The Ringer NFL Show - Week 18 Recap: Lions Win the No. 1 Seed, Wild-Card Round Breakdown, and More

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Sheil, Steven, and Diante start the pod by sharing their reactions to the Lions defeating the Vikings on ‘Sunday Night Football’ to get the no. 1 seed in the NFC heading into the playoffs. They then turn their eye to Wild-Card Weekend and analyze all of the big upcoming matchups. Vikings-Rams (13:11) Packers-Eagles (15:50) Commanders-Bucs (24:17) Chargers-Texans (35:31) Steelers-Ravens (44:14) Broncos-Bills (50:51) Finally, the crew offers superlatives and awards to the players, coaches, and teams who made significant contributions to the Week 18 headlines (58:28). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia, Steven Ruiz, and Diante Lee Producers: Chris Sutton, Tucker Tashjian, and Mark Panik Production Supervision: Conor Nevins, Arjuna Ramgopal, and Daniel Comer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, and get ready for the McShay Show on the ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capati here with Deontay Lee and Stephen Ruiz. Good to have you watching on Fandul TV or listening on Spotify. The regular season is in the books. The playoffs are here.

We made it. 14 teams left. We're going to talk Lions Vikings. We're going to talk NFC matchups. We're going to talk AFC matchups. Maybe mix in a little Gerard Mayo. Coaches are already being fired. Deontay, how are we doing?

I mean, I'm looking at my co-host here. I see a lot more brightness in the faces. I'm seeing smiles are curled a little bit higher up the cheeks than usual. It feels like the regular season is coming to an end. And now we can really focus our attention on the best teams in the NFL. It feels like Mason Rudolph, Cooper Rush, Spencer Rattler, all those guys are out of our lives. And we don't have to talk about them over the next month. It's all of our Jackson, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Jemir Gibbs, all of the best players in the NFL.

No more of these crap games. That's right. These are where the legacies are shaped, where the offseason storylines, or 10 years from now when you're talking about a game, it will probably be one of the games we watch in the next month of the season. So we have some fun matchups. We have to start with what happened in the NFC, Sunday night, Lions Vikings. We talked about a big, big game.

Winner gets the one seed in the buy-in home field. Loser goes on the road in the first round against the Los Angeles Rams. And the Detroit Lions took care of business. in a very surprising way beating the Minnesota Vikings, 31 to 9, really dominating the game once we got there to the second half. I'm going to start. I'll just start because my biggest takeaway is we spent last week talking about Ben Johnson versus Brian Flores and what a great matchup it was going to be. And the story of this game was on the other side of the ball and what Aaron Glenn did. And for all the coaches that make excuses about injuries and X, Y, and Z, this is what

the money's for. This is what you're paid to do. When you have injuries, you're going up against the great offense. Can you come up with a game plan that gives your team an advantage? And that's what he did. Man coverage, Blitz, challenging Amique Robertson. And they take it to the Vikings for most of this game. I mean, if you were going to score nine points in this game last week, I would have never believed you. So, Deonti, to me, if you're a Lions fan, you just have to have sort of be rejuvenated a little bit, that yeah, the injuries suck, but man, if that defense can just give us a little something, our offense is good enough to get us to the Super Bowl. I mean, they blacked out today.

Like, they absolutely blacked out in coverage. I don't know how much analysis there would be, like, going back to film and just watching. I do think that there's a lot to take away from how they blitz the Vikings, and I'm sure we'll get to that in the course of the conversation. But just focusing on Aaron Glenn and his use of personnel, I thought that, at first I thought that he was putting Amiq Robinson on Justin Jefferson to kind of use the Rivas principles or Dion principles of putting your second best corner on the number one receiver. You're going to cloud that guy.

So send a safety help over the top. And then you'll use Terry and Arnold to kind of lock down Jordan Addison or try to at least be on his side of the field at all times. And you're watching the flow of the game. And it's cover zero. And then cover zero again. And then a five-minute pressure with man behind it. And then just regular old cover one.

And there just came a point where I had to kind of surrender to the fact that Amiga, So it was just winning these reps. And I think that he was helped, obviously, by the pressure. You know, this was probably Sam Donald's worst game of the most. Sam Donald has looked like previous versions of himself that we've seen so far this year. But I also think that this was a badly played, a badly called game for Kevin O'Connell. If he go by success rate, this is his worst that he's been, that he's had since he's taken over as head coach underneath 30%. Wow.

Worse in terms of EPA as well. And I think that he and Sam Donald probably have to take some long looks at each other in the meeting room. coming out of this trying to figure out what the answers are going to be, because this offense just had no answer for picking up pressure when the blitzes came, when it was simulated pressure, or they just rushed four, guys were losing their one-on-ones. And that's a big credit to Detroit for being able to get the most out of everybody in a one-week sample. And that's something we've been seeing since these injuries have piled up as they've been able to put together these one-week game plans that have allowed them to dominate their opponents.

But I do think after we give them credit, we've got to look at this Vikings' offense and ask, If they get blitz like this again and they see a bunch of tight coverage like this again, is Sam Drono going to be able to rise to the occasion and will Kevin O'Connell have better play calls in those intermediate areas of the field? I feel like it's the type of performance where we have to look back at it in like a week or two to see if teams do try to replicate this and see what the answers are. Like in a one-off scenario, Aaron Glenn pops a great game playing on you. Like there's no shame in getting and losing to that, you know?

but if it's a recurring theme, then you do have to bring it up. If we're going to give Kevin O'Connell so much credit for propping up Sam Darnold all season, which I've been doing, then I do have to criticize them for not being able to do that in this game, like Deontes said.

But I am, I'm going to pump the brakes on kind of questioning the Vikings after this one just because it is a rematch. They play Detroit again in the playoffs. I expect a better plan from Kevin O'Connell. I expect better protection for Sam Darnel. I don't expect Sam Darnel to miss the throws he made. He missed tonight.

it looked more like the old Sam Darnold, but he was missing throws that we've seen him complete all season long in the face of pressure. It could be a one-off performance for the Vikings offense, but I think the story, like Sheel said at the top, is this Detroit defense and the ability to put together a game plan to flummox one of the most explosive passing games in the NFL and to take away Justin Jefferson

and not open up the opportunities that we've seen opened up when you try to focus all your attention on Justin Jefferson. We've seen that throughout the year. Jordan Addison, Nailer, they've all eaten off of Justin Jefferson's gravity. Didn't happen tonight. And I think it's a testament to Aaron Glenn and the work he's been doing and the shuffling they've been doing in the secondary.

I mean, it's wild. And they get Alex Anzolone back at linebacker and then Terry and Arnold goes down at cornerback for them. It's like they just, they sort of can't catch a break. It's whack-a-mole, right? It's injury wack-mo. Yeah, but there's definitely a culture thing going on there where they're like they play like a team that believes

that they can go up against Justin, Jefferson and Jordan Addison and play man coverage and play zero blitz and get to them. Like they probably shouldn't even think that they would be able to do that. But yeah, next gen stats had all the number 67% of the snaps they played man. Donald was 10 for 28 for 125 yards. And they went cover zero all out blitz 14 times in this game. So we know what's in Aaron Glenn's DNA. And rather than think I got to tweak stuff, he's just like lean into it.

and let's see what happens. And again, now if you're the Lions, you're home in the divisional round. You're going to be home in the NFC championship game if you can get there. So you kind of need two performances from this defense. It doesn't have to be this good. And needs to be good enough because we saw with that offense, that offense is still going to be able to put up points on anybody. Can the defense be good enough for two games where you're going to be favorites?

And you still, despite all these injuries, have a great chance to get to the Super Bowl. It was a real 2023 Vikings defensive performance. in my opinion. We don't have the horses. Let's just get weird with it. Let's just attack them and punch them in the mouth and see if they don't have an answer for it. You could stun them and maybe they don't have a counter punch.

And Minnesota didn't come up with one all night long. And I think it is a culture thing. We haven't mentioned Dan Campbell yet, but Aaron Glenn, like the, I don't know if it was Tariq or Collinsworth on the broadcast. They were saying that Aaron Glenn felt confident in this style of game plan because Dan Campbell puts that confidence in him that even if it goes wrong,

he's not going to get punished for it. You know, he's not going to leave play calling. dude, he's not going to get fired just because something goes wrong. And if you need proof of that, just go back to the first two years of this partnership where Aaron Glenn has been throwing shit at the wall, going back to the beginning of his time as a DC for Detroit when they didn't have the bodies and didn't have the guys that could play man coverage in those first couple of years. And Dan Campbell stuck with him. He stuck with them all along. He didn't fire him where I think a lot of other coaches who were in this opportunity of a lifetime to have a head coaching gig would

have given up on Aaron Glenn after the first two years where it didn't work out. But he realized what Aaron Glenn was missing. The front office got Aaron Glenn those pieces. The pieces got hurt this year. And the work and the confidence that Campbell showed in him over those first two years, I think paid off a lot tonight. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. The defense, fantastic, Lions, I mean, to go 15 and to have that devastating loss in the playoffs last year, where Dan Campbell tells the team seconds after, we might not ever get back here. It's hard to get back here to follow that up with a 15 and two season where things are going wrong all over the place along the way is really a credit to him and a credit to, I mean, Jemir Gibbs in this game. We haven't

even mentioned him incredible in this game as well. So we'll be talking a lot about the lines. I have a feeling in the weeks ahead to follow up there, Deontay, on the Viking. So now they go to Los Angeles. There's two and a half point favorites. Ruiz, I kind of lean with Ruiz. I was like, I'm not giving up on this fight. I think they're better than the Rams. I think you got a bad matchup. The other team had great wrinkles. Your quarterback didn't play that well.

You couldn't protect. Like a lot of things went wrong. I'm not going to throw out what happened in the first 17 weeks of the season. At the same time, I can also see if you're a Vikings fan going, shoot, is that what it's going to look like with Darnold in a big spot in the playoffs? So where do you land on kind of how concerned Vikings fans should be with this loss, given what's ahead against the Los Angeles Rams. The data in film tells you that this is probably a blip, right, for this offense.

