The Ringer NFL Show - Week 12 Recap: Rams Lose Their Third in a Row, Bengals Blow Out the Steelers, and Herbert Struggles While Tua Wins Again

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to talk about the Packers handing the Rams their third loss in a row (2:09). They also talk about the Niners winning their third straight, the Ravens winning a sloppy game against the Browns, and much more (22:55). Then Steven Ruiz joins to talk about Justin Herbert’s performance in a loss to the Broncos and Tua’s recent performances as the Dolphins have won four straight (1:39:04).  Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guests: Benjamin Solak and Steven Ruiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer Gambling show is here to help you place your bets on the biggest sports around the world. Join NFL analyst Warren Sharp on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with guests Chris Vernon, Ben Solac, and Joe House to guide you through the NFL betting landscape. Each week, they'll cover everything from spreads, game totals, and parlays to player props, futures, post-game reactions, and more. Check out the Ringar Gambling Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I am Kevin Clark, joined tonight by Nora Princiotti. Nora, what's going on? Not much, Kev. No Cheez-It's tonight.

No Cheez-It's. We all had a great holiday weekend. Ben Solac showed up on the initial call about an hour ago, still wearing a full suit. Stephen Ruiz joked he was going to the Titans funeral. Just a tie on a cardigan. Casual. Okay. Okay. You got caught. You went to church. You went to church. You got home too late. The football was on. And one thing led to another. And all of a sudden, you were wearing a cardigan in a tie all day. I feel like this is after six. What is he a farmer? I feel like this is not the first time I've shown up

still accidentally in church clothes, having not realized what's gone on with my day. But I was wearing blue and maize to celebrate Michigan's win, go blue. Love watching Ohio State Lose. Are you a Michigan fan now? No, not at all. Again, let me state very clearly for the record.

You live in the state of Michigan. Love watching Ohio State Lose. Okay. Okay. So that's your only rooting interest. you're not like in six weeks going to be like oh you know I'm kind of you know just gonna get getting into it all of a sudden you're wearing Michigan's a fun team to watch because of how well they run the football that's always enjoyable but just love watching Ohio State lose feels good yeah um okay so what a day of football and we have a lot to argue about

we i think we had a record on the call of things we started arguing about and I say oh let's save for the pod um and there's there's a sunday night debacle that's only way to phrase it, a debacle that's going to get more viewers than the Oscar somehow, because that's how the NFL goes. But I want to start with Packers 36, Rams 28. Wow. There is so much about this game. And I want to start, I guess, with the Packers, because I think we're going to spend most of our time diagnosing the Rams and figuring out what's wrong with them. But the Packers are badasses, and they're my Super Bowl favorite. They're Ben's Super Bowl favorite. Nora, I haven't checked on your Super Bowl favorite in the last couple of

weeks, but I imagine that they're at the top, as far as the NFC goes at least. But this was exactly they are who we thought they were. Interesting to me, I was looking at the next next gen stats earlier that they changed the game plan around Aaron Rogers, 96% of his dropbacks were inside the tackle box, second highest in the last five years, barely scrambled, 79% shotgun rate, second highest under Lafleur. They knew how to play this defense. They did it. Jalen Ramsey, uh, Interesting game today. He was aligned across from Devante Adams on 56% of his routes. Adams caught five targets and gave up 41 yards.

So interesting. Aaron Rogers, a bunch of great throws. That's what he does. Ben So like, what you think? Yeah. It was the early third down.

I think it was third and five where Rogers got Devante Adams as the intermost receiver to the three receiver side. And that meant that Troy Reeder, linebacker, 51, was zone dropping next to Devante Adams, balls out, quick six-yard gain, or six yards in terms of air yards, then Adams turns up field, easy first down.

And that's just a play where you go, Rahim Morris might be running the Brandon's daily defense, but Rahim Morris hate Brandon Staley, right? And that's the kind of the key cog here, is that you can run the system, but there is a, when the system is yours, when you're the creator, you understand the buttons and the dials,

the whirligigs and what have you, such that you can make the adjustments necessary to not get Troy Reader over Devante Adams on the, the opening script. Like, that's just that, that's, okay, we have our system, we have our philosophy, but we're going to generally avoid that, right? And then they do.

They do have Jalen Ramsey try to shadow Devante Adams. And it's worth noting, five for five for 41 yards is a good day for any corner against Devante Adams, right? It's also one of Ramsey's worst days, because Ramsey's amazing, but it's a good day for a corner against Devante Adams because Adams is amazing. And that's what happens when good plays good. You know what I mean? You get some wins and some losses, and it truly is a heavyweight back.

battle. But in general, this Rams defense from a philosophy perspective is, is cosplaying Brandon Staley. And they don't have the actual guy. They don't have the dude. And what that leads to is a really talented defensive line, some really effective blitz packages, but never enough pressure in the right spots in the key moments. And what that leads to is a secondary with talent that's running the correct defensive meta, but without the big stops in the big moments against the top receivers. just a little bit fraudulent on that side of the ball. And early on it was a, let's see how they figure it out as time goes. We just played a key NFC seating game in week 12.

And this defense was a problem. Wasn't as big of a problem as the scoreboard would indicate, some short fields and what have you. But this defense was a problem. And that's why, you know, once we start to get into these colder months, the, oh, let's see how they round out conversation really comes to a head. And you see that with the Rams defense, as opposed to a Packers defense that's playing really, really, really good ball

as of late. Nora, before we get into the the real, the main event of this segment, which is the Rams, uh, anything from the Packers and where you think they fall on the NFC pecking order right now. Yeah. Well, I think you're right. They're at the top.

Obviously, one of the things going to this game is that Rogers is not really practicing. And clearly, so far, so good. He practiced once last week and he didn't practice, I don't think, at all this week. Yep. Yeah. And then he showed his feet on a Zoom, which is just never,

rule of thumb, it's not a good place to be. You got to do something with your time. I don't think you got to do that. Don't got to do that. It's not a need. I will say, Rogers showing his feet on Zoom was a great thing to happen

right before I went to see my entire extended family who knows I cover football for Thanksgiving. Because I was asked eight to ten times. I saw a screenshot of Aaron Rogers. I don't really understand what's happening here, Ben. can you tell me as a football reporter? Absolutely not.

I cannot tell you what's going on with Aaron Rogers right now. I have no information. Please don't ask me any more questions. That said. I guess the health of Rogers, Lefleur was saying after the game, he was asked if he'd have any input on whether or not Rogers might get cleanup surgery. He said, absolutely not. The doctors will figure that out.

Again, so far so good in terms of him being able to manage that and play. But that is the thing to me right now where if you see the Packers at the top of the NFC, you're looking through December into January and February and going like, ooh, that would be my top concern. Because other than that, they should only get healthier, right? Like they're still doing this without Zadaria Smith, without Jaira Alexander. Without David Bactiari, Yash Nishman, my guy. That's Yash.

Yeah. Shout out to Yash. We're covering a phone ball. Why see your guy? I just decided now. Come on. You have like 18 guys. I never have any guys.

I have many. I mean, it's really easy. You just did it. You just did it. Now you know it's addictive. It's addictive to call everybody your guy. It's a, now you're just going to be doing it the whole pot. Feels great.

All right. Something to watch. But the most impressive thing about the Packers this season has been how they account for the key absences that they've had. because my guy, most notable play he makes out there is recovering a fumble, right? Rogers says to him, apparently, this is via Packers reporters,

that he completely forgot about the left side of the line. It was just not an issue. I mean, that's a heck of a compliment, right? So, so far so good on that. Yeah. You hope those guys come back. Bactiari had a little cleanup procedure over a few days ago,

which is a little concerning because there'd been this sort of like, oh, he should be back by now. Let's see, let's see. Overall, though, they're presuming that a lot of those guys should be back for a stretch run. And if they've done this well,

sort of spelling those weak points, you figure it only gets better, but you know, you just throw a little asterisk on there because Rogers is showing his feet on Zoom. So Stafford is missing place. Third straight game of a pick six. That's awful.

I think he has six turnovers in that span. There were some analytics this week where basically they say that McVeigh's offense regresses the season goes along and it's been pretty consistent that in the second half of the season he gets worse in EPA per play. Thought that was interesting. I saw a couple of stats that said he gets away from play action or has gotten away from play action the last couple of weeks.

Don't know if that's direct. There's a Stafford report now that he's banged up, the back pain, consistent arm pain, elbow pain, whatever it is. Welcome to your 30s, buddy. This is not good. And for a team that is all in, this is the downside of all in. Because you start to panic a little bit and you say, okay, our window is now.

Our window is, this is supposed to be it. We go up a second and third round pick for Von Miller. We gave up, you know, cap space for OBJ. Like this is, this is, there's a reason you do all of this. And now Matthew Stafford, you know, Lindsay Theory made the point. If this were Jared Goff, the heat would be up to a thousand, a five thousand degrees. And McVeigh in the press conference today, after the game had to say he's totally committed total faith, all that stuff, giving his quarterback a vote of confidence. This is not supposed to happen.

The whole trade was supposed to remove the whole quarterback doubt equation, um, quarterback doubt thing out of the equation. and that's not what's happened. Ben, what's going on here? Right. So, like, very simply, Stafford is playing poorly. When he played the game against the Titans, it was kind of like, oh, we were waiting for it.

There's the bad Stafford game. Always happens. Shucks. And then he played badly against the Niners. And it was like, oh, man, Kyle Shanahan's always got the Rams number, running ball, controlling drives. That's just, that's Shanahan.

Kind of sucks that Stafford was bad. They got stuff to figure out. good thing the biweek's coming up and then they get the Packers and right this is the third week and it's kind of like all right once is an outlier right twice as a coincidence

three times we got something and that's that that concern I think has two heads here the first is what you bring up in regards to the aches and pains the bumps and bruises of playing quarterback because Stafford is a delightfully tough dude and we love tough quarterbacks

it's great when he was gunning it out for the lines in 2020 right and said like I'm going to go out there and I'm going to play through injuries because that's what other guys are doing and this is what we do. I'm a Detroit Lions quarterback and like the locker room, love that. That was excellent. But there does seem to be that inevitable connection that you can make. Same thing is happening with Baker Mayfield and Cleveland where you say, okay, there's no way

this isn't adding up to some poor play because it feels like that's the best explanation we have. He's just missing throws he was making. He is drastically missing throws he is making. He was nowhere near his receivers missing throws that he was. was making that feels like it has to be something physical. The second thing is, I think, the more concerning thing and something that can actually be addressed, which is what you brought up with, this McVe offense getting stale when we get late

into the season. And I'd be curious to go back and kind of watch with that paradigm in mind, some of the previous seasons, because I would imagine it's simply, this has worked for us. You know, we were good in September. We were good in October. Let's keep doing it. And then defenses wise and up a little bit, and it's just hard to, you know, to adjust on the fly,

and that's been the case year after year after year. But very critically, this year, the whole point, the whole beauty of Matt Stafford with the Rams was that there was more on the quarterback and less on the head coach. There was more ability of the quarterback to get into the right looks, to win downs when defenses were in the right looks, right? Goff was never winning a down in which the defense had the right look for the play

call. Stafford can do that. So it felt like this was a relinquishing of some control, of some responsibility of the offense, a sharing of the burden between Sean McVeigh and his quarterback for the first time. And now we're seeing this same thing occur

where Sean McVeigh's offense is fading down the stretch. And I don't think all of that can be explained with Matt Stappert's health. It does feel like teams are just, you know, able to sit on what they expect to see on third and longs and in-blit situations and whatever and find success. And if McVeigh is incapable of pitching change-ups

later in the season, which would be a very peculiar thing for a guy of his talent. But if he is, that's mighty concerning. It doesn't matter who's under center now. This is always going to be a problem for the Rams. I'm not sure we're there yet, but if it is, I mean, that is a terrifying reality for a team that is all in on their head coach as the spearhead to their offensive and overall team ideology.

