like, oh, when does you come back? And it's like, if any of us had 11 broken ribs, we would just be out of commission for an entire year. So I kind of love football injury processes where it's like, oh, you know, it could be out of three weeks, whatever. Yes, I agree with all the points above. And the last thing I want to say is that to make this about Tassum Hill entirely is a little bit misguided. I know why the focus would be on, but the Saints defense played really, really well.

Lattimore was out with an abdominal injury. And yet Matt Ryan was sacked eight times. Cameron Jordan showed up. Snorris Jenkins played well, had that interception equal. into the game. So this was about whether or not, and this was the same with Teddy Bridgewater last year, whether the rest of the roster could make up for a back of quarterback.

The answer is yes. Again, I love the Saints. If Breeze were here, I'd love to crown them. I'm just not crowning anybody. There's going to be no crowning for a while. Let's crown the Browns as a pesky wildcard contender because they are now firmly

in a playoff seed. The playoff picture is heating up. I now bookmarked again, I do this every kind of around Thanksgiving every year, a bookmark the playoff picture. They're now the sixth seed. The Ravens, the Dolphins have dropped out. We'll get to both those teams in a bit.

But I want to know what you thought about this game. What do we think about the Cleveland Browns? Who, when I saw, I was of two minds here. Because when I saw that Miles Garrett was out with COVID on Friday, I thought, oh, this could be a problem. Miles Garrett is the best player on the field in that game. Hypothetically, if he suits up. He's obviously the best player on the Browns.

This could be a problem. And then I saw a staff from Eric Eager, my guy Eric Eager. And he said that your guy, your guy, Eric Eager too. Love Eric. He said that, I saw that Carson Wentz leads the NFL in interceptions from McQueen Pocket. So you don't even need Miles Garrett. Carson wants to just screw up on his own. But the Cleveland Browns take care of business.

What do we learn? So, Fray, I just want to go back. So you won't crown any NFC teams, but you will crown. Well, it's different. It's different crowns. It's different crowns. I'm giving out different types of crowns. So is one like a plastic CVS tiara crown is what we're maybe giving the browns? Yes.

That feels right to me. There's an NFC champion crown that is not being given out. But there's a pesky wild card crown that's different that is going to the Cleveland Browns. Okay, right. And I'm viewing that as like the plastic crown that Katie Heron like breaks apart at the end of Mean Girls and like throws a little piece to have everybody, like all of the seven and three and, like, those teams can have a little piece. You're exactly right. That is correct.

So the Browns, to me, seem like a team that for better for worse, and sometimes it's for worse, they do know who they are. And the Eagles just really stink. They stink. They stink quite badly. I've seen some really good defenses of Carson Wentz, just as a player, from people like Dan Rolovsky, who are just smarter than me about football. and I want to trust them.

But it is getting really hard to parse him just like holding the ball for forever when there's a pass rusher just like zeroing in on him. And you're wondering, if I turned my alarm clock up as high as it will go and put it in his ear and just tried to startle him,

like would he let go of the ball? Would he just try to get rid of it? Because I just don't, it's very, very frustrating. And I don't think that health, like, I'm out of excuses for the Eagles. They're just a really bad. And so back to the Browns. They only scored 22 points. And that's with the benefit of three turnovers from the Eagles. But Olivia Vernon was fantastic. With Garrett out, he still had three sacks. Nick Chubb had 114 yards. I just feel like they know who they are. They know that they're going

to be in the best position when they can get pressure from their defensive line and when they can run the and at this point that might be enough. And I don't think that they're going to make a really long playoff push, but this is also the weirdest year in history. So you can't really look at the position that they've put themselves in and say that it's all that bad. I was thinking about the Browns today, as one does. And I was thinking about how if you told me two years ago or even a year ago

that they would be in the hunt like this, I would not have been surprised, but I would have been surprised with just how it happened and how it all developed. And they've now scored only two touchdowns. in their past three games. Offensive touchdowns, obviously, in the last three games. And it doesn't seem to matter. Baker Mayfield, I thought this is going to be the week that Baker Mayfield finally passed Dak Prescott in passing yards.

