The Ringer NFL Show - Week 11 Recap: Chiefs Win Fourth in a Row, Texans Upset Titans, and Ravens Win Without Lamar

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to discuss the Chiefs' fourth-straight win, the Colts blowing out the Bills, and much more (4:25). Then Kevin and Nora are joined by Steven Ruiz to discuss Cam Newton’s first start for the Panthers (1:17:40). Lastly Kevin and Nora wrap up by answering a listener question.  Hosts: 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

Hi, I'm Missa Kwanga. I'm Ian Wright. And collectively, we are the Stadio podcast. I'm Wrighty's house on the Ringr-FC feed. Yes, we are. We come to you three times a week on the Ringr-FC feed. We're bringing love and love and football. So if you like zooming out and zooming in on football and all the stuff around it, make sure you follow Ringer FC on Spotify or wherever we get your podcasts.

How's that, Rye? I reckon I'll do. Yeah, man. It is the Ring Run NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark, joined tonight by Nora Prince Yad. I don't know what's going on. Kevin, you ever have too many cheez-its? No, no such thing.

Is that where you're at right now? I've had too many chees-its, and I'm ready to do a podcast. Now, how did that happen? Did you not have dinner? No, I had dinner and I had cheeses. NFL Sunday, baby. And then I started to have the cheez-its, and there was a point at which I should have stopped having cheez-its,

and you want to guess what happened then? You kept it moving and you had more cheeses. I had a few more cheeses. And that's where we are now. I have one question. Is that white cheddar or original? No, original. Big big question.

All right. So original all the way. The other thing is, shoot, I'm blanking on exactly what they're called. Some people I know feel very strongly about the, I think, extra toasty. Cheez-its being superior to the original Cheez-Its. Original Cheez-Its cannot be improved upon. That's true. Although I will say this, goldfish better than Cheez-Its,

I've had way too many goldfish in one sitting. Never had too many chees-its in one sitting. So I'm the opposite. I'm the opposite. I think goldfish are like very near and dear to my heart. I think maybe because I had them as a child, I have a little bit more restraint with goldfish. Like goldfish are something that I'm allowed to have in my house.

Normally, Cheez-It's, I have a rule where I only get Cheez-I-It's if I'm, like, on a road trip or something, because it just can't, I lose my flipping mind. Can I introduce Ben-Lak? Is there more you need to work through? No, we got to find out what he thinks about Cheez-Sitz. Get him on right now, Kevin. What are you doing? Ben, what's going on, brother? How do you feel about Cheez-Sitz?

Every Cheez-It-take lobbied so far is incorrect. They're better than Goldfish. White Parvajon is... White cheddar is better than original. Toasty's very good. Hot and spicy are also, Lee as well. Thank you for your time.

Wow. Okay. This is a separate podcast. We could go, I mean, Arjuna, our producer is trying to keep us under two hours and we're already off to a bad start because we could do three hours.

And we could do like a 10 episode, one hour like Cam Chronicles type of thing on Jesus. Okay. I disagree. I think the pot is over now. Like, this is as good as it's going to get. Let's just cut it while we're ahead.

All right. Huge, huge, huge NFL Sunday, full of surprises. And, like, one thing I want to say off the bat is it's not just you. Like, everyone is looking at this slate and saying this is the weirdest week or the weirdest year than they can remember. And it's not just you. First of all, after Minnesota beat the Green Mid Packers on a game winning field goals time expired, this is via the NFL. There have now been 23 games decided by game winning score in the final play. that's the most such games through this this time period, week 11, since the merger.

Beyond that, there are more teams who are beating teams with four more wins than they have through week 11 than any points in 1974. Like the weirdness you're seeing is real. It's not your imagination. I know everything seems weird all the time. We always look back in like week 10 or week 11 of other years and be like, well, what a strange season. This is actually strange. And I can't wait to unpack it.

Also, Ben Solac wants to talk about the Bill's EPA per play on running place, which he's very... That's later. You don't do that at the top yet. The two of you just got in a fight pre-show about the Bill's EPA per play on running down. It's going to be great. It's going to be a great show. This is why we should stick to Cheez-Sys. Let's start with the headline.

They kind of lends itself to what we're talking about, this weird stuff that's going on here. It's Chiefs 19, Cowboys, 9. one thing that's not weird, Chris Jones, 17.5 pressure rate, obviously had the three and a half sacks. He said after the game that he had four sacks,

I believe him, Dron and Reid got half a sack, not sure about that one. Three hurries. He took over this game. Obviously, without full health on the Cowboys offensive line, it's a different game,

but Dak Prescott looked off at times. You know, and kind of big picture here, I think it was Todd Archer's out before the game. The Cowboy, in general were without three players who were top five paid at their position, DeMarcus Lawrence, Mark Cooper, and Tyrone Smith. And then Blake Jarwin is in the top ten.

So this was already a short-handed team, but I don't think we expected this. Ben still like what you think. Yeah, the, the Cowboys are quite simply beat up. You saw people call and, you know, saying like, oh, you know, Kellynmore this, Callow more this, Call him or that, because he's gotten a lot of gases here, and I think appropriately so. And this felt like a big face plan. Stephen Ruiz within 30 seconds of your tape.

No, but the thing is, like, Stephen wrote a tremendous piece. And he was right in saying that Callen Moore's really called a great offense. And then as the Cowboys were struggling on national television, people are asking, oh, is this great Calamore offense? There isn't really a system that, you know, is the system you run when wide receiver one is down, wide receiver two is down, because Cedee Lam was lost to a concussion during this game. Tight end two is down. Left tackle one is down.

And left guard is a position that just got switched because they had Connor Williams playing there and then sat him for Connor McGovern because Williams has had some bad plays. Carter McGovern has a bad place. There's no offense that works in that context. There's no scheme that kind of solves that problem. It felt as if all of the good plays they got, all of the opportunities they got were then subsequently like dropped by Cedric Wilson. You know what I mean?

It was like these last moments of execution. Like Michael Gallup had a drop down field. They had a wide open gallop, missed him by an inch, you know. They had a couple screens look really nice. that just barely got banged up. And Prescott was unable to get outside of the pocket. Like there was just so many little edges that maybe could have pushed this over the edge, maybe could have made this like a one score game,

but they never really got there. It's just a very, very, very, very banged up offense. And so that, to me is like, it is frustrating to see the Cowboys drop two of the last three. This was an opportunity for a very high scoring game and that didn't come to pass. That was disappointing as well. But in general, I'm not concerned about the Cowboys offense. I think that when you get the fullness of health back, you expect them to be fine.

I have a quick question. We got to read or listen to our question, and we're not going to get to it, but it's a good question I want to put to you because you started the quarterback position, especially coming out of the draft and all that stuff. But the question was, what is actually different when Tyrant Smith's out of the game with Dak Prescott? Is it just the pressure or does he just actually play a different way? Does he see ghosts? What is it that makes him worse when Tyrant Smith is out of the game? it there is nothing distinct about how DAC plays relative like Tyrant Smith being out it's not like a oh when Tyrant's out dack X it's Tyrant Smith is arguably the best left tackle in the game yes and terran steel is not like a good swing tackle like I'm sorry for Terran steel but he just doesn't play well he has not played well at left tackle over the last couple weeks and then I know they did the lay all call on switch and like steals better on the right side and like the cowboys are trying to figure out how to jumble together this offensive line and they really haven't landed on a non-Smith lineup

that's successful for them. But to me it's not like a oh there's something particular about DAC that makes losing Smith even more deleterious than it would for like another quarterback. It's just Smith's that good. Right. And when you don't have Jarwin, it's a little bit harder to them protect him because you have one less guy to kind of attach

to the formation. So Steele had a really rough game and it's just simply the loss of Tyrant Smith. It's such a good player. Certainly maybe like Dak's used to the luxury a little bit more than another quarterback would be because that's because he's played with Tyron Smith. You know, so to me there's nothing that's distinct there. I would have liked to have seen them boot him out a little bit more,

get him out of the pocket. He's such a good pocket manager and he's such a good blitz diagnoser that you have this great luxury of just, like, leaving him in the pocket all the time, and he operates it so well that it can be easy to forget. Like, oh, he's pretty mobile. Like, we can move this launch point if we want to. And they did it a couple times in the second half, but they probably should have done it more.

In general, though, Chief's defense is playing good ball. They've figured out, like talking about those little edges for the Cowboys, the ones they weren't able to hit. The Chiefs have found him, right? Chris Jones back in the middle now because Melvin Ingram's in the building. Alex Ocalfour is playing a better ball. Daniel Sorenson off the field, we get Willie Gay out there. Gay makes mistakes, but boy, that young man's explosive.

He'll make a good stop on 302 before you get off the field. Juan Thornhill's on the field now. We're going to be able to play more split field stuff. Legerious Sneeds playing more on the outside instead of the slide. They've just done little things. Spag's a good coach. Little things over time that have helped them figure this out. And this defense now is more than carrying its weight,

which is if you're at AFC, playoff watcher, Chiefs all of a sudden, baby, just right back up there. We said for like two months, the Chief's defense only had to go from really bad to bad, to bad.

And I think we're there, maybe even a little better. Spags was in his bag today, as we talked about. I mean, there was just a lot to sort of Spags bag. Spags bag.

Spags is a Spag bag. Borghum McFarlane said this. Chris Jones, she never played defensive end again. Great note to Spags. Nora, what stood out? Well, that's the thing that we should talk about a little bit, right? Because so this is not counting this game.

Obviously, I think this will only go in further in the same direction. But in the two games prior to this game that Melvin Ingram had been playing in Kansas City, Jones had been at left defensive tackle for 36 snaps, right defensive tackle for 26 snaps, and then left and right defensive end for just 12 total snaps. That's great. That's a, that's, that's, that's the sign. right of a good trade deadline acquisition where you understand where your team is, you understand what you need and it has the ability to have sort of a domino effect.

Chris Jones is great, but he's not having, you know, four sacks, three and a half sacks, whatever. Certainly, I have no interest in quibbling with Chris Jones on this. Three hurries, 17.5% pressure rate according to PFF if he's not in the place where he wants to be. So if we're talking about, okay, where is the chief's defense relative to the bar that, you know, sort of the artificial bar that we would have set for them going into the season where it's like, they just have to be X so that this offense isn't being held back and this is a Super Bowl contending team. It feels like, look, the results have been great, right? 15.6 points per game in the last three games, fourth straight game where they've held an opponent to less than 20.

Part of that is the competition, right? Giants, Packers without Rogers, Raiders, and then now Cowboys. it's getting more impressive. I think this one is the most impressive result. And you start to feel like, okay, no, they're not the best defense in the NFL. They're not in the top 10 probably. But they're doing it against better and better competition.

And you have some stuff like getting Ingram in there, having Jones play in position where you feel like you can trust it a little bit. And that's great. Because I think you're, okay for the most part with the offensive result here, even though it's not a lot of points, just because it feels sort of back to where they were early in the season, where it's being really heavily impacted by interceptions.