His ability to make adjustments is something that, listen, he is one of the best play callers in, modern football history. He's going to be one of the best coaches of his era. But, like, there have been some head scratching lack of adjustments. I would also say that, okay, Sean McVey, his whole thing is, ooh, I'm going to go find a Sean McVey of defense. I'm going to go find a Sean McVey of special teams.

Buddy, Sean McVey, go find the Sean McVey of game management. Get somebody in the booth, get an analytics guy, whatever it is. I don't want you running on third down in a two score game with a minute left and burning 30 seconds off the clock. I don't need you to do that. I need you to go for two more with no timeouts left. You know, listen, Andy Reid was a poor game management guy for two decades, and they found Patrick Mahomes and all of his problems were solved. But you don't need to let a problem linger for no reason, okay?

I also just don't think that Sean McVeigh is like 20-year plan is, well, let's kick around until 2040 and then find the next Patrick Mahomes. No, you go and you solve your problems now. This is a problem-solving business, nor are you worried about the Rams. Yeah, well, I think the interesting element of kind of the, the collision of trust between the coach, the play caller and the quarterback and the way that this offense has sometimes lost its luster-laden seasons is that, yes, maybe it's just defenses adjust and they haven't been able to find the right effective counters. they're also, and look, McVeigh's a really smart guy who puts a lot on himself and believes that he can solve a lot with scheme and play calling. But what we've seen more than once at this point with this offense is that when stuff gets tough, he tries to fix everything. And sometimes that's by kind of tightening the reins, right? And we've seen, you know, it gets more and more horizontal.

It gets more and more like, okay, I'm just going to. I'm going to scheme guys open. I'm going to put it all on me because I don't think that, you know, whether it's golf or maybe we're seeing a little bit of that now because, look, Stafford has been throwing picks. That's what we started this conversation with. He is struggling with decision making and to a certain extent with some ball placement stuff.

So I think the thing you worry about is if the head coach has a reaction to that, that's like, don't, don't let him push the ball as much as we were doing. maybe we should get away from that. That's leading us into mistakes. And then it's like, okay, but that was kind of the key ingredient that you wanted to get when you brought this guy here. Right. Then obviously the thing that we don't know is just the health piece because no player at this point in the season going into December isn't banged up who plays in the NFL, right? But this was the report from Diana Rossini at ESPN was that Stafford has been dealing with pain in his throwing

arm, pain in his elbow, sore ankle and chronic back pain. That's the especially scary part, right? Because he fractured bones in his back, caused him this eight games in 2019. And as part of Diana's report, she was citing a ram source who said that his arm has been, quote, a lot of pain. He has elbow pain and his back has, is a chronic issue that he deals with every single day. His health is certainly an issue.

Like, this doesn't sound like. DefCon 5 kind of, well, yeah, everybody's heard at this point. Like, this sounds like a kind of serious thing. And something where you wonder who knew what, when, right? Because chronic back pain is not a phrase you want to be hearing about the quarterback who you, you know, blew up the off season by going and getting. So I say this as a compliment, but, and it's not going to sound like a comment when it comes out of my mouth, okay? I'm very interesting. This is a great start.

Stafford to me is kind of in the, the, like is on the Ben Rothesberger trajectory where he's just going to be hurt forever. Okay? And that's, and he's still somehow going to make throws and he's going to win games

and he's going to have a nice career and he's going to flourish in his 30s despite the fact that every time I look at him, he looks like death. And he looks like he'd rather be anywhere else, but it turns out that he loves football, he's ready to limp down the field, and everything's going to be fine.

I've talked to Stafford about this. I've talked to him about just, just how much he plays through pain, and he seems completely comfortable with that. And he's taking a lot of hits. I mean, this generation, everyone kind of says, because of the rough in the passer penalties and the body weight stuff, I think that we think the quarterbacks have been babied,

but the flip side of that is they're throwing so much more than the previous generation from the time they're in high school, that they are getting hit and getting driven to the ground much more than previous generation. That's just a fact. I remember when people were talking about Andrew Luck when he retired. They were talking about, you know, obviously he took more hits because he was physical and liked taking it. But they also said that if you, you know, if you were born in 1990 or 1988, you were taking a lot more hits because you were just dropping back more.

And so I think there was a comfort in discomfort, if that makes sense from Stafford. So I think I think it's a fine line between Stafford being hurt, which is always going to be in some regard because of his injury history. And he's too hurt to play. And that to me, when I look at this right now, I was not worried. about that kind of health update until the last couple weeks when I saw it and he's missing layups and all that stuff. And now I think it is pretty bad. Ben, what'd you think? Yeah. The decision making is one thing because I think that you can attribute that a little bit to the pressure they're getting. This interior is playing some really, really rough ball right now,

Austin Corbett, Brian Allen, David Edwards, the interior of the Rams. So I could see, you know, some jumpiness and some uncertainty as well. They really don't want to move his spot. out of the pocket, which I find really interesting because the whole kit and caboodle with golf was getting him out of the pocket. And that playbook didn't go away. It's not like lost in a box somewhere. They got to digitize, man. They can find it. You have a lot of advantages right now to moving Stafford out of the pocket that would simplify decision making and keep him protected from further hits. I know it seems unintuitive because you're taking him out of the pocket, but on boot action stuff, it should work. It's just they don't, they don't want to be an undercenter passing

team right now. They want to be a gun passing team right now because they feel like they can go spread with Odell, Van Jefferson, and Cooper Cup. It's not a wrong thought. Like it was working, but it feels like the confluence of factors here leads that they need to move the pocket. They need to move the launch point. To me, that helps solve a couple of your issues. It does be the question of like, is Stafford able to run like that right now? Like I don't know that. Like Nora said, we don't know the health situation. Well, the other thing, to Ben's point, the other thing that kind of factors into this is you have an interior of the line that's that's struggling. And then again, as Ben said, this is a team that loves to play a lot of empty. And you get a little scared when all

those things are meeting together with a quarterback on the older side who's having all of this trouble. And it seemed like actually they were, I'll be curious to see how it shakes out. It seems like they were getting away from some of the empty stuff today a little bit and trying to do a little things a little bit differently and maybe that's to account for not wanting him to be taking quite as much pressure, but it just feels like it's kind of coming from a bunch of fronts because the combination of who's playing the health and the way that they like to play is not ideal. Hey, Nora, if you were an owner starting a franchise right now, would you rather have

Sean McVeigh or Matt Lerflare? Matt LaFleur. Ben? brother, Sean McVeigh, I am more certain that he can elevate the bad parts

of my team than LaFloor can because I've only seen LaFleur with Rogers. With that said, LeFloor has done a really good job elevating when he has running back deficiencies

or receiver deficiencies or offensive line deficiencies. So I'm confident he could do that, but very, very tough for me to fully buy in on an offensive play call I've only ever seen with Aaron Rogers because that dude's a cheat code.

I actually don't know the answer. I think the answer is McVeigh for me. But, I mean, at some point, and, you know, Nora's already on this corner, but at some point, Matt LaFleur, he's 35 and 9 since he took over. Like, he's really freaking good. I'm actually really surprised that was easy for you guys to go in the other direction.

Like, yes, Rogers and Rogers. Are you just out on McVeigh? Not easy, not easy. Not easy. Not easy. Very hard. Made noises. Okay. Oh. Making noises.

When I make sounds, it's a hard question. Is that the sign? Yeah. I mean, I, like, whenever I get one of those questions that I don't like and that it's difficult, whenever I listen back in the podcast, I'm like, dude, what were you doing? You sound like a train engine right now. Wow. I'm glad we have a tell.

Yep. Just stammering. Okay. Good. I'm glad we got that out on the record. All right. Ben Solac, Ninus Vikings. Ah, yes, the EPA superlative.

Because these are just saying. the two quarterbacks that are good by EPA and by EPA alone. This one goes to Jimmy Groplo, obviously, the victor. 0.21 EPA per play over Kirk Cousins, 0.01 EPA per play. Also, the victor in the box score, in case anybody cares in this one. This game, listen, I'm not going to pretend like I can seriously talk about anything before I talk about Kirk Cousins lining up behind the right guard on fourth and goal and what could have been the game deciding play.

I can't, like, I'd love to be like the Niners running game, but I can't emotionally move forward. It's fourth and goal. It's 26 to 34 late in the fourth quarter. The Vikings are scrambling to get a play call in to get lined up and to get where they want to go. K.J. Osborne is lined up on the incorrect side of the formation. So Kirk Cousins leaves under center, scurries on over to go get him and help redirect him to line up on the correct side of the formation. After doing so, he goes to get back under center and instead gets back under the right guard. There's like five seconds left in the play clock. He's looking right, looking left,

making sure he knows where the mic is, making sure Osborne's getting set. And Alexander Madison, the running back, just behind him like, oh no. And so he hustled on forward. A DJ Jones of the 49ers looks up and is like, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he's there and Madison, Madison had to do the thing that you do when someone like drops something that drops her cell phone in a restaurant and you have to catch up to him like, hey, oh, oh, you drop this. Hey, buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy, big man, big man. Like that kind of thing. I mean, or also like when a toddler is going to run into traffic.

That's right. Yeah. Grabs him by the hips, not like by the waist too, not like aggressively. Like a conga line grab. Just like- There's also two seconds left of the play clock at that point. Brian O'Neill also is, who's the right tackle is like he's, he's stunned, right? Like, he's looking at Kirk and he's not like pushing him. He's just staring at him.

Just confounded by his proximity. The right guard is fine with this. He's ready to snap the football. He doesn't have it, but he's fine. The Kirk's back here, he'll do that. The best is the 49ers. No excuses from the right guard. The best is the 49ers defense who like, just out of instinct,

like start trying to, they start pointing at the center. They like, like, Kirk, like, it's there, buddy. I just want to say, I thought it might have been, them thinking it was a trick play. Because Madison was still lined up in shotgun essentially. Right. And I was going to say, what happens if this is the Patriots? Does the opponent go like, what don't

we know? What don't we know? Right. Yeah, yeah. To me the absolute best part of the play, though, and it's because we've talked about this a lot. Mike Zimmer, we just think, is not a big fan of Kirk Cousins. We know Justin Jefferson's not a big fan of Kirk Cousins

off of this game, by the way. Jefferson was missed on a very wide open two-point conversion earlier in the in the game and just, just, just couldn't look at Kirk on the walk back

to the sideline, just a very upset young man. Zimmer, I would have assumed would have called the timeout with like the ferocity of the Mike Rable challenge flag throw,

just very calmly calls the timeout and starts walking back to the offensive sideline. I don't know what he was saying internally, but externally, Zimmer's like, yeah,

this just happens, man, this is a common problem the teams have, just can't get the quarterback by the center on fourth down. I'm just going to calm my time out. Well,

we'll rally the troop, circle wagons. We're going to be okay. they did not, by the way, be okay. They were unable to convert on their fourth and goal, gave the ball back to the 49ers, and subsequently lost the game. Kirk was rough in this one,

had his nice throws, had his downfield shots, but was generally rough outside of this play. Then this was just the cherry on top of a great reminder that Kevin said, the line, $45 million, guaranteed. Kirk causes. But also, also, these were the second and fifth highest paid players in football.