And I don't think he got there. I think he's two yards shy. If my math is correct, I was writing it down. Society has progressed beyond the need for Baker Mayfield, as well as offensive holding. It doesn't matter. His value is that he's not the problem. And that this offense is doing just,

This team is not going to make the Super Bowl. I don't care if they make a win a playoff game. They're the season's success, no matter what, just building in the first year of Kevin Stefanski and this roster looking good. But I just think that the leaps and bounds they've grown from one year to the next is really interesting.

And how this team was built and developed and all that stuff and the process, Osce's process, and John Dorsey and all the stops and starts, the fact they're able to put this together. with some of the talent from previous teams plus new talent, plus seeing what they flopped on last year, like lose out L. Beckham.

Like I'm just so impressed when I see a game like this. And I understand the Eagles stink. And we're going to get to the Eagles in five seconds. But when someone is making a mistake, just let them. Okay. And when I think about the Browns, the Browns used to be the team that would just implode. And teams would go, oh, good, a free win.

And now it's the damn Eagles, who three years ago looked at the smartest organization in sports. and the Browns the team saying, oh, good, we'll just play competent football and let these Eagles implode all in front of us and just pick up the pieces and score a touchdown. The Eagles, by the way, still in first place in the NFC East, we had a conversation earlier in the week where what did you call them? What did you call this game? Like Schrodinger's football game? Yeah, I just said it doesn't matter. It matters and it doesn't matter.

And because the Eagles, the Eagles at this point can lose. I was playing wrong with the 538. the 538 playoff simulation and if they lost their next three games the Eagles including this one

so two more after this they'd still have a 35% chance to make the playoffs what are we doing what are we doing okay so let me get to the Eagles here

for a second I'm going to get angry here for a second because I remember visiting that facility after they won the Super Bowl and thinking this is the model franchise

and it's the same people it's Doug Peterson it's It's the guy and the general staff and the general eat those. I know they lost Frank Reich and I guess John DiFilippo or whatever. And but, you know, Doug Peterson took Nick Foles aside and said, what plays do you want to run? And Nick Foll said, I run a couple more RPO's.

I have a couple routes, dagger route, I think it was, that they ran more of. And that, to me, everything seems so well, well thought out. And three years later, it doesn't look. like there's a plan. And this was a team that I thought played the long game better than anybody

who's not the Patriots. Carson Wentz not had a hundred pass a rating game all season, I don't think. He was absolutely awful today to the point that

he probably should have been benched. Doug Beersen said that his benching would have, quote, sent the wrong message to the team that the season is over.

I don't know how you can do that. You'd still be in first place no matter what. The message you'd be sending is we're trying to win the game. Okay. Wence was bad. Decision making was off. The throws were terrible.

Jason Peters. great career. Congratulations and everything. Jason Peters. Not the time. It's over. I guess unless there's something I'm not seeing right now, you should not be playing. Tim McMahon has said this as well. Jason Peters not going to be here next year. Alshon Jeffrey not going to be here next year. Where are we going? Is there no, is there no youth plan here for a team that, you know, used to draft and develop? And also, you know, when I was in Philadelphia talking to people there, There were a hundred reasons why they won that Super Bowl. Anything from, and I've told the story before,

but obviously they built through the lines, but then it's the one-year deals for really good for agents, that they can get in the building and then extend. It's the value of draft picks. It's, by the way, Jeffrey Lurie told me that they used to call the backup quarterback, the second quarterback, because they were so convinced that backup quarterbacks always play

because that's just the nature of an NFL season. So they always put a value on having a second quarterback. Well, they've got one and they refuse to play them right now. So I'm just wondering where the franchise should have been a literal model for any team in football, where that team went and whether that ever existed. Maybe I was just wrong. Maybe they just accidentally won the Super Bowl. I don't think so.

I don't think so. I think they built a great team with a great salary cap and great depth and great roster and all that stuff. And if Jalen Hertz can't come in and provide a spark, what was the point of the pick? What was the point of the pick? And Carson Wentz, some of the sacks he took, it was holding on in the ball in situations. Man, I don't know. I don't know. I just, this franchise needs a huge, huge shakeup.

And I don't think Doug Pearson should be fine. I think Doug Peterson's a really good coach, but I do know there's just no answers right now. And I don't know. I read Doug Peterson's damn book. I read his book. That's why you're mad. Because I read his book.