But it's not, it's not the way it looked at kind of the low point for them where it was like, okay, turnovers galore. And this whole thing just looks disjointed. this felt like the picks are not good, that's troubling, the drops are not good, that's troubling, but it is this sort of like isolated thing. So it's what you want to see. Okay.

So I want to get to the Cowboys part of this, and I want to get to Michael Parsons and what he's doing because he, you know, awesome. In a different universe, he took over this game. And we're talking about him first. We're talking about Chris Jones. But, and this is like, it's like when you see a band and they play one of their huge hits,

like pretty early on. I was going to ask her a question and then she walked away. She knew it was coming. Sorry. I thought I could get away with that. I was just noticing that my window was open. I could hear cars.

Anyway, talk to me. Yeah, it's like when you see a band and they play one of their hits too early. Are the chiefs the best team in the AFC right now or is that the Patriots? All right. How long have we been on mic for? Yeah. 12 minutes.

12 minutes. He's trying to. I didn't use the T word. You basically did. You alluded to it. I'm asking you to rank things. Is this team the best or are they next to this other team who could also be considered the best? They don't call the college football rankings.

They don't call it the AP top tiers. They just call it. They just rank things. We've been ranking things for 100 years. I'm allowed to rank. And now I'm asking Nora to rank, but only two teams. You're asking you to rank the chiefs and the Patriots. Unless there's somebody else you want to throw in that conversation,

in which case you can add another level to that conversation. Yeah. But not a tier. Look, it's the quarterback, right? I'm sorry. I just cannot say that if this were the Super Bowl, this were the AFC championship game, I'm going to pick the team with Mack Jones over the team with Patrick Mahomes.

I think you could, I mean, the Patriots have been the more impressive team well-rounded team at least thus far. I think Kansas City, the argument comes down to how much do you discount bad turnover luck, right? Like, what was the, I'll find it. There was something, I think

next-gen stats had something that was just crazy to me. He had double the amount of interceptions where he's going to have 75% expect a completion percentage. He had double that amount than anybody else. So basically he was throwing a bunch of passes that should have been completed and they were intercepted. And so, okay, so he's had five picks that had a 75% or more completion probability, or six

of them, five of the six of them hit his receiver before they were intercepted. Like, that shouldn't happen, but it did happen. So I think when you look at the chiefs, if you sort of bake that into the result that you're looking at, then maybe you start to actually take New England seriously in that. But if you, I want to throw, I want to throw the Ravens in this equation as well. We, we, we, we sort of didn't see them today at their full strength. They did beat the bears, but they didn't have Lamar Jackson. So I do want to kind of get them in the mix there, except the top day of safe. Yeah, I think if we can get Lamar on like a multivitamin routine, then yeah, that would be great.

Yes, he's has a non-COVID illnesses that he's, that he's battling. Um, all right, Ben Solac. Let's talk about Michael Parsons here for a second. So I saw some, dueling numbers. ESPN had him at 12 pressures, which is the most by a single game in a single game for anybody since 2019. A couple of other NFL, I think NextGen stats had him at last maybe seven.

Kind of all over the map, but the point is he was really good. Andrew Wiley surrendered seven pressures on the day. It wasn't just him, but Michael Parsons is clearly the frontrunner for defensive rookie of the year. I think ESPN had the number that with his

tackles and stats to his first 10 games. He's basically the most productive rookie since Terl Suggs. Okay, that's the, that's the company he's at. Healthy. Yeah, Bosa, Watt, it's that kind of company. What did you think about what Mike Parsons said? The rule of thumb, like for like defensive rookie of the year betting is if an edge gets seven or more sacks, eight or more sacks, defense of rookie of the year, right?

Like Chase Young won it and was like average in the sack column. You know what I mean? So long as you get seven, eight, you're good. Michael Parsons is a linebacker with nine halfway through the season. Like this isn't this isn't real. You can't you can't do this. They're like, oh, this is going to be fun.

We're going to experiment with him as a DPR role, right? Designated pass rusher in camp. And then Lawrence went down. Gregory was still playing awesome. They're like, all right, shoot, we got to get a little more reps out of Parsons. This isn't what we thought we were going to do, but it's fine. Now Gregory's down. He's just, he's, they're starting outside linebacker. He, last time he played this position was high school.

This is not. This is an example. Like when we say freak athleticism, that's what this is. That gets thrown around too much, right? Like, oh, he's a freak athlete. Parsons, at his size, with the way he moves,

the way he explodes, and then critically the way he bends, the way, how flexible he is coming around the edge. He can turn a corner. You just don't build guys this way. He has everything. It's all that in a bag of chips in terms of athletic ability.

And so they say, all right, go on the edge and just try to win a race to the outside corner. He's like, yeah, I can do that. That's all it is. It's just unbelievable oozing athletic talent. And that is an extremely exciting idea. In general, you still want to play this guy off ball.

That's where his eyes are trained. That's what he's trained to be in your system. It's going to be effective. But the luxury of being able to say on third and eight on a passing down, we're going to put Lawrence as a five technique. We're going to put Randy Gregory as our outside rush on the opposite side. Osa Deguizua's a good interior penetrator, put him on the field. And then we could just put Parsons as a wide dine and present a five-man front

with that much penetration. that's stupid. And that's really, really fun for Dan Quinn. So he's very thrilling. Shout out Dan Quinn. Dan Quinn did his darndest, man. He tried to play some too high.

He's like, I know the rules. I know how this goes. And they just don't have the personnel for it, man. I listen to the podcast. Yeah, yeah. They just got Anthony Brown

playing eight yards off. You know what I mean? And they got like Demonti KZ dropping a deep half, just saying pretty. It's not what the team's built to do, which, you know, it goes to say that like,

maybe you should spend a little bit more time in camp, working around this sort of stuff and not just majoring them one thing, but that's a different defense conversation. They tried. I mean, Patrick Mulhams was what on the day. His EPA per play was like, uh,

yeah, negative 10.2 EPA per play. So that's, uh, negative point 2 to pass. Like, it wasn't a good day from Holmes. They, they did get the option. You ran the option at the goal line though. That was cool. Yeah, it was pretty sick. Uh, they just, you know, 19 points against the chiefs should generally be a winning effort. It's just the chief's defense. It really firing on all cylinders right now.

Uh, Bruce Feldman did a, who's going to be the next coach at Florida column here throughout a wild card as Dan Quinn, which I was hooting and holler on. Yeah. I would love that. Dan Quinn and the youths, baby. Oh, okay.

Rare second headline, Sunday football was awesome, gang. Chargers 41, Steelers 37. Al Michaels put it best during the broadcast when he said if you were to say, here's a summary for just for those of you tuning in that you couldn't do it, a lot happened in this game. Ben, what did you take away from it? It was a good reminder that the frustrations with the Joe Lombardi offense and the frustrations with the charges seemingly punching below their weight are real. But greater than that is the talent of this young man, Justin Herbert.

I mean, he can sling it. Like this is, this is, this is really awesome. He's quite, quite good. He had 23.4 total expected points added. That's an absurd number. at 0.44 per play. He had the best scrambling night of his career. He had one of the best passing nights of his career on top of it.

It wasn't with deep stuff, right? It wasn't like, oh, they changed the offense. It was just this still isn't an optimal offense in my opinion. And it just didn't matter against a banged up Steelers defense because Herbert is just that good. And that's very special and that's very exciting. In terms of young players to be excited about in the league, he's number one. When you see a game like this, and it was interesting because I had this thought when they put Boso over the guard and he was just taking over the game at the end.

it that's this is a record roster win right like this is this is a win where it's like tulesco has these guys who are top end talent and then they get to take over games when it matters and obviously this is a short-handed stewardess team um but i just felt like um this is the type of team of game that a coach or a coordinator or whatever could could in theory screw up um like tomlin is a better coach in brandon's daily uh but this roster uh is just a little bit too talented for that. Nora, what did you think? That was nuts.

That was a nuts game. That was crazy. The end of that was crazy. The Chargers almost Chargered. And then the Steelers Chargered. It was the Steelers who Chargered in the end. Also, well, the Chargers tried to Charger and then Ben Rothesburg did his trademark thing,

which was he took a sack in which he didn't even attempt to move. The Azte's sacks where he just, well, he tried to move a little bit to his left on the second. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And then they ran a play that had no chance on fourth down, which is another trademark. There was a lot of stealing.

Copyright. The Steelers are an extremely smart franchise that does almost everything the right way, but there were a lot of steelery plays there, end of game. In both directions, right? Like, first of all, this game almost, the chargering at first feels like it's happening in part because Cam Hayward makes an incredible play.

At the same time, he is lucky to be in the game. That's correct. And then the charges go foot on fourth down. Don't get it. I mean, the momentum swings on the, in this game, we're just insane.

And that's why were you surprised, Nora, as someone who's done reporting on the curse, that this was the Chargers win? Uh, no, because we had, we had settled on the curse of the Chargers,

at least having been alleviated by new regime, Justin Herbert, being just the delightful young man that he is, who we all get to experience joy because of. However, I did when the stat popped up and it's like 32 losses after having a lead in the fourth quarter since 2011, only won this season.

It's just, oh boy, let's not do this again. Let's not do it. Well, did you see the Steelers, the Steelers were 0 and 230 when trailing by 17 points in the fourths. Which sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn't. That's the whole stat. Crazy. That's crazy.

I'm sure. The largest deficit they'd overcome was against Washington, 1962. That's where they were at. That's what the Chargers almost had. All right. I'm hesitant to do this. But Ben, what does this tell you anything about the AFC?

Does this tell you, I mean, the Steelers were so short-handed. Weird week, Ben Rothsberger was obviously out last week due to COVID. That interrupts everything. He only got cleared to think over the weekend. Can you extrapolate anything from this game,

aside from what we already discussed about Herbert and the roster? Not particularly. There was a lot of playoff leverage going into this game and obviously the loss hurts, the Steelers, but the Steelers still have

Ravens twice, Spangles and Browns along with Chiefs and Titans on their schedule. That's the whole AFC. They are maybe not going to be a playoff team just with the staunch just of that schedule consider,

but they're going to play a spoiler for somebody. Two games against the Ravens scares the daylights out of me if I'm a Baltimore fan. This Steelers team, and this was another good example, of it. This wasn't even the sort of game they want to play because it's super high scoring, but they just hang around, man. They do not go away. They get those timely plays, right?

They have those big time playmakers. Oh, no, Mika Fitzpatrick, no, T.J. Watt, Cam Hayward will just be insane for us in this game, you know, so they have that. And then the Chargers, it's a similar situation for them. Six and four on the fringe in the AFC West. They still have the Broncos. They still have the the Chiefs. They still have the Broncos. They still have the Raiders. A little bit easier. Bengals, Texans, giants, right? But they're on the, on the fringe. It's going to be about what they can do in divisional games. With the win,

they have a better chance of making the playoffs, but it's far more likely that they end up ruining something for somebody and, you know, the chiefs are the main team you look at there as the problem.