So it was two of the greats. Two of the greats at the bank. Truly the EPA bowl. I have a query. Would you rather, if you are the coach of a football team, would you rather coach a team where the quarterback is consistently lining up under the guard

or be the coach of a team, let's call them the Cleveland Browns, that absolutely cannot get lined up with the correct number of players on the field? Well, isn't it kind of your fault in either situation? well you gotta choose one I'm not here to I would choose I would choose

I would choose the quarterback who keeps growing up because you can replace that eventually yeah I'll just kind of scoge him over yeah yeah the 12 man thing seems like a culture problem at some point that I like the I also like

the quarterback behind the guard thing because then I can just like make how you shook my quarterback and then I can just run like by base offense and he's just a fullback who's aggressively upfield that's correct I want to have what something because over the weekend I was watching the Alabama game

and I thought about this Bill Walsh book called Scortese Care of itself and in that book I made this point talking about Alabama but in this book he says there's no such thing as rising to the occasion that you have a game and you know how to execute and the idea of being clutch or rising to the occasion doesn't exist it's just you playing your game when everybody else when it's hardest to play your game right everybody else starts to lose their head

you're just going to do everything normally Joe Montan's going to throw to Jerry Rice, it's going to be fine. It's going to throw to Dwight Clark. It's going to be fine. Don't go out there and say, we're going to throw this ball harder. We're going to do this route with more intensity. Don't do it. You'll screw it up. Okay. So there's no such thing as clutch. It's only executing. What

is the opposite of whatever I just described? It's Kirk Cousins lining up under a guard in crunch time on the road in a big game that's going to go a huge, huge, huge way in determining who's going to make the playoffs. I don't

there is no, let's say there's no such thing as clutch, okay? And like Tom Brady kind of proves the Bill Walsh theory, he just does his thing all the time and it's fine, and they just win a bunch of games. But Kirk Cousins is the exact antithesis of what we're describing. He does not operate normally when it matters. And that is the only thing that changes. It's mind-boggling that he cannot just execute normally in these spots,

and it's a problem. The Niners are in the playoffs, if they started today. By the way, the playoffs right now, just a total disaster zone. Okay? So I'm going to just really quickly to the seats here.

Arizona number one, Green Bay, number two, three Tampa Bay, four Dallas. Fine with all that. Yeah, all good. All good. Five L.A.

fine. Six San Francisco. Okay. If the football team wins tomorrow against Seattle, this is according to ESPN's playoff machine, I don't know the tiebreaker.

If the football team wins tomorrow. They are the seventh seed at five and six. The current seven seed is the team that lost today, the Minnesota Vikings. Wow. Should we be talking about this Niners team more? Is it a playoff threat, Nora?

Uh, you know what? It's this year, fine. I don't know that we need to be talking about them more, but I will say, there are so few dominant dominant teams. I don't know that this, this week is the one that I want to, want to pluck from,

but we've seen better Jimmy, right? More recently in the season than in the early parts. I don't take that as, I'm just saying there's a chance. That's it. They play Tampa Bay if the playoffs started today. So I think at some point it becomes a matcher problem.

If they play Dallas, if they play Dallas, Tampa Bay or Green Bay or Arizona, I think they're a pretty big problem in their hands, Ben. I agree that they don't at this time feel like a team that could punch it weight in the NFC. The secondary is just terrifying, right? Like we're just continuing to play Josh Norman. That's where we are. Yeah. Also, Josh Norman. Maybe this is like the curse of bad cornerbacks, but just unusually involved Josh Norman.

just in on every play. That's not a good sign. He's around the ball. Yeah, had an awesome, you know, classic Josh Norman

forced fumble. And then upon seeing that his team failed to recover it in the scrum, just like punched out him feeling. And the reps were like, hey now,

and they just didn't throw a flag. And then later, Cam Biden him threw a punch and the reps were like, guys, and no one ever threw a flag. And there were no, there were a lot of punches

and the refus will be boys. Very peculiar. But I will say this. And this to me is the, the secret sauce right now for the 49ers. Since Kittle came back from injury, week nine, their seventh overall on EPA for play on offense,

they face them like defenses, Jacksonville, Minnesota is not the best defense. But in general, this very clearly looks a lot better. And they're doing it with tatters. I mean, Jimmy is nothing besides quick trigger, five-step drop middle of the field right now. Like there were times with that, like Jimmy was that, but then he could do this and he could do that.

That's all he is right now. It is very hard to watch. this team, I think in terms of inconvenience to prepare for, it goes like Ravens just because of Lamar and how they are on offense. And then the 49ers, because they are, they are as close to a modern, like, single wing team as we're going to see. There was a great play.

It was in the second quarter where they're in an eye formation under center, just Jimmy, Kyle Ushik, Elijah Mitchell. And they got two tight ends into the formation. No, no Hback. Like, nobody like off the line, maybe split zone. They're both just up on line of scrimmage. Debo comes in motion and goes behind the two, the eye formation, right? Orbit motion goes way like 10 yards back in the backfield.

And then they just run like lead zone off of it. And Harrison Smith, who's a good veteran safety who knows what he's doing in the run is just nowhere. Like he's just, he's just lost. You don't remember how to fit this. Last time you saw it was in high school when you were 15. You never saw this again. If you played in a Power 5 school and then you went to the NFL, nobody's just lining up with bodies all across the line

and three dudes who can all run it in the backfield and telling you to fit every single goddamn gap. Like it's just, it is difficult to deal with from a preparation perspective Monday to Sunday. And I think that that has the ability to translate to a wildcard win or to a strong offense coming into the playoffs

where it's just so inconvenient to handle this team. Now, the key cog, the cornerstone, is Debo Samuel, who went down with a groin injury during this game. It's not great that Debo's been taking the hits he's been taking because he's obviously a wide receiver, but he has built like a running back. He is a really, really good runner, but he has had this continued groin issue. He has been a player who is a little bit soft tissue injury pro, not like going to miss a lot of games, but we'll have to play less than 100%.

They've been using him high volume as a runner, which I don't think is what they want to do, but they've been using him like that because they've needed to. And then he goes down with this injury. If you don't have Debo, you can't be this. And then for like the fifth time this season, Kyle Shannon's going to have to try to come up with another way to play offense. I've been astounded by his performance

in terms of X's and O's over the last few weeks. I don't think he has another one of these in him if he doesn't have Debo. And so that guy's the straw that stirs the Drake. Hope that Debo is okay in this game. Dalvin Cook also, for the Vikings, went down with a shoulder getting MRI, hope that he's okay as well.

But Debo is as integral to the way the Niners play ball right now as any quarterback is, as Derek Henry was to the Titans, yada, yada, yada. He is the cornerstone. If they don't have him, this hassle cards comes tumbling down. Deepa Sammy, by the way, the first wide receiver in the Super Bowl era to score a rushing touchdown in three straight games. So that's what the Niners are doing right now. Are you familiar with the ignorant swordsman, Ben? No, but this sounds cool.

It's a Mark Twain line where he basically says the best swordsman in the world doesn't have to worry about the second best swordsman in the world. He has to worry about the guy who, doesn't really know what he's doing and is the hardest to prepare for it, the ignorance swordsman, right? Right. And like, I kind of think with the team like the Niners and like Jimmy Grappolo, whether or not he's the ignorant swordsman is sort of a separate issue. It's more about the fact that being hard to prepare for can be an advantage in the NFL and in a weird season and, okay, we don't really know what's going on, kind of what you're talking about. And I don't think that the Niners are exactly that because they are not. They have,

unlike Mark Twain's description, like held a sword in their hand in this, in this analogy, but it's kind of the same thing. Being hard to prepare for is an advantage in and of itself. Nora, New England, Tennessee. Oh, how exciting. Patriots Titans. What a little football contest. All right.

So the Patriots, let's just set the scene here. Patriots win 36 to 13. They are on a six game winning streak. They have a point differential of plus 146. that's pretty good. You like to see that if you were the New England Patriots. The thing that I want to kind of zero it on here is whether or not they've had the test that we kind of want to see them deal with.

Because their most impressive wins, I think this one against the Titans, very good. Not as decisive as the scoreboard would indicate Tennessee actually played pretty well, but turnover is really costly. And then the Browns game. The thing about both of those games that I think will be really interesting just to see what this team does down the stretch in the playoffs is in both of those games, they're able to stick in base defense a lot of the time

because they're playing quarterbacks who either because of the quarterback or the situation, injuries, they are comfortable just daring them to throw. Right? So they do a little bit where they would go, big nickel against 12 or 21 in this game. They'd add Adrian Phillips or somebody instead of just having like Judon High Tower, Bentley Van Nuoy.

That's their starting four linebackers. Sometimes they'll swap one of those guys out in those situations. But in both of those impressive wins, they're pretty comfortable sticking it out there a lot of the time because they're not getting burned through the air. And I mean, Tennessee's leading receiver here has 25 yards. Right. So they are totally cool with Hilliard running all over them. It's totally fine.

We'll take it all day. Whatever. My question is what happens. Look, they've got two games against the bills that are going to decide what they look like and sort of how we see them going into the playoffs. And the bills have not done a lot to, you know, blow your mind lately. But I'm really, really curious to see like what this game did more than anything else. It was absolutely impressive.

it absolutely makes you feel, you know, better and better about this team. But it made me especially curious to see them against a pass-first team. Because I think that's going to tell us not necessarily, you know, whether they are a team that you're scared of playing in the playoffs. Like, they're a good team. I think they've proven that by now. But what I want to see is if they are a team that has multiple punches to throw, particularly on this defense.

and that I think is how I come out of this game going, okay, number two seed eight and four plus 146. That is nothing to sneeze at. But you really, really, really want to see it against a team that, you know, is sitting on the sideline smiling when they see them sticking with it and base defense all day. I have lots to say about the Patriots, but I want to let Ben take his anti-touching.

Titans victory of that. No, no, I mean, like, this is, this is where, like, I'm truly sick because it's like, oh, man, like the Titans are losing games. But I really appreciate their process. I think they're, like, doing full things. This is not the only place where you're truly sick. This is not the only place where you're truly sick.

This is a good, like, you know, a sign, a symptom of my disease. Where it's like, like Titans fans should be sad because the team is playing poorly. But also, it's very interesting to me to see a team lose Derek Henry, AJ Brown, Julio Jones, i.e. the whole thing

and like figure some stuff out, you know what I mean? Like it is not an accident that they're getting to third and shorts and they're winning with it, the offensive lines playing well and their their shot play designs. Like when they're like, all right, it's time to get the Nick Westbrook Aquino wheel route dialed up. Like they get it dialed up. They get some separation.

Dial it up. And they like he gets separation and Tannhill puts a catchable ball. Tannhill missed a couple ones. Like they had a nice one on Miles Bryant. We're just, we're going to let our big. guy box it out and that's how we're going to do this. Like the Titans really, even with Henry out there, we're one of those teams that's like,

it doesn't have to be pretty. It just has to work. And then when they started losing their star offensive talent, they really became a team that listened. This doesn't have to be pretty, but if it works, we'll do it. And no, they aren't great right now. No, the offense isn't good. It's bad EPA for play over the last few weeks.

Success rate is terrible. They can't pass the ball in early downs. They're super screen heavy. All of what I've said is still true and it's still a problem. They're not a good offense right now. but really, I think in the situation in which they found themselves stuck in, they are doing their darndest. And I'm impressed with the chicken salad.

They're making out of chicken. You know what. So kudos to the Titans for that. Their defensive line really stepped up and played out of a tough game against the Patriots offensive front. And I will say, man, I've taken the Mickey out of this Titan secondary quite a bit. Christian Fulton's playing good ball. They have obviously Kevin Biar has been incredible, but Amani Hooker, the young safety out of Iowa,

has been really important for them in the box. I mean, they didn't have David Long for this game. That was a huge loss. You know, Jay and Brown's a problem for them in terms of getting targeted in coverage. But those young players have really stepped up. There's, it's just an, it's really an impressive team just in terms of how they've fought. And maybe it's taking me longer than others to realize that. But I do appreciate it, even only seeing it in losses.

Wow. With that said, yeah, the Patriots are pretty good. Those linebackers from me, they got that defense, a front gun moved around a little bit more in the running game than I expected. That's my concern right now. It's just defensive tackle is a little bit mercurial for this team, especially like Barmore's peak plays are awesome, but against the run. If he ain't

penetrating and getting up field, he'd get moved. And that's not really how the Patriots usually like to have it up front. To me, I am, like Norris said, I'm interested in as a pass-heavy team, but I also am still not 100% sold against for this defensive front against the run. It kind of depends on who they catch in the playoffs.

