The Ringer NFL Show - Week 12 Recap: Eagles Defeat the Rams, Seahawks Win Over the Cardinals, and More

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Sheil, Steven, and Diante return to discuss, debate, and share their expert takes on their favorite games from the Sunday NFL slate. Eagles-Rams (1:36) Cardinals-Seahawks (10:40) 49ers-Packers (23:13) Next, they shine a light on the current state of the 49ers (30:43), Commanders (40:18), and Texans (47:18), and debate whether those teams are cooked, contenders, or pretenders heading down the stretch. Finally, the guys survey the league and offer superlatives and awards to the players, coaches, and teams who made newsworthy contributions to the Week 12 headlines (58:00). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia, Steven Ruiz, and Diante Lee Producers: Chris Sutton, T Cruz, and Mark Panik Production Supervision: Conor Nevins, Arjuna Ramgopal, and Daniel Comer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at the Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that will include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be. keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe,

and get ready for the McShay show on the ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capadia here with Deontay Lee and Stephen Ruiz. Good to have you watching on Fandual TV or listening on Spotify, Week 12, a wild, week 12, new narratives forming, maybe wild endings. Who knows? Are some teams out or some teams in? We are going to discuss it all. We're just going to get right into it as we do at the start of the show and start with our lessons, gentlemen. And I'm going to start us off because we just finished watching the Eagles take it to the Los Angeles Rams.

And we're going to get into a lot of stuff about the playoff landscape and who fits where. I think the Lions, my first lesson is the Eagles are the biggest threat to the lions in the NFC after watching that game. You know, we've watched this team all season long, the first five weeks. It's like, is Nick Siriani going to make it to Thanksgiving? They have a nice win over the Bengals. And now you look at them. And what they're able to do on the lines of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.

I mean, their offensive line dominated in this game and their defensive line, their pass rush, which was something that I had concerns about, you know, over much of the season, has really come on strong the last couple of weeks here. And then, of course, how did I not start with this guy? Saquan Barkley in this game, 30 touches for 302 yards. Deonti, I've said it before. I have been running back pilled this season. I was the little nerd saying you don't need to pay running backs. Don't take running backs in the first round. And now here I am on the Ringer's Philly special and the Ringer NFL show,

getting to watch this guy every week. And you add him to the mix? I don't know. Am I crazy? Do you agree with me? Eagles are the biggest threat to the Lions who I think are still the favorites in the NFC. I would say that they are. I would say the Green Bay is probably not far off.

But coming off of this Sunday night game, I think it's hard to make much of an. argument that the Eagles should not be considered as maybe as a number two team in the NFC right now. And a lot of that is because of Sequin Barclay. And to your point, Sheel, it's not that I was, I was ever on the side of running backs don't matter. You know, obviously, I'm probably the one guy on the show who is most staunch in the run the ball, play good defense. That still works as a winning formula in the league. But watching Seekoine Barkley, and the thing that differentiates him from so many of his peers are all the little things he can do to create space.

you'll see him run up the back of the line and spin out. And now what would have been a two and a half yard gain is an eight yard gain. And then you get to see, and I think that this week, the commanders game both were great examples of how much he wears on you because every play can pop for an explosive. You just see linebackers having to overcommit. And now they're running counter and he gets underneath for a 10 to 15 yard gain. If you don't, if you try to play more downhill because he was able to get some yardage in between the tackles early in the game. you get that third quarter touchdown run where he hits the edge and there's nobody there. And he still has that gear where if he gets to top speed, there's not much that anybody can do with

them linebacker or DB. And that just alleviates so much stress on this offense. And I think that what we're seeing over the last couple weeks is just how little they have to ask of Jalen Hertz, which is a gift, I think, for this team when you talk about their ability to contend in the NFC going forward. Yeah, and that makes his job just so much easier. But I think he's playing really well in that environment. It looks like 2022 Jalen Hertz again, where he's not overthinking things.

I mean, you still saw a couple of plays where he's holding onto the ball for a long time. He's sitting back there in the pocket. He has enough time to make dinner back there. But usually or at least lately, those plays have been turning into explosive gains and big plays that move the chains. At the beginning of the year, that wasn't the case. But I think Helen Moore has found the right formula for this offense. it starts obviously with Seekwon Barclay and being able to guarantee basically

four or five yards every first down with the potential of going for 70 yards anytime you hand hitting the ball and building a simple passing game around that threat and also around the threat of having A.J. Brown on the outside, Devante Smith wasn't in this game and you hardly noticed it

because of those two pillars of the offense so far this season. Yeah, Saquan Barclay has five runs of 50 plus yards in 11 games. more than any player had last season. And again, he's played 11 games. Just the threat, it's not even, you know, explosives on the ground or what, consider like 12 yards, 14 yards, depending on who you talk to in the NFL. These are 50-yard runs.

And your point is so apt, Deonti, it's like you just keep going, keep going. It is the old body blows thing. And then it's only a matter of time with that offensive line where he gets the space. And all of a sudden, he breaks one there. And I think you're right, Ruiz. I thought this was one of Hertz's, better. games of the season. You know, it's like little things. Like they brought a blitz and he knew where to go and he hits AJ Brown on a little inbreaker and it turns into an explosive play. But they're one of the most run heavy

teams in the NFL. So it's not like he's got to, you know, carry them on his back. He's got to not turn the football over. He's got to scramble with his legs, which we saw him do tonight and pick up first downs on third down and then be accurate with the ball and get the ball in the hands of A.J. Brown and Devante Smith. So this season has taken a turn. Now let me ask you this. If we agree and and the betting markets and Fanduel and everyone would say the lions are the favorites in the NFC. How wide do we think the gap is between a team like the Lions and the Eagles? So does it come down to home field advantage? Is it more?

No, I think the Lions are probably a tier above because right now the Eagles are one game behind the Lions. The Lions have a harder remaining schedule. And Deonti, this is one of the biggest stories in the conference, really, the rest of the way, is which of these teams is not going to have that weird slip up? and lose ground for home field advantage. I think that what we've seen in the last few weeks in Philadelphia probably suggests that their ceiling is right about where it needs to be to be able to go toe to toe to with Detroit.

I don't know if I would say that there's a slim margin or a slim difference between the two, because I do think that maybe Detroit's a median game. Their B-plus game, I think is better than what Philadelphia's B-plus game has been this year. We've seen it at different points. Obviously, the Giants game, which they controlled from beginning to end earlier this was a mess for Jalen Hertz in the pocket.

He had a lot of struggles pushing the ball downfield. We've seen that run hot and cold. But I think that what we're seeing over the last few weeks is because of the threat of the explosive run game, I think kind of augmenting what they want to do on offense, that allows them, I think, to be able to look at anybody across the field and play with them, you know, toe to toe. And with some of the injuries and how banked up Detroit has been defensively, I think that if those two teams met Philadelphia should not necessarily feel fearful of anything other

than, you know, Jared Goff and Ben Johnson just having a heater and you're not having an answer. I think that this offense can move the ball against just about anybody in the league right now. I think any of the question marks you have about Detroit to also apply to Philadelphia, like, they are also a team that's built around the run game. They're also a run heavy team. I know Jared Goff puts up godier numbers, but I think he's more dependent on that run game working because Jalen Hertz is a part of Philadelphia's run game. Like he is a factor in the run game, whereas Jared Goff isn't. If defenses are able to take away Detroit's run game, I don't know if Jared

Goff's going to be able to burn them for it necessarily, but I think Jalen Hurts can in a way. But home field advantage is always going to matter in this question because Jared Goff is involved in this question. We've seen him struggle in cold weather. If they have to play outside in Philadelphia, I think that will be an issue for him. If they're playing indoors in Detroit, I don't think it's going to be an issue. but I honestly think it might come down to the whistle like how refs call the man coverage Detroit plays

because we know they're going to play physical we know how big of a deal that is against those two Philadelphia receivers you have to be able to play man coverage on the outside and hold up against AJ Brown and Devante Smith when he gets back and we know Detroit's going to try to do that. Aaron Glenn loves to play man coverage and if they can get away with holding a little bit like teams are wont to do in the playoffs

and the reps usually swallowed the whistle in the playoffs then I think it could be a good thing matchup for Detroit. But if it is outside, I'm going the other way and I'm picking Philadelphia blind. It really is. I mean, this, of all the years when we look at home field and you're like, does it matter? Does it not matter? This year in the NFC, it might matter more than like any time in the last decade. I don't know. I'm saying that off the top of my head. But you're absolutely right. I mean, Jared Goff has been a different guy in the elements. And when they're indoors, nobody has stopped them. I mean, they win. They cover. If you're betting on them every time they're

indoors, you're winning a lot of money. And even if you think the Eagles defense is pretty good, that lion's offensive line has just been, you know, the two best offensive lines in the NFL. So it's so funny as we're talking about this. It's like, oh, the two maybe best teams in the NFC, offensive line running the football. Old school. Deante, I mean, you got to have a big, big smile on your face. Loving this, old school. This is my kind of ball, man. This is how it's supposed to look going into holiday season. We're talking about the teams that went at the line discrimmage with the run game, play physical in coverage, and force your quarterback to earn it by, you know, dealing with pressure and having to play through a lot of tight coverage in, in high leverage

situations. This is winning football. As the great Marty Morningweg used to always say when I was a young buck reporter, everything in the NFL is cyclic, cyclic, cyclic, cyclic, and here you go, run the ball, make sure your offensive line is buttoned up and you will have a chance when the weather gets cold. All right, Deontay, what do you got? What did you learn in week 12th? I learned to Mike McClick. I learned of Mike McDonald's is still just as good a game planning coach as a head coach as he was as Baltimore's defensive coordinator over not just today but over the last few weeks. Like if you look at how they were able to win at the line of scrimmage, not just in terms of getting the sacks on Kyler, I think that some of that is just kind of like variance.