The, the worry I would have if I had to face Justin Herbert as a defensive coach late in the season or in the postseason is scary. Because that third and 13 throw to start the third quarter

to Keenan Allen, you just see that and you go, oh, okay. If we perfectly cover everything, on third and 10 plus, sometimes we'll lose. Even the Mike Williams touchdown, the game winner, that is, you know, we're going to send the nickel blitz.

And Cam Sutton is going to play the outside receiver. He's going to read hot. The slot's going to turn around hot and Cam Sutton's going to go close on that. And Herbert's like, yeah, I'm just going to throw it to Mike Williams. Like, you leave that open because quarterbacks don't make that throw. You don't like leave it open. But quarterbacks don't test that window. That's why you run that coverage.

And Herbert's like, yeah, I'm just zing it in there in stride, full velocity. Mike Lim is going to beat the angle. That's just, that's rule. breaking can't can't can't stop that and so he's he's a scary guy to see and the charges are decently positioned out for that that potential playoff run agree so here here the a fc standings tennessee is first baltimore second at seven and three new england seven and four kansas city seven and four Cincinnati six and four charger six and four buffalo six and four that's seven okay um beyond that is Pittsburgh indianapolis cleveland Vegas and

Denver. Those are the, those either, those either have five or sex wins at this point. Obviously, the Steelers have, have the tie. Um, Nora is kind of same question. Anything you learned about, about what we might be seeing in January from tonight or was this just kind of a fun game of reality good time. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, it is I'm old enough to remember some recent conversations where the phrase Justin Herbert washed was uttered on this very podcast. I don't. Yeah, I'm actually, I don't remember that. can't be proven. This podcast doesn't exist in posterity. Yeah. Total exoneration.

It vanishes. It vanishes in thin air. And we're certainly not doing that here now, are we? Look, if he's going to play like that, right? Like, the Steelers are not a great team, but they're a good team. They're going to put up a fight. They're well-coached. They had a guy, hey, we're just playing out of his mind. Noggin, as Ben Zalak would say. Noggin melon.

Outside is melon, baby. Outside is melon. That's it. You're darned. I love. I am darned tootin, Ben. We're all darned Tutin. We are.

And so is Justin Herbert. You want to see just with how their season had been sort of plotting along. You want to see a super impressive performance from the quarterback. Right. And if they want to get more aggressive downfield, feels like there's still meat on the bone there. But love scrambling Justin Herbert, right? Love how much of that's going. on. That's spicy. That's fun.

And that's the most encouraging thing I think they could have had. Ben, you have 20 seconds. Do we still move on from Joe Lombardi? I don't think we're in like a move on position. They were talking a little bit of the broadcast about how Staley impacts the offense, like as a defensive coach. They just, they, they're,

the designs are good. It's just you need to change your framework. This is not Breeze, it's Herbert. We don't want to nickel and dime. We want to be explosive. We won't nickel and dime if we have to. So to me, it's good designs. You should have to change your philosophy. You have to adjust the talent you have. What a week for Joe Lombardi. He is one slack over.

I've always been frustrated with him, but to me this is not a situation where you want to turn over the office coordinator third time in three years for a rookie quarterback. Maybe it ends up being a new lexicon. The designs are fine. It's where we're trying to get the ball to whom we're trying to get it.

They need to get a speed threat on the field, and then they need to open this play up and say, we want Keenan intermediate, not shallow. We want Williams Deep Night Intermediate. We are going to spread this thing vertically. It's a philosophy shift, not so much like a scheme and design shift

that I'm interested in. Anything else about this game, guys? Can we just shout out Austin Echler? Yeah. Yes, we can't. Three or four total touchdowns? Four, four. Yeah, healthy deck.

Important late blitz pick up. Mm-hmm. Great guy. Yeah. We, I've spent a lot of time talking about how Kevin Colbert's done. miss. The guy in the other sideline, Kevin, you mentioned him at the top, Tom Telesco, man.

Echler's an undrafted free agent. Donald Parham, who's been their tight end two is an undrafted free agent. Keenan Allen was a third round pick in 2013. He's just been a mainstay for ages. That young man, Asante Samuel Jr. could play a little ball. I know he went down. He's second concussion this season.

It's really scary. We hope he's okay. Yeah. I have not seen a corner play Chase Claypool as well this year as Asante Samuel Jr., who has, six inches less than Chase Claypool does, how well he played Chase Claypole for as long as he was on the field was mighty impressive.

He's a really good scheme fit. They just draft them well, man. The Chargers, for all the curse and for all the playoff problems, all the head coaching problems, they have never had a talent issue. And that's a testament to Lesco. He hits outside of the first round at a crazy rate. And Rashon Slater,

Justin Herbert, are pretty good too. Yeah, I was about to say he also hits in the first round. Right. Like, let's... Yeah, it's... It's a good GM is able to hit. Joey is pretty good.

Yeah, yeah. No, their first time is pretty good. I don't want to think Michael Williams can play. Yeah, yeah. They're hitting the first round. Absolutely. But it's,

it's the way that they've been able to fill gaps and let guys walk, right? You talk about like Hunter Henry Walk signs a big contract. All right, we'll sign Jericho off the street. We've got Donald Parham in the building. Our tight-end position is fine.

Like, that's good GMing. That keeps you consistent for a long time. They are so well positioned. The Chargers just be good year after year after year. That's exciting stuff. All right. Time for superolatives because that was second headline we're going to do five.

It's Colts 41 Bill 15. Woof. Yeah. So I'm going to call this award the Jonathan Taylor Fantasy Owners Award for the Colts and Jonathan Taylor winning because that's what they did.

Let's talk about what this game means for three separate entities. First, Jonathan Taylor. I think it means. So 32 carries for 185 yards. Five touchdowns. Now has moved past Derek Henry

to lead the NFL in rushing in the MVP conversation. Jonathan Taylor, welcome to the MVP conversation. All right. I'm here. You're here for it? Ben still X here for it. Ben is logged on.

I'm always here for a let's force or running back in the MVP conversation so you can finish fourth in the voting. That's always fun for me. Right. So here's the spoiler alert. I have long accepted. We're just not doing quarterbacks just win this award.

It's a quarterback award. I think we should just make it a quarterback award. But I don't think so. If there was a compelling case for like a defensive player or a wide receiver or running back, I'd give it to them this year. I just don't see anybody making that case thus far. I just think it's like we should just accept what this game is, which is a quarterback driven game and separate the categories.

and I would buy that argument if it were playing out in reality ever at all. So, spoiler alert, I do not think that Jonathan Taylor is going to win the MVP. But he's in the conversation. And that in and of itself, I believe, is a win. Only the eighth player since 1950 with 1,200 scrimmage yards in an eight game span. Very impressive. Jim Ursay said he texted Peyton Manning during the game. No, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no. It was not Peyton Manning. It was Peyton Manning. It was a group text with Peyton Manning, Edron, James, Marvin Harrison, and Dwight Freeney. Could you imagine being an active... I didn't read that as being a group text.

Oh. We got a kid who plays like... The quote was, we got a kid who plays like you, Edgeron. Ursay wrote to Peyton, Edron, Edgerman, James, Marvin Harrison, Dwight Freene. This is via the athletics, Zach Kiefer. Shout out Jim Ursay, being like, I got a stunt right now.

Could you imagine being... Reggie Wayne and being like, oh, geez, I didn't know that group text was happening. Or let's be honest, if you're Reggie Wade, are you a little bit like, who, I don't need that person. Yeah. I got a couple group chats. I've turned the notifications off on. Jim, Jim tweets a lot already. I'm kind of in touch with what he's up to.

It's okay. I'll pass. So that's what it means for Jonathan Taylor. Yeah. Great stuff. We have to talk about what this means for the Buffalo Bills and specifically. specifically Josh Allen, who did not have a nice, nice time, not a fun go of it. I am curious what Ben's reaction was to this game because it just feels like, look,

at a great, great game last week, terrible game the week before. It just feels like we are on the roller coaster and you don't know what you're going to get. And I don't know how that plays out when you get to the end of the year, right? And it really comes down to they've got two games against New England and that's what it's going to be. But who, white knuckling it a little bit. Yeah.

I think, right. I think the most optimistic outlooks on Josh Allen coming into the league out of Wyoming, even after his first year with the builds, it'd be like, you can get this guy to a point where his peak players are really good. His peak games are really good,

but you have to ride the roller coaster with him. And then we got the 2020 season. It was like, apparently not. If we can do this consistently, we can do this for a whole season. This is viable. This is tenable. And they gave an extension because they believe that. And I believe that.

This was the first game for me this season where I watch it. And I was like, oh, like, we're, we're on any given week, Alan's going to be, is going to be, the team is going to go as Alan goes. And if Alan goes left, they go left. Right. Like, if it's a valley game for Allen, it is a valley game for the bill's offense, period. did. Because they do not have anything right now that is outside of Allen targeting receivers. They got, you know, Stefan Diggs, Manuel Sanders, and Cole Beasley. That was the plan. They have no ball winners, right? Which has always been a concern there. Is that like, if they want to go and, like, throw a contested catch, that that player is not on the roster on the outside, right?

Dosson Knox may be over the middle, but he's not been a high volume player's entire career. So we're okay, we don't have a ball winner. So we're going to pick our matchup, Diggs, Sanders, or Beasley. We're going to try to run them all intermediate and we have Alan hammer the holes and so. hammer the holding zones hammer hammer hammer well if he's inaccurate or if he's attacking windows shouldn't be attacking or this has been the case the last couple weeks spencer brown's been out john feliciano's been out and he's getting pressure off his right side and he's throwing uh you know off platform and he's thrown with guys in his face and he's inaccurate he's going to keep hammering like this is out this is what he does he keeps shopping so that ball's going to be interceptable

and it was interceptable many many many times in bad situations on bad downs in the red zone against the folds okay well let's let's turn to the running game let's get control of this they can't run the football. They can't go have your personnel. They don't have the bodies. On early downs this year, this is me and Kevin from the pre-show, their 29th and EPA per play on running downs, and their 28th in success rate. They can't get the third and manageable. They can't get the third and run, right? They are a third and long team. So we got three reps of Allen on this series. And if we don't get it, it's three and out, defense back on the field. That roller coaster is scary. Now, what has usually been the saving grace has been that you can really trust this defense.

They got a roller coaster game against the Jags, and the defense was put in short fields like four times and only gave up nine total points, right? Like this defense was trustworthy. No Star Lo-Tulele, no Tremaine Edmins. They just had no size in the box. I mean, it's volleyball. Like, this is, this is some Patriots nonsense in terms of how the Colts just move the bills off the line. They did not have the size that they usually do to play too high, right? To play big dime, big nickel the way that they want to and play with.

with little bodies in the box. No Lottelah and no Edmonds killed them in this running game. And so they couldn't get off the field. They couldn't shorten the field for the offense. They couldn't win time of possession. And this thing just snowballed. They have left the area of being a trustworthy team to me. Dangerous team.