It doesn't mean that it's always going to be, you know, them tearing up and down the field they were when they've been at their hottest so far this season. But I don't think that you'll get another game where the success rate is this lower. We're talking about 24% success rate, negative passing EPA. Like that's just not symptomatic of a Kevin O'Connell passing game, period. And I think that because they were out of game script, because they couldn't rely on moving the chains on third down. You saw a more desperate version of this offense on early downs,

and that's not the way they want to live either. And if there is a defense that you can see where I think that they're going to have opportunities to get back into their comfort zone on first and second down, being able to throw play action passes into the intermediate areas of the field, the Rams will give you that on the back end. They're not good. They may blitz because they do trust their pass rushing core interior and on the edge with Jaredverse,

but they don't have the guys on the back end, nor do they have like the institutional belief in, in man coverage that you know the Detroit does on a weekly basis. So I think that you can probably lick your wounds tonight and then show back up on Monday for your team meetings feeling like, we can maybe not throw this out because we've got to see this team again. Let's make sure that we just have in the back of our mind what our answers need to be against man and against blitz in a playoff environment.

But other than that, they should be able to get back to operating as usual. That's where you can kind of spin it as like a positive, this performance for the Vikings offense, is that it didn't happen in the playoffs. It didn't happen in the potential like three match with Detroit. But I would be concerned just because in the playoffs

where you see more rematches, sometimes you're seeing teams for a third time, you get these game plans. You get these one-off game plans that are highly tailored to your weaknesses. And you can just tell

by how Tariko and Collinsworth were talking, because they've been talking to these coaches in the production meetings all year long, what the game plan was. It was to make Sam Darnold

hold the ball. They believed to Sam Darnold held the ball. And we kind of pinpointed this a couple weeks ago before the Packers game that his splits after three seconds are not very good.

His splits when he's throwing in rhythm are some of the best in the league. And they knocked him off his rhythm today. Like the concern isn't so much, oh, they blitz the hell out of them. What are they going to do if they see zero again? It's what if another team finds another way to get him to hold onto the ball? And you only have 30 minutes or so at halftime or in the third quarter to find an answer for it. That could be the end of your season. In the playoffs, it only takes one of those instances.

Yeah, Dan Campbell, when he was shaking Kevin O'Connell's hands at C in two, weeks. I guess probably just being nice, but Vikings go to Los Angeles to take on the Rams. Again, that's the four or five matchup. Those two teams faced off in week eight. Rams beat the Lions in that game 30 to 20. So Rams don't play their starters in week 18. At first, I was like, is that a good idea? You're going to have to face the Vikings or Lions. I sort of feel like they thought Matthew Stafford probably needed to breathe at this age. I think that they needed it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, three of his last four games, four of his last five games, threw for under 200 yards.

They had that awesome performance against the bills where they put up 44. After that, the offense was really sputtering down the stretch. So I don't have a problem with McVeigh making that decision. And now they welcome in this Vikings team in Wildcard weekend. All right, let's take a break. We come back. Let's run through the rest of the NFC, fun matchups in the NFC, small lines in the NFC.

tightly packed together here. Different story in the AFC. We'll talk about it all when we come back. The Ringer NFL show is brought to you by Fandul. Football fans buckle up because for the first time ever, we've got five straight days of playoff football. And Fandul is celebrating with the great playoff payoff. That's a no-swet same game parlay every day for all five days. With a no-swet SGP, you can combine your bets from the same game for a chance at even big. bigger winnings. And if it doesn't hit, you'll get bonus bets back. What a great idea. This is going to be an unbelievable stretch. College football playoff Thursday and Friday, then six NFL games Saturday, Sunday, Monday. So not only do we get to watch five straight days of playoff

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See terms at sportsbook.fandul.com. gambling problem called 1-800 gambler or visit rg dash help.com. All right, we are back on the ringer NFL show. Let me just run through the bracket here a little bit in the NFC. So lions are the one seat. They get the buy, right? The Vikings go to Los Angeles to take on the Rams. That's going to be a Monday night game, 5 verse 4 Vikings at Rams.

other two games here in the NFC. You've got on Sunday afternoon and evening. You've got the Packers as the seven seed going to Philadelphia to take on the Eagles. Eagles are four and a half point favorites in that game. I think it opened at three or three and a half. We'll get to that matchup here in a second. And then you've got commanders at Bucks. They get the primetime Sunday night matchup.

Jade and Daniels in primetime. bucks are fluctuating between three and three and a half point favorites in that football game. So it is a fun bracket in the NFC here. Let's get to the next matchup. Packers at the Eagles. Again, this is Sunday afternoon at 430. Deiante, let's start with you. Where does your attention go?

We saw the Packers today. Jordan Love suffers a little bit of an elbow injury. It sounds like he's going to play in this game. We don't know at what strength. these two teams played in week one. I think these are two teams that we've been saying for most of the season, these two teams can certainly get to the Super Bowl. Now they're facing off in the wild card round.

What has your attention? I think it's just trying to sort out what we're going to get out of both quarterbacks, right? A, I need to see that Jaylen Hertz is cleared to return to practice. That's number one because it's now been a couple of weeks of him being in the protocol. I know they said he's also nursing a finger injury. So it's hard to know if he would have practiced, even if he had been cleared out of the protocol. coming out of last week, especially knowing that they were going to rest their starters. But I do want to see where he and where Jordan Love are going to be at in a playoff environment.

I think that with both of these teams for different reasons, you have questions about whether or not they can operate at peak capacity because you're just not sure if they're going to be at their hottest. And I think that, you know, at least for Green Bay's from Green Bay's perspective, for all the capabilities that we know that they have to be able to, you know, get hot in terms of pass rushing, maybe force a couple turnovers. this defense did end the season, I think with just as many questions as we had for them coming into the year. So I think in that matchup is going to come down to whether or not Philadelphia can build up some kind of passing rhythm or be explosive the way they were in week one when they matched up. And if that's the case, we'll probably feel pretty good about the Eagles and I would expect them to win. I think on the other side of this, this is going to be about whether or not Jordan Love is good enough to be able to lift them up against one of the better coverage units that we've seen in the NFL this year. How do you feel, Ruiz? you and I pick the Packers to get to the Super Bowl before the season.

You stuck with them for most of the season. They get a tough path here where they're the 17th. Go to Philadelphia. And then even if they win, now you're going to Detroit in the second round. So aside from the love injury, again, suffered the elbow injury in the first half came out of the game. Matt LaFleur said, if this was like higher stakes, he could have gone back in. So that sounds like good news. But then Christian Watson, they lose him to a knee injury.

and that injury, LaFleur said, you know, I don't feel great about, although there was nothing definitive. How do you feel about this matchup for Green Bay as they go to Philadelphia? I don't feel good. It's starting to feel like one of those lost seasons in Green Bay where Jordan Love hasn't been able to stay healthy for like a month straight, and that's going to continue going into the playoffs, no matter how insignificant his injury is. It's never good to be leaving games in December or in January, I guess. And we've talked all year about the Packers' defense when they can't kick, teams behind the chains, they tend to struggle and going up against maybe the most reliable run game outside of Detroit in the NFC, that's going to be a tough assignment for this defense.

I don't think they're going to be able to make it a game where Jalen Hertz has to be a dropback passer. And I think that's the only way to really beat this Eagles team. The Eagles have only lost three times. The common denominator outside of the latest is getting Jalen Hertz to play like that style of football. I just don't see it happening. And with Christian Watson going out, I think it's bad matchup for the Packers on the other side of the ball, too. They need a guy that can create those explosive plays, especially when Philadelphia plays man coverage. And I don't trust any of those other receivers. I don't trust Christian Watson that much. I don't think any of the Packers receivers have earned. Trust is not the word for him. No, no. But he is the one with the highest ceiling. He is like

the biggest boomer bus receiver in that core and missing him. That's a big deal for them. Yeah, we talked about him, I think, a couple weeks ago where against man coverage, he's their guy. He's their leading receiver against man coverage, overall averaging over 21 yards per reception. So that was a tough one for him. He was emotional getting carted off the field there with the knee injury. But I think you're right. When you go away from the lines of scrimmage in this game and go to the perimeter on both sides of the ball, and you've got A.J. Brown and Devante Smith against those Packers' corners, and they don't have Jair Alexander,

that's a tough matchup for the Packers. And then on the other side, when you've got these Eagles corners, Quinyon Mitchell, Slee, Cooper de Gene playing so well, and now you've got a Packers receiving Corps that is missing one of their mismatch guys on the outside. I think that favors the Eagles. Also, the other thing here, which I didn't realize, I think until the end of the last week, if Jalen Hertz is healthy for this game, the Eagles will have all 22 starters healthy for their playoff run. I mean, think about- It was the same in 2022, right? Yeah, it's so rare. I keep saying it's so rare. And then I'm like, no, this happened to them two years ago, but it is so rare. We just,

talked about the lions and think of all the injuries they've had to overcome and endure. And you're talking about an Eagles team that could be getting healthy here, Deontay, at the perfect time. We've been having these conversations about the lions and how capable they are of winning a Super Bowl and maybe them being tripped up just by having too many guys hurt and landing in the wrong matchup at the wrong time. I think that the inverse is true of Philadelphia. I think that they have warts. There are reasons to be skeptical, at least of this passing offense, when you compare it to what Minnesota's look like. over the course of the year.

Obviously what Detroit has been over the course of the year, how explosive Green Bay is when they're healthy. For all those questions that we may have, the truth of the matter is the most important thing was that they got all five of those offensive linemen and Saquan Barkley into the postseason healthy, and they've got that. And that's going to be the engine

that's going to push them through most games because that's just what's worked for them so far this year. And the defense has just made so many leaps and bounds up front being able to stop them run from other teams, getting the third down, and then having a great plan for getting off the football field. I think Stephen kind of made mention of it and talking about this matchup with the Packers.