Bill's matchup is going to be nice, though. I think they fit well against Buffalo. So the Patriots, actually, let's take step back here. So the Titans have a 98% chance of making playoffs according to 538. If they can get some of the guys you mentioned Ben healthy, AJ Brown is only on short term IR. They haven't ruled him out coming back in December. They're not going to get Derek Henry back. But if they can get some semblance of help, that's all that matters. They only have a 23% chance of the first round by. That was never really realistic. the Patriots, by the way, according to 538, have the best chance. But I think that that's what they need to focus on right now.

It's playing January football, getting guys healthy, figuring out what they are, their identity. And so I'm kind of with you, Ben, in the sense that they're figuring this stuff out in the flight. It's not the worst thing in the world to have a loss like this against a really good Patriots team. Now, the Patriots to me right now are AFC favorites until the Chiefs prove otherwise. I think eventually the Chiefs are going to get there. Maybe we won't realize that until mid-January, whatever, late January. But they have the highest ceiling,

and they're still the Chiefs. But right now, I've been so impressed with almost every facet of the game. I'm like Matthew Judon, I saw a staff earlier today that he has the most sacks since like Mike Rabel, I think, something like that. He has 11.5 sacks in the Bill Belichick era,

only Chandler Jones and Mike Frable. Yeah, Chandler Jones and Mike Frable, have had more sacks in a, season. Okay. And we're not even close to being done with that. Kendrick Bourne is a yak god. The guys that Bill Belichick has gone out and gotten. And this is something I've readily admitted. I thought that they overpaid with a lot of these guys. I didn't know how bad the AFC was going to be. I didn't know this is going to be a competitive advantage. There's so many things that Bill Belichick did from a team building standpoint. They've been so

freaking impressive. I just I just love this team. The offensive line, I think, had Mack Jones under pressure less than 25% of the team. time. J.C. Jackson had another interception. We talked about how Belichick has built this team for many years. I just, this is, this is the best team in the AFC right now. Is anybody disagree? Yes.

Okay. Chiefs. I still, I still still there with the Chiefs. I think the Chiefs, if you asked me to bet who's made the Super Bowl, I would take the Chiefs. But I think that that's a projection at this point for me. I haven't seen it. So I think the Chiefs are better right now. This was not a

super great Mac Jones game. Had his nice plays. Certainly had his peak throws, but it continues to be an offense in which, like, third and six, throw the dragged to Kendrick board. Oh, 40-yard touchdown. Like, woo-hoo. There's, like, you know, tight windows in the red zone that I don't think he's hit. And he missed a couple open corner throws.

He had a deep completion to Drew Kobe Myers where just the arm strength, which is like fine. And he clearly works around it well, was such that Kevin Bayard arrived for the past breakup before the ball got there. And subsequently went too far behind. the ball and it was a completion. It's like, that's the sort of cheesy stuff where you see it. You're like big play, big completion. Also, it doesn't feel like that's how it should work, right? But, you know, if if pitch and change ups gets hitters to swing, then it gets hitters to swing

kind of in that way, and they're obviously working offense around it. The reason I bring this up, like kind of just picking nits on Mac Jones game is because the Patriots have continued it to impress in the way that they've won games with this variability, with these adjustments. The offense has been ever evolving. They just like screened the Browns to death. You know, I mean, like, they'll, they'll pick different things for what they need in different contexts. That's awesome on a week-to-week basis. When you get to the playoffs, opponents prepare for you differently. Then they prepare for you in the regular season.

The practice schedule is different. The film they consume is different. The way they go about things is different. This constant coaching edge that Belichick and McDaniels has gets duller, gets thinner once we get into January. And I'm worried that the talent, which, like I said, is playing well. Can we argue about this for a second? Yeah, can we argue by this for a second? I think it gets heightened.

Why so? I think it's good. Because I think Bill Belichick is the best defensive game planner of all time, is why I think that. And I think we've seen over and over again his ability to, especially if you're seeing a team and especially if you're seeing a team for the second time, his ability to understand what you do well. And, you know, I think that this is something that I've said for a long time,

which is that, you know, you're not a great team or you're not a great quarterback until he'd been game playing against by Bo Belichick. And I think that anybody who's in the AFC is trying to prove themselves will have to go to that gauntlet. But I also think that he just understands how to put young quarterbacks in a torture rack. I think we saw that with Justin Herbert a couple of weeks ago. I think that in most January scenarios, they're going to have an advantage. The one place I think that he wouldn't have an advantage is against Patrick Mahomes.

But I also think that if anybody can sort of dull that blade by January, it can be Bill Belichick. Presumably, that offense will be in a much better place if they play in the AFC championship game from Kansas cities. But I still think that Bill Belichick has the best edge in the history of football, basically with coaching.

Nora, so same idea? I also think there's, yeah, but there's also just an infrastructure piece to it. And it would be interesting to see how that fares when you're working with a rookie quarterback, right? Who, by all accounts, is super easy. Stephen Kiel, obviously, went to a rather large college football program. But that's something that I don't think that we should undercount.

Right now, the seating goes like this. They would play the L.A. in the first round. Cincinnati's there in the five seed. They'd probably play Kansas City in the second round. Like that, that to me would be the biggest thing. So I agree. I mean, Nora, you can, but like that there's just, there's some quarterbacks here that, that, that, it is I think they would beat herbert right now.

I mean, we'll get to, with Ruiz, we'll get to the chargers later. I think Burrow would be an interesting case study. We saw what they did at Tanna Hill. Tana Hill, by the way, is the third seed right now. There's half these teams, I think that they would be a pretty big favorite over because of Belichick against the quarterback and against the offense. And against the head coach. He would be the best head coach in, in the conference by a large margin.

Yeah. And then also they just know how to, the stuff. like, hey, you're going to get all these ticket requests. Your deadline to get all of that stuff sorted out and figured out of the way, it's Tuesday. And then no more questions about it. We're done with it. Like, that stuff I do think it's so hard to see because we're not in there. But it does on some level matter and may matter even more when you're dealing with young players. I mean, it all depends who's who the opponent is.

Right. like Andy Reed, I'm not necessarily going, oh crap, look at this coaching matchup, right? Like he's going to be quaking in his boots over there. Now, if they're playing Cincinnati, yeah, like, sorry, but there is a gap in experience. And there is a gap in how big of a deal relative to the other situations that someone's been in over the course of their career is this. And I do think that that matters. to Kevin's point, sort of.

I'm kidding here. So they're doing this thing with Michael and Wayneau, who great season last year, good player, but right now he's just not in their starting five offensive linemen. So they're just like finding little spots to get him some run. And he's playing a little sort of jumbo tight end. He's hopping in there for a few snaps here and there. It's just something's going to happen in January, right?

like he's going to score a touchdown or something. He's got a big wings fan too. And someone's going to be mad about like ineligible receiver or whatever. Right. We should just like stake a claim to that right now. Just make that prediction that there's going to be like some Michael on Wayneux nonsense. Like, oh God, here they go again. Yeah.

34 and 3 eighth inch arms, 10 and a half inch hands. He can make a catch, Jesse catch in January. That'll apply. I'd like to make something very clear for the record. Patriots get the Bengals in round one. They're just absolutely blown. back was out of the water. That's happening. I'm there on that. I think that when we start talking about best team in the AFC, I think the Patriots have done a tremendous job. I talked about this

with Rams Packers, figuring it out as the season has gone on. No team has done a better job. Figuring it out as the season has gone on. Second place is probably like the Chiefs in terms of offense, whatever. I think that what Nora pointed to, which is the rookie quarterback, first time in the playoffs without Tom, first time with Mack out there, is going to put the Patriots in a tough spot on the offensive side of the ball where I think that right now when I try to think of the game in which a team forced Mack to beat them and Mac did, I can't think of it. And to me, like, by the way, it certainly wasn't today. Like he was fine, but he's not, he was not blown your mind out there. Right. It's a good thing Mac Jones isn't to Facebook Belichick. Very true.

But I do wonder if Brandon Staley gets a second crack at this Mac Jones offense, if all of a sudden we see a few more resources dedicated to stopping that running game, and that game goes a little bit differently. That, to me, is the difference. I think that we're going to see a different defensive approach for AFC playoff teams facing this Patriots offense once they sit down and say, okay, if we're able to take away the 21 personnel running game and we're able to drive down home on screens, we'll play off on on Jacoby Myers, we'll play off on Kendrick Boyle and we'll let them throw slants, but we're going to play off on those guys, we're going to let our corners play with vision. We're going to come downhill at all this, John. We're going to tell Mack to beat us with

tight window throws. I think that right now, defenses will be able to get away with that come playoff time. So for me, I'm not all the way there on trusting the Patriots through January. No,

I heard you got Staley's better coaching Belichick, loud and clear, bud. But Balichick does to Joe Lombardi is also going to be terrible, but different conversation. Yeah, that'll be a chess match, Belichick v. Lombardi. All right, let's move on to a game

I really want to talk about here. And there's a lot of games here that kind of speak to bigger themes. And I don't, we're going to like be your, for five hours if we explore every nook and cranny of every little theme that was was kind of revealed on Sunday. But Bengals 41 Steelers 10 is the type of game that you could probably talk about an hour about because of how many kind of boxes it opens up. After the game, Mike Hilton,

who had a revenge game. We get excited about the Mike Hilton revenge game today. Yeah. He called it a changing of the guard, a big changing of the guard in his opinion. It gave him a lot confidence and Brooke prior from ESPN said that as as the bangles as the bangles ran into the locker room a one player who had disappeared beneath the entrance yelled it's our effing division interesting take when the ravens are still in the division is what i would say about that but i understand where they're coming from they did beat up on the ravens so i i get that no i know but i'm just saying that there's there's still it's beating the steelers is not the only thing that you have to do in order to win the division. Now,

um, Mike Tomlin, pretty bluntly said they got whipped on, on both sides to the ball. Um, not, not really, um, much of a, much of a mystery there. Um, a couple of, of stats here.

First of all, this was a Joe mixing game. And for as many plot as we can give Joe Burrow and certainly Jemar Chase early in the season was, was playing out of his mind. Um, it was a really interesting game today. Uh, outside of the tackles today, makes 142 yards. I think only Nick Chubb has more.

Everybody thought that with this defense, they get Mick of it's Patrick back, T.J. Watt was back. There'd at least be some sort of life. They're five, five and one in Pittsburgh. The Bengals whipped them. Joe Burrow, I thought this is actually kind of amazing here.

So no one, no one in his first 11 games, which Joe Burrow is in, has thrown for more touchdowns of over 30 yards since Johnny Unitas. That's the kind of deep ball that Joe Burroughs throwing right now.