Don't want to play a playoffs. I completely agree. Yeah. If we get Allen in the playoffs, I'm worried. If it's good Allen, that's a very difficult dude to stop. But me, like, projecting out the playoffs, bills have stepped away from being a trustworthy team,

which is especially scary when you contrast them to the Patriots. We're now leading that to, vision. They may not be high ceiling, but they are consistent. So this is the, this is the third entity that we, we have to talk about here because the Patriots are now in first place in the AFCs. They've got two games against Buffalo. And beyond just the bills scaring you a little bit right now, I think what Ben was sort of hinting out there where you just watch this game and they don't, they can beat you with speed on defense if that's, if that's the right thing for them to do. I don't know that they, especially with some of the injuries, can beat you with just

like size and brawn. They don't seem like a particularly physically imposing team right now in a lot of ways. And that's a little scary if you think, okay, their main competition is New England right now. Because if, look, the Patriots offensive line sort of grounding into form into health and they've got that downhill running game, you, if this is a tough matchup, that could also be a tough matchup. So, and obviously, look, now they're playing from behind. So I think it's concerning in a in a number of ways. That said, if you got great Josh Allen, fine. Right. But to Ben's point, you just can't necessarily count on that. Yeah, but I would also say, I think Seth Walter had it. At one point in the first half, Alan was under the most pressure he'd ever been under in his career.

And I think the number is they finished with something like 13 pressures, something like that. And so this was kind of, I mean, listen, I think that we've all assumed after last year that the bills had one of the best rosters in football. You know, we did a thing a couple weeks ago. And I asked Jason Fitzgerald, who runs over the cap. He said, we look back in three years. Because so often we look at these stacked rosters and we say, oh, man, I can't believe they had this guy under this contract, this guy under this contract. He said, we're going to look back on the bills and be like, wow, they really crushed it capitalize. They had so many cheap guys who were really overperforming.

And I kind of feel like because of that, we think the does. that gets stacked for them. But right now, as you said, Ben, like, they're, they're really going through it. And, and, and they're, they have been banged up. You know, Sean McDermott after the game basically said we got pushed around. Um, they made some stupid mistake. The Isaiah McKenzie fumble was just outrageous. Like, he just fell down and lost the ball.

Well, but think about to your point, like Andre Roberts is not on this team anymore. Yes. You at some point have to make tough decisions. And then sometimes you have to live with the results of it. Yeah. Uh, by the way, last player to have. Four touchdowns rushing, one touchdown receiving. Sean Alexander.

Yeah. He has eight consecutive games, excuse me, Taylor does, of 100 yards from scrimmage and a rushing touchdown, which is tied with Ladanyan Tomlinson for the longest active street. So next week, if he does it again, and I would not stop giving him the football personally. Just me, that would be my coaching point.

He's going to have nine. So this is a, this is true high volume dominance. And this was the plan, right? We're going to bring in Carson Wentz and say anything to Josh Allen. This roller coaster can go up and down a little bit. Bill's hitched their wagon to Allen, right? Passing games. Spread it out.

Here we go. Colts did not hitch their wagon out to Wentz. They hitched it to Taylor this running game. They got a mean offensive line and they can put three tight ends on the field to move you. This, the physicality for this team is impressive. It's a lot of fun. And he's been over 20 carries in a game only twice just in the past two games, right? So it's not as though you're in a situation where you're like,

oof, this guy has got to be tired. First of all, it doesn't look at it. But second of all, like, that's a good situation to be in. All right. I'm going to give the Dan Marino award to Kirk Cousins. It's Vikings 34. Packers 31. I'm fine with that sentence.

So, I want the NFL put this out tonight. And it really needs to be broadcast everywhere because it's going to make so many people upset. And that's important. Kurt Cousins now has 25 career games of at least 300 passing yards and three touchdowns. He surpassed Aaron Rogers

for second most such games by a quarterback in the first 10 years. Only Dan Marino has more. Dan Marino only has one more than Kirk Cousins does. So Dan Marino squarely in the crosshairs, Kirk Cousins is coming to get him. This is, you know, we were joking, Ben. This is sort of the end of analytics,

like the end of math. Like the math was the law. of the universe, everything within the world and the universe and the galaxy, like, obeyed the rules of math. And now it's over. If an average football fan asked me, like, why do you have to watch the games if we have all these advanced stats? I would just start rattling off Kirk Cousin stats until eventually it broke them. I've got one for you. So next 10, next 10 stats says that according to EPA, if you add up Rogers and Cousins, that this was maybe the third best performance in history by EPA. So cousins and Rogers. A, do a,

duel for the ages. You know what Kirk Cousin's statistics are? They are the football stats equivalent of like, you know, when some website tweets, like, here are the top 10 Thanksgiving foods and number one is like cranberry sauce. Well, right. And it's obvious that like they're just doing this to get a rise out of everybody. Or it's like, here's how the average family of four like budgets. And it's like 32% toilet paper.

and you're like, what the fuck is going on here? And it's just like, clearly this is for clicks. It's to get you upset. Or it's also a little bit like how like the billboard charts now, it'll because it's all streaming numbers and stuff, it'll just be like, oh, Cardi B on that last album had more number one hits than the Beatles did in their entire career, like that kind of stuff. Like it's just a little bit like that because it's all.

Well, and it's also because like they're keeping number ones because there's more people on streaming services. Right. This is a lot of metaphors for Kirkhausen's numbers right now. I mean, do you actually want to talk about Kirk Cousins' play, Ben? Or do you want to keep with the metaphors? Curcus makes people seek for alternate methods to contextualize things. We're just looking for answers, buddy.

We're looking for answers. Here's my Kirk Cousins' actual play analysis. He tried so hard to throw a game losing pick that he actually, like, did throw a game losing pick. And then I was stunned that they overturned there. I thought there was like a non-conclusive, whatever. But Darnel Savage drops it. The Packers' ability to miss key.

plays in the defensive backfield and subsequently almost or in this case actually lose a game is staggering. They did against the Bengals. And then they had the Darnel Savage drop. And then the Adam Thielen game deciding catch was like Kevin King was in the route. Like he was there. He ran past the ball. If they had the ability to play on the football, this is 40 to six backers.

It's very sad. Okay. So a couple things. Number one is the Aaron Rogers barely practice this week. He had apparently a really brutal toe injury. or anything from Mahomes last year. Like that stuff can really, really matter. Chris Sims, I think, talked about it last year when the Mahomes injury was happening.

Just it's really freaking hard to have a toe injury and plant your foot like you normally would. And so he practiced just a little bit. They have the Rams coming up. The Packers have the Rams coming up next week. It'll be interesting to see how he looks, how often he practices that kind of thing before next week. Like you said, Ben, this was an extremely weird game.

So Cousins had a fumble. The interception was called back. and Darnell Savage basically had two picks drop out of his hands. For the Packers, I'm kind of chalking this up to things happen over 17-game season. There were some real, you know, Rogers started slow, and Kevin King is bad. We're extremely understanding of that. Justin Jefferson took over this game, eight receptions for 169 yards, two touchdowns, the kind of numbers that only Randy Mollaston Stig's have put up in their first two years.

and yeah, I mean, we just saw, you know, Adam Thielen had a nice game. The offense, you know, Clint Kubiak had Jefferson coming out of the backfield. And, you know, obviously, you know, when you have such a dominant receiver, you have to kind of scheme up ways for him not to be taken out of the game. I thought this was an impressive win by the Vikings. I don't know how much it's going to end up mattering. But I think that for the Packers, I'm not all that concern. Should I be bent?

No, I think that if anything, this was an emphasis on they really need to get J. your Alexander back. They've done such an impressive job in zone coverage over the last few weeks, Packers, defense, like, you know, the unders of me cashing. Like, they've been really, really, really strong. And it's been with great harmony, great fluidity in zone coverage. They've been able to pitch a lot of different stuff back there. And they got like Rassul Douglas and Eric Stokes.

And like, it's not supposed to work. And it is. That's been impressive. But then all of a sudden, you go up against arguably one of the three most difficult receivers to just straight up cover man to man on a third down in the league right now. And Justin Jefferson, he's just a nightmare in space. And they don't have, they don't have a response to that. And that, that player is usually Jair.

So not, no Jair hurts. And then obviously they've got injuries up front as well. And so, okay, let's protect our corners with pressure. We have no Rashd Gary. We have no Zedaria Smith. We have deep in the lay out here, rushed in the quarterback, you know. So the, this was a reminder that they've been punching above their weight on defense with the injuries they've sustained.

And they really need to get Alexander back. In general, though, probably you wish you could run the ball a little bit better. You know, it felt like AJ Dylan was was playing really good ball. No Aaron Jones. He becomes the feature back. He had a tough day. Elton Jenkins goes down with what looks like a nasty injury.

Yeah, I was going to mark that. That's a tough one. Yeah, he's been, he's been critical for them in terms of solving problems on that line. And they're getting Boktiari back, but now they've lost their second best lineman.

That's a punch in the mouth as well. But, I mean, Rogers had some truly delightful throws on for as long as he's dot and Marquezvold of Scaleling. You know what I mean? Like on deep shots, this backer seems going to be in every single game they play. It really just felt like the Vikings,

after all of these close losses, just deserved one. And they won this one. You were like, only once that kick went in, were you like, okay, Vikings got one this time. That's awesome for them.

Very happy for Mike Zimmer's blood pressure. That's great news. So the Vikings are the 60th right now in the NFC, but they have the same record as the Niners who they play next week. So there's going to be a couple of, couple of bigs of the schedule goes, Niners on the 28th, and then the Lions, which they'll win, but then

Steelers, Bears, Rams, Packers, Bears. And there's no real law that says that the bears are better than the Vikings. So that to me is kind of a tough schedule. Nora, where are we on these two teams? Well, on the Vikings, I agree.

They would make a game of it if they were in the Super Bowl. And I think if they were playing a high school team, Cousins would have eight turnovers and it would just be like down to a game losing. Well, the Super Bowl is the Super Bowl is an afternoon game. If you think about it. So cousins would be all over that. Cousins would be all over that.

In L.A.? Are you kidding me? Isn't it going to be like a 2 p.m. kickoff in L.A.? That makes sense. That sounds right. Look out. Look out. Now, that said, the proverbial prime time, I think referring more to the level of a tension than the actual time of day.

Maybe you make the argument the opposite way. I think the Vikings had a heck of a game, had some things break right. Fine. You live to fight another day if you're Green Bay and you've got got the cushion in the record to do it. Agree with Ben. Hopefully you get a little healthier on defense. They've done a good job of getting themselves to this point.