The pathway for the Eagles is that they can just continue to lean on the fact that they can get up in games, force you in the obvious passing situations, and then that's when they can kind of sit on you and just take time off the clock and basically make it a game of possessions. And if they're able to operate that way when they play the Packers and I would assume so, they should be able to cruise,

I would think, to the next round of the postseason. They also have the easiest path now. This is the path I would want as an NFC team. They avoid the, the, the Vikings and the lions until the championship round. And then you get the worst of the three NFC North playoff teams or the one that's fading, the one that's trending the worst. The Packers don't feel like a contender right now.

Those other two teams, Minnesota and Detroit do feel like contenders, teams that can make the Super Bowl. And Philadelphia is going to avoid them until the championship round out. Yeah, it could be the Rams or the Bucks going to Philadelphia in the divisional round. If the Eagles get out of the first round there against the Green Bay Packers. I mean, we can't sweep under the rug what Deontes saying about their passing offense. You know, it was a month ago where AJ Brown's unhappy. Their passing game looks terrible against the Panthers.

They come back and play a good game against the Steelers the next week. We haven't seen Jailen Hertz since then. You know, you were thinking maybe they'll figure some stuff out down the stretch. That didn't happen. So their passing game is very much an unknown here as they go into the postseason. And historically, the teams that are playing in the championship round, you're not saying that about them, that I don't really know what we're getting from their passing game.

So should potential for a fun matchup, I just hope Jordan Love is healthy. I hope we're not watching the first quarter of that game going, oh, man, he doesn't look like himself with that elbow injury. So that's Packers at Eagles. There were moments on Sunday where it looked like, is this Tampa team? Are they going to blow this against Spencer Rattler?

And the New Orleans Saints, they're down 166 at halftime. they come back in the second half, beat the New Orleans Saints, get the number three seed, and they will host the Washington commanders who got a win against the Dallas Cowboys today. Ruiz, let's start with you. Bucks hosting the commanders Sunday night. What are your eyes going to be on in this matchup? I really want to go back and revisit that week one game. From what I remember from it, the commanders move the ball, just fine, up and down the field.

They just couldn't finish off drives in the red zone. and the same is true for the bucks. I remember them just, I think it was like over 100 yards of yak. I remember there being a lot of screen passes, a lot of bubble screens, and Washington couldn't really do anything to stop it. And I don't think much is going to change. With Liam Cohen going up against Dan Quinn's defense, that feels like the biggest coaching mismatch in this matchup.

And with the way Washington's offense kind of rebound in the second half, I know it wasn't Jaden Daniel Shields MVP, it was Marcus Mariotta who put up another master class. I don't know, getting kind of spookia down there. But yeah, I think the offense has kind of figured things out after that little slow stretch during the middle of the season. It looks more like the offense we saw over the first two months of the season when we thought, hey, maybe this Washington team can challenge Philly for the NFC East.

I don't know if that's their ceiling. But I do think winning a playoff game is their ceiling now. And going up against this Bucks team, I think, was their best possible draw. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. It's hard to look at these defenses and go. which of these defenses is going to be able to stop these offenses? You mentioned it. That Buck's defense has not looked good.

I mean, it's mostly been a mediocre to below average unit all season long. So now you're going up against Jaden Daniels and that commander's offense, which, like you said, they had the little issues in the middle of the season, where is it the ribs? Is it the Cliff Cliff? Cliff. What's going on here? No Cliff Cliff. No Cliff Cliff Cliff this year.

Was Cliff the most pumped coach of any coach on the sideline today? Did you see his reaction, Dianne? Yeah, 1,000 percent. I mean, it can't feel much better for Cliff than to know, like, not only am I winning in December in January, I just won a game with my backup quarterback in January, something that definitely would not have happened in Arizona. And Kyler fell off over the last month of the season. Like, that can't be ignored.

Great for your personal narrative, man. Kyler's first name starts with the K-2. We could do the alliteration there with the Tyler Cliff. It still works. But did you hear the report from Schrager before the game? So you were saying Cliff's name's coming up in these coaching searches. but Cliff might be able to just sit back and wait. He can wait on his next job.

And I feel like he should, honestly, because this is an ideal situation in Washington. He's grooming a quarterback. The more success Jaden Daniels has, and we all expect him to have more success, the easier it is for him to just walk into the most ideal job. I don't know if that ideal job is out there right now. I don't disagree.

I don't disagree with that take. I always strike all lions on Cliff. I always think it's funny when the report on a coach who's clearly interested in being a head coach again is ended or couch by, Oh, but he can wait. That to me usually sounds like he might be ready to take calls. I don't know if calls are coming quite yet.

Let me tell you a story about a guy named Bobby Sloick, Cliff, a year ago at this time, there were some good things. Don't do that to him. There was questions about Sloic before then. There's some pretty appealing jobs out there, though. I mean, if you look at it, like I threw his name out there for Chicago like a month ago and our friend Nora Preciati almost like made me turn off the podcast. She was so upset by the thought.

But I don't know. I mean, like that job could be out there. Now the Patriots job is open. I feel like, and I feel like it's not a crowded pool of candidates. You know, there's no, it's basically Rabel, Ben Johnson, and everybody else. And we don't even know if Ben Johnson wants a job. So I feel like it might be, again, if I'm Cliff's agent, I'm saying strike while the iron's hot here, you know the coaching pool is bad when John Gruden's name comes up.

Oh, my gosh. I have seen John Gruden's name come up more than once. It is bothering me. We're talking about Pete Carroll and on a lot of names that I would say are probably closer to unhirable than they are being real candidates. Yeah, you're right. It's certainly not a long list of guys that you would say, yes, bring this guy on board right away. That commander's game today was weird because it sounded like they were playing for seating. And so Jaden Daniels is playing in the game.

All of a sudden, he gets pulled. And I'm going, why would you play him in the first? But they said afterwards that he had, quote, mild leg soreness, according to the DC report. So, yeah, that would have been. I was wondering why he was out of the game there. But, man, they finished 12 and 5, their last four games, two game winners in OT, and the other two were game winners in the last 10 seconds of regulation. But 12 and 5 is a pretty wild outcome, Ruiz.

I mean, even somebody who was very optimistic about the commanders, I don't think would have even predicted 12 and 5. before the season. No, it's going to be easy to fade this team next year when we look at all the underlying metrics and their record in close games and all these like 50-50 wins. But no, you have to celebrate this. I mean, they've just come out of two decades of Dan Snyder. This is like one of the great, this is literally their best season since they won the Super Bowl in 1991 by record. They haven't come close to 11 wins, much less 12 wins. This is, and I think I made this point earlier in the season, this is the only time in my life or like that I've been a full.

football fan where I can remember Washington, wire to wire, being a playoff team all season long. Yeah. Like, we've just taken it for granted that they're going to make the playoffs. It's literally never been like that. Even during the RG3 year, they had a back into the playoffs and win like five games in a row just to make the wild card to win the NFCs. So, yeah, this is totally different. It's worth celebrating.

I don't care. If nerds were yelling at me, oh, look at your record in close games. Look at all these fluke wins you have. I wouldn't care. Who cares? Where does your gutly, Deonté, Commander's, at bucks. Are you concerned about the leg, the leg soreness?

My leg soreness is like something I get while recording a podcast. I'm surprised at that I got some right now. Me too. I got the standing desk. Yeah. I was going to say, I woke up today with my own leg soreness. That's the old, you know, old man's IT bands acting up a little bit. No, I'm just one, because I think this is a tough game to pick because you look at the commanders. I mean, they give up 370 yards and 23 first downs to Tray Lance and Rico Daudill and Jail and

Tolberg. Like, how are they going to do against this Bucks offense? But like we said, is it just going to be a shootout where both teams are going up and down the field? So I was just getting a first impression. I think my first impression pick would be to go with the commanders in the upset. They've been pulling out these close games. But I don't know, Ruiz, where does your gut say for this one? It's a coin flip for me. I'll probably lean towards the home team and go with Tampa Bay. but my prediction is this is going to be not the best game of Wildcard Weekend, but the most entertaining game.

I think it's going to be the most high-scoring game. Yeah. Deontay, what does the gut say? I've been very pro-bucks, so I'm not going to leave them there. I'm kind of leaning bucks. I think that home field will be just enough for them to be able to pull this out. But I will say of the NFC matchups, this is probably the one that can really go in either direction.

I do think it's going to be a shootout. I have not seen anything from either defense to suggest otherwise over the course of the year and especially down the stretch. as of late, but I think that both teams can basically have whatever they want offensively. And I think it might ultimately come down to whether or not you get the

backbreaking Jaden Daniels scramble. That was basically how they were able to pick up cheap points when they played each other week one. It was a bunch of scrambles late in the game. That's how I was able to get that prop bed of him rushing for over 70 yards. What a memory. I'm never forgetting that. I'm never forgetting that.

You don't forget the winners. I know you're not. I know you're a coach. You're only supposed to forget you know the losers, not the winners. The winner's wash away. That's nonsense that you've heard from miserable coaches. I don't describe to any of those any of those philosophies. No, I do think this will be a close one. I think that really Jane Daniels in the running game and whether or not Tampa Bay's offensive line can continue to move bodies in the running game for them will be a big deal. I think we saw today against New Orleans when they don't have those throws behind the line of scrimmage or within a couple of yards of the line of scrimmage

pop for explosives. It just changes the feel of this offense when those aren't turning into 10, 15, 20-yard chunk plays, there's not as much for them to rely on. And I think that that's where you get to see Baker may feel look a little bit more mortal in the pocket than he has at different points in a year. I'm really interested to see whether or not Dan Quinn can figure out a plan to try to make them a little bit more uncomfortable on those early downs, throwing those quick passes, and then whether or not his quarterback can kind of put the cape on for one more week. But I do think the Bucks will have just enough to get over the hump with this one.