I wasted like seven hours reading his book. And now the legacy of this era of Eagles team is going to be getting Nick Foles. There's nothing in there. I was reading his book going, hey, this is a good coach. And now he's not even that. No, now the legacy of this era Eagles franchise is going to be getting Nick Foles the first. Lou Lemon ambassadorship for an NFL player. Do you have any other points or should we talk about the dark side of this particular division?

The dark side of the moon, the dark side of the NFC East. Let's do it. It takes me no pleasure to report this, but there is a legitimate path to victory in the NFC East for the Dallas Cowboys. Wolf. So first of all, they have the 31st hardest schedule in the NFL going forward. only Seattle has an easier schedule. They have, they play the Baltimore Ravens, which at this point, who the hell knows? Then they have the Bengals, which most NFC East teams do,

but then the football team, the Giants, the Eagles, and then the Natives. If I'm not mistaken, they have the most NFC East games remaining, which is pretty much the only thing that matters at this point. I was joking last week about how the problem with the NFC East is they don't play the NFC East in its entirety. And the closest you're going to get to that is Dallas.

Andy Dalton comes back, there's a first of all, I was just blown away by this. NFL put this out. You know the Andy Dalton and Dalton Schultz were the first, it was the first time ever that a last name threw to a first name and it was the same?

Wow. Andy Dalton and Dalton Shultz, first time that's ever happened for an exact name. It feels like, how could that be? I don't know. We've had Rogers to Rogers, but those last names.

It's the, and also you have like a Rogers to Roger kind of thing, but it's not an exact match. this is just outrageous. It's outrageous. Now, someone could conceivably be named Andy Dalton Shultz. That's actually kind of a nice, that's a nice name. That's a Hollywood name.

It is. It's a great name. So, Cowboys played a nice game. DeMarcus Lawrence played really well. C.D. Lamb looks like a great one. But the story here is that this is a bunch of teams with three wins, and it's anybody's division. If the Washington football team, they play on Thursday, Dallas and Washington football team, and the winner of that game, I mean, at some point it becomes insurmountable. Once you get to five wins, I mean, this is, you're resting your start.

I mean, Andy Dalton might be resting in week 17 if they get to five wins here in two weeks. So, okay, a couple things. First of all, I just want to say, like, blessed are the wide receivers who made this a watchable and actually very fun game. Justin Jefferson, great. The Vikings should not have lost. We'll get that in a second. Justin Jefferson great, but Cidieland made an incredible catch. Adam Thielen made an incredible catch.

Like the back corner of the end zone was just a fun place to be today. And the Cowboys won 31.28. So this could have been a dumpster fire and was actually a very fun game to watch. And I think we should count our blessings in that regard, particularly when the NFC East is involved, given how much primetime television space they take up. So that's great. The second is a question I have. you, which is, do you even want to win the NFC East? Because once you make the playoffs, draft position gets receded.

So it's not as if a terrible record for the team that wins this division is going to line up with their draft position. Like, they will all of a sudden be vaulted closer to the top. So it's a real, like, I think that's a real question because at that point, you're talking about a fairly significant. difference. Let me tell you why I want to win the NFC's because my life revolves around one thing and one thing only. And this is why I'd want to win the NFC if I played there. The only thing I care about is talking shit. I thought you're going to say the only thing I care about is winning. No, no, no, no, no. It's just relentless trash talk. And you win that division, you get months of it. So that's, I think bragging rights are important. Listen, in all seriousness, and I don't,

talking shit is not the BL and all with NFL players but these guys, yes, they want to make the playoffs and they want to there is a feeling who said this. I forget me of Steve Maryucci or somebody like that. There is a feeling

for a non-playoff team from January when the season ends until August and it is so different. It doesn't matter if you made it at 8 and 8 or 12 and 4 whatever it is. There's a sort of a Paul the hangs over.

And I kind of just feel like from a personal pride standpoint, from a job standpoint, you want more chances, you want to play. So yes, the answer is you do want to win the NFC East. And I think that that's, we'll see that. The Vikings, we don't have time to get into the Vikings, they should not have lost this game. I thought that they could have made a nice little NFC, like a fake NFC, like wild card run where we could have been thinking about in week 16.