Not Patrick Mahomes, Johnny Unitus. I'm curious, A, Nora, what you think about the Steelers team and whether or not this is finally the end of something and then we'll get to the Bengals. Yeah, I do. I mean, we've talked about this, right? Like, I just don't think that

it's, Rathosberger is their best hope. He's the best player that they have at the position of the roster. he's the most effective at running that offense. It also is not good enough to get them where they want to be. So I think it's basically the question is, do you have anything that you, you know, not necessarily as future franchise starter,

but do you have anything else at that position on your depth chart that you feel those guys are worth developing or trying to develop? Or is it just find some way to work towards, accruing the resources to rebuild because I just don't know. I don't know how they could see a viable path forward

because this would be the year, right? Like the AFC is wide open. This would be the year that if you have your aging, wounded starter, he could try to make one last run for it and it's just

not, it's not happening. Yeah, it's not happening. is an understatement. And by the way, the Johnny Nita stat was for quarterback's under 25. It was interesting because I actually kind of laughed at, I was watching the Colts game earlier. And the color analyst made the point that you should just

underthrow every ball now because that way you can get a weird, underthrowed ball, past interference penalty. And I was thinking, man, if Ben Rutherspur can't thrive in this NFL, like this is it for him. This is set up for old,

decrepit, can't throw the ball downfield, Ben Ronsberger. we just underthrow everything and get those PIs. Ben, the Steelers, man. What are we doing? There's a happy medium in the, the Wensian approach to deep passes. You ought to throw, underthrow it enough

such that it is still catchable by the receiver. If you underthrow it, like, his first pick targeting Chase Claypool, such that it is exclusively catchable by the trailing defensive back. You have jumped to the shark on the defensive pass interference underthrown meta. The Steelers are frustrating

because for a second, there. Oh, you think? Yeah. They were five, three, five and three, three weeks ago. And then they tied with the lions in a game that, uh, obviously, Mason Rudolph was a starting quarterback, Ben Rothensberger missed. They had the, uh, tremendous late surge against the chargers to almost bring it home, got a little bit of luck there. Defense played with a lot of heart without Watt and without Minka. And then they just have this absolute face plant against the Broncos, uh, continue to be a team that if they get just enough from Rathesberger, everything else.

works well and they're able to eke out these close games. But man, like to say, I mean, Rothesberger was throwing lollipops. I mean, these were, these were, this was the worst game for Rothesberger, Jolly Rancher arm I've ever seen. And just that Mike Hilton pick six was just the ball was just on a platter. I mean, you could, Mount Mike Hilton had time to like do his taxes in the amount of watching the ball come to him for the pick six. It was just the lack of velocity is debilitating.

And I think Matt Canada, the offensive. coordinator had done a nice job over the past month, month and a half of working around that, and then it's eventually you run out of tricks in your bag. The rebuild to me continues to be a really, really interesting idea in Pittsburgh, not just because we've never really seen it. Like living memory is just like Tomlin Rothersberger, let's go win 10 games, somehow be leading the AFC North and, you know, just amazing consistency. Not only because we've never seen it, but also, and I've said this previously, they can if they want to. not rebuild.

If they're able to get a veteran quarterback into this building, there's a very strong argument that they should do it and go. Right? And I don't know to what degree Colbert and Tomlin, given their football backgrounds,

are going to like, Sneed and McVeigh this thing and be like, ha-ha, first-round picks, goodbye. But if they have the ability to- If you can. Yeah, if you can,

I don't see why you'd be making first-round picks if you could load Russell Wilson into this team and shoot, which, like, you know, Ros has got his own stuff going on and whatever, but Russell Wilson to Chase Claypool to me is just

he's so good. It would be delightful. And so they could rebuild. They could realistically draft and slow this down and whatever. But I think if I were sitting in that building, I would be saying let's call up every veteran quarterback we can because

this AFC is for the taking. This is the post-Bready AFC. It's all young quarterbacks. Let's tell Russ to hop into this conference. Let's go win a playoff game. Okay. Can I run some names by you? Okay.

Okay. Always. All right. First of all, is Matt Ryan's contract such that he cannot be moved, Nora. Didn't we talk about that? Didn't they kind of restructure a little bit? I think he might be able to get moved next year, right? Yeah.

If everybody were in on it, it would be fine. And the stewards have cap space, by the way. Like, that's the luxury of Ben Ralthusberger. Moving on. Okay. Matt Ryan, would you give up a, first for Matt Ryan then for one year of Matt Ryan? Yeah, a little bit depends right.

Like Nora said, everybody's got to play ball. So it kind of depends on what the financials are. For Matt Ryan's talent, I'm comfortable giving up a one and having him for the next three years. I'm cool with that idea. I do want to not pay his whole contract, though. Okay. So Russ Wilson and Aaron Rogers, we understand you sell the farm for don't worry about it. Would you rather go into the draft?

Nora or take Jimmy Garoppola. Ah. See? Noises for hard questions. That's so mean. I think I would rather on current Jimmy salary.

He is making 27 next year. So let's just say this is a trade for a mid-round pick. I would trade a mid-round pick for Jimmy Garoppolo and pay him $27 million for a year. I hate it, but I would do it. Yeah, I'd also do it, especially given the nature of this quarterback class. Yeah.

All right, Nora, Colts box. Yeah. So this is, this is like a missed opportunity award, I think, because the Colts lost 3831 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, ever heard of them. they had five turnovers. That is a lot of turnovers. I don't even really think you should be competitive in a game with five turnovers.

Although I guess today proved that. There's a lot of not going around. Right? Wrong? We'll let you decide. The listener can decide. But it turns into 24 points for the bucks. Sure.

So you can kind of, this game is like a weird Colts Roershack test where there's some Frank Reich play calling scapegoating going on that I think is silly there's kind of okay you can say they beat themselves and had a bunch of horrible mistakes

or you can say Wentz was dealing in the second quarter there were some moments when they looked really good they were moving the ball but the big picture is that they're six and six and if Indy had won this game they would be a game

behind the Titans just one game back of the Titans who are crumbling like a biscuit and would have a really, really, really good shot at being a playoff team. Now, they still have a good shot. They had their playoff odds from 538 fall from 81% to 52%. So they go from being, you know, pretty solidly you'd expect them to make the playoffs to being just sort of like flip coin. And I think that is unfortunate because, again, there were a lot of moments in this game when they really did look like they could move the ball effectively. Now, the thing that has gotten some attention is that Jonathan Taylor really didn't get a lot of carries until the fourth quarter. He got nearly 70% of his 83 total yards in the fourth quarter.

Average 3.8 yards after contact per carry with four explosive carries, six runs for a first down. So effective, but again, they didn't go there until late in the game. Now, that is because of the Buccaneers run defense, which is scary. And so Bruce Ariens goes to press conference and says, nobody runs the ball on us. I don't care who the hell you are very Bruce Ariens. I'll take our run defense over anyone else's run offense any day. Just like Bruce Ariens doing Bruce Ariens stuff. He also said that they said, Vita Vaya lost a tooth and he said, well, he's got 30 more.

Yeah, he was like, I don't care. Yeah, which Vita looked pretty stoked of loss of tooth. Vita rolled up to the sideline and was like, woohoo. How many teeth does a person have? I'm Googling this. Vita Vaya and toddlers love losing. 32 adult teeth. Shout up Bruce Ariens.

You have 32 teeth? This is not Ariens. Ariens is on it. Listen. Ariens knows how many teeth existed in an adult human being. You think you could be a head coach for NFL team and out and I'm having adult teeth the person has? Come on now. Yes.

I bet, okay, I bet less than 50% of Medvedville coaches know how many teeth are in it. I agree, I agree. Because by the way, I did not. Yeah. That's not a slight. I thought it was more. I thought it was more.

I thought it was more. 50 teeth. Sharks have like 200. Ariens remarkably red. He's getting redder as the season goes along. Yeah. There were people who mentioned that he's now turning in. The backdrop was the Buck's logo.

And his face is, is approaching being the same color as the Bucks logo. That's all I'm saying. It's like a weird green screen thing, except not great. Yeah, like a ton, no one will ever be as red as Tom Coughlin during the Giants playoff runs in 2007, 2011. But we're in the ballpark, I would say.

He's a chameleon. He's merging with his surroundings. He's increasingly cyborging as well. I know, I know mentally that the radio pack he wears across his chest is not getting bigger, but emotion I feel like every week, see it. I'm like, dude, that's taking

up too much space. You are a 15% machine. It's like the it's like the, the memes that are like for every 25 likes will make like Jason kids collar bigger. Yeah, yeah. There's somebody, it's like the portrait of Dorian Gray. There's just something going on in the background

where every time, like in real life, the little pack just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. His little hat keeps getting bigger. Like it's, there's something's going on with Bruce Aaron. About this game. Well, okay, so we'll talk about the bugs in a second. But I don't know.

Did you guys have an issue with the play calling and not turning more heavily to Jonathan Taylor earlier in this game? My takeaway, if it wasn't already clear, was don't give up 24 points off turnovers, right? Like, just don't be doing that. You'd have been fine. So I didn't think it was that big of a deal. But I sort of understand the frustration. So I'm curious what you guys think. well we have a wintzologist on staff hello

the doctor is in Indianapolis fans furious with me for saying oh there's the crippling wens turnover after Eric Fisher got beat cleanly and then subsequently forced to fumble which was recovered by the box as if we don't have like years of data of course of when it's fumbling the football in the pocket or anything like that

listen I'm not in the Jonathan Taylor Russian business I'm going to score on points business. We had 24 points going into half. Good work. I got like this is very simple. You're pretty happy with that. Yeah. The formula coming up to this game was give the ball to Jonathan Taylor's score points. Frank Reich, you know, pushed his chips onto the idea that the formula for this game was going to be throw the football score points. They had 24 points at half. That's good business. You know, like, is it awesome when JT is running out the clock and limiting opposing possessions? Sure. That simply does not look like it's going to work against Tampa. So Frank Reich said, I'm going to run this

a different way. And boy, diddy. I mean, it should be noted. 24 points of the first half without Jonathan Taylor being a big part of this offense. Like, I would have told you that is not within the cards for the Colts. They were all over. It was awesome to see.

No team right now is better. I shouldn't say that. Few teams right now are better than the Colts are at getting one personnel package out in the field, namely two tight ends, Jack Doyle and Mowley Cox, and saying, we can run everything. What do you not want

us to do? Because the bucks were saying, and we've talked about this with Todd Bowles before, Todd Bulls is going to be plus one of the box. Todd Bulls is going to stop the run. Like, you know what you said, it's a Bruce Ariens thing. It is also a Bowles thing. Like, that's old school defensive coordinator. We stop the run, period. Oh, no. Ben, I want to be

very clear. The Bruce Ariens thing that I referred to was yelling at press conferences. Oh, my back, please excuse me. And getting redder. Yeah. And Reddening. Todd Bowles is going to be plus one in the box. And so we know we're getting cover three. We're going to take the big post to Ashton Doolin. And we're going to go for a 62-yard touchdown to our 13 personnel blocking receiver. We're going to get Zach Paskell down the field on the deep over. We're going to throw the Jack Doyle corner until the cows come home. If you're going to give us cover three, we're going to take it. We're

going to hammer it, hammer it, hammer it. Frank Reich is so good at that. This first half was a great example of that. And even in the second half, that third quarter, they get outscored. 14 to nothing because they had the fumble and then they had the pick. They were moving the ball before those turnovers and they were moving it with impunity. This offensive model worked and it should be very encouraging to Colts fans that it did because it is a sign that with T.Y. Hilton healthy, even with Quentin Nelson out, even with the offensive line not playing that great, they have the personnel necessary and the just delightful, tremendous, excellent offensive coordinator necessary to get the job done.

They need to avoid the turnovers and very simply two third quarter turn. And as Norris says, the 14 points that come off those two third quarter turnovers are the fulcrum for this game because they had a multi-score lead and you could have started hammering it with JT. You could have started eating up the clock, but you let the bucks get back into this thing. And then Tom Brady took you in the fourth quarter. That's how it goes. I'm fascinated that you're this excited about where the Colts offense is right now. It's because it's so impressive. Right.

But it's, to me, the question is how much are those backbreaking picks fumbles? how much of that is baked in do you have to kind of expect, right? Because if this is an anomaly, then maybe you look at it and go, okay, well, they've got some work to do to make sure that they're in the playoffs. But if things are clicking,

you feel pretty decent about that. Not as decent as you felt about it before the game. But, you know, losing to the bucks is, the bucks are not the best version of the bucks that we've ever seen. But it's not like horrible. But, to me, as good as they looked in moments,

it just feels like if they find themselves on the outside of the playoffs, then you go back to this and go, geez, those five turnovers. Like, this is where it slipped away. I don't disagree. This is a tough loss. I think that the continued struggle of the Titans

encourages you that you're still in this division at six and six. I think six and six still leaves you in the wild card race. I don't, right, want to put the cart before the horse and say like, oh, come playoff time, they get to do X, Y, and Z. But to me, the biggest question I had about the Colts entering this game was how reliant this offense had been on Jonathan Taylor. I mean, he got thrust into the MVP conversation, right?