I think that there were things that might have been that we'll look back on film and say, all these things might have been available or, you know, guys just losing one-on-one up front. You know, Leonard Williams, Charlie have one of the most productive games of his career today. and that was definitely an unexpected piece of it. But what I think when you look at, not necessarily the results of those plays, those big splash plays, but what they're doing on a down-and-down basis

to see Arizona have their season low and rushing success rate against the Seattle front that we have not had many nice things to say in terms of stopping the run, I think that that speaks to just their growth over the season. And then you think a few weeks ago when they played the Rams, even though that game went into overtime

and we got to see some of those Stafford trick shots, that was the third lowest passing success rate of the season for the Rams in that game. And so much of this, I think, is just the implementation of a different scheme, right? And I think that it just takes some time, like that onboarding process of, hey, we're going to give up some plays time to time, but we're not going to give up many explosives. And sometimes you've got to deal with early in the season, things may be going wrong. And I think that now that you've seen them kind of build up a comfort level and an understanding of who they are, you're starting to see that success really start to shine through. even though, you know, the metrics don't necessarily suggest that you're looking at a top 10 defense, right? They're about middle of the pack and passing success rate and they're supposed to play aloud.

And the same for the run game. But the one thing that they do take away are those deep passes. And that's been what Arizona has been running defenses off the field with is running the ball well enough to make you honor it and load up the box and then taking big time shots down the field. And I think outside of like some very high degree of difficulty throws to Tray McBride, obviously you have to throw over the shoulder to Michael Wilson that put them within the 10-yard line that was one of the Tyler's best throws of the year.

You take those plays off the table that really wasn't much else there for Arizona in the passing game, which is why the pass rush was able to get home. And I think that all of this speaks really well to who Mike McDonald is. And it's funny that this game happened coming off of our preview show where we were discussing which of these teams you trust most. And I think all of us said in a one-game sample, Mike McDonald is about as good as you can ask for.

And that's exactly what we saw on Sunday. Yeah, he's helped turn around. on this run game completely, which I think has just made everything else easier, especially on passing downs. Like if you look at the pass down numbers, they haven't really changed over the course of the year. The big change over the last couple of weeks has been that first down run defense. And like maybe it's just coincidental that they made the move at the deadline. They trade for Ernest Jones. They get rid of Jerome Baker. They get rid of Tyrol Dotson. They replace their lineback court in the middle of the season. And they have a top 10 run defense since then.

Ernest Jones hasn't missed a tackle in four games, according to pro football focus. I don't know if we could put it all on him. The defensive line has also gotten healthy. I think Mike McDonald, like Deonti said, has figured some things out. And we saw a similar first half, second half split with Baltimore during Mike McDonald's first year. It took a little while to get that defense up and running. And if Seattle gets that similar boost over the second half and this run defense stays good, and Mike McDonald can do all of his tricks on third down, which we know put quarterbacks in hell,

like even the best quarterbacks. Like, Kylo Murray has been playing the best football of his career, and he looked helpless out there at times. And like Deontes said, 15% success rate for Arizona. The crowd. One explosive run play, and that was a 13-yard run on 3rd and 18. It shouldn't even count.

So they did, and Arizona came into league with the highest explosive run rate. They came in to the game fifth in success rate, and Seattle just decimated them in the ways that they've been thriving all season long. So, yeah, I'm with Deonté here, and I have to give myself an out because, like, three weeks ago, I was saying, Mike McDonald, show me something. If you're this great defensive game planner, this great defensive mind, show me something.

And since then, he has, and he shut me up. He's got his fastball back. I mean, like you said, that Cardinals' offense was top 10 and pretty much any metric you want to look at. They didn't score a touchdown today. Ten offensive possessions, and they don't score a touchdown. And this is the stretch run, NFC West game. It's a big spot. You know what moment I loved was that big fourth and one?

And the Cardinals are going for it. and McDonald calls the timeout, but like they don't see it until after the ball snapped. And I think it's an incompletion. And some players like, no, why'd you call timeout? But they whistled the timeout. They come back. And they were ready for, I think, what the Cardinals were calling there. I mean, Devon Witherspoon with a fantastic play realizes Kyler Murray's rolling out to the right,

chases him with like unbelievable acceleration and explosion. Kyler Murray realizes, I'm not, I can't turn the corner and run for this. I got to throw it. but he throws it, makes a bad throw, Kobe Bryant with the pick six there and returns it. And I like seeing Mike McDonald kind of come out of his shell on the sideline too. I mean, that dude was pumped today. Not only at that moment, but throughout this game, like, my guys are, you know, it's working. Because I'm sure as a coach, you're kind of like, all right, I think I can do this,

but I'm sure there's paranoia. Like, is this going to work this year? Is it going to wait until next year? Like you guys said, how long is it going to take? And then you have injuries. So getting healthier, he's finding his. fastball and all of a sudden this team that two weeks ago was like they're

probably the team least likely to get to the playoffs in the NFC West they've won two in a row and now they're right there. I mean I would say defensively I trust them more. I'm making sure I believe this before I say it. Yeah, I trust them more than any other team in the division right now

defensively. You guys agree right? 100%. I feel like we've seen holes in the other defenses. I think the only defense that has an argument is Arizona and obviously when those two were on the field together. Seattle looked much better on the defensive end. And I still think this offense has a lot of room to grow. Like this offense could be so much better than it has been.

Just figure out that protection. I know that's been an issue like going back to the Russell Wilson era. But if they could just figure something out, Gino has played at such a high level. We saw him make clutch plays. I know he had the interception. He had some tough throws out there today in the rain. But when it comes down to it, he's making clutch plays and making difficult plays in the clutch. We saw it against the San Francisco 49.

last week. We saw it against Arizona today to close out the game. He's playing at a high level. They have one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL. They have one of the better defenses over the last month. Like, that's usually a recipe for success. And they're up to the three-seat in the NFC. It's not even like they're just like in the playoffs right now. They have the three-seat. That's crazy. I didn't realize that. See, I got a little circle back on all the standings throughout this show. Yeah, I'm with you. It's just like that that has to be number one on the priority list now. You know, it's just like, because there's, it always feels like there are a negative play around the corner because of the offensive line.

And you even saw that today just when you start to feel good. When it's going good, you're like, this is one of the best teams in the NFC. And then they just had these spurts, we're like, they can't block anybody. Every run is getting, you know, Kenneth Walker. Oh, he just lost six yards on that and they were in field goal range. Oh, Gino Smith, I mean, he got sacked about four times on third down today. And it's just like, how do you get those plays out of there somehow with this offensive line, Deontay?

If they could do that, I mean, they really could. be an interesting sort of wildcard team in the NFC? I mean, it speaks to just how dangerous they are, right? Like before Stephen brought up that point, that was going to be kind of what I was going to close the conversation with, is that Gino is still about 15th in total EPA on throws, despite having lost the most EPA on interceptions and being in the top 10 in EPA lost on sacks. Some of that is Gino being ambitious. I think that there's a lot of, there are a lot of times where I'm watching Seattle's

offense and it feels like I'm watching Dak Prescott, not necessarily this year, but in years past with Dallas. So it's like so many of these situations is, you know, trying to extend or trying to work the ball into a tight window in a high leverage situation because that's all that's really available. And when they're not rolling on early downs, you can really feel just how much pressure is on him as a passer. But I think that this team, because the defense has been better, because they've done a little bit better job of being able to get explosive plays, you know, when they have decay in the lineup. And now the Jackson Smith and Jigba, I think it's kind of breaking out as a legitimate number two wide receiver in this offense. I think that you're seeing the margin of error is not necessarily as tight for them right now as it was maybe three, four weeks ago when it looked like they were maybe kind of losing their grip on the season. I think that this is one of those scenes that you should be looking at saying whether, you know, if we've got to travel to them early in the year, this is, or excuse me, late in the year, this is not going to be an easy game for anybody.

And you've seen it and how they've handled these divisional games of late. They were right there with Los Angeles and then you come back and you beat San Francisco and then you really put a clamp on Arizona's offense. This is exactly what we needed to see to be able to believe in who they are right now. We've kind of forgotten about it over the last couple of years, but like Seattle's a terrible place to play. And to have to play there in January, it's going to be a tough assignment for anyone. And like even with like the margin for error that Gino has and the fact that he's been throwing interceptions, I think he has 11 interceptions on the year. He only has 11 turnover worthy plays, according to pro football focus.

He's tied with Patrick Mahomes for the 11th best turnover worthy play rate in the NFL. So, like, he is making the most out of a crappy situation that I think a lot of other quarterbacks might buckle under. But he's, I mean, we're seeing him buckle at times, but he's saving his best play for when it matters. And he's helping them win games at the moment. Like, as long as you have this good quarterback who makes the right plays down the stretch and then you have a good defense, it usually leads to win. Like, we're seeing the chiefs use that formula this year. They used it last year to win a Super Bowl. Obviously, Seattle's not on that level.

Gio Smith's not on Patrick Mahomes's level. The defense isn't on Kansas City's. Actually, it's probably better than Kansas City's defense, but we'll get into that later. But it's a winning formula, and I think they match up well with a team like Detroit. Like, we've seen them play Detroit good over the last couple of years. I know their defense got torn up by Detroit earlier in the year,

but it looks better now. This is a, yeah, they were missing like their entire front seven. And their offense had 38 first downs against the Lions defense that now is looking like a lot better. So, yeah, I mean, it was a competitive game. And the pass rush hasn't got better in Detroit, at least based on personnel. That's interesting.