This was not good. You lost Andy Dalton. You're done. All right. Loser. it's the Miami Dolphins. So we had, I don't want to say we were the conductors of the hype train because we weren't,

but we were, we had punched, we had first class tickets on the Dolphins hype train. We were talking about how they'd be tied with the bills at this point because obviously they're just playing the Broncos. No problem there. Not only do they lose to the Denver Broncos, but Tua,

who was a huge part of the reason for, was for optimism. was benched. And he will be the starting quarterback going forward, according to Brian Flores, but he left the game with 83 yards. There was no spark. There's more questions and answers to this point. You have, you're responsible for most of the two it takes on this podcast. Give us some more. There's nothing new here, right? There's, there's a lot new in terms of how their defense got run all over. And I actually think it's a pretty significant credit to the Broncos just for forcing another team into playing the type of game that they're more comfortable

playing. But everything that happened to the Dolphins offense, I guess beyond their offensive line being totally demolished, although that wasn't necessarily unpredictable either, is in line with what we've talked about, I think. Tua has shown moments of incredible poise that to me say that he has an incredibly bright future. I just don't understand what the problem with saying that a player who is 22 coming off a brutal injury in one of the weirdest years on record just might not be quite ready yet. And that is what it looked like. And then we had a quintessential Ryan Fitzpatrick experience where he came in. He started to lead a comeback.

He completed 12 of 18 passes for 117 yards. Get them in position to potentially tie it. and then he threw a pick in the end zone. He was targeting Devante Parker on 3rd and 8, and Justin Simmons picked it off, and the rest was history. I don't really know what else to say about where they are, other than that they are a very good team

that plays very good special teams and very good defense and has a limited offense that I think is a little bit less limited when Ryan Fitzpatrick is playing quarterback than Tua right now. And I sort of think that that's backed up by the fact that they are going back to Tua, but they felt like in that moment Ryan Fitzpatrick was going to give them the best chance to win. So it's clearly a close competition between those two. And you can make a very strong argument for getting game reps and helping Tua develop. But I still always come back to with this team,

how viscerally, negatively they reacted to the idea that they might be tanking and how they've won a lot of games that we didn't expect them to. and seem to place an incredibly high premium on just competing in every moment. And I still kind of have trouble understanding why they are playing a quarterback who doesn't seem like he necessarily gives them the best chance to win. So that's how I feel. The dolphins are never tanking. And I think that with Flores in particular, and this is something I thought about when

they made them move to Tua to begin with, and that why I was a little bit of a spree, to me, even though I obviously understood it, was because I think that they want to win the game in front of them at all times. And I think that Fitz was playing pretty well. So obviously, the Tua three-game run here dovetailed with just some great plays by the defense, with the dolphins understanding their identity and who they are. And you even saw that with, you know, how many times Tua on the first drive of the game was either given a lead or given great field position. And so, I think that a lot of the Tua hype was because of that because he looked good enough in games where they were making him look really good. And obviously part of that was Tua.

And he has exceptional poise. Yes. Exceptional. And he will be a star. And I'm not, this today doesn't make me feel any less optimistic about his future. I think that there are probably three medium term goals for the Dolphins this year. They're trying to make the playoffs. They're trying to develop Tua.

and they got to keep it to a healthy. Joe Burrow, obviously, we saw what happens, you know, the worst case scenario for a young quarterback. We saw that day with Burrow. But I actually think that, you know, first of all, the Tua has been taking some awful hits today. You know, I saw that Bradley Chub one. The offensive line was not protecting him.

And then Fangio was just, was scheming him up. And that was not good for a young quarterback. And so I kind of think on a day like today that, that in order to keep him healthy, in order to develop him more, and in order to protect the playoff run, I thought that Benjingham wasn't the worst thing in the world. And he'll grow from this, he'll learn from this.

The dolphins are, and this might surprise some people who don't follow everything closely, but what the dolphins are at this point, a very, very good franchise. And whether it's coaching staff, whether it's front office, cap, whatever, they understand how they should deal with the young quarterback. And so I'm not, there's very, there's maybe five teams I trust more right now to do the right thing.