Right. And it was so much so the Colts continuing to give him greater volume and greater volume and greater volume over the course of a few weeks and seeing the efficiency stay that led to their winning streak. For the offense to be as successful as it was, moving the football on base downs, you know, taking the turnovers and putting them to the side for the second, without Taylor as the centerpiece, was really important to showing that the model under Wentz can work, the way they want this team to be built can work.

Absolutely 100%. The reason that you cannot trust the Colts, even if they get that playoff berth, even if they do look like they're humming, is because you expect to get a game from Wentz, once every few, where there are just too many turnovers. And sometimes it's, you know, a bad balance is. Naim Hines, such a good returner,

muffs a, muffs a kick. like that sort of stuff. Like turnover is always going to be outliers and what. But whence we know, once we know is going to be down for some dumb sacks and dumb fumbles and some dumb picks. And that's a scary thing for a playoff run. But proof of concept,

I'm now fully buying this Colts offense. Interesting. So the Titans, by the way, have the tiebreaker. So the Colts are probably playing for a wild card. They have 4% chance according to 538, but you never know.

I will say, by the way, I don't want to harp on Ariens as press conferences, but he is, we if we branded brandon staley a podcaster russarant's kind of just like a poster like a message board poster like every week is either like no one can run on us or he's like our quarterback sucks and we need to like move on right the pendulum this way yeah yeah like a couple weeks ago

he was like oh those interceptions there was an interception that was tipped and he was like that was just brady that was just brady so it's uh i i like him being in our lives is my take on that uh all right anything else in this game feel good about the bucks now. I mean, like, they had some, they were in the wilderness for a couple weeks. They'd beat the Giants. We didn't know if that was interesting. We're feeling fine, right? The main thing about the bucks that is just, to me, very exciting is how Leno Fernette has just become a scat-back.

Yeah. It is, the back that plays with Brady is a receiving back. And if you wanted to prove that wrong, you would have put Leonard Fordette with Brady. I mean, like, you can't do it with him. It's impossible. And here he has with seven catches, eight targets. he was second on the team with targets. He's been an extremely high volume receiver over the last month.

Just Leonard Fortinette, 240 pounds gap back. I find that just tickles me. I love it so much. It's very charming. All right. Let's get to whatever Sunday night was. There's a lot here. So there was a six drive sequence.

Field Deates tweeted this out that went Jarvis Landry Strip Sack. I'm not totally sold on Jarvis Landry's pocket presence, by the way. Lamar Jackson interception, Brown's fuel goal, Lamar Jackson interception, Baker-Mayfield fumble, Lamar Jackson interception.

So the Ravens won this game. In doing so, they kept the number one seed in the AFC. Lamar Jackson had four interceptions. I believe they're the first team in six years to win a game when throwing four interceptions.

I want to throw this out of it. The NFL sent this out here. And it's very fun. So Lamar Jackson was targeting Mark Andrews on all four interceptions. Okay. He's the fourth quarterback on record to throw four interceptions when targeting one player specifically. Okay.

Okay. I'm not going to make you guess. I'm just going to list them off and we're going to laugh. Okay. Sounds good. Eli Manning, Hakeem, Nix. Good. Luke McCown, Mike Thomas.

Fantastic. And this is, this is just, this is just glory days. This is just glory days. It's going to be some guys pumping their fists when I say this. Mark Sanchez and Braylon Edwards. I knew Sanchez was one of them. It had to be one of them. Sanchez would force feed a guy like there was no tomorrow.

Just going back to the well. Oh, man. That was delighted. Sanchez. Sanchez to Braylon. Oh, man. What a list. Um, okay.

So this. this was a gross game and I I can't believe it's going to get more viewers in like any World Series game in the last two decades I guess guess that the Cubs had some some wins in there that could think uh Nora what you think uh well I'm I think that's not a great moment to be Baker Mayfield like you say a football fan well that do but uh I think if if, what was it, Lamar had four turnovers in like 10 seconds or whatever.

Like, yeah. You don't really want to be the guy on the other side of that and not win. That's my takeaway. That's correct. That's correct. Are we just out on the Browns for 2021,

Ben Solac? I am. The reason I am is because I, I'm getting the experience from... By the way, Jack Conklin out for the year, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

Torres, Patelot tendon. Really, really gnarly injury. Like, that's worrisome long term. So hope that the things go well for Jack Conklin. Offensively for the Browns, who've dealt with so many offensive line injuries. I'm getting to the point where it really seems like over the last three weeks,

seven points against the Patriots, 13 points against the Lions, and now 10 points against the Ravens. We've moved to the point where we're just, we're no longer trying, to win, that's too much. There should have been more screens. There should have been more trick plays.

There should have been, you know, a continued dedication to the running game, even in the face of a Harrison Bryant injury and loaded boxes. Like, if we were, Kevin Safansky regularly comes out with optimized game plans and simply hasn't, in my opinion, for the last couple of weeks. I don't think that's a mistake. I think that's a let's see what this can do. Let's see what that can do sort of a thing. It's not that they're giving up on the playoffs.

it's not that they are, you know, waving the white flag on offense. I think there's a massive concern for Baker's longevity, plus also a curiosity and like, all right, we're in the post-Odell era. What can we get out of anything here?

You know what I mean? They're like, Donovan People's Jones used to be their field stretching guy, now they're trying to use them as a possession receiver. You know what I mean? Like they're kind of just pressing different buttons. I don't have a rhyme or reason for that. And accordingly,

it's not a team that I'm very interested in watching like playoff run live I wonder if they win they're interesting to watch on Tuesdays like oh they try this they try that cool but on Sundays it just doesn't really register as a team for me they have the biweek and then they have the Ravens again which is a really weird scheduling quirk if they come out offensively and can't do anything against the Ravens this team is just empty right there for whatever reason whether it's the Baker injuries the offensive line injuries or Stephansky whatever it is if they can't do anything against the Ravens when they next see them,

they're just officially out of gas. They feel like they feel like they have nothing left in the tank. Like just the bag of tricks is empty and they're listless right now. And that's a sad thing to see because they were really, really fun in terms of how they generated offense last season and even coming into the season. Right now they're rudaless. They're nowhere.

They need their by week because they need their quarterback healthy. And like I think that in two weeks it'll be a nice litmus test. Not even whether or not they can beat the Ravens, but like what does this look like? Is there a quarterback going to be healthy after the bi-week? I'm not sure. He's not going to be healthier or healthier. He can't be less healthy.

He can try. Right. I think he could be mentally, I am healthier because of bi-week, because I have rested and I feel better, but also like actually, functionally, not much of a difference. I say as somebody who has never recovered from playing a full season of NFL football and has no, like, basis for, for making that assumption. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I, I just think that it can't get worse for Baker, is just my dinner.

Unless he's good, he has the yips in two weeks. It's not going to get worse. The Ravens, extremely sloppy game, Ben, So, like, are you worried about this? I mean, there was a couple. Listen, the John Johnson catch was amazing, the interception, the play. The Grand Delpit pick, the first one was real bad. That was just an awful over the middle of the field. to kind of pass. So, you know, throwing foreign

exceptions is warring in and of itself, but did you see any sloppiness that gave you pause about this team over the next couple of months? Yeah, I'm trying to remember all of the I&Ds. It's hard, right? Like which one happened when under which context? The Mark Andrews one stands out. You had a Chris They were all Mark Andrews once. They were all Mark Andrews one. Frick! Remember Raylon Edwards? 20 seconds ago? The third one, Ronnie Harrison,

not dropping down as the robber, not pitched by Denzel just Lamar threw it right to him and then Chris Collinsworth is like this is 100% on Lamar. That one stands out to me because I don't believe it was 100% on Lamar. I think he thought Andrews was going to settle. Andrews stemmed away from the zone defender and then Lamar threw it to the wrong space.

And the reason that one matters is because we are in week 12 of the Ravens' fourth season with Lamar Jackson as their quarterback, third season as the starter, all of which have been with Greg Roman as the offensive coordinator and still this passing game just doesn't exist. It's

It is, the spacing is terrible. The communication is horrendous. Nobody ever seems to be on the same page. Quarterback to receivers who are running into the same areas with one another. Even the Rashad Bateman, like the, the Rashad Bateman tipped ball that ended up being the interception because it wasn't really him targeting Mark Andrews. It bounced off Bateman's hands and that ended up near Mark Andrews, whatever.

That's supposed to be like a high low, but both of the routes are developing at the exact same time. Like they're at the same place. in the field vertically. So you're not stretching anybody high-low. You're now allowing one defender to cover two guys. The passing game continues to just be so discombobulated. Continued offensive line injuries with Bradley Bowesman out. Continued terrible running game with Devante Freeman and Latavius Murray.

And this is just blood from a stone. Lamar Jackson drawing everything he can out of the Ravens offense. Ravens are number one team to the AFC, best record, extremely well coached, one of the best players in the league, in my opinion, what should be like the league four-runner for MVP? Yet still they're not a team rumble. like, oh, come playoff time, because offense is just so, so laborious right now. Nora, same question, Baltimore Ravens football.

I mean, like, it's weird because obviously we talked about the Mark Andrews targeting thing is slightly askew because he obviously, the Bateman thing, but also he had some really nice place today. He had the insane and one pass interference catch. He had the touchdown right after that. What did you think about this team and kind of where they stand in the AFC? I'm still okay with the Ravens. First of all, again, we're having these conversations about a lot of teams, right? It's different if there is a dominant, dominant team.

But they've still, you know, 91% chance to make the playoffs. They are in, okay, Bengals getting a little spicy, but they are still the favorites to win the division. Didn't you hear the unnamed Bengals player? It's their division. That's very nice. I get all of my takes from unnamed Bengals players. That's the pipeline.

That's the well. For the most part, I think on a good day, there's still a tough out. I believe in Lamar. The concerning thing, look, he's going to keep getting blitzed

until he picks it apart. And that's still happening. Again, I do think, I still believe that they can find the fix for that. Some of the discombobobulation, it would be nice to combobulate it

because I think it would go a long way, one helping the other. I agree with that, but I also believe that he's the best quarterback in football when he's just completely off. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean? Like,

if you were to rank everybody's worst case scenarios in a given game, like, oh, defense isn't given you anything. you're throwing four in receptions like tonight. He's the most dangerous of all of those guys. He has the best worst case scenario in football as a quarterback. And I kind of think that that gives them a bit of an advantage. And so that that's not everything, but it's definitely something.

So, yeah. Anything else about this game, guys? Well, I'm seeing a tweet from some Browns reporters. I'm seeing it too. Why don't you tell the people? I'm so excited. I haven't seen it yet. Surprise me.

So Kareem Hunt's dad is on Facebook, eviscerating the Brown's offense. Man. Listen. So we're having another, we're having another dad's, Brown's dads on social media. Wait, but no,

but he's saying, I just, hopefully this is, listen, this is just on Twitter, but the best part is that he prefaces it by saying that he, He's not going to be like Odo Beckham's father

because he's just stating facts on football. Right. So it's not, it's different. Let me tell you something. He's not doing it. He's just stating facts on football while. Odell's dad, who had video clips, was not stating facts on football.

So that's where we are. I was surprised that Cream Hunt wasn't in for the two-minute show there at the end. It was Derrness Johnson instead. But also, I did, did have the O-Rone receiving yard. So that was more about that than it was anything else. Cream Hunt Sr. agrees.

A lot of seniors. Odo Beckham Senior, Cream Hunt, senior. Wow. The dads have thoughts. And you know what's good for them. The dads have thoughts. Ben Solac, Giants Eagles.