Honestly, the best unit in this game might be the Bucks offensive line, which I think is like the most under told story of the season. There's just been so much focus on Baker Mayfield and like his reclamation project and how he's turning around in Tampa Bay. But the key to it, if you watch these games, he's throwing from wide open pockets. It's fitting that he wears a red jersey because that's how he's playing.

Like he's playing in seven on sevens and nobody can touch him. And then the run game, like we've seen their dominance in the run game, which has been powered by both the offensive line and this pair of running backs, especially with Bucky Irvin, who was just gliding through that Saints defense at times on Sunday. So I think like the analyst in me wants to see the Bucks kind of advanced just because I want to see

this offensive line take on one of the better defenses in the NFL or in the NFC in the playoffs. I don't think they're going to get that challenge against Washington. You mentioned the Bucks offensive line and one of my favorite moments of the Baker Mayfield was doing this move today. And he probably does this more often. I haven't noticed it. But he'll have a scramble or run or something. And then he'll like try to give the defender the business.

but just as the defender is reacting, he walks away and then his offensive line all come over and have to like fight the guy. I mean, he did this multiple times today. He starts it and then he walks away and then the camera is on him. You see his face, but it's his offensive linemen are then having to kind of clean up the mess with the opposing defense. I don't know. It's just something I noticed.

We'll see if other quarterbacks, his offensive linemen didn't seem to mind. I'm sure they'd like that kind of thing, but that was hilarious watching today. All right, that's the NFC. I got to tell you, one of my issues here looking at these. I like too many favorites. Between now and the end of the week, because it's not going to be every favorite that's going to win. I have to go back. I have to look at all these teams, really, in both conferences.

But my first impression for most of them has been to go with the favorite. That's why I kind of forced myself to say, of the underdogs. Maybe the commanders have the best chance to pull the upset there in the NFC. say, all right, there you go. We will take a break. We will come back and we will move over to the AFC where I'm going to force these guys to make the case that some of these teams aren't going to get blown out, that they're going to give some of the big dogs in the AFC actual games. All right, we are back on the Ringer NFL show. Let's go through the AFC bracket here. Of course, the Kansas City Chiefs, we'll get to them later. Don't worry. Kansas City Chiefs get the buy.

I had the wrong read on that game. The first game in the AFC will be the Los Angeles Chargers going to Houston to take on the Texans. That is the first game of Wild Card weekend, 430 Eastern on Saturday. They are two and a half point favorites, road favorites against Houston. Next, we have the Steelers at the Ravens facing off for the third time this season in prime time. Saturday night in Baltimore. the Ravens are nine and a half point favorites in that game. We just saw these two teams play a few weeks ago.

And then Sunday early game, Bo Nix, the Broncos, Sean Payton, they get it done against the chief. So now they earn themselves a date at Buffalo to take on the bills. The bills are eight and a half point favorites. So two big time spreads here, Ravens nine and a half, bills eight and a half in the ASC. Those are the two biggest spreads. of Wildcard weekend. All right, let's start with the first game here. Chargers at Texans.

I think the Chargers are going to be a popular pick. Two and a half point favorites. Deonté, are these two teams relatively evenly matched? Are you buying what you're seeing with the Chargers? Do you just want to sell the Texans offense? Where do you come down on this matchup? I think if you're evaluating rosters, you'd say they're evenly matched.

The issue is that the trend lines are going in the wrong direction, at least in Houston's in Houston's case offensively. I don't know why you would pick the Texans' offense to be able to win a playoff game against the defense as sound, as consistent on a down-and-down basis. It just sounded so mean. Like, you know, I just don't trust them. And that's with all the belief I have in C.J. Stroud,

unless they were just able to hit explosive play after explosive play over the top to Nico Collins, which they don't even have the time in the pocket to do at this stage in the season. I just don't know how they don't end up trailing by, nine or 10 points, and then Jim Harbaugh pulls out the old him and he and Greg Roman special of 22 personnel running power, ISO and duo, and just running a clock out so they don't have enough possessions to come back. And I think if you look at the way that Justin Herbert's been playing over the last three weeks, as his volume of passes have gone up in these games,

you've seen them be more and more productive offensively. I think that they're starting to strike something that really works for this offense and they've been able to put up points, I'll be it up against some struggling in defense as the last two weeks with the Patriots and Raiders. But I think if you can look at that Broncos game, which is another pretty evenly matched team with them, they were able to figure something out in the passing game that worked for them.

And I trust them to do the same thing against the Texans who also like to play aggressively on the back end. I don't want to get clipped saying that the Texans have no chance in this game because I would never say that about a team going up against Greg Roman. I think their best avenue to winning is getting Greg Roman to participate in a run, run, past competition where first down's a run, second down's a run, and then we're just going to leave

it up to the quarterbacks on third down. That's been the case in all of the Charters like losses and disappointing performances on offense this season. And it's been the case for Houston for basically two years going now. So I wouldn't be surprised if that does happen. But like Deontes said, this is an offense in Houston that's been powered by explosive plays. We've talked about it all year. The success rate has been below like Carolina and all the worst offenses in the NFL. The run game has been non-existent. The only thing they've had is C.J. Stroud throwing downfield strikes to Nico Collins and the other receivers who are now hurt in this game. With only one receiver to key in on, I think it's going to be very easy for Jesse Minter to put together a plan,

put a roof over this passing game, limit explosive plays and force them to convert on first and second down, move the chains, and convert on third and medium. And I just don't think they have the pass protection or the play calling to do that. And with the way Justin Herbert's playing, I think you can somewhat mitigate the one advantage that Houston does have going for it. It's defense led by Demiqo Reigns. I think Justin Herbert is one of those quarterbacks that kind of puts defensive coordinators, the best defensive coordinators out of the matchup. I think he takes them out of the matchup and is able to process things quickly enough

where that pressure isn't going to bother him like it would other quarterbacks. To add on to that, maybe the biggest under the radar, I don't know if under the radar storyline is the right way to phrase it. But this Chargers offense, the last three weeks, have really played their best games of the season. I was looking up just the percentiles of their last three performances. 94th percentile, 93rd percentile, 89th percentile, their last three games. That's in terms of EPA per drive. So now the question is, is it all, you know, they face the Raiders, they face the Patriots.

They did do it against the Broncos as well. is it a small sample? Is it a blip on the radar? Have they figured something out? To Deonti's point that, hey, let's just play action, early downs, put the ball in Justin Herbert's hands. We don't have to go run, run past. We can open this thing up a little bit more with Ladd McConkey, with Quinn Johnson, making a couple big catches today in their victory over the radar. So I'm kind of looking at that, wondering, have they figured something out? Because you have Herbert, you have Jim Harbaugh, you have Jesse Minter, a defensive coordinator. Everyone likes, like if I had to pick sort of the under the radar,

weird surprise team that maybe is going to be playing on championship weekend. Don't do it. Well, in the AFC, there's certainly no better option. So, all right here, let's do this exercise right now. Of the teams that are ranked four or lower in both conferences, who has the best chance to be playing on championship weekend? I'll run through the teams for you. The Rams, Vikings, Packers, commanders, those are your options in the NFC.

And in the AFC, it is the Texans, Chargers, Steelers, and Broncos. If you had to pick one of those teams ranked, four-seed or lower, that we're going to be seeing playing in championship weekend. Who do you got? You made it uninteresting by giving us the Vikings. Like, that's the obvious one. We should limit this to the AFC. Is it obvious? They got to go to Detroit?

There are no weird thing. there are no weird things happening in the AFC, let's be honest, but it's going to be one of those three teams. It's going to be some combination of those three teams, because that means in your scenario, that a team is going to Arrowhead in beating Patrick Mahomes, and one of those teams is going to be

the Texans, the Chargers, the Russell Wilson Steelers, are the Boatniks Broncos. It's not happening. That's why it's a fun exercise. It probably is the Chargers now that I'm going through the option, so you're right, I guess. Yeah, so there you go. I'm just, I have my eyes on that Chargers offense a little.

I'm more interested in them than I was a month ago when I thought, all right, they're beating up on bad teams. They're doing it with their defense. This offense is boring. This offense is annoying. Who cares? Justin Herbert's playing well. They got no one they can throw the football too. Not interested.

Now I'm a little more interested. There's a little more of a ceiling there than I previously thought. When has it ever burned anyone who does football analysis to put a little stock into the chargers? That always works out. We need Damiko Rines to bait Greg Roman and John, or Jim Harbaugh, throughout the We could just be like, they'd be scared to do have a run-first script in this game. They would never go run, run-run-pass every series in this one. Haven't you seen our defensive tackles?

We'll give up trap every play. I bet you won't run it. I bet you won't run it. Texans go into the playoffs with the worst offensive any team that made the playoffs. They are 25th in DVOA. They are 31st. They finished the season, 31st in offensive success rate ahead of the Cleveland Browns. The New York Giants, the Bears.

the Colts, the Titans, the Raiders, all these teams were more likely to produce a positive play on any given snap than the Houston Texans. As we've said for roughly three months now on this show, that is unacceptable with C.J. Stroud as your quarterback. So we'll see. Listen, playoffs are weird. Maybe they'll come out. They'll smoke the charges. That's possible too. The charges are two and a half point favorites. It's not like they're massive favorites. They're going on the road like Deont. I'm with Deonti on paper. I don't think there's a lot really separating these two teams, but just in terms of trend lines,

some of the coaching we've seen specifically on the offensive side of the ball with Houston, it's just going to be tough for me to get to a point by the end of the week where I'm like, yeah, I trust the Texans to win this game against Jim Harbaugh and Justin Herbert. I don't think I'm going to get there. All right. Now, these two, these two is where you're really going to have to earn your money

as podcasters. You're going to have to tell me why the Steelers can give the Ravens a game. Steelers have just fallen apart. Now, this weekend again, you know, this weekend was not an embarrassing performance, but they have lost four in a row, three blowouts against the Eagles, Ravens and Chiefs. They keep it close against the Bengals. They still lose that game. They are nine and a half point underdogs. I mean, it wasn't long ago where we were saying, man, Lamar's having trouble against the Steelers. Steelers have Lamar's number. And now here they are nine and a half point underdogs in Baltimore. Rees, I'm going to make you start this one. Give me the case. Let's say, you know, somebody calls you up from Pittsburgh and say, Ruiz, we're paying you $3 million to come to AccroShoor Stadium on Wednesday and give our team, give our fans a pep talk on why they can go to Baltimore and beat the Ravens. What are you telling those fine people of Western Pennsylvania?