And so I'm, I don't think this is as big a disaster as maybe someone might from the outside. I don't think it's a disaster at all. I just think that we got really carried away with the, with assigning the hype about this team to their offense, which was objectively just not producing a lot. ringer NFL Slack took a step back today It's really tough It's a tough look for us We gotta have Ben Glickman

Colin and leave a voicemail at some point But this probably isn't a week for it Hiding on the Zoom call to jump out here To defend to him with his 83 yards He's probably like he's like outside my door in Boston He's gonna like run in out from the cold I do want to We should take a moment to

Shout out the Broncos though Because for all of what we've made of the Dolphins defense, which I think is genuinely... Shout out Justin Simmons. Shout out Justin Simmons. But for all that we've made of the Dolphins defense,

which I think is genuinely very, very good. And the ways that they get pressure is incredibly interesting and effective. They did come into the game 29th in DVO against the run. And the Broncos just ran on them, which is a simple thing of attacking an opponent's weakness that more coaches should do and a surprisingly small number of them actually follow through on.

But Melvin Gordon had 84 rushing yards. Philip Lindsay had 82. And they attacked the, on the other side of the ball, they attacked the offensive line. It's the Broncos had six sacks. And I just always feel like it's worth mentioning when a team plays an opponent

that has more talent, is a better team than them, and just identifies the places where they're weak and goes after those. Sounds really simple, but it doesn't happen as often as you would think. So I think that's a good sign for the Broncos. Ultimately, what this comes down to is that they turned the ball over twice, Drew Lock Through Pick, and then there was the Andrew Vanginkle strip of Melvin Gordon on the goal end,

but they didn't shoot themselves in the foot, and they played in a way that allowed them to go through the game on their terms. And I thought it was impressive. Yes. Okay. So let's get to the next loser. it's Baltimore Ravens. And all credit in the world goes with Tennessee Titans.

We're going to give them a lot of props in this segment. But right now, the Baltimore Ravens, the team I picked to make the Super Bowl. They're just not good. So they went up 21 to 10 in the third quarter,

the type of team that's supposed to hold a lead, and they just didn't. Okay? Two touchdowns in this game were especially worrying. The AJ Brown one where Chuck Clark,

Marcus Peters, and Marlon Humphrey mistackles. And it wasn't even, AJ Brown, it's not like he was breaking the tackles. It's like he was shoving them aside. Like it wasn't necessarily, they were hanging on and they just gave up. It was really a strange play.

But this was, I'm feeling better about the Titans and worse about the Ravens after Sunday. And there's so many things to get to here. But the number one thing, before we get into sort of the scheme stuff and all that, was how many quotes after the game were about how much. much effort, how much more effort or toughness Tennessee had than Baltimore, coming from the Baltimore stuff. And that worries me a lot. Lamar Jackson said, look like the team wanted it more than us. And they were playing physical. Lamar basically said the same thing last week about how physical the Patriots were in the heavy rain. Derek Quiff took responsibility for the Derek

Henry touchdown and overtime that won the game, but they basically need to be more physical, is the bottom line from pretty much everybody. And so I was reading those quotes after the game about effort and physicality and stuff really worried me because so much of the Ravens identity last year was just running people over. And I remember going there

and Robert Griffin III made the comparison between the Ravens' offense and Lamar Jackson to the Marshaun Lynch run through an MFRA's face thing. That was their mentality last year. that's not their mentality this year. You know, Mike Brenner wrote a great piece in pro football focus last week

about essentially what defenses are doing to Lamar Jackson. It's essentially the same offenses last year. They're using the same amount of motion, the same amount of shifts, the same amount of heavy sets. The difference is teams are using more dime packages,

more defensive backs, lighter sets, all that stuff, and they're just more adaptable. And if you could beat the Ravens last, year and the Titans could they did in the playoffs, then you can beat them this year. But also other teams are having success there. So there's a lot to get to. Nora, what jumps out about the Ravens and the Titans today? Well, some of it is explainable.

So their inability to take advantage of those lighter defensive packages that they're facing. Some of that I think is just because they've had a lot of injuries on the offensive line. So when last year they were able to retire. Right. So some of last year when they would have been able to just pound the ball against those light defenses, they're less effective doing that. But there also does seem to be, and I'm glad you brought up some of the postgame quotes, because they have really bad vibes. And I'd spent a couple weeks just wondering, like, are the Ravens just kind of emo? You know, like, are they just like this?

We talked about it after the Colts game, how they, how just, how, how, a moose. of they were. I don't know what the word is. They just seemed like they were living and dying with every result this year. They're like a Drake song. I think it's because last year's playoff loss was so emotional that their expectations that year was so high that there's just, there's a bit of an emotional roller coaster that this year. Well, and I worry about that in the position that they're in now because they are currently

outside looking in for the playoffs. If they lose on Thanksgiving to the Steelers, They are out of the hunt for to win the AFC North. And with the way things have been going for the Browns, that's all of a sudden looking like they would have a tougher and tougher task for them just to get a wild card. And this is not exactly the most scientific and thoughtful analysis. But if you're a team that's going to come on hot at the end, I want you to be loose. Like I want there to be a screw it to us against the world. Let's just go for it vibe.