Oh, yes, Giants Eagles. Giants win this game 13 to 7. This is my right guard award. And the reason it's my right guard award is because a lot of people got behind Jalen Hertz when they shouldn't have. Hey. Thank you, Nora. Listen.

That was good. I appreciate it. I worked very hard on it. Jalen Hertz had a really a tremendous stretch. The Eagles had won three of their last four games. They had pulled within, I believe, a game and a half of the division lead after the Cowboys lost to the Raiders. And there was a lot of muscle behind Jalen Hertz is the franchise guy.

It was this is what the offense should look like. He looks like a franchise. as dude, the Eagles will be comfortable at the very least going into 2022 with him. And that was the main thing for me is it was if you can go into 2020 with this guy, continues to play this way down the stretch, then you can turn your 22 draft capital into fixing the many, many, many holes on this roster, especially on the defensive side of the ball. When you put that claim to the test over the last few weeks before the Giants game, you found a

team that just was running the ball as much as they possibly could. They became extremely run heavy. they were operating like a college offense where it was all RPO's. It was all shot plays with deep vertical routes. We have 101. We're just going to take a nine ball and hope to get a chunk gain.

We're going to largely take our quarterback out of the big chair, out of the big seat, and just make him a cog in the wheel. And we're going to use his running ability to our advantage. And that was delightful. It worked very well for Philadelphia, got them a few wins, surprising win against New Orleans,

domination against Denver. Cool. The question of whether or not a more past heavy script could work for Jalen Hertz remained. And that's because even in those wins, even in those good games, he wasn't passing the ball as much and he was passing the ball safely, flats, slants, curls, and then working that bat nine ball. The intermediate middle of the field and the deep middle of the field were largely being ignored.

And teams just didn't have to play with the post safety. There was no reason to. He was never going to throw that big post, that dig, anything that post safety could close on. the Eagles, I don't know if they did it intentionally or not. I think it was intentionally. Decided to try to do that. They ran a bunch of crossers. They ran a bunch of digs.

And they said, we want, we wanted, they ran Dallas Goddard on the sit route, like 10 yards, middle of the field between the hatches, turn around, sit down. Every tight end in the league runs it. They ran it over and over and over again with seemingly the intention of making the offense work through the past the game a little bit more. And it very simply did not. Jalen Hertz had no interest in throwing those balls middle of the field. When he did, especially late when they were down and they had to pass, the ball was regularly late, which led to interceptions.

You saw the Cuez-Walkins interception. There was a Jalen Rager throw where the post-safety just collision and came down. It wasn't a good route from Rager, but the ball was just behind. And this took Hertz out of his comfort zone, and it made him be a quarterback he didn't want to be. And then all of a sudden, there were open crossers and open curls and open nines that he usually throws that he wasn't throwing. He was late. He was second-guessing everything. The Giants also did a really good job of saying,

all right, if you're always going to break the pocket, we're not going to rush to tackle you once you break the pocket. So they rush with three and rush with four, those defensive tackles will take a couple steps up field and then sit. And just wait for Hertz to get antsy with pressure on his back shoulder, step up, start to break outside, and then they would go make their tackles. They had a nice game plan for addressing the way the Eagles offense was.

And the Eagles offense, again, not out of any choice. They were still like decently balanced, run past, and they were still like decent shotgun running team, everything they were, but they clearly gave different concepts. They had Greg Ward out there. They were doing more four-wide stuff to try to throw the ball more.

And Hertz just kind of really couldn't endure. He couldn't withstand that offensive change. A continued reminder that right now, Hertz is a cog in a wheel. He is not really a load-bearing wall in a house that is the Eagles offense at this point. That remains okay from a long-term perspective, but from a short-term perspective,

I think that a lot of people got suckered into the Eagles as a playoff push team and as a Hertz as a franchise quarterback idea, myself certainly included. And I don't think that that holds to battle. I don't think that that's an idea that we can trust because when they really try to turn the keys of the offense over to him, it doesn't seem sustainable. It doesn't seem regular. Nor are any Eagles thoughts. Yeah, I too had been moderately suckered in. And I think Ben is rightfully pumping the brakes there. it would be interesting.

Look, like they've still got a 23% shot to make the playoffs. I don't think a lot of the teams that you're going to see in the postseason would be particularly scared of that matchup. But still, I don't think that I had them as a playoff team, right? So in terms of kind of the overall trajectory, I don't think it's like any huge disaster. But agree with Ben, they'd look a little spicy and maybe throw some water on that.

I'm going to rant about the Giants here real quick. Please. So Ian Rappaport reports that the Giants are probably going to move off from Dave Gettelman and that maybe they want to bring in a guy who is more in line with the New England scouting system that can help Joe Judge. first of all, I'm racking my brain. I actually put this to Twitter and no one had to answer about a time when fire the GM, keep the coach worked when it wasn't the coach who already had all the power, right?

So like John Dorsey got fired in Kansas City, but Andy Reid was already run the organization. That's not what I'm talking about. It never works. Fire the GM, keep the coach, never works. I would say the chances. and not working or increased about 5,000 times over when the coach you're keeping is Joe Judge. What has he done?

What is he done? Has he shown anything? Like, Ben, am I missing something? Am I just a football idiot? Has he shown any, any glimmer that he should be the guy that you're going to go all in on and go find his GM so you can get more alignment with Joe Judge?

More alignment with Joe Judge seems like a bad thing. And I understand, okay, maybe it's the New England scouting method and Nora, you know it well. And I've read all the Michael Holly books about how they work and operate and stuff like that. Well, the New England scouting method is going to be without one big thing in New York. And that's Bill Belichick to make all the players better. That's sort of how. That's the end result. Also, a cherry on top.

A lot of great books about the process. But the New England scouting method hasn't exactly had a. stellar track record the last half decade. No. It sure hasn't. It sure hasn't. I just, I'm not sure I love that report. I'm not sure that I like to plan.

I think that the I think that the giants are on the verge of making a massive, massive, massive mistake. And I hope that as someone who lives in New York and I would like relevant New York football, I

don't care if it's the Jets of the Giants. Somebody figure it out. Like, the city deserves better. Hard agree. It would be really fun. In the world of team building, I generally like the idea of correlated bets, right? Like you look at the Rams.

Because we have Stafford and he's good, let's trade for Vaughn because we're going to be good. So let's go and get more good players, right? Like you make presuppositions. And sometimes I can get into trouble and the nerds don't like it, but whatever. The Giants just seem like, like dedicated to making uncorrelated bets.

Like we have Dave Gettleman and Daniel Jones. And obviously that's good. So let's just go bring in Joe Judge like install a culture and we'll be set. And then all right, we got to let go of Dave Gettleman. But obviously because we have Joe Judge and he's fine,

we should just, you know, retain him and kind of keep the culture. You have to be willing to step back to step forward. You have to be willing to clean house in order to reshape kind of like install, organize and come up with a cohesive team. ideology, right? Which a good team to kind of like turn towards to understand this for is the team they just faced in the Eagles where the general manager is still there and his edict still

exists. Eagles are so analytics oriented and trench oriented. But very much so this season with the changes they've made on defense and a offense have been figuring out like how do we want to build our house? What do we want to matter? What do we want to not to matter? What are our cornerstones? Kind of like those ideas. The giants are so, so much urgency. They're so much very want to have at least one piece ready that they won't admit that they don't and then take the necessary step back to take a step forward. One thing, when you report on this sport, and I'm sure Nora's heard this too, when you talk to like people who work at really, really, really smart organizations, you know what they say

like a shocking amount? It's pretty easy. Like everything's pretty self-explanatory and like, oh, we'll just draft this guy because like I was in the row. So and so was in the room and this guy was a dick and this guy was really nice and they were the same level of, you know, talent and we took the nice guy, right? Like, just the guy who wanted to win. Are we, like, so many of these things when you're inside it, and well, I'm not inside. I just talk to people who are.

It always just, they say it's, it seems easier to diagnose it. And I'm sitting here on the outside and I can't say with any certainty what goes on with the giants or whatever. but I can say that I the guys who know how to build a team say this is the exact wrong way to build a team. There are easy ways to build a team. There are layups just like they're designing an offense. There are layups that you can make to ensure that your franchise is better and the Giants are simply not taking them. They're going to do some weird arranged marriage with their front office and I hate it. So that's that.

I'm going to say one nice thing. Nice uniforms. Very nice uniforms. That wasn't going to be it, but they do have very nice uniforms. Chans always look nice. This is sort of a predictable thing, right? Like Dave Gettleman's job did not feel safe entering the season, even well before that, if we're honest here. I respect that he did not conduct a save your ass draft. traded down for the first time ever.

I at least think that it shouldn't change any of this. There was something about that that impressed me where it just seemed like he went into that and said, all right, here's what we're going to do when a lot of guys will make job security moves at that point. And maybe the ship had sailed. So maybe it doesn't really make a difference. But I still think that's worth saying.

extension time? Not extension time. I would posit that Gelleman did not do a draft, like, you know, did not avoid or sidestep A, save my job draft, not because he thought that was the right thing to do and you got a draft for the team and whatever.

But I would posit he did it because he was certain that he was going to continue to have the general managing job for the foreseeable future. Well, that seems silly. Hey, Ben. What's up? Ben, I want to talk about the 2019 draft. So we know now that that gentleman basically made up the story, according to reports, that he had to get Daniel Jones at six, six because he couldn't wait until 17 because there were a bunch of other teams waiting to draft Daniel Jones.

Through reporting, I believe Diana Rossini is reported. That's just not true. Denver, I think, was at one point was rumored to be in the mix. That wasn't actually the case. Washington was rumored to be in the mix. That wasn't the case. So let's just game, game theory this out. So they could have had any number of guys where Sean Gary, Brian Burns went. If you were, if you were redrafting that from the Giants perspective, how would you have game to that? At six with Murray Bozook, Quinn and Pearl and White. I'm assuming in this scenario that Daniel Jones would be the 17th pick. Yeah. I run the Ryan Bird's card up to the board.

I mean, the Giants haven't had a legit. Would you have said that draft night? Yeah, I mean, I had Burns a half step behind Bosa, and it was a little bit of like a, what do you run and how do you like it thing?

You don't teach movement the way the way Burns moves, right? That's not real. And you've seen that with the Panthers. Now that Panthers defense helps them out, so it's kind of like also a scheme thing as well. But no, the push up for Jones, it remains one of the most perplexing things,

was on the day, continues to be, and I will say it everywhere that they let me talk or write. Dave Gellman told Peter King, after the draft when you pick Jones, talk to me in three years. We'll see who's crazy then. It is three years. Daniel Jones is one of the losing his quarterbacks in league history with over 35 starts. Also, like, the 17th thick was Dexter Lawrence. Great player. Yeah. Not integral. Great player.

Not like franchise changing. Nice guy. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Honestly. All right. Let's get to Ruiz.

All right. Now, bringing in Stephen Ruiz. Michael Kist has a idea for the segment. I want to get the pronunciation right. Le Miz Ruiz was his take. A little theater. I don't know if you feel about that one. I like it.

Theater buff. Stephen, what's going on, buddy? not much it wasn't a great day for my priors I'm going to admit that it's a bad day so you just told us

that you went into a pretty big deep dive on a Dolphins fan movement called Tuanon which I had seen references to this week Tua did not know what it was

unfortunately we do why don't you tell the people before we get to the Justin Herbert thing because they're intertwined here we're going to get to Justin Herbert Herbert then we're going to get to Tua what is Tuanon?

Well, I think it's just a growing faction of Dolphins fans who... I saw a pretty disturbing video. I see, I didn't see the video. Okay. When I went down this rabbit hole. Yeah, it was a guy, like a dolphin, a man with a dolphin head with a voice changing thing is what I saw.