I'm going to steal the line from Mike Tom and say, eventually they're going to burn the house down when it comes to the winning time. Like, this is what this team has done. It's burned me so many times as an analyst. Every time I'm like, no, this team's different. This is the team that's finally going to break through in the playoffs. They lose to the Titans when they're the favorites by whatever. It was probably the same spread in 2019. I don't know the pathway to victory.

I think it's just completing a bunch of explosive plays downfield, which have dried up in the Steelers passing game over the last couple of weeks. I know George Pickens was gone, but his return didn't exactly help them out in the deep passing game. The last week. So I don't know what it is. I think it's the Ravens beating themselves. That's how they lost games all season, especially to inferior opponents.

We haven't seen them lose to an inferior opponent without committing a crap load of penalties, are making mistakes, untimely drops or fumbles like that. And with the way the offense is ascending and with the way the defense has adjusted, I don't know how you can bank on that because they're not committing penalties like they were before.

They're not busting coverages like they were before. And that was the way the Steelers beat them the first time they did it. And I just don't see the game. game being competitive, but it's got to be a ball control, Mike Tomlin style game. Like he likes to say, high floor football, we don't turn the ball over, we don't commit penalties, and we force the other team to kind of lose the game themselves. I think that's the only viable path, but it's kind of hard to plan around the other team kind of shooting itself in the foot. Deontay, you got anything else for

the fine people of Western Pennsylvania? Is that it? Just get weird, play Steelers football, look up in the fourth quarter, have everyone go, wait, how is this the score? type game. Is there anything they can do from a schematic football perspective after having lost to the Ravens 3417 just a few weeks ago? You pull Cam Hayward and T.J. Watt into Mike Tomlin's office and you say, hey, we're going to win this game. It's going to be because of you too. Yeah. Beating up on their guards and tackles. And that's not outside of the realm possibility. Almost happened against Cincinnati, right? Yeah. Exactly. So you know that that's always there. Ruiz obviously kind of laid out the fact that Baltimore has just struggled.

in games like this where all they have to do is draw is color within the lines, play simple football. I do think if we're going to be confident in Baltimore, you look over the last month and you see the fact that they've really been leaning on the run game and they've been able to pop explosives in a second half as a run game with their run game. That way, obviously you're getting great play out of Lamar Jackson as well. And I think most importantly, their defensive success rate against the past has been great over the last month.

Two games over 70%. Obviously, you get a couple of weaker opponents in that. stretch, but I think the fact that they're playing more sound on the back end is it really shrinks the opportunities available for Pittsburgh to take advantage of. But if they do so, it's going to be the inexplicable Lamar strip sack, where he's trying to do too much, spin out of the pressure. T.J. Watts waiting for him, knocks the ball out of his hands. That puts the ball. It happens in the first quarter. It would happen in the first quarter. If it doesn't happen by the end of the first quarter, it's not happening. Exactly. You know, it would take something like

that, a bobbled pass off of, you know, Rashad Bateman, that turns into an interception. Some of the more inexplicable things that seem to happen to this team every time the eyes of the nation are on them. But I do think, unless you see something special from Russell Wilson in terms of extending plays without taking sacks and pushing the ball deep down field, I don't know how they muster up enough points to be able to play with this version of the Ravens offense that we've seen over the last month. Usually a Justin Tucker miss is usually like what spells doom for the Ravens in the playoffs, but they're going to need like three Justin Tucker misses and much more than that. This is how I earned my $3 million talking to the Steelers.

Remember a couple weeks ago when you guys decided to keep the ball in Derek Henry's hand on the Reed option plays? Don't do that again. He's going to run for 200 yards. He's going to run right through your face. But the problem is, what do you do? The alternative is letting Lamar Jackson do that to you. And that's really why I don't have any hope for the team or for the Steelers in this game, because we saw in the first game they were able to limit that run game because they were going under center and the Ravens were trying to play the Steelers game. When they played in the second game, Ravens got into the gun and did their little option runs. and the Steelers didn't have any answer for it.

And they haven't really had an answer for that style of run game. When you look at the splits between shotgun and under center run divins, they haven't had an answer for it all season long. This might be the worst possible team to have that specific problem against. It's the like you guys said, you need a little Tomlin magic. You need a little division rivalry game. Like Saturday night, Raven Steelers makes me feel like maybe some weirdness can happen. You mentioned Tucker, you got the kick, better kicker.

You got Chris Boswell in this game. You should be able to win. Maybe you can make a play on special teams. Zay Flowers did have the knee injury. I guess his status is unknown at this time for that game. So, you know, it's not like they're loaded with past catchers otherwise. So, yeah, I'm with you, Deonti. I think the way Cam Hayward's been playing, T.J. Watt, High Smith, her, like, they just need to make some dominant plays up front, some game-changing plays up front, turnovers.

Turnovers, sacks, even though Lamar is impossible to sack, to really. be in this game and avoid. I mean, this is a big time free fall. You get blown out in those three games. And then even that game against the Bengals, I mean, they're out game 314 to 193. Like, that's almost the kind of game they have to play here, where you look at the yardage and you're going,

how are they in this game? But again, this is how the Steelers play. You look up in the fourth quarter and you go, all right, they kind of still have a chance here. So we will see if they can give the Baltimore Ravens a game on Saturday night in that matchup. All right. last one here, the Denver Broncos against the Buffalo Bills, Bills, eight and a half point favorites.

I had the wrong greed on that Broncos Chiefs game. I thought maybe the Chiefs backup target. You know, Broncos get a little nervous. Keep it close. Nope, that game was over right after it started. 38-0. Broncos beat the Chiefs. Bow-Nicks, 26 for 29, 321 yards, and four touchdowns. also ran for 47 yards here. Deonti, this Broncos team going into Buffalo, what is their pathway to making this a competitive game in the fourth quarter that maybe it can at least have a chance to steal at the end? The only way I see this happening is if the bill's secondary just has their worst day of the year and they're able to design up enough deep shots in a play action passing game to Cortland Sutton to be able to just keep pace.

with the Bill's offense, because I do think, in terms of a style of quarterback that can give Vance Joseph problems, it's a guy that's difficult to sack, right? And I thought we saw that when they played the Chiefs the first time. And they played well against the Chiefs, right? But what ultimately happened was they were getting a lot of negative plays on first and second down. And then Patrick Mahomes would just get into extension mode. And now those five, those five mayor pressures are basically rendered useless because he's getting away from unblocked guy. He's getting out of muddy pockets. And then you just don't have enough bodies on the back end to be able to match up one-on-one with their receivers.

So I don't know if, I don't know if Denver's defense can do enough to kind of tamp down on what Buffalo has been doing offensively. This to me will come down to Bo Nix and Sean Payton having that perfect mind-meld. It looks like they do at certain times in the game where the play action passes are just bringing wide open receivers and Nick's is able to work within structure and push the ball deep down field. See, I'm kind of more optimistic about Denver's chances in this game. Out of these two games that we just discussed, I think this is the one that has a chance

to be close in the fourth quarter. I agree with that. I was just asking myself that same question, and I'm like, yeah, I think that's right if I had to choose one of them. Just because of how Buffalo's offense has operated this year, when it's at its best.

Like, not when Josh Allen is in creation mode, because I agree, if Josh Allen goes into God mode on third down, even if it's third and long, it's not going to matter what Vance Joseph calls. It's not going to matter what the Broncos do in this game. They're going to lose it. That's what happens when you go up against

one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. But if you can win the battle on first down, where the bills are a run for, team on first down and second down. They operate more like Detroit's offense and we have given them credit for just because we see that quarterback and think he's the alien who makes everything go. No, they've been an under center run team that hits on play action passes from under center on first and second down.

It's been more like a system quarterbacky type of approach. And we've seen Vance Joseph be able to win those battles on first and second down throughout the season. That's why they've had success. So if Buffalo can get Josh Allen into third and long, which I think is very popular. possible without giving up a bunch of play action passes on first and second down and make this a third and long game and you just survive Josh Allen on third and long that I think you have a chance of keeping this competitive. And I'm not counting out Sean Payton from scheming up a game

plan against a secondary that is, it's not the best secondary in the NFL. It's not overwhelmingly talented. I think you can get rid of the ball quickly, mitigate that pass rush, force their defensive backs to tackle, let's see if it happens. On the other hand, Sean McDermott does have that secondary flying to the football and tackling. He has those secondary players playing like linebackers. But if you force a few mistackles, I think it could be a good game for the Broncos' offense. And I think they match up kind of good with Buffalo's offense. The Peyton point, I think, is the one.

I think if we are talking about on Sunday night after this game, the Broncos keeping it close or even winning this game, we're saying, Sean Peyton, man, he's still, and we've said that at times this year. Sean Payton's still guys fastball. Man, what a game plan he put together there. So he has done it. They have overachieved this year. They are in the playoffs. I was looking at all their results this year. They've only lost one game by more than seven points. Now, I know it wasn't the toughest schedule out there, but that Ravens game, 41 to 10, they lose to the Ravens. Other than that, you know, they played the Chiefs tough. The one time with Patrick Mahomes, that was what a, you know, a very close game when they played them. You had the special

teams thing there at the end. So that was their probably biggest test, but they haven't got blown out. They haven't got blown out other than that one game. So can you create some chaos defensively? And I'm with you. I kind of think their offense has a chance against that Bill's defense. You know, can you methodically put together drives? Bo Nix avoids the negative plays, which he's done, mostly a good job of for most of the season, then maybe you have a chance to be in it there in the fourth quarter. I just want it on record I'm picking Buffalo. I'm not picking Denver. I was just simply.