You know, had that vibe last year, the Tennessee Titans. Yeah. And I think there's something really probably wounding about playing two teams that pride themselves on physicality. They go up against each other twice. And one just takes it to the other routinely. And that A.J. Brown play, it reminded me of. of like a bunch of Ravens defenders trying to tackle like a really muscled up version of one of those like blow up guys that hangs out outside car dealerships.

Oh yeah. You know, because it's just, it's like a combination of big and slippery. But that is so core to their identity being able to do things like that that I bet it's really tough to lose in that way, to lose to a yards after the catch team like Tennessee. So in some ways I'm not surprised.

surprised that they're a little in their feelings right now. But I think it's a bad place to be if you want to make a late season push. You're great. And, you know, the best comparison runner made, I thought, was he compared this Ravens team to what happened to the Rams after Belichick owned the Rams in the Super Bowl. And they basically wanted a one-year funk now. So much of that had to do with the Rams, offensive line injuries and all that stuff and just not what happens when they had to adjust a little bit and take a step back.

They weren't able to do it. And then obviously a year or later, they've recovered and all that stuff. And they've gotten their mojo back, so to speak. And I just wonder if, kind of talked about the Sisyphus thing that Jim Harbour brought up years ago that I think about all the time where you, when you get close to the mountain top, it's just really hard to get back. And I wonder if I overrated their ability to bounce back immediately. Maybe, maybe this is a longer term project than anticipated.

Maybe they're not the team I thought. I don't know. All I know is is that I was most likely wrong. take my medicine, not too worried about it. They play the Steelers on Thursday, and we're going to learn a lot. The Titans real quick, we'll give them some props. Obviously, a great game with Derek Henry and AJ Brown touchdown. Both them sort of showed who they are as far as being physical badasses and, you know,

Derek Henry's second half. I've heard the broadcast talk about how he wears guys down. It seems like pseudoscience, but when you watch it, it's just not. Like, people get tired of hitting Derek Henry and trying to hit Derek Henry. Bucky Brooks is on the show a month ago, and was just like, man, when I played defensive back and there was a guy like Derek Henry, I was out. Like, I don't want to be a part

of that. You know, you don't want to get put on a poster. There's a real emotional response to it. So I just, I liked what they did. I am starting to like that team. And, you know, there's so many AFC teams right now with the playoff race that there's going to be good teams on the outside looking in, but I do like the Titans.

Jayon Brown, by the way, it's out for the season with a dislocated Elpo. Good Titans lined out. Some housekeeping. All right. All right, hurry up. Steers, Jags, go. Well, I got to flip to you on this one, Kevin, because I think you summed this game of pretty nice.

Steelers are 10 and O. Congratulations. We'll see them on Thursday. We can't, listen, this is 2020. We can't beat the Jags and expect praise here, okay? Chargers, Jets, Justin Herbert overcomes a bad haircut to win a game. Just hero stuff. Just some real hero stuff.

But I think the question is, does playing the Jets negate, the bad haircut juju or the bad chargers juju. We're going to get to that. Or are the Jets so historically bad that they can negate both of those things? It's food for thought. It's food for thought. Patriots versus the Texans. I couldn't believe this game.

The Texans were the worst rush defense in football. All the Patriots do is run the ball effectively. I cannot believe that they couldn't, obviously they couldn't generate any pressure on Deshawn Watson. DeShown Watson played out of his mind. I loved to Sean Watson. I was so disappointed in the Patriots Day. Did Devin McCordy opt out and not tell anybody?

That's brutal. That's brutal. Devin McCordy has my entire heart. Great guy. Great guy. Great guy. That's secondary. We're not playing well.

Being a great locker room dude does not, in fact, generate past breakups. That's what we're finding. Any hope for the Patriots going forward? I know you're so negative on them. They're just not good. Like, the difference in this game was one team. just has terrible infrastructure, but some good players. And the other team has great infrastructure,

but does not have enough good players to compete in a game like this. And that is absolutely where the Patriots are. And it is not about this season for them anymore. It's just not. Panthers Lions, my only take on this is that the Lions should have just kidnapped Joe Brady, like an old, like a 1900s war, just stolen him. I like it.