But you hope that you have some of your heavy hitters back in there in January and and maybe beyond if you were trying to play in that 2 p.m. game in Los Angeles in February. But for the most part, this to me is, okay, good effort, everybody. Let's move on. Not a whole lot that you're coming out of this being like, oh, Green Bay is capable of something or not capable of something that it seemed like they were last week based on this. Yep. Anything else in this game?

Divisional games. Just, you know. Weird. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you've got to throw them out. Kirk Cousins posted on on Instagram that he was like honking at people at his car on his drive home. Like he saw people with biking stuff on their cars and he would pull up next to them and like wave.

I think that's weird. You know, Kirk Cousins probably thinks is really cool. Kurt Cousins. Oh, Kirk Cousins. Yeah. I was racking my brain and it was the answer is right in front of me. Would you feel weird if Kirk Cousins was honking at you? Well, so I think if anybody honked at me like that, I would just drive off the room.

but then again. Are you a bad driver? No, I'm actually not, but I'm incredibly mistrustful of cars. Like, I think the idea that we as flawed and mistake-prone human beings just like operate giant metal death traps on a regular basis as part of our way of life is deeply flawed. So I don't want Kirk Cousins honking at me in his weird van. John Wooden once said that there's no such thing as an upset if it's a conference game that's on the road. That's probably,

you extend that to divisions, obviously, in football, not conference. It's probably, probably correct. Ben, texting 22,

Titans 13. You get to do it, buddy. Yeah, well, no, I'm gonna, this is my first thing,

it's by Ty God award. How have you prepared, Crow? It is my good award. And I do want to shout out Tygod Taylor, who did not have like an incredible box score day, but very simply, his two scrambling touchdowns

were the difference in a game that was just ugly everywhere. Ugly offense for the... I think Ryan Tannahill playing like an idiot was also the difference. So yes and no. Because this is this is my bugaboo here. This is my Knit.

Tannahill is largely being what Tanna Hill was and it always has been, which is that he's a good deep pass or he's a good explosive pass or you can hammer an intermediate window. They've wanted him over the last couple weeks to be more quick game. That isn't his strength.

They've been running a lot of screens and trying to kind of run this offense with yak. That wasn't working. So they increased his aid out a little bit. He was at 8.2. He's been at like 3 and 5 the last couple weeks without Henry. They increased his 8 out a little bit,

started pushing the ball down the field, trying to run that intermediate play action because they weren't really running that as much. Taney Hill had four picks. Most of them came like fourth quarter where already they were in just like past heavy script. It was raining a lot, and they just have no wide receivers, right?

And that's the really, that's the crux of the issue to me is that losing Henry, losing a running back is going to be like a massive point of contention in terms of like how team building works. Because we largely understand that running backs are replaceable. We've seen running backs go down. Their backups come in.

And so long as the offensive line is still healthy and they can run the same system, the same running system, the running game will still work. Running backs are fungible. We have seen that from a cat perspective, from a team building perspective for years. But Henry is a fundamentally different character in the cast of NFL actors than other running backs.

Simply the way that he affects defenses, I don't want to go so far as to say it's unquantifiable because I don't know how to quantify things, but it feels that way. Because this guy is so big, so strong and so dangerous in the second and third level that like all the Titans run with him is inside zone and duo. They're just trying to get him vertical. And the second they lost him, they gave that up. I'm not sure they should have, but they did. They're running split zone with a fullback.

They're running lead ice. They're running stuff. they would run with Henry, but it wasn't what they majored in. And so they feel like they've lost intermediate play action play. And so now they're getting further by on the six. And so now they have to go more spread. But it turns out with Julio injured, they don't have any wide receiver debt because that's not how they built the team.

They built the team centered on the idea of the fact that we can get Henry going vertical at an offensive line. And when he breaks into the second level, it is curtains. It is lights out. That is the identity of the team. And when they lost that, they went to go become something else. and they're discovering, oh, shoot, four Marcus Johnson targets a game is bad.

Three Nick Aquino Westbrook, like we need Nick Aquino Westbrook to win an isolation route on third down. And like, these guys made sense for the Henry team because they were big and they could block. They don't make sense for the non-Henry team because they don't have that anymore. So this is why, like, when the Titans were winning those games,

you would go and watch the offense and just say this offense is nowhere right now. They're 23rd in EPA per player for last three weeks. That's the non-Henry weeks. They don't know what they are. They are throwing non-examines. at the wall and trying to figure out what sticks.

They should have beat the Texans. They had two failed fourth down attempts. They had the four turnovers, right, including the muffed punt, the Texas were able to score on. Their defense played generally well. Like on the box score, Titans had 5.3 yards for play. Texans had 3.1. Titans should have won this game.

They did it because of the regression plays. But this is the concern with how ugly this offense is. They just lost a stinker to the Texans. I think, I think that was an amazing explanation. but they also outgain them 420 yards to 190. And you said that, but about the yards for play. And it came down to Ryan Tannehill

throwing four interceptions. And Mike Frable said that the offense was their own worst enemy. And I understand there are play calling problems. But for me, like, they should have been able to sleep block and win this game. And when if the Titans are playing the bills or the chiefs or any of these teams have already played, then you can say, okay, the play conglings should have mattered.

This was like an energy and a, and an organizational loss today. Like this was just a sloppy, sloppy, sloppy game. And they were out with three starters. Bud Dupree's on IR. Genoris Jenkins was scratched right before game time with a chest injury. But this was brutal. And if our whole thing, and we did this little kind of mini debate last week,

and I said, you know, I'm sorry, the best argument for the Titans is they know how to win, this is the kind of game that is the counterfactual. is like if my whole thing, I don't have anything. I preface my entire argument with you last week, Ben, with I don't have EPA on my side. I don't have pressure rate on my side. I don't have anything except I believe the Titans understand I play situation of football and win. And now that I don't have that anymore.

So I'm not off the Titans bandwagon, but what I am saying is if you're, if you're the team that wins, you have to win. Right. And that's the thing is to me is they won those games and you'd watch them back and you should be like, there's no way this, this house of card stays. Because it's just, offense was so onerous. It was so just agonizing. And that's what, that's, that, this is the other side of that stick.

I think they can be fine against the bad teams with how they are on offense. And I also think they're still in self-discovery mode. There's a chance we get to week 14 and they figure it out. They're like, all right, we got to run, don't to form like this, Ederson like that. And we got to keep the fullback on the field because they're doing a lot of fullback snaps now. And they, like, get somewhere. Right now they're nowhere.

And so this, this is a team that's going to be in the playoffs. It's not a playoff team. The defensive line is not dominating. There's nothing about this team that's a playoff team. They have seven weeks and a two and a half game cushion against the Colts to figure it out. That's the timeline right now for Brable. And if you can do it, it's a heck of a coaching job. But it's tough to have faith.

No, I think they'll make the playoffs. I mean, AJ Brown was knocked out of this game. I mean, this was just a disaster of a game. It has been questioning most things about the Titans. but as we've talked about, the whole thing was kind of hang on by by Superglue anyway.

All right, my next one is the is this the end of an era award and it goes to the Seattle Seahawks? The Cardinals beat the Seahawks 23 to 13. I'm just asking questions, Ben. I'm just asking questions. Stephen was also just asking questions on Friday. So it's very clear we're not just asking questions

on this topic. So Colt McCoy is now just destroying franchises. He's just destroying franchises. This is amazing. So this is VESPN. The Cardinals are now 6 and 0 on the road. All of those wins coming up at double digits

are the fourth team in the history of the NFL to win six straight games on the road by double digits within a season. And then the first team, the third team, by the way, to do that in the first six road games. McCoy 33, 44, 328. yards, two touchdowns, Russ Wilson, 14 to 26, 207 yards.

I believe the numbers from McCoy, almost all of them, 26 to 34, were on throws of five yards or fewer, so it wasn't like he was pushing it down the field. This is an embarrassing loss for Seattle. And I understand we're going to give the Cardinals their flowers and they're due. But Russell Wilson should be able to play better than this, unless he's really, really hurt, in which case, we talked about this last week, you should be able to have the conversation with him that he should not come back. Zach Ertz has been an awesome addition, by the way.

Like, I think that we would all have had Zach Ertz on a washed watch a couple of months ago. Yeah, yeah. He had eight catches for 88 yards and two scores today. Not washed. Not washed. That, to me, is the example of what winning teams do in midseason to take a guy that we thought. I mean, like Melvin Ingram is a good example with Kansas City, where I saw that and I kind of

shrugged. Well, he's actually making a difference. You know, Ryan Clark earlier today said, well, let the, the rough sweepstakes begin. And you sort of think a guy who wanted out last year sees this, kind of sees where things are trending. According to a bunch of people who are there, Pete Carroll cut off his press conference and said,

after eight minutes and said, quote, I'm really done, I'm done. And then he returned to the podium and said he is not used to having to handle this much losing. Called it the most frustrating he's been. And then answered. Repentance is important. Are you sure that it's helping to come back and just clarify that you're the most frustrated you've ever been

and that you can't handle all this losing? Are we sure that that was like the move? Wilson also had a quote where he was asked, he was talking about the offense. He was like, yeah, the two drives we scored on were like tempo drives. We're up tempo. So maybe we should do that a little bit more. Oh, hello.

Loving some shots, baby. Let's go. I love me a little public dissolution. the Seahawks do not have their draft pick. They traded that for Jamal Adams. That would move, I believe. That's that working out. According to the Jets writers,

that would, if the Giants went on Monday night, they would have a top five pick, okay? The Seahawks, and that would go to the Jets. So from a franchise perspective, and this is sort of what we talk about, when we say all in from a franchise standpoint, a lot of times it's a bit of a misnomer. I don't want to do the whole all-in rant again.

What I do want to say is, like, sometimes there's actual stakes. And there's such a small margin for error for a team like this, the C-Ox. And they bet big on Jamal Adams. It's not working. This team is not good. They're not going to make the playoffs. Mathematically, they're not going to make the playoffs.

Just, I test-wise, they're not going to make the playoffs. And you just wonder, that was their shot to change their franchise. They didn't do it. Russell won it out last summer. I don't know how this is any different. Ben, what do we think? I think you look at the Titans, right? I just talk about how they're trying to figure stuff out, right?

What are we going to be? You remember the Titans. Remember the Titans, for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tremendous. You look at the Chiefs, a team that, like, didn't have to figure anything out for years because there was like, Mahomes, Reed, we're the best. And then suddenly got punched in the face and had to, like, recoup for a couple weeks, you know, circle the wagons and then figure out what to do.

And then you look at the Seahawks with the Pete Carroll, Russell Wilson pairing, and just for like 10, not 10 years, because obviously the mid-2010s are great. For the last four years, it's probably fair. They've been trying to figure out exactly which button to press on offense. And they just can't get there. And I think from the outside, and it's very easy to say, like, pass more. Aha. Like, you know, we did it.