Yeah, I'm going to say, please. I do not want to be mistaken for what I'm saying. Simply making the case. And don't look into this any further, but they outscored the Chiefs by 36 points of their two matchups, 18 points, an 18 point margin in the games. There you go. I might.

I will consider taking the Broncos with the points there. Eight and a half big spread. But tough one, tough one. The most likely scenario is obviously Baltimore goes to Buffalo. What do you think about the draws here? Let's finish this with the AFC. Ruiz, you've been bullish on this Ravens team from before this season to now. Now their draw is Steelers at home, potentially at Buffalo, at KC, divisional round, championship round.

We've been talking about it for a while. It's not the easiest draw after you get out of the wild card round. You've got to be Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes on the road. Are they up for it? And then same question with the bills here. You get the Broncos in the first round, but then you've got to. got to take on Lamar Jackson and potentially Patrick Mahomes in the next two rounds to get to the Super Bowl. How do you feel about kind of the paths for those two teams going in?

I honestly don't hate it. I like the fact that they're playing Buffalo before they have to conquer the Chiefs demon that has been tormenting them for the last couple of years. Obviously, they've had problems with Buffalo in the playoffs. They lost to them. I think it was at 2020. I think it was. But I don't know. I think it kind of this matchup, especially in Buffalo with Derek Henney, I think it kind of goes in their

favorite because Derek Henry is a hard man to tackle no matter what, but in the cold, he becomes even harder to tackle, especially when you're playing five defensive backs all the time, like 95% of the time. So I don't hate this matchup, and I really like the wildcard matchup. I don't think there's any chance that this game gets too weird. It's a familiar opponent. I don't think they're going to have any wild cards sprung on them like they had against Tennessee in 2019. So I don't hate it. They're going to have to go through Buffalo and Kansas City eventually. The order doesn't really matter. This is life in the AFC, man. the path in the AFC, you're going to have to face hall.

You're going to have to beat multiple Hall of Fame quarterbacks, really, to get to the Super Bowl. I was the thing of that compared to the NFC right now. You're not facing anybody who's going to the Hall of Fame to get to the Super Bowl in the NFC. So yeah, it's little halves and have-nots with these superstar quarterbacks right now. But I swear to God, if Mike Tomlin or Sean Payton cost us the Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen playoff game, I don't know what I would do. I don't want to say anything that it lends me on a list, but I don't know what I'd do.

I'd be very mad. I wouldn't show up for the podcast that weekend. Yeah, I was going to say, we'll think of something before we record the podcast after those games. All right, we will take a break. We'll come right back with our awards for Week 18. All right, we are back on the Ringer NFL show. Last awards and superlatives for the regular season.

What a moment. All right, let's see what we got here. We've had some news break to kind of. throughout the course of the day. So we'll get to some of that. Ruiz, start us off. What do you got? I'm going to give Robert and Jonathan Kraft

official ownership of the Patriots franchise now. I feel like all ties to Bill Belichick have been completely severed now that Gerard Mayo has been fired after exactly one season on the job. But really, this is what the crafts, I guess, have been looking for over the past couple years, is to take back control of this franchise

that has been so led by Bill Belichick over the past 20, years. And I have to say, their first major decision, they're already taking the L on it, backing off of Gerard Mayer, a coach that they had earmarked as the successor to Bill Belichick for years in advance of hiring him and to pull the plug after one year. I feel like that's the biggest red flag we've seen from this team all season along. You could say Gerard Mayo didn't handle end-of-game situations, game management situations. Well, you could say that he flubbed a couple of press conferences calling his team soft at the beginning of the year

was a bit of a mistake. But everything ties back to Robert and Jonathan Kraft because I feel like we've given them the benefit of the doubt for being a good ownership group just because they've won a bunch of Super Bowls. But we've never seen a coach like Bill Belichick who's had the control, the extent of control that he had over this franchise for 25 years.

So I don't know how much credit we should give them for any of those Super Bowl wins. And their work in the year after Belichick, Keeping the team has not been inspiring. And I think the only reason for optimism is Drake May, but we've seen incompetent ownership and a tumultuous coaching situation kind of ruined a promising quarterback many times in the past couple of years. So I don't know. I got my eye on the Patriots now.

I was very optimistic about their future just because of Drake May and how he's looked all year long. But this Strad Mayo situation is very concerning. The funny thing to me about it was all the issues that existed with the Patriots knew about literally from day one. like you knew that they had some square pegs in round holes defensively up front you traded away your best pass rusher before the season even started you knew that you needed to make some adjustments on that side of the ball in the coming off seasons no matter what it looked like this year I think I think that what we saw by the season's end was that Drake May was maybe a little bit more ready to be a starter

than it might have been put out there before time but ahead of time I don't know if anybody necessarily needs to be criticized about that obviously I can't speak on what the energy was like in the building on a day-to-day basis. I know that was kind of referenced by the crafts in terms of just like, oh, you know, locker room, feelings and team culture and whatever. And I think that sometimes that can be used amorphously to just say, we didn't like the cut of this guy's jib and we just wanted to move on, which to me is a perfectly fine reason to get rid of a coach.

If you feel like he doesn't align with where you want this franchise to go after a year and you were bad, that's justification enough. I don't know. It seems like they're almost digging for me. reasons, digging for rationalizations to let the guy go. I just think that Stephen kind of hit the nail on the head. Like, since Bill Belichick left, what I know of this team, what I know of this ownership group without Bill Belichick and Tom Brady is that they were afraid to name a GM in the offseason. It took them forever. We got to the combine and it was not clear who was actually

making personnel decisions at the table for them. The Gerard Mayo thing was basically the only thing that they did cleanly throughout the process where everybody kind of knew that that's where they were leaning and that's how it landed. You got the right quarterback. I think, and I've noted this in power rankings before, this is just life in the regular NFL.

When you don't have the most accomplished quarterback and the greatest coach of all time, welcome to what it's like. You have to make hard decisions sometimes. You have to kind of bite the bullet with the rebuild at times and say, hey, we would have liked to have gone six and 11 instead of four and 13,

but sometimes that's just got to be what it is. and we know that we're going to have to spend money as an ownership group in order to dig ourselves out of this hole. So I think the only way that I can feel coming out of this is if the crafts feel like this is the kind of organization that's that close to being competitive again. And Gerard Mayo was an obstacle between them and being more competitive. I want to see them not free agency out of the park. I want to see them approach to draft differently than they have prior to. I want to see them really address some of the holes that exist on this roster and bring in the kind of head. coach that would quell any questions that we might have about this ownership group. I think that

now it has changed my focus from just the development of Drake Mates, really looking at the franchise as a whole. And now the 2025 season, I think, it's under a much bigger magnifying glass than it would have been otherwise. Yeah, I'm split on this because I agree with kind of everything both you said, but I think like you look at Gerard Mayo and if I were making the case for Gerard Mayo, I would say, this team sucked last year. Bill Belichick put together the worst roster in the NFL. I mean, let's just call it what it is. There is not a lot of talent there.

And then, like you said, you bring in Elliott Wolf. And his move was basically to just, I didn't have like an issue with like any one single move, but they were basically bringing everybody back that was on the previous roster. So what am I, why would I expect this team to be better than last year's team that went four and 13 with Bill Freak and Belichick coaching the team? You know, you shouldn't. And it's year one of a coach, of a head coach. There's just going to be some growing pains.

We see that throughout the course of NFL history. Now, having said that at the same time, I didn't watch this team this year and think that's a well-coached team or we were never on here going, hey, they put together a great game plan this one week. Gerard Mayo, great week for him. He showed us something. So I can't say like, oh, man, there's a lot of signs there that he's going to get it. So if they look at it and say, we made a mistake. We got to change a lot of things. This is one of the things we have to change.

But to your point, Deonté, we got to change a lot of the stuff with personnel and the roster because we have a quarterback who looks ready. Like right now, like his rookie, they have to be thinking rookie contract, Drake May, what can we be with this guy? Let's spend. Let's surround him. Let's try to win. It's a different timeline than it was even three months ago when the guy hadn't seen the field yet.

Like, I've seen enough. I think you guys have seen enough from him there, too. But I think, Ruiz, you're right, too. They made one move. They hired Bill Belichick. That set them up for two decades. What else have they done? Why?

There's no other reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. The personnel stuff has been a disaster. Really, since Tom Brady left, they've been a disaster. It's been a PR campaign. It's been documentaries. It's been leaking this, leaking this, changing your mind on Gerard Mayo. I mean, wasn't it two weeks ago that Gerard Mayo, unless the last three, weeks or train wreckers. That's no way to choose a head coach based on what he does in the last

three weeks in games that don't matter. Like, either you've been paying attention the whole time and think he's got the potential to grow into this role and you're going to support him and go with it or you don't think he's the guy. And like Deonte said, that's fine. They're closer to it than we are. They're seeing the day to day. If they see it and say he's not the guy, that's their prerogative. But yeah, I'm with you. Like this is shaping up to be a situation where we're here next year. at this time going, you like Drake May? Yeah, I thought Drake May was great. You like Drake May?

Yeah, are they going to be able to figure out how to surround Drake May and produce a winning franchise? No, are you crazy? Look at the move. Like, that's where I think this is headed regardless of just the coaching chain. And the roster's not an offseason away. That's the biggest issue. They have to fix this offensive line.