It's good strategy. Maybe next time. The biggest lines got shut out. They stink. Beep, beep, beep, beep. We did it. All right, let's do reader questions first. We get out of here.

All right, so we got two similar questions, okay? First is from Derek Ashworth, the golf man. If a trade was proposed between Nick Foles and Carson Wentz right now, how would either Philadelphia or Chicago feel about that? Would most fans rather have the other quarterback? We also got a tweet from Andy Johnson, one of the best golf minds on the planet who asked would you rather have Chicago's offense

or Philadelphia's offense? So both those are in the same genre. I want to focus on the foals for Wend's question. So if tomorrow Ryan Pace calls Howie, I guess off the season after the, when trading opens up, or if hypothetical you could do it now, if that trade was proposed,

how does that conversation go, Nora? I think they would do it, although... Well, they can't with cap, but that's not... This is a hypothetical, universe. Yeah, I think they would do it because when people get upset about things, the grass is always greener. Uh, I agree with that. I actually think that the Eagles, the Eagles might say no. I think the Eagles might say no. Should the Eagles say no? Because you can get out of that full,

you can get out of that full deal easier than you can get out of that one's deal. Well, I mean, the dead, the dead cap charge would be insane. So this is all hypothetical. But first of all, if Nick Foles was the quarterback and put up the same performance Carson Winston today on a lesser contract that you can get out of, do they put Jalen Hertz in the game today? Because I think they absolutely do. Yeah. I think that

if you put circumstances, if you put the contract and name aside, they put jail in the third, the second round pick, they put him in the game today. Yeah. That would be a better team. It's a good hypothetical. There would be a better functioning team right now if they did that. I'm looking forward to

debate show stealing it for Wednesday as often happens with that reader questions. No, just, you're laying in the airport. Oh, look at the Kairon is the reader question from Sunday. Second question is from Greg. Did the Jets fix the Chargers? My answer is no. Jets games are not canon.

Jets games are not canon. That's all we need to say. That's right. It's like when someone's like, oh, this comic book is in an alternate universe or whatever. Like, that's where we're at. The Chargers, it's all the same. This is important, actually, that we're talking about this

because another reader question was something like, I'm a Jets fan, like, what do I have to live for? And we get that a lot. I responded to it on, yeah, I know. And I responded to it on Twitter. And I said bagels because bagels are awesome and there are great ones in New York. And I just wanted to make sure that that didn't come across to anyone as bagel, like goose egg, nothing.

Because since there are bagels, it cannot be bagel because bagels alone are fantastic and Jets fans can feel better by eating them. So go have a bagel. Oh, that's very nice. Tomorrow's quick break. Go ahead. I'm just going to do this and see if Ben Glickman allows me to escape with my life. Oh, no.

Two is a bust. Kevin's speechless. No, I'm actually, I Googled it to make sure that they're, was not a headline and there already is a headline. It's up on on nfl.com and other places. It's that it appears that the saints have found their heir apparent. It's much for Taysome hell. Oh no. It's up. It's already up. It's a question mark though. It says have the saints found breezes their apparent in hill and then the headline is it justified the investment. Does the body of the article just say no? No. No, it looks it's no no no no. It's it's full

fleshed out. And by a writer, it was fantastic, Judy Batista. So it's already started. We love Judy Batista. It's already, we're there. We're there. It's not even tomorrow's clickbait. Tomorrow's clickbait today.

Sean Payton just dunking on the haters. Tomorrow's clickbait today. One of Ian's tweets was like Sean Payton won the world zero. We have Belichick Brady. Mm-hmm. Rivers and the Chargers fighting over bad vibes. Taysam Hill versus Twitter. versus the world.

Mm-hmm. Take that. Take that world. All right. This has been, anything else? This has been the Ringer NFL show

and the Ringer Podcast Network. Thanks for listening. That's what we go out on. On Tuesday, House and Warren Sharp will be with you on a special Thanksgiving week episode. And then on Wednesday, a super table,

a crossover episode, myself, Nora, Danny Kelly, and Ryan Chase you. We'll be answering December's for this question. See you there.