Right. But there's very clear limitations on where Russ wants to throw the ball and how he wants to get into those plays. And those go up against how Pete Carroll wants the offense to be designed in terms of run-pass balance and how the running game works. They still can't go under center because Russ's finger's not working. They, you reach a point where even if the marriage is good, you're like, you know, you've won 10 games every season forever.

You, you feel like you've hit this ceiling in this relationship where we have pressed all the buttons we can think of. We've turned all the dials and the knobs. We have, we have uncovered every stone. We've left no stop unpoled. We cannot get this. any better than it is here. And that's where you start to get this angst,

which you saw from Russ this past off season where it was, well, maybe if the offensive line was better, that's probably not it, Chief, but like you start to make these claims and to push for these things a little bit more publicly. Today, today they allowed 11 pressures and four sacks. So today, yes, you can sort of say, but on the other hand, Wilson through,

I think the PFF number is here, he threw only 34% of his passes beyond the first down marker. So he's just, he's not Russ right now. Yeah, and when he takes his deed, To me, they're very contrived right now. It's like, oh, it's deep shot time. And it's like, yo, DK is covered.

Aha, but it's deep shot time, right? They just don't, they are nowhere. But unlike other teams who are nowhere or have been nowhere, they've just been mired in this for a while. And that's why it feels like we're coming to a head. We're coming to a split. Because it's just this has been so long. What newness?

What trade acquisition gave Jackson? What officer coordinator, Shane Waldron, can possibly break this ice at this point? It just feels forsaken. And I think that that frustration spirals and it boils. And that's why you see them losing stupider and stupider and stupider games. It had to be. I mean,

it had to be this season. They went out and they got the offense. And everyone was talking about Ruskin in these layups and, and the easy throws that everybody else the NFL was getting. It had to be this year. And it just not there. Nora, what sort of stood out about this game?

I have a question for you, Kevin Clark. I have something I need you to do for me. I need you to rank the following teams in tears. Please do. would like to. Please do. Yes, I would love to. Thank you. The Cardinals. Okay. The Seahawks. The 49ers. The Rams and the Colt McCoy Cardinals. This is a great question. Okay. So Cardinals right now are number one. The Rams look like they're in a bad place. I would put

the Rams and then the 49ers. I understand the Colt McCoy Cardinals have looked good, but if they play 100 times. It's about playing 100 times who would win the most, right? So I'd go card. It's actually about your ranking of these teams and tiers is what it's about. Kyla Murray. Kyla Murray Cardinals are on a tier. B tier is 49ers, Rams, not in that order, Rams 49ers.

The Colt McCoy Cardinals are on the B tier. And then the C tier is the Ciox. It's a tough scene. It's a tough scene as a friend of mine would say. The Gino Smith Seahawks are on the D tier. Are we sure the Gino C Seahawks are lower than the Russ C Cawks at this stage? Well, they're getting there. The Russ Seahawks, when he can go under center.

Russ Seahawks, then the Gino. Then the Gino Cahawks. Dude, and then the nine finger Russ Cahawks. That's it. That's your NFC West Tears. Here's the, here's the McCoy passion chart today, okay? Behind the line of scrimmage, 10 for 11. As I said, short passes, he had 22 of them, completed 8.

percent of those, just a completion. Medium-length throws. When he did go beyond 10 yards, 10 to 19, 8 of 8 for 115 yards. Like, dude, this guy's just hitting passes. Don't worry about it. Colt McCoy's got this. Like, this is why you invest in a backup quarterback. This is why you go out and you, I know this is going to sound like a joke.

Like, this is a Rosillo bit, how much you love Colt McCoy. But this is valuable. This is a team that can legitimately win the Super Bowl. and this is a team that needs to buy and home field to get that and if this all happens it's going to be because of freaking Colt McCoy.

Listen, you need a good backup who can't make, it doesn't make mistakes. That's what I think we're backup. And then you need an offensive designer who knows how to maximize that guy. And as a long time, Cliff Kingsbury fan, it was never said a bad thing

about his offense ever. Absolutely. Do not go back in check. Please know. Please don't. That Panthers game was Phil Snowpitch and chaos and Colt really couldn't handle it.

in general, the offense they've run for Cole McCoy has been impressive. It is emphasized that Cliff's not running the Kyler offense the way he is because of ineptitude. He's running it because that's what's good for Kyler. Like, just let Kyler play backyard football. That's better than anything I can do, which takes some humility. This cold offense, quick game, play action. No Chase Edmonds, too.

Edmonds should really hurt their ability to go play action and go quick games. He's such a good pass catching back. Nah, we're going to throw screens to James Connor. That's not supposed to work on the chalkboard. It's working because they've got a really, really nice. flow right now on offense. Little boy, Ron Dale Moore. Oh, man, he's a lot of fun, too. That's a real good pick. That's helping them out a lot as well.

They know what they are on offense. And Cliff's ability to change pace with Colt back there has been impressive. Shout out, Chandler Jones, Marcus Golden, both had great games today. It's Cardinals fans, oddly insistent. We don't talk enough about the defense. So there you go. Good games. But we focus on the quarterback because they had one of the best quarterbacks in football.

Now they have a guy who wasn't supposed to be good, who's playing out of his mind and maybe ending the Seahawks run in the NFC West. So we're going to talk about that. Anything else, guys? Shout out cheese-its. Well, I mean, like, just for that game. All right. Unless you have a cheese that's take relative,

or, right? No, it's okay. We can move on. We can move on. Producer Arjuna is telling us to keep it tight tonight. Ain't that the truth. We failed. Tried and failed.

Tried and failed. All right. Ben-Solak. Raven 16, Bears 13. And I want to preface this by saying that I had asked you, do you want to do this game? And he said, I don't know. And then you just started ranting about Matt Nagy,

and I stopped you and I said, we have to do this segment. I don't know how I feel about the week 11 show becoming the, let's talk about all the things Ben does in the pre-show show, where I just, we're pulling back the curtain of how upset I get when I'm doing prets for this podcast. Yeah, Ravens beat the Bears,

which Ravens, man, just we're going to lose to the dolphins on Thursday and I football with our starting quarterback and then we're going to beat the Bears with Tyler Huntley. Sure, why not? Extremely difficult team to prognosticate. So Huntley gets the win. Fields was four for 11 with set for 79 yards

before going down in this game with a rib injury. He immediately comes in and QB1, Andy Dalton, 11 for 23, 2001 yards and two touchdowns. This is my, it's my time award, as Andy Dalton told us in the preseason about his status of the starting quarterback for the Bears,

obviously since lost that job. Matt Nagy, at the end of this game, was asked if both of your quarterbacks are healthy, who's your starter? And he did not commit to a player. That's cool. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm just doing the math thing.

Yeah, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. What was previously the dumbest thing you've ever heard? Matt Nagy not committing to the starter at some point earlier this season. I would guess. here's the thing you look at the box score Dalton played so much better than Fields you watch the game

simply is not reality Fields had a couple of incredible throws in a couple of great scrambles any time they were in their condensed sets and they had their tight ends on the field and they're running boot action they had some sprint out stuff that was nice

they had a little orbit toss they had some cool stuff in the script like Nagy has good one-off plays he always has it looked good it looked how it was supposed to look they had like a missed field goal then they get into empty

and the Ravens are just like, okay, and they just send fine. Cool. Yeah, and Jason Peters and Borum, the right tackle, get absolutely deposited in a field back, and you get a forced fumble. You get an untimely sack, and all of a sudden you're in a third and long. There's no reason to be going to these empty sets.

Just completely unnecessary for the way your team is built and the strengths of your quarterback. Then Dalton gets in there. You know, throws a wide receiver screen, 70-yard touchdown to Darnamuni. Great, whatever. It plays a stateless. line, don't care. But then he goes into the empty sets and it looks better because

Dalton's a better quarterback in that context. And you can see Matt and Aggie learning the wrong lesson. Like you can see the gears turning in his head. He's like, oh, my offense is working now. Firstly, it was a five-yard completion of Marquis Goodwin, Chief. Secondly, no, it's not. Your offense works in that, it develops fields. That is the objective of the offense at this point. And that's my main question is if they are putting fields out there in like, you know, spread on third and five to help him learn and they know it's not going to work,

I'm okay with that. Like if that's how you think you need to develop the guy, whatever. That's, I don't think the best way to do it, but if you're doing it for that reason, cool. It feels like Nagy's doing that because he's continually trying to make a point

and it is absurd that he is allowed to continue making this point. Play calling should be wrenched from him and given to Bill Laser. He should be replaced on the headset. They shut down the headset. I'm doing this conspiracy theory. They broke the headset

in an effort to get an actually good fourth of one play out there, and he still went wildcat from the gun, which is the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my mind. Oh, I heard the opposite conspiracy theory, which is that they were pretending the headset was down. I like that. Yeah, I'll run with either. At this point.

Either one. Yeah, all slander would have a direction. We've been lied to about the headset, okay? Yeah. One of the guys who compass the Ravens said something, that I've been thinking about, where he said, imagine if I told you in August,

the Ravens would win a game at Chicago without Lamar Jackson, Hollywood Brown, J.K. Dobbins, Gus Edwards, Marcus Peters, Ronnie Stanley, Anthony Avert, Jimmy Smith, Pranelle McPhee, Derek Quill from Brandon Williams. I would say, man, Don D. Filippo

or Bill Lazer's interim case can't be that good. Or I would say, man, I can't believe the bears haven't gone to Justin Fields yet. There are so many things I would say. First of all, I would have believed it. I would have believed it.

If you follow the bears for five seconds, I would have freaking believed it. But I also think, Like, what is this franchise doing in Chicago? What, what are we doing? If I was a McCasky, I would have some clandestine meetings with my staff. And I'd say, show me your plan for Justin Fields.

The injury apparently is some sort of bruised ribs. He's going to be fine, thank God. But when I hear the comment, we don't really know who's going to start. We're going to keep that in house. when I hear that comment, I would figure out which of the offensive coaches who have the best plan

for Justin Fields. I would make that guy the interim coach and Matt Nagy can get started on figuring out what staff he's going to be on next year

because it's not going to be the Chicago Bears. And that's what it is for me. It's just we are, we are on a piece of driftwood in the ocean right now just in terms of what are we trying to,

are we trying to develop Justin Fields? You very simply have to remove Matt Nagy's influence because he's not showing that he understands how to do that and that it's making headway. And I understand that Ian Rappaport wrote a piece that Justin Fields is developing. To me, that is very much in spite of what is being done in Chicago, not because of what's

being done in Chicago. So I'm 100% there. I just don't see the object. I don't see the point of continuing this far as any longer. Well, and now you combine that with a shoddy offensive line. And the combination is clearly also putting the guy's health in jeopardy to too great an extent. I'm

Kevin is flailing his arms. I've just seen too many young quarterbacks get failed by their franchise. And if you ever won evidence, there's a lot evidence for it. But if you ever want some real football evidence that life is not fair, just take a look at young quarterback sometimes. And take a look at someone

who gets every advantage handed to them with a good offensive line, with a good play calling, where the coach knows what he's doing. Coach who supports him. What are you even saying just from a support standpoint, from a confidence standpoint, when you don't give a vote of confidence to your first round pick? And if, if, and listen, actually, you know,

the Cowanahan debate is actually a little separate from this. But I just think that if, I think Jim Greta was also quite a bit better than Andy Dalton. But at some point, if you can't say Justin Fields is absolutely our starter, I believe in this guy we're going to win with him next week or two weeks from now, we're going to win with him three weeks or now, we're going to win out, whatever.