They've got to bring in some veteran receivers that are more consistent on a down-to-down basis. And they've got a lot of work to do on the defensive side of the ball at all three levels. So, again, maybe there is a head coach. out there that they know they can bring in. Obviously, the rumors have been Mike Vrabel, that he's been eye on this job, and that's something that they would be interested in. And I guess if you're going to pitch the fact that, like, the day-to-day just vibes in the building were bad, Mike Vrable has a reputation of being an organizer in a way where that might not be an issue, but that doesn't say anything to me about what the on-field product is going to be. And even when he

took over in Tennessee, it took them multiple years to kind of build around Ryan Tannihill to get to point where they could actually be quasi competitive on a year to year basis with other contenders. This is not that situation where you're just looking to maximize the talents you have around you and squeeze the blood from stones. You have a legitimate guy who could legitimately be in the top five conversation as a quarterback by the end of his rookie deal. I want to see something maybe a little bit more imaginative. And maybe that's what we get out of this.

It just does not, it's not clear to me right now that the Kraft family isn't just Dan Gilbert who happened to land on, you know, Bill Belichick. as basically your biggest coaching hire. That's well said. That's one of those where I'm like, I wish I would have thought about that. That was good. Ruiz, are we doing, is Brable the right guy?

I mean, is that just where this is headed? Do you think they thought we, hey, he's available. He's looking. Let's pounce now. We know him. Owners want someone they're comfortable with, not necessarily the best candidate. Would he be the best guy if you're trying to build a thing around Drake May right now?

I don't know if the goal is building around Drake May. I don't know what Mike Vrable has done throughout his career to kind of earn the benefit of the doubt there. I've seen a lot of fan bases pushback against the idea of pairing Brian Flores with a young quarterback. Why don't we talk about how Mike Vrable handled the Malik Willis situation? Malik Willis leaves Tennessee and looks like a promising young prospect now. After one year with Matt LaFleur, they didn't even change the offense for the guy when he had to start late in the year when he got his cameo appearances in Tennessee. It's like they barely gave him a chance to succeed.

I wouldn't want my young promising quarterback prospects in the hands of a guy who's known for kind of being a guy with a short temper who's more like a rah-rah in your face. I'm going to give you hard love or tough love and kind of mold you through that. I don't know if that's going to work with Drake May. I don't know if it's going to work with any young quarterback, so I'd be kind of wary of that.

I get the connection to the franchise. I get the past successes in Tennessee. But, I mean, I don't think he's earned his bona fides as a coach where he's a guy that should be able to walk into a job, especially one as prestigious and promising as this one with Drake May there. And by the way, Brabils, I like providing Brable is a good coach, but his tenure in Tennessee ends with a power struggle with the GM. Are you bringing Brable in and handing him the keys?

Is he making personnel decisions? Is he working with the existing guys you have in place? Like, I don't know. Are you blowing it up and starting anew? Like, those are things that they have to decide. and his success in Tennessee was largely, largely based on Arthur Smith did a fantastic job. Now, I don't know if I'm sure Rabel can coach different aspects of the team, but like Arthur Smith did a very good job with that offense,

which did have Derek Henry and A.J. Brown, by the way, at that time. And that was really lifting the entire team. Like, I don't know. If you're Ben Johnson, is this the most attractive job on the market? Go coach Drake May if you have your choice of different places. Now, I don't know anything about Ben Johnson as like a leader or culture or any. I feel like I almost don't know anything about the guy other than, man, his offense is beautiful. And I love the hook and ladders that he mixes in.

I don't know a lot about him other than that. But I don't know. That was a thought that I was like, oh, Ben Johnson with Drake May sounds interesting to me. I didn't hate Alex Van Pelt from what I saw of him in his first year as a play call either. And the guy, like, when you go through his lineage and like what he's been through as a play caller, like the guy has an impressive resume of guys he's worked with and worked under. that's the type of coach that I would be looking for as a play caller, a guy who kind of has his feet in all these different schemes we celebrate throughout the NFL instead of just being like fast track through the Shanahan School of thought.

That's how you end up with a Bobby Slovak. I like a guy who has a more diverse coaching background. And Alex Van Pelt was one of those guys. And when you watch them on film, you could see a purpose for how they attacked in the passing game. All right. Then we'll see what happens. That was the first dominoe to fall. By the time you listen to this, there might be others.

we will, of course, be talking about all the head coaching stop for all the teams that didn't make the playoffs also in the weeks ahead here. All right, Deontay, what do you have? What's your first award? Look, I mean, if you were watching Week 18, you saw a lot of teams that were ready to turn in their helmets and gear and get to their vacation spot. I don't know if anybody felt that more than Tyreek Hill coming off the field in week 18. I know, Sheila, you said that you had missed this and getting prepped for the show. Yeah. So I'm going to read you the quote verbatim from Tyreek Hill. this is my first time I haven't been in the playoffs.

I just got to do what's best for me and my family. If that's here or wherever the case may be, I'm going to open that door for myself. I'm opening the door. I'm out, bro. It was great playing here, but at the end of the day, bro, I got to do what's best for my career.

I'm too much of a competitor to just be out there. And in the hour following, while the team is putting out statements saying that Mike McDaniel will be back, Chris Greer will be back. You know, they're looking forward to the next season trying to continue to build this offense. Tyree Kilville follows it up with the tweet, basically given the thank you post to Dolphins fans. It's been fun.

It's been real. I'll see you guys down the line someplace. So I don't know where that leaves the dolphins, but when you look at his cap situation, you look at Tua's contract extension and you start laying out just the financials of where the dolphins are going to be in relation to where they are competitively. And amongst the AFC teams, it's going to be really hard, even if they were amenable to Tyreeks' request to be out for them to release him or trade him and be able to get commensurate value in return. The dead cap is almost, almost makes us a non-starter. I think it's like $48, $49 million

if he were to be cut ahead of the 2025 season. And as a trade suitor, you're talking about a guy on the wrong side of 30 that's what, sub 510 and is probably not as fast now as he was two, three years ago and it's taken a ton of targets over the last half decade. I don't know if a guy like this ever hits the cliff, but if there is one for a player as talented as Tyree Kill, I think that this season was maybe the first time you can kind to get a peek at that. And you would definitely be buying the worst years of his career going forward. So I'm not sure where this leaves the Dolphins or for Tyree Kill, but I think this is a messy

situation. And if you're Mike McDaniel and Chris Greer, now your 2025 is set up to be maybe the hardest that you've had so far in your tenure here. Who gets out of Miami first? Jimmy Butler or Tyree Koehl? Oh, Jimmy Butler. That's definitely Jimmy Butler. That's a good segue to my next award here.

But, yeah, Tyreek Killed, 939 yards is his fewest since, are his fewest since 2019, 11.9 yards per reception are the second lowest of his career. He's entering his age 31 season next year. and like you said, Deante, it's not like they, you know, it isn't like a cap

casualty where they can, so tricky situation, sounds like a situation that is going to get a lot of headlines and a lot of podcast air over the next few months if he definitely wants out.

Because if you're a contender and you're thinking short term and, you know, then I could see you saying, all right, this is just for one or two years, you're taking a flyer on him. But yeah,

I don't know, 31 year old wide receivers. Less need. F them picks, less need. No, no. She'll,

Shield can start doing the pod prep now. That's Harry Roseman's music. No. A big name that we could take a chance on. Not with A.J. Brown and Devante Smith. That would be a disaster. Otherwise, yes. Otherwise, you're correct.

How about Lamar? We were throwing out names before. No, no. I do not need another undersized receiver for Lamar Jackson. Especially one who forgot how to catch deep balls all of a sudden this year. When he ends up back with the chiefs, so we're all going to be disappointed. I told Deontay, where was this trade request eight weeks ago? we could have solved a lot of problems.

If they would have just sold him, traded him at the deadline during the season, that would have solved everybody's problem there. But, oh, well, he waited. Don't wait too long. Listen, if you're going to get the complaints out, that's a lesson for everybody. Get the complaints, the trade request.

Get it out there when you first think of it. Someone's telling you, now's not a good time. It might be the best time. You could be playing in the playoffs. People say, if you love them, let them go. I think that this might be an exercise in the other side of this. If you got a good situation, man,

don't look for greener grass. I will say this. I feel like Tyreek made up his mind mid-sentence there because when you started the quote, he was like, I don't know if it's going to be here or somewhere else. And then at the end, he was like, I'm out, bro. I'm out. Sometimes you got to talk it out. By the end of it, you realize where you're going. All right, you talked about Jimmy Butler. I got the Jimmy Butler Award for Finding Joy again. You know what I'm talking. He just wants to get. This goes to Bryce Young. I'm sorry, Ruiz. You're not going to like it. But Bryce Young today was loving life again. He was playing well. I don't know, without looking at film or anything.

It felt like it might have been his best game of the season. 25 for 34, 251 yards. Every time I was watching that game, he was making big time throws, three touchdowns, no interceptions, no sacks, ran for two more touchdowns. Dave Canales fired up at the end of that game there. So I'm not saying he's definitely the answer and he's going to be awesome,

but let's get the man, another wide receiver next year. It looked like the offensive line was holding up well today. let's add some pieces to the defense and you can just hear me now, can't you? July, August, Shield's picking the Panthers to win the NFC South. What's wrong with them? So that's where this thing is headed.

You picked the NFC. You picked them to make the playoffs at the end of September. Listen, Bryce Young found joy again this year. I didn't think he was going to play for the Panthers again. It's also a great what if. If Andy Dalton doesn't get in that car accident, what is Bryce Young doing next year? Andy Dalton was the quarterback, gets in the car accident,

Bryce Young goes back in there, and now Bryce Young's going to be their quarterback next year. So there you go. Ruiz doesn't want to hear it. It was his best game, and I think he made two, like I thought people were kind of jumping the gun, celebrating his performance over the first three quarters when they were just popping like schemed up plays,

the little leak plays out of the backfield, the pass where he turns around, the guy's wide open in the end zone, Tommy Trimble. But he made a great throw over the middle on third, I think he was third and eight on a little dig route. The whole shot against Cover 2 down the sideline late in the game. That was another good one. Those were two throws that we haven't really seen on his tape,

those strong, driven throws. A lot of the times with a lot of his highlight throws, they are soft tosses, which don't require the arm strength of a first round prospect. And I'll just say this, those end zone angles, when you watch it, when you rewatch the All-22, they are very damning. That's all I'm going to say. There's a lot of quacking going on. The ball flutters.