I didn't realize that about Gino's turnover worthy play. So that would suggest that he's getting a little bit unlucky in that when he makes a mistake, it's a high leverage. This is sort of killing your team type mistake, but it doesn't necessarily mean he's making more mistakes than the average quarterback. So whether that turns in the course of a season or not, who knows. His 11 turnover worthy plays and 11 interceptions. Right.

Now, not all of those might not be turnover. He might have others that were dropped. but there might be ones that were interceptions that bounce off a player's hand or whatever. So that's, yeah, that is interesting. Seahawks at six and five atop the NFC West plus two point differential. Arizona Cardinals, six and five plus eight point differential. Los Angeles Rams five and five minus 26 point differential. And I don't think I realized this until just now.

49ers are five and six and are dead even on the season in point differential. So a lot to be determined. We're going to talk about a couple more of those teams here coming up. Let's take a break. We come back. We get to Ruiz's lesson from week 12. Get ready to tackle the NFL action with Fandul, America's number one sportsbook, because right now new customers can bet $5 and get 150 in bonus bets if you win.

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We're back on the Ringer NFL show. Ruiz, what did you learn in week 12? My lesson comes from the 49ers Packers game. Packers win this game 38 to 10. But I want to reference our first conversation when we talked about the Lions and Eagles and which team we trust more. My answer to that question would actually be the Packers.

And the reason why is this is the only team that I think has been able to show a high level of play in the run game and also a high level of play in the passing game where it's kind of separate. I think Jordan Love has become one of the better dropback passers in the game. You still see those air in throws. You still see the odd mistake.

But his ambition as a passer, We keep throwing them around that word this season. It's just remarkable to me. And we're seeing him, it's almost like a better version of the Anthony Richardson approach where we're not throwing a lot of passes. We're not completing a lot of passes, actually. But every pass we throw, we're getting a tremendous bang for our buck. And I think the more they play, I still don't think we've seen the best of this team yet

and the best of this offense yet. And the best of Jordan Love yet, he hasn't been healthy all year. He hasn't been able to put together multiple healthy games in a row. and I think over the past couple of weeks we've seen signs of that quarterback we saw over the second half of last year with a little bit of more improvement with a little more confidence and a little I think he has more clout in the offense

I think Matt LaFleur trust him a little more even when Jordan Love was throwing interceptions a couple weeks ago Matt LaFleur was asked about and he was like I can't blame him because he's like he's making the right decisions like he's aggressive but it's in appropriate situations to be aggressive and I think as he continues to calibrate

that when we get into December I don't think there's going to be a question about who the best quarterback in the NFC is, or in the NFC playoff field, I should say, because I think there are some quarterbacks who might fall outside the playoffs that are better than Jordan Love at this point. But I think he will be the quarterback who's playing his best ball in January, in the NFC. I still think that run game's going to be good. And the defense, I know they went up against a banged-up 49ers team that was missing Brock Birdie,

and Brandon Allen was playing with a broken finger on his left hand. I don't know why that was a better option than Josh Dobbs. which made things super easy on Jeff Hathley in that defense. But the defense is good enough. I don't know if it's like a Super Bowl winning defense, but I think it's good enough. Good enough to get this team to be competitive if Jordan Love is playing his best ball.

I'm with the eye. I wrote down like for my Packers notes, I'm like 8 and 3 and it still feels like they haven't played their best. So I'm totally on the same page with you. Even watching that game, you're looking at it. And it's like they're in control that game the entire time. But I wasn't like, I still feel like there's another level to them. they are the most run heavy team in the NFL.

We talked about the lions and the Eagles being run heavy. You know, no one is running the football more on early downs than the Packers. And that was clearly their game plan today where they're just like, we are going to bully you up front. You don't have the guys. And they were pretty much right about that. And then like you said, when Jordan Love throws the football, he's connecting downfield.

Christian Watson had the drop today or his numbers are going to be a lot better where the box score isn't that impressive. So yeah, I've been a Jordan Love guy for a while. it's interesting to see how the, you know, like, like Jalen Hertz, it's like, don't make mistakes. Jared Goff, it's like, let the scheme work for you. And Jordan Love, it's like, like his highlight package is going to look the best, you know, of any of those guys. So it's hard for me. Now, I do have more, still have questions about their defense.

I don't know when I'm going to be at the point where I feel like they're answered. We've talked about it before. They're getting a lot of their production on turnovers. If you look at success rate, I still think they're bottom 10 in the NFL. And so when I look at kind of these teams in the NFC and how they match up with one another, like if they've got to play the Lions or the Eagles, are they just going to get run all over? I mean, I think there's potential for that. Now, they might be able to run, you know, they might be able to score and keep up in one of those games.

I think the Lions and the Eagles have more ways to win with their defense right now than the Packers do. I trust them more than the Packers. But I think the Packers' offensive ceiling is right there with anyone in the NFC. Deonté, what do you think? I'm with you. It's actually fun. I think I've kind of reversed course since Jordan Love has come back week by week. I think early in his return, I was like, all right, some of these ambitious throws that are going sideways, I would like you to maybe reel it in a little bit more. I think that what I've actually seen is maybe Matt LaFleur has just decided to embrace it.

And you see them trying to push the ball further and further instead of trying to rein the drop-back passing game in. And I think that it's paid off for the most part. You mentioned the Christian Watson drop. I mean, the margin of this game could have been a lot. worse if they were able to connect on some of their earlier passing passing plays in the first half. And the fact that they can rely on Josh Jacobs when he's there to really just be a hammer behind that offensive line, it does kind of protect them. It gives them a good baseline to allow Jordan Love to be able to take those chances and not feel like it has to be all or nothing. That's something that we talked about a lot with Anthony Richardson, right, is that so often you look

at the Colts and they are in second and 11 or they're in second and seven or you're in a third and eight and now that guy's got to be Superman and he has not shown that he's equipped to work through defenses that way. I do think that when Jordan Love is clicking, he can actually diagnose defenses and stay aggressive in a way that very few can for guys who want to push the ball downfield as often as he does. And I think that he's surrounded with the right kind of playmaking talent and a coach that is really going to enable him and kind of empower him to take those chances every time they're available. So I probably shouldn't be surprised that they were able to put this game away so quickly. And even if I do have questions about

this defense and I'm with you, Sheel and me not totally being a believer in what they are and what they'll look like against contenders this year, I do think that Jordan Love just might be good enough to where it only matters but so much. Yeah, he's one of the few quarterbacks that doesn't let the defense dictate how aggressive he is. Like, even like a quarterback like Patrick Mahomes, just let that happen. He's one of the lowest quarterbacks in A-DOT. He has one of the lowest a dot, I should say, in the NFL right now. It doesn't matter how you defend Jordan Love. He's pushing it downfield. He had a 12A dot today against the pack, against the 49ers. But my pushback against the Lions point and how the defense matches up against the lines and the Eagles, we've seen them play those offenses.

They played Detroit in week nine and they gave up 4.7 yards per play. They gave up 0.04 EPA per play, which is positive for Detroit, but it's not a Detroit game that we're used to when they're ringing up 50 points a game. So they've competed with both of these offenses that they've gone up against now. The Philadelphia game was in week one in Brazil. I don't think that game really tells us much about either team sealing or how they're going to play in January. But three weeks ago, we did see them be competitive against the best offense in the NFL, maybe the best offense that we've seen in a couple decades. And the good news is we get a rematch between the two.

So we'll have a lot more information going into the postseason. I think it will be easier to answer the question, which team in NFC do we trust most? Yeah, they're eight and three. So they've got a, you know, Vikings are still right there, nine and two. And the lines, of course, are 10 and one. So right now it's looking like the Packers would be looking at a wild card spot unless they can jump. both those teams. But like you mentioned, they still have an opportunity to face the lions there. So yeah, they're going to be there. There's no doubt about it. They're going to be a very fun team once we get

to playoff time. All right, we take a break, we come back, and we are debuting a new game for the Ringer NFL show in week 12. We'll do that in a second. All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. A little game this week called Cooked, contender, or playoff pretender? The idea is simple. We are focusing on teams that lost today, and we're trying to gauge a little bit about where are we with each of them? Are we panicking?

Is it over? So cooked means it's over. See you next year. Not your year. You're not making the playoffs. Contender means, all right, you might have lost today, but we can still see you playing on championship weekend, which if you're playing on championship weekend,

it means you obviously have a chance to win the Super Bowl. Playoff pretender, that's in between. Like, all right, you still got a shot to get into the tournament. Maybe you're like the Saturday afternoon game or something like that, but we're not really taking you seriously as a contender. So we've got three teams we've got to talk about, see what level of panic their fan bases should be

after what transpired in week 12. And the first team is a team we've talked a lot about this year. And that is the San Francisco 49ers. They lose 3810 to the Green Bay Packers, no Brock Purdy, no Trent Williams, no Nick Bosa, no Charverius Ward. They have 11 first downs in this game that's the fewest in any game under Kyle Shanahan since he became the 49ers head coach. Ruiz, let's start with you. What do you got? Cooked contender or playoff pretender for the San Francisco 49ers and why?

I'm not quitting this team. I'm sorry. I know how bad it looked. There are only one game back of first place in the NFC West. There's a very good chance this team makes the playoffs. I know that some playoff models have them at only 11% at 15% to make the playoffs. But Seattle's schedule is tough down the stretch. They still have tough games.

They play the Packers. They play the Vikings. They play the Rams who I think the record isn't great, but I do think they're going to be a competitive team. And they play at Arizona. So there's a chance that Seattle loses a few games. I think Arizona has shown some weak points, especially on Sunday against Seattle.

And I still want to see this team in this offense healthy again before I'm willing to say they're cooked. I still think if we get those five Avengers back, I know we're not getting I you, but if you get, you throw Purdy in there, I guess for one day I'll allow the membership in the Avengers, the 49ers Avengers. But if you get all those guys back,

I still think this offense has a high ceiling. We saw even during this hell year, they're like top 10 in a bunch of offensive metrics coming into this game. I know today was ugly, but it was expected to be ugly. And I know the schedule is daunting, but every team in the NFC West has a daunting schedule down the stretch. And if I had to bet my life on one of these teams winning a playoff game in the playoffs, it would still be the 49ers.

So that's contender for you, not just playoff pretender. I'm going contender, because if they do hit their stride come January, I think they have a chance to go on a run. I think every team of the NFC has weak points, has exploitable weak points. I don't trust the defense. But if Nick Bose is out there, the defense always has a chance

to put up a good game. I hate to agree with you, Ruiz. But I can't quit him either. I can't quit of me. Listen, you get to the Super Bowl, you earn a little bit of, you know, credibility where until I really need to just say, see you next year,

I'm not going to do it quite yet. And Deante gave us all the numbers on the Friday show that they're still operating like a top eight, top 10 offense. when you look at it. Now, obviously, the big concern is, are you getting healthy?

You are going to Buffalo next week? Who is lining up? Who is on the field against Josh Allen in Buffalo in week 13? But I'm with you. They're one game out. They're five and six. No one's run away with the division. They don't need to win necessarily win the division.

If you get a wild card spot, I have a mass contender because I think if they actually do get in, they're going to be dangerous. Like to me, there's no playoff pretend. with them. They're not going to be a who cares. The Niners are in the playoffs. Now, if they get in, this is a dangerous team that can make a run. The odds, you said good chance to make the playoffs. The odds would say they do not. I know you mentioned that, but even the Fandual odds, the betting markets, any statistical model you look at would say it is, you know, way over 50% that they do not

make the playoffs. That was the case going into this weekend. And then they lost this weekend. I'm looking at Fandul's odds right now. They are fourth. They have the worst odds of any NFC West team to win the division at plus 600, which I think is kind of nuts right now. All right, Deontay, put us, are you putting us in our place or is this a clean sweep? And we're all brainwashed by Kyle Shanahan. This is not a clean sweep. They're a pretender to me.

And I would say, not only are they a pretender, they're closer to cook than they are a contender. And I think it's okay. I think it's okay to say that the story of this season and what it may ultimately be by the time we get to the end of it, is that they were a team that was so close. I don't think that this is a Super Bowl hangover year where it just seems like a team's letting go of the rope. I think obviously today was pretty circumstantial.

You don't have your quarterback. The quarterback who you are playing only has use of, you know, nine of his 10 digits, and you could clearly tell that he was struggling to handle the ball early in the game. And then the turnovers in the second half basically sealed it for Green Bay. But when you look at what this team was designed to be,

And I noted this on last Friday when I was writing about the 49ers offense and what's been wrong with it. The issue was not trying to create some argument that it's been bad. You can't. By any metric or on a down-and-down basis, there's no argument that this offense is bad. In fact, this is still a top-six to top-eight offense in just about any metric you look at, you know, this Sunday notwithstanding. The issue is that this team was not built to contend for a Super Bowl with the top six to eight offense. This team was built to contend for the Super Bowl with the number one offense. That's what it was built to do, is to have its entire complement of weaponry on the outside,

to have Brandon Iyuk is a guy that can go win one-on-one passes. We saw how difficult this offense look when Brock Purdy and Brandon Ayuk were not able to connect deep down the field in a way that they had been prior, and that was before he got hurt. We're seeing Debo Samuel really kind of be relegated to just like a drag, a drag route and dump-off guy and just getting like cheap yards after the catch. And I think that's always been a piece of his game, but the fact that defenses now are really able to take him away in the intermediate area has become an issue for this team.

And then you look at the return of Christian McCaffrey. And I think that I will speak for myself, and I'm sure that this is reflected in a lot of 49ers fan, there was a thought that A, that would add into your yards after the catchability in the passing game and that you would be a better early down running team once he got back. And neither of the two have happened.

we didn't get a chance to really get a legitimate evaluation this week. If they have Brock Prady, maybe we get a clearer look against the defense that's going to be contending for a title this year and whether or not they were going to be able to find any kind of rhythm. But this team's offensive line is just getting moved off the ball, snap after snap. And because of that, you're in these difficult situations to where you can't even maximize the value of Christian McCaffrey coming out of the backfield or Debo Samuel getting yards after the catch because you've got so much ground to make up. and now you're asking Brock Purdy when he's out there to be a quarterback that we just haven't seen him demonstrate the ability to be on a week to week basis, which is a ceiling razor. And I think it's okay.

I think it's fine. As a matter of fact, I would say that I trust them in just about every game to be competitive outside of this one against the bills that's coming up next Sunday and then late in December against the Lions. I think that you can make a credible argument that they can win the rest of their six games that are left on the schedule. I just don't know if any of that matters when you're dealing with the team that is not operating at this level it needs to offensively and certainly defensively to make another run at a Super Bowl. Yeah, their defense without Nick Bose. I mean, I guess it's not just Nick Bowes. They haven't had Javon Hargrave.

They don't have Charverius Award. These are three of their best players aside from Fred Warner on defense. You've got a new defensive coordinator. Your special team suck. I mean, watching Kyle Shanahan today, I'm just like, What do you do? Is my guy going to like survive this season? Is he just like, I don't know.

Someone might need to be like, you just need to take a break. Like come back. We'll see you at the Combine or in the spring. Yeah, he somehow passed Mike Shanahan in age. So he caught up to Mike Shanehan. Somewhere along the line. He's the senior of the family now. Like he looks like he's aged 10 years in the last month.

Yeah, he really does. They had those, I think, back to back, 12 men on the field penalties. where I was like, just make sure, like, so keep an eye on this guy. It's like anything is possible with him right now. And yeah, now going to, going to Buffalo and facing Josh Allen is not going to help that. All right. So Deontes got playoff pretender. Ruiz and I, we can't give up on him.

We're still saying contender. We'll see where we are. Week 16. That's when I'll quit them. Okay. That came against the dolphins. If they don't beat the dolphins in that, that week, I'm assuming they're going to beat the Bears two weeks from now.

I'm assuming they're going to beat the race. fans at home, that Dolphins game is the first real test after this bill's game, which I'm chalking up as an L right now, whether Purdy's playing or not. But that will be either the death or the rebirth of this team. Yeah, let's see who was on the field next week, the week after. I mean, that really is a big aspect of it. What kind of team are they able to put out there? All right. The next team is the Washington commanders. Ten and a half point favorites at home. They lose to the Cowboys in Cooper Rush, 34 to 26. third straight loss.

Deontay, where are you with the Washington commanders? They were pretenders before this week, and I really just think that this just stamped the fact that they're pretenders and that this season is basically playing out how every Dan Coyne and Cliff Kingsbury season plays out where they get all the high variance plays to go in their favor early in the year. You get your quarterback to kind of raise the level of the scheme around them, especially in the passing game, and then as defenses start to adjust, and they play tighter to routes and take away some of the easy buttons.

You're starting to see just how little is actually built into this thing to help, you know, their quarterback get through possessions quickly and efficiently. And then I think just today was today was the day of just kind of like the wheels coming off for this defense. There's really no excuse for Cooper Rush to look as good as he did. The special teams were bad. You know, I'm sure we can get into all of the ending of this game in detail for Washington. And this was against a Dallas team that was also not that great on special teams.

today either. But I just think that things are kind of falling apart, so to speak, on schedule. I think that all of the flaws that we've seen in this team or we've been trying to identify in this team from the beginning of the season are starting to come home to roost. And it doesn't mean that this is a bad year. I think I've said it's in the power rankings. I've said it on the podcast. Once they got to about six, seven wins, I think everything else for this season was gravy for them, you know, judging up against our preseason expectations. but this is clearly your pretender in this context. So you can still see them making the playoffs.

I think that don't make the playoffs. I think they banked enough early season wins. And they've got the Titans. They've got the Saints. They're going to see the Cowboys again. They've got Atlanta. So I think that for the next five games for them, they should feel like they can at least compete in if not went outright.

Yeah, we would have said that against the Cowboys, but they're favored by 10.9 points. That's really bad. Like the game ended up being close. And you could argue like the kicker lost them, the game with the missed extra point, but the game shouldn't have been that competitive to begin with. Dallas gave them every chance in that game to get back into it. And honestly, I feel like the kicker is kind of getting a bad rap.

Like, the only reason they were even close in that game was because he hit a 51-yard field goal. For some reason, Washington took it on second down. Did you guys see this? I don't think I realized it was on second down. No. Yeah, they spiked the ball on first down with like, I think it was a minute and 48 left. They're down by 10 points. And they take the field goal on second down, a 51-yard field goal, too.

the kicker had missed an extra point and you're relying on him to make a 51-yard field goal to cut it to the seven. And then it almost worked out because the Cowboys went three and out. And then they forgot how to tackle on the Terry McClure in an 86-yard touchdown. Oh, right, because they needed the field goal and the touchdown. So they said get the points early. Normally you do that when you're a little closer, not at 51 yards. Yeah, and when there's like 30 seconds left, not two minutes left. It was an insane decision, but it ended up working out, I guess.

But then obviously they missed the extra point. but I think this schedule is a little harder than Deontes is letting on here like the Titans they should be able to beat the Titans next week but the Titans the Titans just upset the Texans in Houston then they play a Saints team that has played better since the coaching change I don't know how sustainable that is but the offense looks a little better the defense looks a little better and then Philadelphia Atlanta and then this Cowboys team on the road that just beat them

there's a chance they can miss the playoffs I my pick is Pretender and this team is a Hail Mary and a fourth down conversion in Cincinnati away from having a losing record right now. But like Deonti said, we shouldn't lose sight of what this team's expectations were before the season and what the barometer for success was. And we're seeing that.

Like, Jane Daniels struggled once again, but down the stretch, he played really well in the fourth quarter. He helped them come back. Like, yeah, a lot of good drives, like three good drives in the fourth quarter. So I'm still optimistic about him. I haven't been optimistic about the longevity of Kingsborough, So I'm not terribly surprised that it's kind of falling apart when they started to fall apart on first down.

But this isn't the season that I think they envisioned after two months. Yeah, it's sort of, they sort of look like the team that it was like going into the season, you looked at the offensive line and the past catchers in Cliff Kingsbury. And I was like, Dan and Daniels is not going to have a good rookie season. It's not going to happen for them. They're going to be one of the worst offenses in the NFL. And I think a lot of that stuff is just catching up to them. I mean, the offensive line issues certainly a couple weeks ago.

against the Eagles and even you saw that in this game today. The pass catchers when Terry McLaren is lining up at left wide receiver on 80% of the snaps and the defense knows exactly where he's going to be on every pass play. And it's like you're the only team that is still, why are you still doing this? Did you not learn from when you were last in the NFL? How is this still happening here? And then you look at who else is he going to throw to? And then, you know, the Daniels, and I'm a big Jane and Daniels fan, but the frame.

And then you wonder the injuries that hits he's taken throughout the course of the season because his accuracy is not maybe what it was the first four, six, eight weeks of the season. And then there's Cliff Kingsbury. He's getting the questions in the press conferences that your teams fall apart in the second half of the season. Oh, can you be more specific? So all these things are adding up and they've lost three in a row. And right now they would be the last team in at seven and five. But the Cardinals are behind them, six and five.

the bucks are five and six, the Rams are five and six, the Niners are five and six. And then Ruiz mentioned the Saints, you know, maybe there will be other teams in there. So they're in a good spot where you would think, all right, if you can kind of, you know, revert to being some version of the team we saw earlier this season, you've still got a great chance to get in here. And their odds to make the playoffs are minus 188. So the, you know, betting markets say they should get in. But I just don't know what kind of team this is going to be down the stretch.

Like you said, you lose, you lose. The final score here is not indicative of how they play. The final box score of 412 yards is not indicative of how they played. They were down 20 to 9 with five minutes left against what's been mostly a, you know, lifeless Cowboys defense and a lifeless Cowboys team this entire season. And then you get the 86-yarder to Terry McLaren. But again, those are high leverage plays that you can't count on every week. So if you're a commander's fan, I'm with you guys.

Like, yeah, zoom out. but at the same time, if your season ends by this thing going in the tank and your offense looks bad and your quarterback doesn't look like he has answers because the coordinator's not, you know, very good and you don't have a great support and cast, you're going to get to January and be like, now what? Like, all right, hopefully we'll build this up in the offseason and it'll look better in 2025. So yeah, it's not a Jaden Daniels thing, but you look at everything else and they are a team I have my eye on because I do think maybe the floor is a little bit lower after that hot start

than I initially anticipated. All right. Speaking of which, the third team we got to get to. Oh, wait, I didn't get you. Okay, so we all had a pretender there. So good shout at making the playoffs. Don't think they're going to make noise in the playoffs. Also a chance they don't make the playoffs.

All right, this last one. The Houston Texans, seven and a half point favorites against Will Levis, Brian Callahan, and maybe the most irrelevant team in the entire NFL. and you lose 3227 to the Tennessee Titans. So this Texans team, you know, I think they've underachieved offensively, specifically for much of the season. We've talked about that. You look at it right now, the Texans in the AFC playoff picture,

they're seven and five. They're still leading in the AFC South. But I don't think anyone would look at this team and think, all right, you know, I like what I see recently. They've lost three of their last four games here. Ruiz, where are you with the Houston Texans? I mean, I guess technically because they're in the AFC South, we have to consider them at least pretenders.

They're going to make the playoffs. They're tied with Buffalo for the biggest margin in their divisional race at four games. They're four games ahead of second place. So they're not going to miss the playoffs. But for all intents and purposes, they're cooked. No, there are only two games now. The Colts are five and seven. Oh, yeah, that's good.

Yeah. I was looking at the wrong stadium. But yeah, they swept those games, right? And they sweat those games. They have the tiebreaker. So they're basically, they're a shoe-in to make the playoffs, even if it ends poorly here. But this result was very concerning. Like you said the score, they lost by five points, but it could have been by more.

Like the Titans didn't play well. The Titans gave them every chance in this game to win it. Will Levis throws a terrible pick six that only Will Levis could throw. They give up a big, the Titans give up a big kick return on the 4th. first play. They gave a touchdown pass to C.J. Stroud on the first offensive snap of the game. They have a fumbled snap. I don't know if it was on Leviss or on Tony Pollard.

They have a muffed punt that the Texans recover. They lost the turnover battle and still won this game kind of convincingly. The Texans had a really fight to take the lead in the fourth quarter. And by the way, can I say something? No more. They shouldn't allow onside kicks after safeties. The Texans take the safety at the end of this game. It was third and 17.

I mean, C.J. Shroud kind of pulls the Dan O'Rlowski. I don't know if he did it on purpose or not, but it would have been a smart move if he did because it really gave the Texans one last shot at getting the ball back and tying the game perhaps, or taking the lead perhaps. But obviously, they didn't get the on-side kick. But this team's problems on offense are just,

I don't know how you fix them. Like, the run game is still non-existent. Another terrible game on the ground. C.J. Stroud is obviously pressing. He threw two more picks. He has four multi-turnover games. after having only two last year during his rookie season. The defense, I thought, was partly to blame for this loss,

even though the offense looked so bad. The Titans really preyed on their aggressiveness and how they played downhill, like the signature style of the Domeko Ryan's defense. They hit a long touchdown on a double move. They hit a Conquo on. They had to do like a fake sweep action and then hit him on the other side of the field, and he's in wide open space. They're running trap plays in the run game, draw, screen passes.

It was all working. I thought Brian Callahan did a really good job. in this one and out-coached Domingo Ryan's, which is not something like you could say about the Texans opponents before this week. Something you couldn't have said about the Titans at any other point in the year. That's that's that's in Brian Kelly.

That's a good point. That's a good point. This was a very unique result for both sides. But it just shows the margin for error that D'Miko Ryans and his defense is working with right now. And the margin for error that J. Stroud is working with. Like every time I looked up, it was third and 10 plus again. That's been a recurring theme for him.

Third and 15 plus, third and impossible. even on a 30-19 in this game in the fourth quarter, he hits tanked out right on the hands and he gets dropped. So even when he's playing superhero in those situations, it's not always working out. And then we're starting to see cracks in his game, especially with his decision-making and accuracy over the last couple weeks. Yeah, I think that's fair to point out. This is the, I think the last like three, maybe three to four weeks is the first time where I'm like, all right, remind myself that success is not linear or improvement's not linear in the NFL. you have a great rookie season. It doesn't mean your second season's going to be better than the rookie season.

And I do think he is having issues this year that I did not anticipate. It doesn't mean I don't believe in Stroud. I think Stroud's going to be awesome. But it's like, all right, he's got stuff to work through. The setup in Houston is probably wearing on him a bit. But just stuff like missing throws where it just felt like last year, like he was the least likely quarterback in the NFL to just have accuracy issues. And you're seeing him miss throws this year.

You mentioned the decision making. Deante, this team is 30th in offensive success rate ahead of the Cleveland Browns and the Indianapolis Colts. I mean, how is that, they had 12 first downs today. The Niners had 11 first downs with, you nine-fingered Brandon Allen or whatever you were mentioned about them earlier. They had 12 first downs. C.J. Stroud's fingers were all working as far as far as I know today.

I mean, I don't know how to explain it with this Texas team, whether it's offensive line, coaching, quarterback, having some bumps in the road, maybe all of the above. But this team right now is seven and five. They've got the chiefs, the Ravens, and the Dolphins on their schedule still. This could be one of those weird division winners where they win it at nine and eight, but they're not the team we thought they were going to be coming into the season. I mean, they're definitely not the team that I thought that they would be coming into the season. I've got them as a pretender as well because they are so safe within a divisional standings.

it would take an act of God almost for Indianapolis to overtake them in the divisional standings. But I think that when you look at the fact that over the last four weeks, the only team that's been worse in passing success rate than Houston is a Jacksonville Jaguars, who have not had Trevor Lawrence over that stretch. Like that just speaks to not just the fact that it's not just an issue that's existed all year, but how it's been worsening week by week for the Tennessee Titans to really be able to lean on this offensive line. and force them into rough down and distance situations. It kind of speaks to, I guess, just how beyond repair things are for Houston's offense.

And I think that for the Texans on defense, they have been able to avoid so many issues by playing aggressively. And I think that Detroit probably put some things on tape on how to take advantage of this front seven in the run game and with the play action passing game. And this was a week where I think got to see a bad team take advantage of that, which tells me that this team just has legitimate issues, right? This isn't just a Detroit, you know, cooking them on, you know, downfield passes when they're not turning it over or being able to use gap scheme runs to take advantage of an overly aggressive front four. This is a team that has had struggles with moving the ball on the ground and in the air all year long that were able to, you know, access some of those exact same things to cause this team problems.

It doesn't mean that they're bad. It just means that they're disappointing. Right now I would say I'm more disappointed than totally out on Demico Ryan's or C.J. Stroud or anybody else that's involved with, you know, the coaching. staff of this roster. And I think that they will make the playoffs and still be competitive. I just think, again, we've been talking about this all year. The teams that only have really one pathway to win and several to lose are the ones that are kind of eliminating themselves on the process. And I think that Houston has just kind of exposed themselves that there are more opportunities

for them to lose games than there are for them to win them with the way that they're playing right now. I would like to change my answer. Okay. I said they have to be a pretender. I'm looking at their schedule right now. I might think they're cooked. Like, compared their schedule to Indianapolis his schedule, especially Trevor Lawrence gets back next week, which I think is still up in the air. I doubt he'll play, but I think there's a chance he will. They play Jacksonville before they're by.

And then they get Miami, Kansas City, Baltimore, and then this Titans team that just beat them. Now, meanwhile, Indianapolis has gotten past most of their difficult games. Indianapolis gets New England, Denver, which is a playoff team right now, but I still think that Indianapolis could beat them. Then Tennessee, the Giants, and then

Jacksonville. Like, you can make up a two-game deficit in that, with those two stretches. I don't think it's out of the question. Colts are plus 1,000 to win the division. Texans are minus 950. So if you like that, Ruiz, you know, at our next grade, I'm not betting on that. Long on to the Fandilap. There you go. We are, we are, we are, uh, how hot he's been this year. That will might actually work out for him. That's right. I went one and two today, though. I jinxed myself because I said, I'm putting a lot of faith in Gardner Minshu, holding the Bronco, and I was talking about the Broncos going under 23 and a half points. And I was like, well, I guess I don't have to worry about Gardner Minshu, unless he throws an interception,

to an interception, gave Denver a short field. They score a touchdown. They get a punt return on the other half of the field. And then they go over. That's right. Ruiz had Broncos under, what was it, 23 and a half? Was that the number? Under 23 and a half points.

They go over that in their win against the Raiders. The one thing I'm still hanging on to a little bit for this Texan team is like, I like the quarterback. I like the wide receiver one. I like the coach. I like the pass rush. And I like the defense. There's a lot of things there that I like that matter in a one game playoff, you know,

once we get to January. So I'm holding out not a lot of hope like this much. I'm holding up now for audio listeners. It's very, my fingers are, you know, barely far apart here, my thumb and my index finger. But they are apart a little bit where I say, If you can rush the passer with those guys and T.J. Stroud can kind of work through some things, then maybe. But I think most likely scenario is they're going to have a disappointing playoff exit, and they're going to have some big questions to answer about how do you actually build the right offense with the right pieces, with the right coaching around this quarterback next year and going forward here.

So we'll see how it plays out. But yeah, a lot at stake it feels like for this Texans franchise over the next six, seven, eight weeks. All right. Hopefully, I enjoyed that. What do we think? Thumbs up. It's fun to say. You guys should try saying, you don't have to say it on air.

But, you know, when you're just hanging out at home later, it's fun to say cooked, contender, play. You know, Deontale, you do a little chant, you know, Deontae, do it with your son or something. It's pretty fun. It's pretty fun to say. All right, I think it was a success. Maybe we'll bring it back in future weeks. There's a lot of these teams we got to talk about or do we take them seriously or not. So that will be a lot of fun.

Let's take a break. We come back with awards for week 12. All right. We are back on the Ringer NFL show. It is awards. Awards time. You know, we do just some awards, some superlatives can literally be anything from week 12 in the NFL. It doesn't even have to be from week 12 in the NFL.

Deonti, you know, had a fantastic Beyonce take last week that even got our colleague, Nora Princiotti in the Slack. It got her approval, which means like, all right, now, now we're doing it. Yeah, I'm good to go now. Yeah, now we're doing a good job. All right, Ruiz, start us off. What is your first award for week 12? All right, I'm going to give Caleb Williams the Brian Flores seal of approval award.

He passed the Brian Flores test, and I think he deserves more credit for doing this because of how in control he is before the snap of the Bears, you know, the Bears' offense. He's calling out the protections. And I thought he did a fairly good job of doing that. And when the Vikings did get free pressures on him, or unblocked pass rushers on him, he made the miss for the most part. Like, Andrew Van Ginkle had a hell of a day trying to catch Caleb Williams.

And I think at the end of the game, it might have been in overtime. Caleb gets rid of the ball, and then Van Ginkle gives him a little shove from behind. It doesn't get called by the ref. It wasn't, like, big enough to warn a penalty flag. But you could tell it was a little bit of frustration because he couldn't tackle this guy all day long.

And I don't know where to start with Caleb Williams. performance. Like there were the highlight where the throws, the arm talent, the off platform throws, the throws from no platform, the one down the sideline, where he has both feet off the ground and both of his knees are bent. It almost looks photoshopped if you pause the play right after he lets go with the ball. And I'm not quite sure I've ever seen a throw like that. Like I don't think Patrick Mahomes has ever made a throw like that. I don't think Josh Allen has ever made a throw like that where he's going to the sideline and he's throwing a vertical ball straight in front of him, and it drop, it's like a touch pass.

Usually when you see a quarterback make a throw on the run, it's like a driven pass, a line drive, hitting a receiver, cutting across the field, not going down the field. And he somehow hits him in perfect stride. The guy doesn't have to readjust his route at all. It just drops right over the defender, right in front of another defender, an amazing pass. And that was like one of five jaw dropping plays he made. And then there were like the small plays he was making, getting rid of the ball on time. There was a bad sack in overtime, but I could overlook that against a,

against a Brian Flores defense. This was a very good performance from him. And I'm back to where I was in week one. This is the best rookie quarterback in the NFL. Yeah, listen, there have been times this year where we've done this show on Sunday night and you guys kind of make the case for how Caleb Williams played that day, the little things he did and this and that.

I'm like, all right, fine. Internally, I'm rolling my eyes a little bit. He was incredible today. It is a great day. If you are a Chicago Bears fan, I know they lost 30 to 27, and you're not making the playoffs. but the number of like the 1% plays he made today were incredible.

I mean, the numbers are 32 for 47 for 340 yards, two touchdowns. Ruiz described the ones, but just the throws, the lasers that were just like, if you don't put that much on it, that defender's getting their hand on it, but that defender is there like a millisecond late, their hand because of, you know, how good that throw is. He had those all day long. And listen, this is a guy who three weeks. weeks ago, like this offense looked like they couldn't do anything. They're firing their coordinator.

I thought there was a chance his rookie season was just going to go in the tank and we'd have all this discourse in the offseason. Like it wasn't going to happen this year. The way he's bounced back first a couple weeks ago, you know, with his legs and the scrambling. And then today he did the scrambling. But just I thought he made more high level throws Deonté in this game than he's made in any other game this season. I thought he was fantastic. I mean, Ruiz talked about the player where he extended and was able to loft the ball over. I think it was to DeAndre Swift along the sidelines. Yes.

And then you get to the fourth quarter when they're trying to mount that comeback and you get the dig route to Romodense in between two defenders. And like, Romo Dense obviously makes a big time catch because he takes a lot of contact to secure that ball. But being able to fit that ball into a tight window. And then in the very next drive, after they recover the onside kick, where you're trying to get in the field goal range. And he rips that 20, 25 yard end breaker to DJ Moore.

to get them well within field goal range. I mean, that's a high-level football play and to not panic in that situation and think, oh, you know, the clock is low, we're out of timeouts. I've got to just take the sideline. But to understand as a rookie that that's probably your last opportunity of the game to really push the ball in the middle of the field and to get that window available to you

and be able to deliver the ball. That was really impressive. And I think that those throws are only possible because of what he was doing to extend and scramble early in and in the game. where now as a defense, you're probably, you're a little bit more panicked about what's happening as panicked about what's happening in front of you as you are about what's happening behind you because you have to honor the fact that this guy can find those escape lanes and extend

and go and punish a defense if you want to play soft in coverage or drop eight or turn your back and allow him to get a, you know, get loose against your pass rush. I think that he did exactly what you would hope to see. You know, Stephen kind of dubbed it the Brian Flores test and he definitely passed it. and he passed it without necessarily having to do it like Jared Gough did, where he was trying to, you know, just dink and dunk his way down the field to punish the team for either playing with too much depth or blitzing him too much. But to be just confident in the dropback game,

throwing the ball in the intermediate areas of the field when it needed to be there or when it wasn't there using his legs to, you know, find yardage. I think that that's exactly what you want to see from a rookie quarterback going into the home stretch of the season. And he does, again, look like the best, you know, combination of attributes out of all the rookie quarterbacks in this class. It seems like at some point in the last couple weeks, there was a reminder,

whether it was just him to himself or a conversation with someone else about how talented he is and let your talent shine through when you play rather than being kind of robotic and not trying to be the person who scrambles or makes a play like you are, you are who you are for a reason. And we really have seen that the last two weeks here.

All right, I have one from the same game here. So I'll go next. and it's time for today's better together segment presented by State Farm. When it comes to football season, some things are just better together. And I was watching that Viking Sparrest game today. And you know two guys who are better together, Kevin O'Connell and quarterback Sam Darnold? Because my award goes to Kevin O'Connell for the most underrated coaching performance in the NFL today. And I'm not talking about, you know, in-game decision-making or anything like that.

I just thought he was on fire as a. schemer as a play caller with the way Sam Darnold played today. Darnold throws for 330 yards, and they were just picking up chunks after chunks against a bear's defense that, you know, is a good defense, maybe not as good as we thought coming into the season, but has been a very good defense. They had, what, over 450 yards of offense. The Bears did a good job, kind of taken Justin Jefferson away at times. Jordan Addison goes off for eight for 162.

T.J. Hawkinson has seven for 114. they get the ball in overtime conversions to Addison, Jefferson, Hawkinson. And then Nick Mullins had to come in for one play. If you didn't watch the whole game, they had a third and 13 in this game where Donald gets injured and Mullins has to come in. And this is what I love about Kevin O'Connell.

He's just like foot on the gas type coach. Comes in, converts a third and 13 on a crosser. The guy's wide open. It's like a six-yard pass and the guy runs for a first down there. So I thought O'Connell did a fantastic job today. He's done a fantastic job all season. The Vikings are nine and two. This is easily the best version of Sam Darnold we have ever seen.

So Sam Darnold and Kevin O'Connell better together. And you know what else is better together? Bundling your home and auto insurance with the personal price plan from State Farm. The personal price plan lets you call the place so you can choose the right coverage at a price that's right for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle. and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, state farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.

Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. All right, Deonti, what are you got? What's your first award? So my first reward is going to go to Liam Cohen for my favorite offensive coordinator that's going to be a head coach, a future head coach not named Ben Johnson. and I think that so much of this has come back to what this offense has been able to do in the absence of Chris Godwin and obviously Mike Evans missing the majority of that time as well.

For Baker Mayfield to still be 13th in total passing EPA in the league and 11th in success rate since that Godwin injury, I think it just speaks to how much they're able to, how much Liam Cohen is able to squeeze out of this offense. And the thing I think we have to keep in mind is not only is Baker Mayfield playing well and Liam Cohen scheming it up well, they're basically doing it without the threat of any explosive plays anymore. I think it's like near the bottom, if not at the bottom, an explosive pass rate. Since Godwin got hurt, we've talked about it while they were, you know, kind of heating up

on offense. So so much of it was little slide routes or bubble routes out in the space, you know, whether it's RPO's or screens and Chris Godwin is making a guy miss and turn of what would be a four-yard gain into a 25-yard gain. That Saints game was probably the best example of it before you got hurt. I think that they've just been able to take whatever, whatever defenses give them to, with almost ruthless efficiency. And that speaks to a great scheme.

I think it's entirely possible that maybe Baker Mayfield is going to be this generation's Alex Smith, where he is kind of the bar of whether or not you have a good quarterback or not. And if you're better than Baker, you're probably a good quarterback. And if you're worse than him, then you're not.

But the fact that he's able to, you know, so often get to the bottom of the drop, get to the top of the drop, and be able to deliver the ball accurately with confidence in between defenders. He's getting those soft zone windows and taking advantage of them. And when he has seen man or,

has gotten pressure over the last month or so, it looks so much better than it did earlier in the year, where there seemed to just be a clear dichotomy of, Baker Mayfield gets the ball out quickly and underneath, and good things happen. And if he has to hold the ball, bad things happen. I think that they've done a better job of smoothing that out for Baker.

And that, to me, speaks to an offensive scheme that knows how to protect his quarterback and get the most out of what he does well. Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. I had one on the bucks too. Now, mine was a little less serious. It was for best celebration. Baker Mayfield, I think they're calling it the double Tommy.

Yeah, there you go. Deontes got it down. You do that well, Deontes. I don't know that I've ever actually tried to do it. But, yeah, Baker Mayfield scrambled for the touchdown. And he did that in the end zone. Again, this is why you got to watch on YouTube to see Deonté do it. I don't know.

How do you even describe it? It's, you know, you got the raised arms. You got the fingers curled and you do the Tommy DeVito. And so he did that. They were up 23-0 at halftime. they dominated this game 30 to 7. And this Bucks team, it's crazy. They're fifth in EPA per drive.

Their fifth in offensive success rate. They're 66 points better than Atlanta Falcons just in terms of point differential so far this season. And I think they got a great shot to win the NFC South. And I'm with you. I think Liam Cohen, I was skeptical coming into the season. But they're playing better than they did last year when the guy who directed their offense last year got a head coaching job with the Carolina Panthers. So yeah, I think the Bucks definitely deserve a shout out.

And they have, I think, the easiest schedule in the NFL remaining. So they could really pile up a lot of these wins here. I do love this from Shield. And I wanted to describe it because it's very difficult to describe it in any words that don't just come back to. It is painfully stereotypical. The celebration, it is painfully stereotypical. I'm trying to still be able to do this show next week.

To the point where Alex has a little hoody tweeted out, seeing the play like all right baker i think that you're laying it on a little bit too thick well he did say so i think he was asked about it afterwards he says he doesn't know if he's italian he hasn't done if he has any italian you know because he hasn't done a 23 in me uh he he said he told reporters i think after this so who knows i did love the saddest i this wasn't an award rui's but i think the saddest crowd shot i saw today was before the game they're going to the you know the crowd when de vito comes out at giant's stadium and there's literally one guy doing it.

He's like excited. He's the only guy. Like, it's over, John Mara. This wasn't going to get your fan base invigorated, okay, to bring in Tommy Cutlets here. They were leaving the stands with seven minutes left to go in the fourth quarter. And honestly, they should have left earlier based on what the show showed up. No, the performance they got in. What a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Dei, doing the celebration makes them qualified to be the next starter of the Giants. This is what they're, this is their bar. Drew Locke I mean Drew Locke is probably lucky If we're being honest Because no quarterback's going to look good In this environment No quarterback's going to look good

Behind that offensive line Malik neighbor said it after the game Like you could change the quarterback Nothing's changing Like the issues are beyond the quarterback At this point And I don't think going to Tommy DeVito Or Drew Locke or Tim Boyle

Or whoever starts the next couple of games For them is going to solve any of this This team is cooked And it's getting more depressing By the week You know what I was thinking though With the Drew Locke thing So, you know, according to the reporting, they were like a couple million dollars off with

Sequin Barclay, right? It wasn't like a huge gap. There was some price where they at least reportedly were willing to bring him back. So I at the time was like, this probably isn't the best for your franchise. You don't have a good offensive line yet. Like I understand why you wouldn't want to pay Seekoine Barclay. Then they pay Drewlock $5 million for this year to be the backup. And John Schneider does the hilarious.

radio interview in Seattle where he's like, yeah, Drew Locke's going there. They told him he might be able to start over Daniel Jones. He goes there and then you make a quarterback move and you don't even start Drew Locke. You go to Tommy DeVito. So this is what a waste of $5 million. Easiest $5 million ever made for a backup quarterback. Amazing. And I'm all, you know, I'm the big CTC. My quarterbacks might be Drew Locke. It is Daniel Jones, of course. Daniel Jones can go on vacation and still make that money. So Drew Locke, you're still going to have to back up Daniel Jones, first team CTC quarterback this year. Oh, man, imagine that he gets to leave before the weather gets bad in New York. Oh, what a favor the Giants just did for him. I know. So nice. By the way, where are you with the

whole, like, there's too many things on my timeline, too many headlines about where Daniel Jones is going to go. Is this just me? No, no, I agree with you. And if I'm Daniel Jones, why would I want to go anywhere. Like just take the, the checks are still coming in. I'm assuming there's offset language in his contract. So even if he signed somewhere, he's not making any more money, just take the year off. You don't want to go to Las Vegas. Emotionally, why would I want to go someplace and potentially piss off another fan base? I'm going to wait. I want to wait and wait for a team and free agency to strike out on whatever quarterback plan they initially had and then come to me, throw me a dozen or so million

dollars to come hang out, be a bridge quarterback for whoever the next guy is. That's the kind of life you should be striving for if you're not going to be a franchise QB. You think Ryan Tannahill's threatened now? Because he was the guy that was kind of waiting around for his spot, like a quarterback to get hurt in a playoff contender. I think Daniel Jones might have skipped a line ahead of Ryan Tannahill. Yeah, I think he would get a call before him,

but I'm with you guys. Go hang out for the rest of the year. Figure it out later. You've been hit a lot over the course of your career and this season. You've had injuries. You really don't need to be going. These practices, listen, they look pretty boring. The meetings, everybody's falling.

asleep, just go do something else for a little bit. All right, Ruiz, what do you got? What's your next award? I'm giving the red flag award to the Kansas City Chief's Defense. We are officially in problematic territory now. They just allowed Bryce Young to have the best game of his NFL career and he put

up more EPA than Josh Allen did against them the week before. And this has been a trend with the Chiefs defense, especially it's passing defense. They haven't held an offense to negative EPA in over a month. The last time they did it was when they played the Raiders on October 27.

The Bucks had a positive EPA. Broncos just barely had one. The bills obviously did, and then the Panthers do today. And it didn't look very difficult for Bryce Young at any point during this game. Like, he made some tough throws, especially down the stretch. But a lot of the throws he was making was to wide open receivers, outside the numbers. And I think we have to worry about this chief defense now. Obviously, the quarterback group has been shaken up by injuries.

And we've seen them kind of exploited. I think the pass rush has started to slow down, and that's always been kind of a worry because there's not a lot of depth there behind Chris Jones. And it's been, I would say, about a month and a half since this has looked like a championship level defense. And for all the hand-wringing we've done over the offense, the offense ranks higher in EPA and DVOA and any other metric you want to look at. The offense has not been the problem. It's been the defensive late.

And if this team doesn't win a Super Bowl, it might end up being the defense. his fault, which is something I didn't think I would be saying two months ago. Yeah, one of the wildest outcomes of the day. Bryce Young goes 21 for 35 for 263 yards and a touchdown brings the Panthers back. They end up losing 30 to 27. But again, the Chiefs were 10.5 point favorites. We just talked about the commanders. This ended up being, you know, a little bit of a, a little bit of a coin flip game here.

I mean, you look at the yardage. Panthers had 334. Chiefs had 3991. So it wasn't like a, you know, a totally fluky thing here. Neither team had a turnover in this game. So yeah, you're probably right. Anytime the, I mean, I'm rooting for Bryce Young. I've said this before.

He seems like a great guy and I hope he has a nice long career where he can, you know, be cashing them checks too. Maybe he has a backup quarterback in the future. But usually you look at a Bryce Young box score under yards and the first number is not two. So that's the first thing that caught my eye. Like I think there's been very few of them. those in his career. So he throws for 263 yards.

Chiefs, eight of their 10 wins have been one possession games, seven points or fewer. Yet here they are, 10 and 1. We will continue to talk about them. All right, Deontay, what do you got? What's next? All right, so this is my last superlative of the night. And I'm calling this the Founder Calling Award. And I'm giving that to Davis Webb, who is a quarterback's coach of the Denver Broncos for the

development that he's done with Bo Nix over the last month or so. I think that Sunday might have been maybe the best reflection of Nix's development so far this year. And he's had some really good games. Obviously, the Falcons game was probably the one I think that's just most explosive, most impressive, most impressive when you look at the box score. But if you hone in on footwork, on process, on how the ball is coming out of a guy's hand and how he's working through his progression, I mean, you can look at the real of both of Nix's dropbacks. And it's felt like every throw, you know, he puts his back foot down. he's driving off of that delivering the ball to an open receiver it was just happening over and over again you see him scanning the field looking one way seeing what the coverage picture is and knowing exactly

where the next throw was going to be and being able to get you know get tie his feet and his shoulders to where he wants to go with the football and that was an issue for them earlier in the year and the thing that has really been taken out of his game that's probably been most impressive because it's probably the hardest thing to work on in terms of habits in the year it's not drifting in the pocket anymore That was something that improved tenfold, I would say, from the first six to eight weeks of the season, is he's not creating pressure for himself by drifting or trying to escape or waiting until the last second to try to shrug off a pass rusher. He has a much better understanding of an NFL pocket. And to be able to do that as a rookie as the bullets are flying in season speaks really well,

not only to just Bo Nixen being coachable, but I think Davis Webb, obviously Sean Payton, scheming things up, but him really working on the mechanics of being an NFL quarterback is being reflected now in a way that was not present in the first part of the season so far. Yeah, like you said, and what I wrote down for him today was just, he knows where all his answers are. Like, he looks like he's, you know, he is not confused most of the time out there. He goes 25 for 42 for 273 yards, two touchdowns, only takes one sack. We talked about that before that. Their offensive, line is very good, but he's also done a very good job with the sack avoidance with those

negative plays. Broncos win 29, 19, and are now 7 and 5 on this season. Ruiz? Yeah, I'm going to give a superlative to both Mike McDaniels and to Tagavalao, the Welcome Back Award, because they have figured out this offense. And if you look at them over the past couple of weeks, they have the, I think it's over the past three weeks during the winning street, they have the second best point different in the NFL behind the Lions, who shouldn't even count at this point because they're just blowing

teams out every week. But no, Mike B. Daniel, I think, deserves a lot of the credit. I think Tua deserves his fair share of credit. He is one of three quarterbacks who have a positive EPA on throws behind the line of scrimmage and also a 45% success rate, 45% are better. And Tua, to his credit, he is the third best quarterback on throws beyond the line of scrimmage in terms of EPA per attempt. He's averaging 0.42 EPA per throw past the line of scrimmage. So I think we're seeing all facets of this Dolphins pass game start to click, especially today. I thought Tua was better on the deeper throws.

He had a couple of weak throws on the two-minute drill before the half, but outside of that, I think he was very accurate, very decisive in the pocket. The running game is still a problem. And I think that's the one layer that Mike McDaniel is going to have to solve. This team is going to make a big, run and make the playoffs because the schedule is still very tough and they're going to have to beat some very good teams in order to make the playoffs. But they have a chance. And I think if they keep playing like this and the defense keeps punching above its weight like it has all season,

I think there's a chance that this team sneaks into the seventh seed. Maybe it's the Bengals, maybe it's the Dolphins, but I think there's still a chance that we get one of these offenses that we had such high hopes for before the season. Obviously the Bengals have lived up to that. The Dolphins not so much until recently. But I could see them making the playoffs sneaking in the back door. It depends on what Denver ends up doing. down the stretch. Yeah, they're five and six. The Broncos are seven and five here, but yeah, two its numbers this year. I mean, he has operated once again, like one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the NFL. And as we discussed previously, they're doing it in a different way.

And this offense did not look good before he got injured early in the season. So I think Mike McDaniel certainly deserves credit. They figured some things out. I will say this. They play on Thursday night in Green Bay. The weather report, 13 degrees, which could get him bad too again. He hasn't played well in cold weather, but he had that one strong game against Buffaloes. I think it was a snow game on a Saturday night where he threw for a bunch of yards. But other than that, he hasn't performed well in those types of conditions. I would love to have seen Green Bay's defense go to Miami and take on this offense right now and see how they perform. But it's a much better matchup than it looked like a month ago with these two teams.

So Packers Dolphins on Thanksgiving should be fun. All right, my final one. most impressive feat by an announcer. Adam Amine and Mark Sanchez during the Kobe Bryant, the Seahawks, you know, the Seahawks defensive backed, returned the Kyler Murray interception for a pick six. And they made it through that whole thing. I think someone double-checked me on this because I was flipping around a little bit.

I think they got through it without saying crotch or crotch grab the entire time. You know, he did the Marshaun Lynch as he crossed the goal line. And I'm like, I'm always curious. how are they going to describe this? My daughter would say, you know, where the sun don't shine or something, when a guy gets hit there like Sequod in the Sunday night game, or I'm always curious how they, you know, what are they going to say when a guy like hurts his, you know, tailbone.

All right, what, what, how are we labeling this? So I think they got through that whole thing, even the penalty there was there, and there was no mention of crotch or crotch grab there. You two seem riveted with my last award. I just don't know that I don't know if I would be mature enough to not, to not make mention of it. I've seen too many YouTube videos, man. Seeing too many Beast mode of YouTube videos.

No, yeah. I'm not going to credit them for not saying. I think they should have just gone out and said. Just called it what it what it is. We're all adults here. We're all adults here. There you go. You don't know who's watching. I don't know, maybe their mom or dad's watching and they feel little, you know, I can't be saying that. My mom

or dad's watching. I'll be hearing about it after the broadcast. I don't know. Maybe we'll get to the bottom of that. Maybe they actually did say it and I missed it. But when I was watching the way they were describing it, they just kept referring to it as the Marshawn Lynch tribute, which I thought was funny. I got one more. It's not a serious one. I need you guys to help me figure out what to call this one. It's either the extremely, the extreme football guy award or the opposite of that. He's just not a football guy at all. Apparently Pooka Nukua

did not realize the Rams were in the NFC West until recently. A teammate told him like a week ago that what division he was in, he had no idea. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Sean McVeigh was asked about it. And Shao McVeigh was like, that's not true. I refuse to believe that's true. Then he finally accepted that it was true. And he was like, well, he just has his head down. He's just focused on the things that are in front of him.

And then he was like, maybe I could lie to him and say the Eagles are in our division and we'll get him hyped to play. Apparently, it didn't really work out. Obviously, the Eagles win that game. But yeah, Pook and Nakua had no idea what division they were in. Was he like, why do we play the Rams and Cardinals and Seahawks twice a year? Nobody else. All right, I got to give this one to Deonté.

He has more experience around true football guys for his life, I think, than either of us. Deante, what do we make of Puka Nakua not knowing or saying that he doesn't know that the Rams play in the NFC West? I guess that makes you a football guy. I just think that Puka maybe just does not give much thought to anything outside of what the route or motion is. That's part of the call. I don't know. In terms of like a football guy, all I care about is what's happening between the lines. I don't know if anything's ever going to beat the Donovan McNabb.

I didn't know that a tie game was in the rulebook quote. Yeah. I was like, come on, Cordy rack. Like, first of all, he played in a lot of, he played in a lot of overtime games between Syracuse, Philadelphia prior to. So to not know that there was a tie, that a tie game was a possibility. It's going to be tough to beat that one for me. Has Nuku would never look at the standings?

Does he look at the standings? Like, what is, what is NFC West mean? Like, I don't understand. Like, does he think it's just like happenstance that in both years of his career that he's had to play this set of three teams twice in the season. Maybe he knows that he's in a division with them, but he didn't know what the division was called. Maybe he doesn't know the divisions of the NFL. That could be what was it, Jared Gough?

Wasn't there a Jared Gough thing on Hard Knocks back in the day? There was something similar like this, I feel like where he didn't know something about this. He didn't know which side, like which direction, the sun. Oh, is that one? Yeah. This is that. It had nothing to do with the NFC West. It had to do with the actual West and the actual East.

I'm sorry, the more I'm thinking about this, the more of a demurit, I'm willing to give Fuku Nakua. He was born in Vegas and went to BYU. You were in the time zone where the NFC West is on all the time. How do you not know what division the L.A. Rams play in? I'm also leaning towards non-football guy because he was asked before the Sunday night game. I think he was interviewed by Melissa Stark on NBC, whether he enjoys throwing a block are catching a touchdown more.

And that's T you knew up for a football guy. You go, yeah, you know, everyone loves scoring, but I love throwing a block. And he was like, as a receiver, I want to score a touchdown. There's nothing better than it. So he loses another football guy point for that. There you go.

All right, I feel like there will be follow-ups to this one, Pukukkah. Still looked good out there. Some athletes, you know, there are some athletes. Like, Fletcher Cox did not watch sports. Like, he played for the Eagles for a decade. But he always said, like, be like, you're watching this game? No, like, of course not. I'm not going home and watching sports.

Like sports is my job. So maybe it's that with Pukiniko. He likes, he loves to play football. He doesn't really watch football. He's never looked at standings. He's not, doesn't have the standings, playoff standings up on his computer like I do right now. It's possible. I would like more reporting on this and we'll report back on the Ringer NFL show in episodes ahead. All right, that's a good way to end it. Pukinikua, not knowing what division he plays. And thank you to Diate Le. Thank you to Stephen Ruiz. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing additional production supervision by Connor Evans, Arjuna, Ramgopal, and Dan Comer.

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