If you're the quarterback guru, isn't that on you, big man? Isn't that on you? Like, that's your job. Your job is to develop the young quarterback. So what is it you say you do here if you haven't developed the quarterback

to be better than Andy Dalton? Because you didn't develop Andy Dalton. You just signed him. He grew his hair out. He got a beard at one point. I don't know if he still has it. It does look great. Now he has a really bad mustache.

But I just think this whole thing, thing is an indictment. I think that Matt Nagy is confusing excuses he can make with indictments of himself. I'm done. I do want to share the stat. This is for Mark Dalton. He works for the Cardinals. There's only one quarterback over the past two years, including Seattle quarterbacks, who is one in each of the last two seasons in Seattle, and that's Colton McCoy. Russell Wilson has not won in Seattle this year. Wow. I'm glad that Kevin opened this segment by saying Ben got amped up And close the segment. That's exactly what I was going to say.

I just, I'm sorry, I've talked to too many 34 year old quarterbacks. Mm-hmm. Who have a pang of, of regret. Weird flex, but okay. I just, I know a lot of 34 year old quarterbacks, okay? A lot at 34 quarterbacks. Just like, I, I've talked to enough guys. I've talked to enough guys who are at the middle of their career or they're on our third team.

And they all have the same freaking story. They all have the same freaking story. this thing about Mac Jones a couple days ago and I talked to Richard Taylor, the economist who buys NFL teams or whatever. And his belief is that there's no such thing as a quarterback prospect. Like, yes, there are smarter quarterbacks than others. There are

better quarterbacks and others. There's guys who make all the throws or whatever. But like the franchise change in quarterback, it's usually just a really good quarterback who went to the right team. And right now, Justin Fields is getting the rug pulled out from underneath him because he

went to the wrong place. And life is not fair. Did you say you talked to Richard Toller? I did. I took a class that has at UChicago. You should say hi. He doesn't remember me, but that's fine. Yeah, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go ahead and not do that.

Yeah. You went to the University of Chicago? Yeah. It was a grand old time. That's cool. Do you ever see Obama around? He's in that neighborhood. No, but I took my then-girlfriend and my wife

out on a date to the Baskin Robbins where he and Michelle Obama had their first date and they had their guests and there's a rock. Yeah. And we realized like that's because Obama's. And she was like, yeah, that's cool. I went there on my first date with my boyfriend too. Wait, this is awesome.

He was graduating law school at you Chicago. And we walked past the rock. Then we have this in common. This is so cute. Oh, man. What a beautiful moment. An hour and 10 minutes into the show. What a tough time.

Stephen with Cam. This is such good. What a tough time to say goodbye to you, Ben, when we found out that you and Nora had this in common. Bye, buddy. Bye, friends. All right, now it's time for our statement with Stephen Ruiz. So we've been here at the Ringar and Felt show,

Nora and I, we've been putting a different name on it every week. And for some reason, the dam is burst. And I'm getting so many submissions for this. And that's how you know, Stephen, it's catching fire. But, boy, we got a couple, don't stop Ruizun, which is it's strange that people came to that independently. The birds and the Ruiz we got.

Cash Ruiz. Yeah, the cash Ruiz everything around me. Which is a pretty good one. Literally, I got 40 of them in my. It's time for me to close open DMs, is what I would say.

Yeah. If this was an Eagles podcast, the birds and Ruiz would be pretty good. Um, hey, what's Ruiz? Uh, oh, yeah, some of these are just completely insane. And I'm not gonna, I'm actually just not, Ruiz it enough. I don't, I honestly, there's just some people who, uh, who really went for it in the DMs. And, uh, we're gonna move on from that and we're gonna call it 13 Ruizans why again.

See what's going on, buddy. I like that name. I have no problem with keeping that name. But I, I, I had a great day. I had a great day. what stood out that is not in the Panthers game they're going to be discussing. What stood out that wasn't in the Panthers game? Yeah, like give us some hot takes

that you just don't have any other place for. Oh, oh. Anything that's not about the Panthers game is inbound. Okay. This isn't a new hot take by any means. Justin Herbert, once again, the best quarterback in the NFL. He reclaimed the title on Sunday.

I don't know how anyone... It's not not a hot take. I mean, you guys, what do you guys? think top five at least are you giving me top five i will give you top five thank you norah it depends on i will give you top five like going forward um yeah sure sure i mean i don't i don't know if we're doing if we're doing a quarterback draft right now for the rest of the year is her word a top five guy probably yeah sure i don't know um all right anything else or should we get to the panthers game no let's talk

about the panthers game because i have a lot to talk okay so you finessed your way into talking with the Panthers two straight weeks. That coincides with Cam Newton being on the roster for two straight weeks. Cam Chronicles, too. They played Washington. They lost. But what did we think? Pretty good game by the offense.

I know it was only 21 points. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it was a very short game. Like Washington only got stopped once or twice and they only scored 27. I think it was 2.3 points per drive for the offense, which would be around a top 10 mark. The defense, for some reason, could not stop behind it. I guess Heineke still thought he was playing Tom Brady this week because it was one of the better performances I've seen out of an NFC East quarterback, not named Dak Prescott. Wow. Okay.

So there's two separate questions. One of them is if the Washington football team is any good. And one of them is if Cam Newton can actually be a viable starter for the Panthers. Let's take the Cam Newton thing first. What does this look like? What is this going to look like? They paid him a lot of money relative to what his. status was before he signed there. This is going to look how, Stephen? Well, this week, it didn't

look much different from what the offense was like with Sam Darno. Like, they just called the option routes where Chris McCaffrey came out of the backfield and either went to the left or went to the right, depending on where the defender was and came to doing through those passes over and over and over again. But that's what Sam Darnet was doing because he's not good at much else. So that's kind of why I was optimistic about this signing, even though. Cam is coming in mid-season, and it's kind of hard to pick up a playbook at this point, especially in an offense that you've never been in. And Cam has never been in an offense like this with terminology.

But I was, I'm optimistic after what I saw. Like, it didn't go well for the offense of blind. He could throw option routes to Christian McCaffrey. He threw the ball at the seam. He threw a nice little outbreaking route to the perimeter of Robbie Anderson at the end. Like, he made strong throws. They didn't ask him to throw downfield a lot, but, there wasn't any throw in the game that I can recall where I was like, oh, that was an ugly throw.

Maybe Cam's not all the way back. He looks back. He looks like how he did in preseason. Were you surprised at his ability to run today? No. Actually, before the touchdown run, I was like, oh, he looks kind of slow compared to last week. But then the touchdown run happened. And I was like, oh, I'm an idiot. Like, he's fine. He's still fast. He broke one safety's angle on that play. Like, I think he could still run. how good can this team be once cam get settled and all that stuff they're five and six i believe which is by no means crazy out of it in the nfc what what are we looking at they're not going to be that good like i don't think they're going to make the playoffs the defense is mostly smoking

mirrors i think it works against bad quarterbacks apparently heineke's not one of those bad quarterbacks because he tore it up but when they're not able to do the funky blitz stuff where they're dropping defensive and sending linebackers and safeties and getting free rushers, the secondary gets exposed, and it got exposed in a big way today. Heineke escaped the pressure

at least like five times, and the secondary just couldn't hold up. Against not just McLaurin, like other guys, too. Like, they couldn't cover Washington. And I don't know if you guys can name two other receivers on that team, because I certainly couldn't be coming in today.

Definitely not. Definitely not. I do want to say, though, the Panthers have the dolphins next week and the Falcons the week after that. They could win two straight. And then it's anybody's, it's anybody's guess what could happen.

What would you do long, having seen this now, and listen, we're not going to see that much more of it, but I don't want to overreact to it to one and a half weeks. What would you do with the QB position if you were Carolina?

For this offseason and going forward. I mean, you have to look at the draft class and maybe they love one of these prospects. I certainly don't. I haven't had a lot. of exposure to any of them, but from what I've seen, I'm not getting hyped for Sam Howell. I'm not getting hyped for even Malik Lewis.

I'm going to jump off a bridge here. If I hear one more report about Sam Howell being a lock for the first round. I saw it, Neon Rappaport's thing where they were like, oh, yeah, pick it, Matt Corral, whatever. And then Howell will be right in there. Buddy, I've seen a lot of Sam Howell. And I keep seeing. I saw this, I saw this in the Rockport report here every week where it was like, oh, well, once the coaches get involved, these guys will rise up their draft boards.

well then don't get the coaches involved that's what he's yeah that's exactly what you should say like sam how is the answer to the question what if baker mayfield was worse that's sam howl and a little bit like wider a little bit wide not i don't mean that in like a derogatory way

I just mean like he just slightly sturdier maybe and I don't think he has like the movement skills like I think the wide this matter slower slower yeah Yeah. Anyway, that's, that that is whatever. But you have to take that into account if you're thinking about the offseason, right? Like maybe Cam might be the best option.

I mean, it's not a terrible option. New England almost went into this season with that as their top option before drafting Mac Jones in the first round. Well, I would also say like, you know, and this kind of goes to, I think this may have been in the end's report of somebody else's where they were like, well, 2017. was supposed to be a down year and then had Mahomes and Watson. But there's a couple things. Number one is everyone was just wrong on Watson.

Like he obviously should have been a top five pick. And the second thing is like Mahomes was overdraft or was sort of, Brett Veach said he was the best part ever seen. They went out and I got him and they traded up, you know, because the best coach, one of the best office coaches in the history of football, decided that he would become his pupil, right? Like, and if there's a situation like that, I'll see it. But like, I don't see any of these guys where that's how Matt Corral, whatever, Kenny Thicket.

Like, I just don't see. I don't even know who that would be this year. But I don't see any amazing officer play caller saying, this is my guy. Yeah. And the two guys that stood out from that draft looking back, one was one of the greatest winners we've ever seen in college football. Like Clemson won a national championship with Watson. And then you had Mahomes. like scoring 70 points a game and the only reason they were losing and he was throwing a lot of

fix was because the defense was so bad and he was pressing. Like we saw the generational talent on Mahomes's film. You saw it with Watson just based on how Clemson won. You can't make that case with any of these guys. Not one of them. Well also who's like, okay, maybe like the minor league version of that could be if Kevin Stefanski's like, like I desperately have to have some guy at like 15. Like that would be that that would be what a play caller is going to just make a rookie his guy. But even that, that's still not Andy Reid. But I don't know. I didn't want to do draft here, but we're there.