There's a lot of fluttering. Those balls are quacking is all I'm going to say. say, I know Payton Manning threw a lot of touchdowns that quack, but that's Paid Manning. And he was 40 years old. Try to give you a moment. Bryce Young, let the record show on the Ringer NFL show. I was there for you. They wouldn't let me have it even in Week 18.

Unbelievable. All right. Ruiz, what do you got? What's your next award? I'm going to give Doug Peterson the most unnecessary extra work award. This is a guy that's been on the golf course. His mind's been on the golf course all season long. So I thought it was very fitting that the final Jaguars game, a game that I didn't

see one play out. I didn't see one play from Jaguars. I didn't see a single snap of this game. It was very fitting that that game went into overtime and Doug Peterson was supposed to was forced to coach even more than he's wanted to all season. What a great ending to the Jaguars terrible, terrible season. Do you know where the Jaguars ranked in offensive DVLA? This shocked bit when I was looking it up earlier today. It's got like 23rd? 16. I mean, that was the thing was like when Trevor was in there. His stats were like really good. Like people were like, oh my God, Trevor's a butt. and then he looked at his EPA, he's like top 10 in EPA every week. I feel like the offense wasn't that bad.

The problem was turnovers and the defense was terrible. Yeah. I didn't realize that because I stopped paying much attention to this team a while ago. Mac Jones starts, what, six or seven games, and you still finish 16th in DVOA. Like they were, they're ahead of teams like the Seahawks, the Broncos, the Dolphins, the Texans, certainly. I was 16. I was like, man, Doug, I thought you mailed it in. See, that's a pretty good accomplishment.

Like, it's not going to be right there with winning a Super Bowl and beating Bill Belichick, but now maybe the first page. It's getting to 16th and offensive DVOA with this team. Doesn't sound like it's that bad, but I have a feeling it's not going to be enough for Doug. You think Doug's going to get a job next year? Is that what you're saying? Hired Doug Peterson? No, I think Doug is done coaching and he'll enjoy a, he'll have a nice,

dress-free 2025, Doug. So here's to you. All right, Deontae, what do you got? Anything else? So this is my second and last one. This is the wire my eyes watering award. I'm giving this to Mike Evans for clearing the 1,000 yard mark to Ty, Jerry Rice, from the most thousand yards season, consecutive thousand yards seasons in a career.

It was funny watching it because you knew that that's all that everybody on the field cared about. Once it became clear that the Bucks are going to win the football game, I appreciated the fact that Saints defenders were kind of clearing out. They didn't necessarily give up on the play, but they definitely wanted to make sure that they weren't the asshole who tackled him at like 4.8 yards to keep him short of getting across the market and waiting until he was ready to give himself up. But just seeing an entire sideline come alive to celebrate the guy,

he's able to have that moment. It's going to be a really interesting kind of conversation about his career because he spent so much of it in a low profile market relative to the others in the NFL in Tampa Bay. But the fact that he has been a thousand yard or better receiver, with basically every kind of quarterback that has ever made the NFL speaks to his consistency, his ability to produce at a high level. There was a point in time where I wasn't sure if he was hitting the cliff or not a couple of years ago

and you just look up and it's another thousand yard season, another thousand yard season after that. So I'm really looking forward to hearing his perspective on the game as he gets closer to retirement. I think that he'll end up ultimately being a Hall of Famer and it was nice to see a guy be this productive, basically from day one in his career. Yeah, well, well said. It's like one of those guys that you remember like, man, where was I when he was coming out of the draft? And wait, what job did I have?

Did I have a case? He's just been a constant in your NFL viewing and analyzing life. Like you said, year and year out, whether the bucks are good, bad, have a quarterback, don't have a quarterback. Guess what? Look up, look at the pro football reference page. And there it is again. Mike Evans had over a thousand yards.

I do have a question for you guys. if Marshall Latimore is still a saint, do you think that he gives up that play? I was about to say, Mike Evans reward for getting a thousand yards is another matchup with Marshawn Laddimore. There's probably going to be a punch or two thrown in that matchup, but absolutely not.

There's no way Marchand. They would have had to bench Marshawn Latimore to make sure that Mike Evans could get the catch to be able to cross the thousand yards. Are we going to get a moment in a documentary 20 years from now where Jerry Rice is confronting like Alante Taylor for letting him get like Mark Gastonot and Brett Farb? Castano, yeah, that's what I was just thinking of when Diate was mentioning that. I'm like, wait, you think, oh, okay, this could come back to bite somebody in a very awkward clip 20 years from now. All right. I've got two more here. One is very quick. Just box score number I couldn't believe. The Chiefs had five first downs today. Five first downs. Week 18, they did it. The fewest of any team in a game this entire season. Congratulations.

to the Kansas City Chiefs and to the regular listeners, yes, one of my picks for our contest was Chiefs plus ten and a half. Did not work out, great for your boy here. 18 minutes time of possession. 18 minutes. I'm just happy that we avoided any idea

or any inkling of a Carson Wentz redemption. So we do not need one. We've already got Baker, we got Sam Darnel, we had Gina, maybe we get Bryceon. We do not need a Carson Went's redemption narrative. And I'm happy that the Broncos and Vance Joseph snuffed it out early. I want to know what the text message was that Joe Burrough sent to Patrick Mahomes

that that Zach Taylor sent to Andy Reid today because I think that you're looking at that saying, we could have made this a little bit more competitive. I'm sure Joe Burrow was able to turn his TV off and start thinking about where he was going to spend the winner before the end of the first quarter. At least he didn't have to watch the full game through. That is on my radar, though, Ruiz. Here's what happens now this time of year is that people take the wrong lessons from the previous year.

I've already seen stuff about Zach Wilson and stuff like, let's look at every situation like individually isolated. Just because Sam Darnold had a good year with Kevin O'Connell doesn't mean your sorry franchise is going to take Zach Wilson and win 14 games next year. So these things are on my radar and I'm going to be yelling about them. This isn't going to be the last time you hear it from me in the weeks and months ahead. I heard the broadcast booth talk about this week 18 game was proof that Aaron Rogers can see. still play and contribute to winning in this league. What are we doing? Hey, not a bad take.

Not a bad take. Someone might have had the same take three weeks ago on the midweeks. There you go. All right. So that was one. And then my last one here, CTC coach of the year goes to Kevin O'Connell. Now you're saying, what are you talking about?

You did CTC for those that don't know, cut the check. But I see a little report on my timeline earlier today. Jay Glazer reports that multiple teams are considering making a trade offer for Kevin O'Connell, who has one year left on his contract. That's good agent work right there. You didn't read the report right. It was possibly attempting. It was like thinking about possibly attempting.

The bare minimum, it's like someone called up, it's like Kevin O'Connell's agent called up like a front office. It was like, hey, if like the Vikings just wanted a seventh round pick for Kevin O'Connell, would you think about doing it? And they were like, yeah, why wouldn't I? And then they ran a Fox and Jay Glazer and he reported. Listen, Sheal, you're in Pennsylvania. I have watched James Franklin take the inkling of a USC job or an NFL job or another SEC job right into that negotiating table to get another two to three years tacked on to the end of that deal. This is excellent agent work, excellent up the deal for a couple, a few more millions and a couple more year. Pick the worst day to do it, though.

Well, he did get it out in the morning before the game. Yeah, so yeah, this is a compliment. Don't get. I mean, this is fantastic. Like, I would love to know the circumstances by which the Vikings were like, let's trade Kevin O'Connell after we just went 14 and 3 and he just Sam Darn got the best out of San Darno. I wonder what we could get for. I mean, just a blatant move to put pressure on the owners to get an extension done. And good. Make those owners spend their money. Coaches, players, trainers, GMs, ball boys. Make those greedy owners. Spend a little money. Do what you need to do. So good job, Kevin O'Connell. and Kevin O'Connell's agent. Yeah, we need more coach trades, by the way. Not enough coach trade. 100%. Big agree.

All right. You know what thought I had. Now that you brought it up when I was watching the game Saturday, could you picture Mike Tomlin wearing the Ditka Bears Fest? I'm just asking a question here. I literally was just going to throw out hypothetical out there. What would you give up? If you were the Bears and the Steelers, like, you got inkling that,

all right, this thing is run its course in Pittsburgh, and you can have Tomlin for the Caleb Williams era here, bring some stability to the franchise. What are you willing to give up from Mike Tom? I'm giving up a top 100 pick. I'm giving up Soldier Field. I'm giving up the memory of the 1985 Bears. I'll give the Steelers credit for that Super Bowl. You can have Mike Singletary.

You can have the 46 defense. Second round pick, let's see, when are, because the bears are picking 10, so I don't think you're going to give the time. You're not going to get this year's first round pick. Although maybe some type of pick swap or something like that, I'm just saying, I feel like there might be more interesting places Mike Tomlin could go now that we've seen how this Steelers season has ended. All right. There you go.

Anything else? Have we covered it all? I think we're good. Let's get to the postseason. Let's call it. Let's move on to the playoffs. We got playoffs coming up next weekend. It's going to be awesome.

Other stuff coming up as well. We talked about Gerard Mayo. Our wonderful colleague, Nora Princiotti, will be writing a column on the Patriots, Gerard Mayo. She's, of course, got ties to that franchise. So check that out on the ringer here. in the next day or two. And then on this feed, where Prince Yates got a special

Josh Allen episode, a deep dive into the very unique relationship that the good people of Buffalo have with their star quarterback. So look out for that on the ringer NFL feed. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you to Deonté Lee and Stephen Ruiz. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing.

Thank you to Tucker to Sheegen for video. Additional production supervision by Connor Nevin. Arjuna Ramgapal and of course our friend Dan Comer. We will be back later this week talking more playoffs, head coach firings and everything else on the ringer NFL show. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C. Gambling problem.

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