I did see this, actually. Okay. I tried to erase it from my memory. Because I effectively erased it from my memory until you just brought it back. I did see that last week. When I covered the Patriots and would go to Miami for game every year. I would say to everyone, the dolphins have one of their versions of their mascot is like this blow-up dolphin that moves. I can't describe it. I've tweeted about this a lot.

He moves in the most disturbing way. And I always found him just totally nightmarish. I really didn't think it could get worse, but to and on made it worse. That was actually Ben Rathesberg. scared. Oh, no. Oh, well, there we go. Off to a hot start in this segment. Okay, so let's get to why we're talking about doing on. And that's Justin Herbert being kind of in a rut, Stephen. What do we see? Wait, well, kind of in a rut. He just played with like one of the best games we've seen all season six days ago against the Steelers on Sunday night. Okay. But yes, and I've made the jokes that like, hasn't played a bad game this year. He hasn't thrown a real interception.

This was his first bad game. He was truly bad. I think he only threw two interceptions. He could have thrown at least five. I don't have an explanation for it because some of these interceptions, he just threw it right to the Broncos. Like there was no coverage disguise or anything. It was just terrible throws.

You can't pin this on Lombardi. I've pinned a lot on Joe Lombardi this season, the Chargers offensive coordinator, but this was not on him. It was just a bad performance by Justin Herbert. And it's week 12. He's allowed to have one bad performance. What is he? 23 years old.

I'm not going to question him because of that. All right. If you're Justin Herbert now, you need to prove on what? Oh. I don't know. I don't know. Because these are mistakes that we haven't seen this season. I still think the offense is a problem.

Like what mistakes did we see on Sunday that we haven't seen this season? Literally him throwing the ball directly to defenders. It's inexplicable some of these mistakes. Like, I think he just thought he could get the ball in there and was a little too confident in his armability, which, like, judging by the rest of his season, I can understand that. I think part of it was just impressing because the Chargers weren't scoring a lot of points on Sunday. But, I mean, I still think defenses have figured out a way to play the Chargers offense. It's not really Herbert related. It's just they're playing man coverage.

They're playing cover one. That means there's help in the middle of the field. There's a deep safety. deep safety, there's usually like a linebacker lurking around the middle. So teams, the quarterbacks play outside leverage and all of his routes are outbreaking routes to the perimeter. He leads the league in these types of throws by 20 attempts coming into this week. And teams are just sitting on them now.

So it's harder to complete those passes. Against the Steelers, he was able to get outside the pocket and create, kind of shift the defense by running. He wasn't able to do that this week. Vic Van Gio kept him in the pocket and that was the difference between this week and last week. Okay. So with Herbert in particular, I know this might come back to Lombardi.

The answer might be Lombardi and that's okay. But when I'm looking at Herbert's game log, he has not had back to back. And this is, again, a victim of his own success. He's not had back to back 100 rating games since October 10th. He had a three game stretch there. And it's gone. And again, rating is imperfect, but it's just a snapshot. So today he was an 80 rating.

Last week was 116. week before that was 72, week before that was 123, week before that, 66, week before that 67. There seems to be a little bit of week to weak inconsistency. Is this just Lombardi? Is this this Robert's young quarterback?

What is it that he seems a little bit boom or bust right now? I think if you look at the three games that have kind of been bad, the Baltimore game, Patriots game, and then this game, all of those defense, they played the same coverage

most of the game cover one. And I think that's kind of the book on this offense right now. And that's kind of the ultimate sign of respect to a quarterback is saying, the only way we could stop you is playing man coverage, because that takes it out of the quarterback's hand. If they're playing zone, it's up to the quarterback to find the hole in the zone. But if you're playing against man coverage and your receivers don't get open, what are you going to do?

You got to throw in a tight windows, and sometimes you throw interceptions when you do that. Now, this week, I think it was less of that and more of just Herbert throwing bad passes against Baltimore and New England. This is why I said he hasn't played a bad game. Against those two teams, he was making the right decisions. It was just, the coverage was too tight to beat it. This game, there was guys open,

and he was just missing them and throwing it to the Broncos. All right. Nora, any questions on her before we get to Tua? I want to get to Tua, but I just, I would be, I could not live with myself if I did not bring this up. So, Stephen, we were talking a little earlier, on the pod about how Kreme Hunt's dad is taking to Facebook to express his feelings about the Cleveland Browns.

He ended one of his posts. Go Browns, hopefully. I think that's the best thing in the entire world. I'm sorry. It's a great way to end it. Go, go Browns, hopefully. Hopefully. That's so good.

I just love the fact that all the Brown's dads are rebelling against Baker. You think they have a group chat? Browns, dads are having a time. I don't think they have a group chat. I think they just take to Facebook. If they had a group chat, this whole thing would be solved. This wouldn't be an issue. They would just talk amongst themselves and go, man, take a breather.

Don't post this. All right, Stephen, let's get to Tua, because Tua versus Herbert has been on the tip of many Dolphins fans' tongues for the past two years. Go to a hope. Right now, right now, right now, the gap is not closing necessarily because it's it's pretty huge but toa has a couple couple of stats here two is two a completed 27 of 33 pass attempts this week he is the fourth player in NFL history

with the completion percentage of 80 or higher 80% or higher in consecutive games the other quarterbacks to do this drew breeze kailer murray and peyton manning So there you go. What's going on the tour right now? He's not throwing passes downfield, so it makes sense that he's completed so many passes. 3.4 today, right? Yes, and he did not attempt a pass over 20 yards downfield. He did not complete a pass over 15 air yards today.

There was no highlight video of Tua's play today, even though he had a great game on the NFL YouTube channel, but an independent content creator made a video. To a non. Probably. It was two minutes long. And one of the plays was the needle down at the end of the game. That's the type of game we're talking about. You got to show everybody the win, the W.

The comment section, full of two and on members. One of the guys was like, are there only 37 comments because the two haters are in hiding? No, there's only 37 comments. comment because it's a two minute highlight video with all RPO throws and a kneel down. No one wants to watch that. That's not a good highlight video. Okay. Do you think it during like, remember in 2017 when all anybody talked about was just like

RPO's RPO's RPAs RPAs. It's the most amazing magical thing. It's going to take over football. And then that became mocked and blah, blah, blah, blah. And this was like the only topic. Do you think anybody looked into the future and saw the 2021 Miami Dolphins? offense. I think Jerry Rice did.

He had the famous RPO's or conservative trickery. What happened to like lining up and the best man wins? Like that's how I feel when I watch this offense play. It's hard to watch. It's like watching a big 10 game, maybe a big 12 game. Is this sustainable? Like can they win games like this? Like beyond the last couple weeks?

No. I think this. win streak that they're on has largely been driven by the defense. I think Brian Flores is back. I try to cancel him a couple months ago on this very podcast, but he's back. And I think he realized, oh, I might get fired at the end of the season. Let me just start blitzing every quarterback we play on every snap. And it's been working. I don't know if it's going to work against like actually good offenses, but for now it's working. And I think when they start to play better teams, we're going to start to realize why to, uh, okay, hasn't solidified himself.

as like a franchise quarterback for this team. So you say when they play better teams, have you looked at their schedule? I have not. I should have probably done that. Giants next week. They jets the week after. The Saints the week after that.

The Titans the week after that. And then ending with the Patriots on January night. I mean, it's not crazy, Stephen. If that Patriots game was three days earlier, we could have made some good two and non-jokes. It's a bit of a thinker. I have a great... No, no, it's loud and clear, bud.

I have a right-wing conspiracy theory, too. It would be better if you three with his natural hand. All right. Give us any more hot takes you have before we get out of here. If I was a scout at the time of last year's combine, I would have asked Zach Wilson to work out as a kicker. Like the Chargers asked Lamar Jackson to work out as a receiver. I would ask him to work out as a kicker.

Before I get to your next one, I need you to know this, that I was playing with the ESPN playoff machine. And if the dolphins went out and I just did dolphins wins, I didn't do anything else, they'd be nine and seven and they would take the seven seed over Los Angeles Chargers. Oh, man. Yeah, but I don't know. I don't know if that's official. Like, I don't know what the tiebreakers are. But I'm just saying that was what happened in the trade machine is the charges were out. They came out.

Tua came there. I like how you just call it the trade machine, even though it has nothing to do with trade. You know what it is. I know exactly what you mean because I was playing with it earlier. And like you could pick the Chargers to win only the games they're probably going to be favored in and they're still going to make the playoffs. So I think we got to keep talking about this Chargers team because their schedule is pretty easy

and they're going to make the playoffs. But it's a, it's not a great team. So if the Chargers went out, they'd be. Yeah. I mean, so obviously the Chargers control their own destiny because they have a better record. I'm just saying, watch out for those nine and seven dolphins, baby. Any other hot takes? We got the sound effect ready to go. No, the Zach Wilson was my, my hottest take. It's hard to have hot takes after this week. If you ran the Jets, would you just try to start over

a quarterback? What would you do? Oh, yeah, I think you have to at least consider it, right? I'm not even trolling here, like, making a joke. I think you have to at least consider it. He has not been convincing at all. And I mean, the one thing you could say, say is the next quarterback class is not great, then maybe you just pass on it for a year and just let him do his thing. But no, I don't think you can be convinced with that. I'm not saying like, he's the first time pick. I'm saying like go out and get one of these mid-level veterans who'd be available. No, I don't think you do that. I think it's one of those situations where you either hope he rises to the occasion or you hope he's terrible and you get a top five pick the next year.

Anyway, I think they should give a time. I think you should be the starter next year. I think they're not going anywhere regardless. I would have an insurance policy in case he fails. But I don't, I think that you would be really, really bad unless there was obviously the Josh Rosen thing is a separate issue because they had a quarterback to replace him immediately. I would give Zach Wilson another year.

Also, they just traded a draft pick for Joe Flack though, a veteran option. Yeah, that's the mid-tier veteran. Dismissing that? All right. We'll see you on Friday show. with Kaelin Jones and Ben Solac, buddy.

Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me. All right. We're almost out of time. Nora, we have a very quick listener questions from Will Nights. He asked from a content perspective, what's the funniest end to the Mat Nagy era?

Oh, goodness. Well. They have the Cardinals next week, then the Bears, the Vikings, the Seahawks, the Giants, and then the Vikings. I guess the funniest end is, I don't think dragging it out is funny,

but he has to, I think it's that he gets fired after a win. That would be, well, Matt, that, that was on the table, I guess, last Thursday. I will say, I'm circling January 2nd because what if him and Joe Judge are in kind of a coach gets fired, Bull? And I'd also say, by the January, January 9th against the Vikings. Against the Vikings, well, me, listen, that's what the money's for, as Don Draper would say. You have paid millions of dollars. So they're going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine.

Oh, yeah. They'll be fine. Your consolation prize is you get to be a coordinator for millions of dollars. I'm just thinking it's not ha ha, funny. Well, I guess we have different views on comedy. Matt Nagy and Joe Judge playing a 9 to 7 game for their jobs. It could be as funny as Kirk Cousins lining up under the wrong player. That's my take.

I think it's got to be, I think there's got to be like a win, a kind of, unwarranted crowing at the press conference moment and then the hammer drops. I think that's that's the funniest way this can happen. All right. See you this week, Nora. This show will be back on Sunday and every Sunday breaking down all the NFL action. Next up on this feed is the NFL players podcast, Ryan Chazier, James Jones, and host of the full go Jason Golf.

I was on that show last week. Had a great time. I'll be back on Wednesday with the big picture NFL topic. Nora will be back on Thursday with Mallory Rubin, Friday. a show, as I already talked about, Ben, Stephen, and Kaelin Jones, previewing all the action for next week. Check out Slow Newsday with a Slow Newsday legend, a favorite this week. I'm very excited about that. Thank you to Nora, Ben and Stephen.

Thank you to production assistant Isaiah Blakely with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramkopol. It's been the runner NFL show on the Ringer podcast network.