Anything about Washington stand out? No, I honestly, I think this game was more of a fluke. They weren't very good on early downs outside of when they were running ball. Like the passing game wasn't very good until third down. That's why Heineke had to do so many crazy things on third down. I don't know if that's sustainable going forward. I don't think it is. but maybe Heineke's like the next, I don't know, Tony Romo, but I doubt.

Maybe he's the next Ryan Fitzpatrick. Well, that's not a win for Washington. I don't know if you know how Washington. Yeah, but it's a win for like crazy stuff. That is, that's a good point. It's a win for content. That's all we're after. It's a win for it's third down.

Let's do something crazy. Does Ryan Fitzpatrick have the career he ended up having if he doesn't grow the beard? I feel like the beard. was a big turning point for him. Well, that was, that's the Kyle, the Kyle Brand made that point before the season that, like, if he didn't have the nickname and the personality, would he've gotten so many chances,

would he get so hyped up every single off season? And the answer is no. Well, I plagiarized Kyle's take and then you just blew my, my cover by pointing it out. Did you know it was Kyle's take? No, no, I was, I'm lying. Okay. Well, kind of works for us.

So we can, we can steal each other's takes. It's fine. Yeah, it's fine. All right, cool. It's, it's all good. We just have one big pot oh takes, and we just, we can just, we can just steal from it. The take tank.

Company policy. Yeah, it's company policy. By the way, Atlanta at nine, like that, if Arthur Smith decided that he was going to develop a quarterback, he thought was really special, that would be like another kind of minor league version of what we were talking about earlier. Nora, anything about this weekend and the games that you want to run past Stephen? I just want Stephen to reach into his personal take tank and lay something on us.

Preferably, Stephen, could you tell us how you feel about cheese it's? Oh, come on. He's going to be, Stephen has great judgment. You know he's going to compare it favorably or unfavorably. No, no. And also, second question, goldfish or cheez-its? Goldfish. Thank you.

Thank you. The goldfish is lighter. Cheez-its, it's too dense. It's too dense. Cheez-its are more dense than goldfish. Kevin, we don't disagree on that. I said earlier that I had chees-its tonight. It's not that I think that cheeses are better than goldfish.

The secondary. flavors for goldfish are a hundred times better than cheese it's. All right. Well, talk to me about, talk to me about cheezed flavors. Just cheese it's though. Like the white cheddar flavor? I think that would be like regular white cheddar, uh, like extra toasty. Extra toasty.

I see I, I, I, Ben brought up some spicy stuff. Yeah, I would say like white cheddar is seen as the number two cheese it and it's a bad, it's a bad cheese. It's not good. I'm not into the white cheddar. Right. It's not like white cheddar. popcorn, which is one of the goat snacks.

Which is elite snack. And if you can't support white cheddar, are you a good snack? I would say no. It's a system. It's a system snack. The thing about white cheddar popcorn is it ruins your day. Thank you. Thank you, Isaiah. It ruins your day and it like ruins your hands,

but it's worth it. How does it ruin your hay? You can't just wash your hands. Because it's, it's, oh yeah, okay. Yeah. Do you try it? Have a bunch of white cheddar popcorn. And then try to have a normal day afterwards. Just try. Don't lie.

Don't come on here and lie to the people. You can't have a normal day afterwards. It's over. I can do that for you. I'm going to tell you a little life hack for that, white cheddar popcorners. What the hell is that? No, popcorners are good.

Popcorners are good. They're flown jet blue? Like once. Okay. For the live TV. You can look it up. I flew on an airline yesterday. They didn't have live TV.

I missed a college of Los Angeles. I feel like an idiot. Popcorners are in elites now. Okay. I do have a hot take I can drop. And it's Cam's Cam Centric. So take this with a grain of salt. But I think the Patriots are Super Bowl favorites with Cam Newton.

This version of Cam Newton as their quarterback, leaving it at that. I won't explain it either. I'm not going to explain the tape. Wait. I'm not going to explain the tape. No, there's Super Bowl favorites? They would be my Super Bowl favorites if they had Cam Newton. And I think we would all agree with that take.

And we're seeing the Mac Jones version of them. We don't know what the Cam Newton version would have looked like. I'm just saying, and there's no way to fact check me on this because there's no way to prove it that they would be a much better team if they had Cam Newton had quarterback. You know, I went on a limb and I was pretty pro-CAM last year, and I disagree with that take, with your take, with your current take. I'm a second.

I'm second only to you as far as ProCAM takes this company, but I still think that the Mac does things that Cam, I think they would just be, the offense would be a little, I don't know, I was made worse, but also just like, I was disappointed. More turnovers, but also like I had thought, and this is something we've talked about at nauseam here, is that I thought that they were going to have a little more for Cam

offensively, and they just didn't. Like I was like a little disappointed with with Josh and Bill last year from an offensive standpoint. I thought they were going to be in their bag. And maybe it was because of the limitations of CAMs, especially after a test positive for COVID. And obviously was was out for a little bit and then seemed like he got a rhythm of things. Like maybe there were limitations there. But I don't think there was a bag for them to be in. I think Josh McDaniels got unfair criticism last year.

I don't know how you coordinate an offense with those pieces he had to work with. and you can include Cam Newton in that. Like Cam Newton not at his best. Cam Newton tested positive for COVID in the middle of the year. Like all those factors. His first year without a real off season.

Like I don't know how McDaniels could have done much better than what he did. Not that he did well, but I wouldn't put last year on McDaniels at all. I just think it was a bad team. I mean, it was just the weird. And also they had a bunch of opt-outs. It was also the weirdest year in football history

and like integrating a new quarterback into a new system that you're inventing on the spot. not ideal. I'll make it a non-cam take. I'll say I think they're a better team. And I didn't believe this two weeks ago, but I believe it now after watching all of his dropbacks this past week. I think they're a better team with Trevor Lawrence.

I think Trevor Lawrence is a better quarterback right now than Mack Jones. And I don't even think that's controversial. I know it will be taken as it. But if you watch them play, I'm telling you, he's better than him. He's just, it's not even close.

Wait, yeah, I don't see why. I'm not even giving. I'm not giving. and we're not, Isaiah, don't even think about giving the hot take button here. It's not, it's not, it's not, I don't even know why, who's arguing that it is. He's going to win rookie of the year because he's playing on a team that's winning and he looks,

he's making plays that look better. But I don't, I don't think anyone would be like, oh, I would take Mac Jones over Trevor Lawrence for the next 10 years. Nobody's saying that. Nobody's getting off the bandwagon. Now, after next year. That might be true. I think we have a couple.

I think there's a couple of people that think that a redraft would go a little differently. I had W-E-I callers, but like not anybody, not pundits. Yeah, pundits. I'll give you that. I would, I would say, like, I think that I think there's a chance that Mack Jones ends up having a better career than Trevor Lawrence. But I think that's only because of what an indictment, I think it's been of just the entire vibe around the Jaguars right now with Urban, like when are they going to pull the plug?

Are they going to hire an offensive coordinator who is going to make a, things better is urban ever going to have any creativity is urban ever going to think he wants to be there like i i don't i'm getting extremely worried about that but i would still take trevor lawrence over mac jones and i i do think i do still think despite everything that he lorence will end up having better career i just think that there's a much bigger chance that mac uh has a better career than than the than the what i pegged it as beginning of the season I still think in a vacuum, Lawrence, it has a better career than Mac. So maybe I misinterpreted the takes from the timeline,

but I thought people were at the point where they were like Mac is better now than everybody, but maybe soon they'll surpass them because they're more talented. I think he misinterpreted the takes. I'll take that. It's also possible that some people in your timeline got a little carried away. Yeah. I can't speak for your timeline. I'm only following Patriots fans.

Well And Alabama fans I'm not even sure Alabama fans Would go there But I don't know I don't know Stephen The Friday show is going to be

On Wednesday this week Because it's going to be before the games Nor will be on that show I will be on the Tuesday show With James Jones Ryan Chazier and Jason Gough So we're doing a little bit differently This week and it'll be very fun

Happy Thanksgiving Great All right Stephen see you soon norah we have a couple more segments all right now it's time for a listener question we got a bunch of good ones but i want to tackle this one because we didn't get to talk to it talk about this team at all uh really from an analysis standpoint on sunday night uh sir michael reeves in your opinion with the 49ers getting healthier do you think they are a worthy playoff team so worthy is a strange word because they're probably going to make the playoffs

and it's just a math thing at this point i guess the better question is are they legitimate playoff team that can win a playoff game and nor I'll put the ball in your court. Yeah, I think yes. Right. Like obviously the, the, um, NFC feels still top heavy, maybe a little bit less than it did a few weeks ago. But there are certainly matchups that'll wind up at the top of that division that I would not like to see them matched up with or would not favor them in.

But they went into this week, I think seventh in total DVOA. Mm-hmm. we're seeing, you know, even Jimmy Garoppolo is sort of firing on all cylinders. Peak Mahomes, he is not, right? But we're seeing Jimmy Garoppolo playing his best football. I think that's a viable team, right? Like, this is a team that does head scratching things sometimes,

both personnel-wise. And then, you know, even today we see Shanahan get like suddenly conservative. And all of a sudden they go on this magnetism. magnificent 20 play drive. They're milking the clock. Everything's going right. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, it's just turtle and kick a field goal here. But there's still a lot that, that they've got some ways to win a football game where I'm like, yeah, sure. I believe that a, that a team with a really for the most part sound creative offensive scheme, a quarterback who can, who does not always play very, very well, but when he's relatively mistake free, like, can move the ball on

you, a lot of talent on the roster, it's totally possible. Okay. So I want to correct something I said earlier because I'm looking at the schedule now. When I say they're going to make the playoffs, I feel like they feel like a playoff team. They're five and five right now. 50, 50. Yeah. I mean, I feel like they're probably better than maybe some of the teams above them.

But let's put that aside for a second. Here's a schedule. So Minnesota, which, as we discussed, is a huge, huge, huge game for the playoffs. because they're on that zone too. At Seattle, don't really know what their deal is going forward. Are they just going to pull the plug? Are they going to be a feisty team in December?

I don't know. Cincinnati, tough out. Atlanta, who, putting aside Thursday night, I have won some games this year. Tennessee, Houston, okay, and then the Rams at the end of the season. So there aren't a lot of automatic wins here.

So, I mean, the fact they've already lost twice. to Arizona. They've gotten them out of the way. The Colt McCoy lost, quite frankly, looks better every time Colt McCoy beats a team like the Seahawks. So I don't think that I think they're playing like a playoff team, but that schedule might prevent them from it. I still say they make it though. So there we go. Anything else, bud? Love it. Okay. So you're back on Wednesday. I'm back on Tuesday. We're both joining different podcasts. The normal schedule will be a little bit shuffling.

because of Thanksgiving. This has been the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely for production help with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramqq.