The Ringer NFL Show - Week 2 Recap: Miami’s Incredible Comeback Win, Raiders Fall to 0-2, Trey Lance’s Injury, and More

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz are joined by Benjamin Solak to discuss Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins' historic comeback win on the road against the Ravens (1:52). Then, they briefly discuss the Niners' victory over the Seahawks, before talking about what Trey Lance’s season-ending injury means for him, the Niners' outlook this season, and in the future (23:50). After that, Nora and Steven get to their winners and losers, which includes the Jaguars, Lions, Patriots, Bucs, and more (36:56). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz Guest: Benjamin Solak Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mac Jones is ripped. Matt Patricia's calling plays. The Celtics are title favorites. And The Ringer has a new Boston show. I'm Brian Barrett, host of Off the Pike, the show covering all things Boston sports. I'll have shows multiple times a week covering your favorite teams and with your favorite ringer and local guests.

Plus, maybe Bill will stop by to rant about the socks. Follow off the pike with me, Brian Barrett, now on Spotify. The Sunday edition of the Ringer NFL show. I'm Nora Pinceotti. Week 2 is almost in the books. We have had absolutely crazy finishes today in Dolphins, Bengals, Cowboys, Raiders, Cardinals, and we're going to break it all down here.

As always, I've got my trusty co-captain Stephen Ruiz here. How has your football Sunday been, Stephen? It's been good. It started off on the wrong foot because I am, I have been anti-Tua, but it leveled off. It leveled off. Yeah, this is the elephant in the room, because for our headline segment,

we've got the wonderful Benjamin Solac here as well. Ben, it took you a little minute to get on this Zoom to record this podcast. And I'm going to be honest with you. Steven and I were speculating that you weren't going to show because you weren't going to want to talk about two in the dolphins. What say you? No, I very much wanted to show. I'm a little discombobulated in life right now. I got poison ivy.

Okay, things are going on in the world. But I'm excited to talk about Tua because it's very interesting. It was a really interesting game. It was cool to see this work. It absolutely was cool to see like, Well, I'm sure we'll talk about how this Dolphins offense happened, but it was like, last year it was like, oh, the Dolphins is working for two, they scored 24 points. This year, they scored 42. It's awesome.

Like, this could work. This is very exciting. But we have to be honest about it, and I'm sure we'll do that over time. So, okay, let's just get into it because it was kind of insane. The Dolphins ended up beating Lamar Jackson and the Ravens, 42 to 38. They mounted this insane comeback with 28 points in the fourth quarter, wound up with 547 yards of total offense. Six passing touchdowns for Tua.

Very, very healthy. And the majority of that was because Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle just went off. Tyreek had 11 catches for 190 and two touchdowns. Waddle 11 catches for 171 yards and two touchdowns. It was the first time that two teammates had each had 10 plus receptions, 150 plus receiving yards, and two receiving touchdowns. touchdowns each in the same game.

Ben, what did you see that led to those guys being just incredibly open? Yeah. So let's step back into last year. Last year, the Dolmins are trying to make Tua work. And they've got like a weird offensive coordinator set out of the three dudes involved. And they're running the super RPO heavy offense. One step drop. We're going to put the ball in the belly of the running back.

If we like our look for the one route we're looking at, we're going to bang, throw it right now. You want to get this ball out very quickly. Our offensive line isn't good. Tua is very accurate. He's got a very zippy arm, fast. release we can take advantage these underneath windows and that's how we're going to move it down the field. And at the time we were like, yeah, this is the offense that makes the most sense for Tuva. He was an RPO quarterback in Alabama. He has such great short intermediate accuracy. This is

good. It's just this is a limited offense because it's going to inherently be nickel and dimey. It's going to kind of be trying to cheese one defender, two defenders, and you can get caught by rotations and blitzes. This is going to be limited. They change offensive systems. Mike McDaniel comes in and we're all kind of saying like, all right, they're probably still going be pretty RPO heavy. We've seen them use a lot of RPAs with Jimmy. Like, well, we kind of get how this is going to work. And then in week one against the Patriots, they ran two total RPO's. I don't have the RPA numbers for week two, but you do not see a lot of RPO's in this game against the Ravens either. In week one, they were very clear that they wanted to push

the ball down the field. Tua is one of the league leaders in average air yards per attempt, passes more than 20 air yards down the field, deep shots. They were play action, boot, rollout, long drops. Even with Tua not having the longest arm in the league, they still said, hey, we have unbelievable team speed. We have not just Jaylen Waddell and Tyreek Hill, which like, let's stop there, not just Jalen Wattel, Tyree Kill. We have freaking Jaylon and Tyree Kill.

Like, this is just insane explosiveness off the ball. Like, we are on you right now. There are a place where Tua drops back, like a three-step drop and he throws on his back foot. And you as a football watcher like, yeah, the receiver's going to be about 10 yards deep. I've seen 10 million quarterbacks take three-step drops. I know where roughly the receiver's going to be.

And Waddle's like 17 yards down the field. Like, how did you get there that fast? That's nuts. So Waddle and Terry Kill, but then also Mike Gisicki, who's going to be one of the fastest, best seam running tight ends that you have. And then also Albert Wilson, who's like a fast receiver, a quick receiver, go with the ball in his hands.

And then also Chase Edmonds coming out of the backfield, Rahim Moster running the football, so on and so forth. We have unreal team speed. So we are going to lengthen this field. We are going to send dudes flying down the field, and we're going to do it consistently. We're going to use play action. We're going to use polars on play action

to get our offensive linemen in advantageous blocks. We're going to get extra bodies into protection with play action with using our tight ends, and we are going to find a way to lengthen this field, and then we'll hit our deep shots, but we'll also hit our intermediate shots and our short shots. And because we have made this field so long by running Tyree Kill at you,

by running Jalen Wadle at you, our underneath stuff and our intermediate stuff has more room to operate. The ball gets to Jaylon Waddle's hands 12 yards down the field, and there's not that many people around. There's one guy to beat. And if you beat some, the safety's 30 yards deep. There's room for this guy to run.

So you had 220 total of his yards in this game off of after the catch. That's an extremely high number. The only higher number we've seen over the last, the first two weeks of the season is Rust in week one with 230. That was he was throwing constantly

behind the line of scrimmage. Two was throwing 10 yards down the field, right? He had an average off the target of 7.5. So what you end up with is a really, really, really cool effect late in the game. Because remember, the Dolphins only scored

14 points in the first three quarters. Two was having interceptions in the red zone. They were struggling to run the football. The Ravens' defense just got gassed. It's the same philosophy as like, we're going to run and ground and pound and we're going to physically beat you in the trenches

and we're going to make you not want to play football. But it's just like the millennial version of it. It's the cool modern version of it. We're just going to run dudes at you until you are tired. Air raid colleges do this in, air raid offenses do this in college a lot. Well, they'll just put like fourth string receivers on the field and just run a nine ball, run a nine.

Just run as fast as you can that way. So if you want to tire this corner out, so eventually when we get our best receiver on him, this dude's gas. So from next-gen stats, Ravens defensive backs, traveled a total of 6,131 yards on passing plays in the course of the game, which is the most by a defense of back group in a game. It says the start of last season.

So you had an exhausted and banged up Raven secondary in the fourth quarter trying to stop a pass happy attack that was still just Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle, just running at full speed. And all of a sudden, an inundation of points came in the fourth quarter. Dolphin scored 42 and they win. It was sick. But I think, like, coming away from this game, too, is going, going, to be the headliner, right? He threw six touchdowns. He threw for a billion yards.

But for me, this was like a coming out party for Mike McDaniel because my big worry, and we talked about this on the Friday preview show, was him being able to bring the 49ers under center offense to a quarterback that wants to be in the gun and needs that space because he's just not good under center. He's a smaller guy. We heard the commentators say that in the pre-production meeting, to a talked about being smaller and having to get used to that. And it's working. Like so many other offensive geniuses have had trouble trying to figure out how to make a shotgun play action game work. And through two weeks, we don't know if it's going to continue, but through two weeks, Mike McDaniel has figured it out. And that's one of the hardest things to do. And he's done it so

quickly. And he's getting the most out of all these weapons that they've put around to it. I mean, he's an early favorite for me for Coach of the Year. And I know it's very early to say that, but I already have him on him watch. He's that good. I think he's a good coach. Mike, me, Kimmel. You can see it in how often Tua has to make those throws into tight coverage, which in some ways is something that he's good at, right? Like that that accuracy, that placement is something that's a strength for him. Still, those are harder throws to make.

And this is from Next Gen stats. Last year, he led the league and throws into tight coverage. He was doing that 20% of the time. So far this year, in week one, he did that 6.1. percent of the time. That was lowest in the league. And today it was 8.5%. So something about this offense is very clearly working.

The guys are open. We know that while Tua might not be the prototypical quarterback you want, making every type of throw, there are certain types of throws where you can trust that he's going to put it in the right spot for someone like a hill, someone like a waddle to turn up field and go. And if that starts to happen. and particularly when you're going against a defense where Marlon Humphrey's out for most of the fourth quarter when this is happening.

Brandon Stevens was inactive. So you've got Jalen Armour Davis who ends up giving up the game winning touchdown to Waddle. You've got Demerian Williams, who's another rookie in that secondary. You've got young players and tired players. It starts to look really, really scary, really, really fast. But Stephen, I'll ask you first. I'm curious if you think there is a counter, right? Like, is this just a situation where speed absolutely kills and there's no defense in the

NFL that has the personnel to match up against those receivers when they're really going off like that? Or do you think that there's something where the Ravens or a different team with different players could look at this game and go, yeah, but if we do X, Y, Z, they're not going to, they're not going to have access to those plays. I think to Ben's earlier point, the game kind of got away from the Ravens defense and they got tired and they got gas. And once you get past that point, it's hard to come back from it. And I do think that it's going to be hard for teams to avoid that because they do have these speedy receivers and they're going to stretch the field like Ben says.

And that makes it harder to play man coverage. Because man coverage is a more physically taxing coverage to play because you have to follow the receiver no matter where it goes. Whereas if you're playing zone, I drop back into my one little zone. I'm just guarding that area. It's not as demanding. And I think teams are going to realize that and they're going to have to kind of change their approach to playing the Dolphins and kind of think about controlling the ball

on the other side. And that kind of makes things easier for the Dolphins defense, if that's at the front of the offensive coordinator's mind, is clock control. I don't think like this is going to be like a superstar offense where they're like top five in DVOA at the end of the year. But I think it's going to be good enough. And really the question is,

can you put two and six? situations where you can't use play action, you can't use all these schematic crutches to help them out, can you put them in third along and tighten the pocket and make them throw from a tight pocket? That's the question. I think other teams are going to be more equipped. I just thought it was a bad game for the Ravens and things just broke bad in the second half. And we saw a bunch of coverage busts. Like it's, I don't want to put too much stock into what we saw just because those guys were running wide open, not because, not just because they're great players, but because the Ravens secondary is messing up. So I want to see like this for a couple more weeks.

Yeah, so you had two coverage busts from the Ravens on touchdowns in this game, right? You had the second Tyreek Hill touchdown in which Marcus Williams and Kyle Hamilton both believe they're the strong side safety, both line up in the exact same spot, both try to do the exact same responsibility, and then a second of the play go, wait a minute, what are you doing here? And then Jaylon Armour Davis thinks he has safety help, and there's just simply nobody on that side of the field. And then in the first one as well, Tyree Kill burns Marcus Peters. I think it's cover three off what you can see on the broadcast film.

And Kyle Hamilton, rookie safety, who messed up on second touchdown, is just super duper cheating. It's just like, yeah, like, I'm not worried about the post at all. And Tyree Kill just eats Marcus Peters lunch. And then, like, the amount of separation is ridiculous. The ball's underthrown as two as deep balls often are. Sorry, Dolphins fans, they are. But it doesn't matter because Tyree Kill so far away. To your point, Nora, Ali Connolly tweeted out, average receiver separation.

I don't know where he got this from, but it's got a spider graph, so I buy it. The average separation for receivers is 2.91 yards. Tyreek averaged 3.97 yards of separation. Waddle 3.07, Trent Shurfield, 3.31. Like, this is all just absurd levels of distance from the nearest defense back on the time of the ball arrival. That's bananas separation that you're able to get. The reason that I think, like, when we go to say, like, all right,

how are other teams going to deal with this? we have to remember the dolphins at seven points entering halftime. They scored five touchdowns in the second half. Those touchdowns came on third and 13 from the Baltimore 14. The next one came on a third and goal from the two. That was a nice, you know, even well done drive. Then you had a third and 10 from the Baltimore 48 touchdown and a third and six from the Miami 40 touchdown.

And then you had their final game winning touchdown, which they didn't have a third down. You don't want, like, the Dolphins scored 42 points. That's awesome. There's clear proof of concept as how this offense is supposed to work. However, no coach wants to win a game won 28 fourth quarter points

with four third down touchdowns. That is extremely late, high leverage play, especially when a couple of touchdowns came on clear coverage busts. It's not like we're taking away from Tua. No, the people who were supposed to be there weren't there. So you have, with eight minutes left in the game, according to ESPN, the Ravens with a 97% chance to win this game. With two minutes left, when they kick the ball off after the go-ahead field goal, they have a 71% chance to win this game.

There's no bones about it. The dolphins clawed their way back into this one. So if this is going to be like an offensive juggernaut, if two or six touchdowns, and he had three deep attempts and two of them were touchdowns, in terms of attempts, more than 22 yards down the field, air yards. He had three of those attempts, two of them were touchdowns. we don't see Rogers. We don't see Mahomes. We don't see Brady. We don't see anybody

just consistently produced touchdowns on 66% of their deep passes. This was a high aberration game. This was a high tail game for what we know from the Dolphins' office right now. They got big scores and big moments to steal one out from the Ravens. They're 2-0.

There's proof this offense has good stuff working for it. Things are much better in Miami than I personally thought they'd be and Dolphinsonsonsonsons is let me know about that. That's great. But you don't want to be in this one. world, man. You do not want to be in 35 points in the second half, four touchdowns on the third down

world. That is not a sustainable world to winning football games. So really lugheaded response, though. This is a team. You don't want to live in that world. I'm totally there with you. I was not and have not really been a Dolphins believer. And

some of that is because of Tua. Some of that is also because I've looked at Mike McDaniel, who I think is a really interesting head coach who I like a lot who I want to root for. I've looked at some of the stuff going on on the periphery with ownership, with Brady, with all of the messiness there. I've looked at what Tua's sort of had to deal with with all of the noise about, okay, are they going to replace him a quarterback?

What's going on there? And thought to myself, man, I don't know if I trust this team when they, you know, what hits the fan. I don't know if I, like I love Mike McDaniel. on a midweek press conference when things are going well. He's making fun references. He's talking to everybody. He seems like a really, really cool, interesting guy who has some really good ideas.

I get a little bit more nervous when it's like, okay, what happens if you drop a couple games in a row and the heat is building and people are saying mean things? And I still have a lot of those questions. But if a game when you need to mount a comeback like this is a little bit of a microcosm of that type of thing. Just one example of a team responding to a really adverse situation and not folding.

I think they deserve a lot of credit for that. So if this game doesn't totally answer all of the schematic, is this sustainable questions about to about the offense, to me, it does start to answer something about just what's the fortitude of this team. So I think it's impressive in that regard. I don't want us to get out of this conversation without. talking about the Ravens because that comeback ruined what was a really, really otherwise great day, specifically from Lamar, who I thought was just fantastic.

Stephen, what did you think about the Ravens offense? Yeah, I agree. I think the problem was they kind of went into a shell in the second half, and you saw Greg Roman kind of revert to Greg Roman of the past. We saw a lot more empty, although I thought they were pretty good in empty today. So I don't think that was much of a problem. I know people, when a team loses, they're going to look for people to blame. And Greg Roman usually gets those strays when it's the Ravens.

And I really don't think anything was on him today. It was completely on the defense. I actually like what I saw from the Ravens' offense, specifically Rashad Bateman. Rashad Bateman taking advantage of one-on-one opportunities. The Ravens just haven't had a receiver like that since Lamar took over. And you need one of those guys. Because Lamar puts so many constraints on a defense. but if you don't have to worry about other players

like other prominent chess pieces on the board, then it doesn't really matter. It's like Lamar is the queen and then everyone else's a pawn. But now with Bateman, you at least have another, another, like you have like a rook or something, a bishop. I'm not very good at chess.

Ben is much better at chess than me. But yeah, so they have more pieces now. And I think Greg Roman has enough talent around him where the offense is going to be good enough. And I don't think he's going to be the issue now. Mike McDonald, I think, has some questions to answer after week, too, because that was not a good showing. That was a poor showing.

And the secondary communication, I think, has to be on point for this defense to be what we think it was going to be. And this week, it was as bad as I've seen from any team this season. I do think that I agree with you that the offense looked very good. And in particular, we've seen Lamar have some of his worst games against Miami, particularly because they blitz so much that 2210 lost last year was a prime example. He was so good against their blitz today, which I think is significant because that's been a big question about Lamar. He goes 10 of 12 for 188 yards, 15.7 yards per attempt, two touchdowns, no picks, no sacks, perfect pass a rating against the blitz. A big part of that, to your point, Stephen, was Bateman.

He had that touchdown in the second quarter, which was against an all-out Dolphins Blitz. Really, really impressive. That was the number one thing, I think, when we looked at this game going into. to it and probably would have favored the, the Ravens and would have been thinking about, okay, how are they going to deal with this Dolphins defense that in prior iterations, obviously different coaching staff, but same coordinators,

a lot of personnel similarities, how are they going to deal with that this time around? And I do think that they answered a big question in performing really well against that. Yeah, Lamar looked great against the Blitz. I agree with Stephen as well that offensively I think large like feather in the cap for Greg Roman They had hot routes

They had like built in answers To expected rush packages Which is kind of like a little bit wise frustrating They went to empty Though at the same time like I understand that you don't really feel They need to threaten the run With people in the backfield

Especially when the Ravens rushing success rate It was 25% in this game Is the second worst performance of the week Only the Colts are worse They need JK back They need JK back. They need Ronnie back. Like, they have the huge Lamar run, and that kind of hides things a little bit.

This running game was atrocious. But passing game-wise, they've found targets to the middle of the field. They figured out their play action stuff nicely. They have the down, like, Lamar's downfield stuff still working because, like, Rashad looks really fast, faster than I remember him looking. Devin Duvernay's fast. Mark Andrews, obviously, is explosive for a tight end. Like, they have the verticality.

That'll work for Lamar, and they're working intermediate middle of the field. This is a lot closer than week one in terms of how. how I think the Ravens offense needs to look and should look. They just need to get healthy in the running game with some of their key pieces there. The big Mike McDonald's stat for me in terms of Ravens coordinators to look at, man, PFS quarterback's pressured on a dropback this week, Tuotunga Vailoa, 23.5% pressure. It's one of the lowest numbers in the league this week.

If there's a book on how to beat the guy, it's the pressure him. And they showed a lot of blitz packages and didn't bring a lot of blitz packages. and in doing so, they're trying to drop surprising guys, trying to drop surprising dudes into those intermediate passing windows. And it kind of worked because they had chances for picks and they had big hits on receivers and they just couldn't get the turnover they were hunting with that. They had a second and ten dropped pick, boom, third and ten touchdown pass.

And it's just like, that was the fulcrum right there, you know? And so you're trying to create this confusion, but when it doesn't get paid off with turnovers, all of a sudden you're ending up with some of these big, plays and these big explosive plays. They needed to find a way to get after two and they didn't. And if it's this quarterback and this line that you're struggling to pressure, they're going to struggle to pressure a lot of quarterbacks and a lot of lines across the league. And that's kind of like where you worry about Mike McDonald's coming from the college game. It was like almost

like you said, they're trying to get this turnover. That's almost like the college approaches where you don't really, you just want explosive plays on defense. You just want to make tackle for losses, sacks, and interceptions. Everything else doesn't matter. And there are times when like you just have to go after Tua. Stop trying to fool him. Just go after. from. That's when teams have had success. And there was a, I think there was a third down call in the second half where they rushed two after Tua. They dropped nine in the coverage.

The third and 13 on the 14th. It was a second touchdown. Was rush two dropped nine. And that's, that's fun. That's an interesting thing. It's very quick. Two was an accurate dude.

So that ball ended up where Mike Gisicki and only Mike Gisiki could get it. And then Mike Cickey made an incredible catch on the back line. But yeah, they're very, I don't know why a rush. to dropping out against Tua. That would make much sense to me. Tua is an accurate guy,

especially when you give him a clean pocket. And he's basically playing seven on seven out there. And that's just a call. I just don't get when you're like the scouting report is pressure Tua, puts a lot of bodies around him. And then you start to see inaccurate passes. You start to see mistakes. And giving him that space,

it's just, I don't know. It's just the worst way to play him. Ben, I hate to do this to you. But a little birdie told me that you might have benched to him. in fantasy today. Would you care to comment?

No, I feel fine. I mean, like, I got back, I'd do it again. I think that when the birdie told Tua that I bench him in fantasy, was probably between the third and the fourth quarter. And all of a sudden, you had four touchdown passes. I think it motivated him. Dolvin's fan should be thanking me.

Also, what? I don't even know. I sent my fantasy lineups at like 1259, folks. I'm just out here. I was like, yeah, I like Marcus Mario. Here we go. We support you. We support you.

Uh, dolphins are two and no. That's going to have implications for the AFC. Bill's next week, baby. A lot of dolphins fans talking a lot of heat. Buffalo week three win the game, baby. Shut me up. All right. Well, we'll be very excited to see that.

Uh, over in the NFC, something that may have altered the landscape today was a season ending injury for Trey Lance, 49ers quarterback. He broke his ankle in. in what wound up being a 27 to 7 win against the Seahawks, which ended up mostly being quarterbacked by Jimmy Garoppel. Kyle Shanahan said that he needs surgery. It is almost definitely season ending, which is just a pretty brutal outcome for any player,

but obviously, especially someone like Lance who's so young and promising, but also needs a lot of development. Stephen, what do you think this changes about the 49ers outlook for this? year. I feel like the median doesn't change, but like the floor and the ceiling definitely changes. I think the floor is a little higher now and the ceiling's a little lower, which is the whole reason why they went to Trey Lance. As a football fan, like, it's just a bummer. Not even

from the perspective that Trey Lance like suffered an injury and we haven't seen him play a lot, but it was going to be cool to see what Kyle Shanahan made of this offense. And now we go back to Jimmy and I think the offense is going to be fine. It's going to be good with those two. They usually do good together. But it just could be more. of what we've seen. It's going to be boring. And I think we know how the season ends now for the 49ers. Maybe Kyle comes up with some crazy schemes to overcome Jimmy G's limitations in the playoffs, but I just don't see it happening. So for me, it's just a bummer all around. Yeah. I think the one, I mean, first of all, definitely share those sentiments. It was one of the most exciting things about

this season to get to watch Tray Lance in this offense. And it really blows that we're not really going to get to do that. I do wonder, I mean, Jimmy looked pretty good going in there. I do wonder when they're not playing the Seahawks defense, playing defensive friends that have a little bit more in terms of teeth. The interior offensive line for San Francisco is probably the weakness of the team. And if you're working with Aaron Banks, Jake Rendell, Spencer Burford, on the interior there. I wonder if that gets magnified when it's Jimmy back there

for an entire season versus someone with the mobility of Trey Lans. Obviously, Jimmy has strengths that Trey Lance right now in 2022 does not. So I agree with Stephen that I think the median is about the same. Just the one thing that kind of popped into my head was if there's one thing

that is the low point for this team, It is that interior of the offensive line, I think. And I wonder if that's something that in particular, having a more mobile quarterback was able to cover up for. And that might be something to watch going down the line. Yeah. So the, right, the kind of talking about like the range of outcomes and the spectrum of outcomes is, I think, like, the Niners open to the season with a 10 and a half win total at most books. Right. So that was assuming Lance is going to play pretty much the whole season.

And if Lance wasn't going to play, then you had a really, really good backup. Niners are one in one right now. We still think they win around 10 games. Like that, how do we feel about like, yeah? So, you know, yeah. It's the, the 2022 outcome, I think Steven put it really well. Like ceiling floor, we kind of know what this Jimmy team is. But like medium-wise, yeah, there should be a playoff team.

They're going to contend for the NFC West. Which is good. Like, that's a good. They've been in the Super Bowl. We know they're good. It's the whole, it's the whole quarterback switch all over again. This is why they did it. This is why they drafted.

What matters now is how many eggs can you confidently put into the Trey Lances our quarterback of the future basket? Because to me, the number just dropped precipitously. I did, but I did a piece of content week one about how the diners would be better if Jimmy was starting instead of Trey, but the whole point is to be better. The whole point is to get Trey better. The whole point is the guy you draft for the third overall pick. You traded multiple first round picks to move up to and go get that, that selection

and make him the player to change the way the office. offense looked. The one thing this guy needed more than anything else was reps. He attempted just over 300 passes in college over the course of his career. And that was in an FCS school. He started two games in his rookie season. At the end of the Bears game, he had 99 total passing attempts in the NFL. He will end the first two seasons of his career with fewer than 200 career snaps. You can't get better if you don't play. And when they picked Lance, no matter if the Niners picked Lance, the Falcons pick Lance, the freaking Jaguars picked Lance. No matter who picked Lance, they were going to need to play him and he was going to need not be good in order to get good

because he simply didn't have enough reps under his belt. Dude's got a dude to learn. Like, it'd be awesome if you could just sit every Patrick Mahomes behind Alex Smith for a year and then Patrick, but that's not the way it works. You need live reps. You need to get accustomed to NFL speed. So now you're going to enter the third year of Tray Lance. We have to start talking contract now. After three years, you can be extended. So it's two more cheap. years and the fifth year option. He's going to have fewer than 200 career snaps and he's going to be coming off major ankle injury when his chief trait is mobility and explosiveness. How many eggs? This was your quarterback of the future plan. Jimmy's on a one-year deal.

You've got to make a decision. I have no idea. Like, I have no clue how you calibrate the 2023 and beyond if you're San Francisco. It's impossible. I think it's impossible for us from the outside looking in, but from the 49ers, they see him every day in practice. They know what he is. I think they have a good feeling of what he's going to be going forward. I think they're more confident in their appraisal of what Trey Lance is than we should ever be. And I don't, like, I don't think it's that dire of a situation, actually. Like, losing a year of your development is bad, but that used to be the model back in the day. Like, we've seen quarterback sit on the bench for two years and come out and be just fine.

And I do agree that he should play and he needs to play to get better. but I do think this last off season of being the guy taking all the reps in training camp is going to be a positive for his development. I don't think it's that big of a setback. We live in a different world, man. It took one loss to the Chicago Bears during a biblical flood for multiple prominent media members,

including a guy who has Kyle Shanahan's initials tattooed on his ankle. So that locker room knows that Chris Sims matters to start calling for Jimmy, right? They, they, the, there is nothing establishment NFL media wants to do more than to tell Kyle Shan-N-N-he was wrong to pick Tray Lance. They've been chomping at the bit since the day he picked them over Mac Jones. We, like, it was just like, you can't, it can't be Rogers Farr. We just, we live in a different space than we did then.

We're like, the visibility is just so much greater. Actually, so hysterical because up until the very second when Tray Lance was picked over Mac Jones, there was mass outcry. the potential that they would pick Mac Jones over Justin Fields or Trailance or someone who's not Mac Jones. And the tides change very quickly. I'm sort of more inclined to agree with Ben here that it really scares me going forward. I do think the contract piece of it, if you had to pick a team where you would hope they can ignore some of the noise and have a clear head about the investment they made, why they made it, the fact that they should have a coaching staff that

understands how to build an offense around a quarterback, get someone better. The 49ers would be on my list for teams where you're like, okay, at least the situation's pretty good. But I just think that's so scary, particularly when the injury, obviously that information is still sort of coming in and he's getting x-rays and tests and whatever. I don't want to Jerry Jones this situation, but the name Dak Prescott is coming up in relation to the injury. So that's just, it's just not a small deal.

So I find it a little worrisome, although I do at least cling to the hope that he's young. He should heal relatively well. Young people are good healers. So you just hope for the best. He has three years to just show them one season that he's the dude. He has time, I think. And I do think it helps that Mac Jones and Justin Fields don't look so great right now.

So you're not going to hear that, oh, you made a mistake when Mac Jones is averaging like five yards per attempt. I don't think they're going to hear that. Because the only person that looks better than Trey Lance could look right now is Trevor Lawrence. And when you say, when you say that he has three years to show them that he's the dude, you mean 2023, 24, and 25? Yeah. I disagree. I think he has the next two at least. Yeah, but I first day, I would, I don't think he has that much time.

Secondly, I'm not sure that like Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch at that much time. That I don't. Those two are on pretty strong ground. They went to a Super Bowl three years ago in an NFC championship last year. Yeah, and got extended. Listen, we have plenty of Super Bowl attending and winning head coaches who lose their jobs quite quickly thereafter. Think about Doug Peterson's first win in Jacksonville. Shanahan is trying to handle a quarterback switch from a guy who played in a Super Bowl

and played another NFC championship game to a guy who is a one-year FCS starter and is now majorly injured. You, me, Nora, the people listening, a lot of people think that that was the correct decision to make. It was a bold stroke, but it was the right stroke. There are a lot of people who don't, and that's going to get loud. And it's going to get loud, and it's going to be pressure, and that's just going to exist in San Francisco.

this is really delicate. So there's a lot of ways in my head it goes left. I kind of disagree. I think like there's not going to be as much debate because now Jimmy is playing so you don't have that like specter hanging over the offense all season long. And I think it would have been worse if Trey Lance played the whole season and was bad. Now that he's gotten injured and we haven't really seen him,

we only saw him in a monsoon. It kind of like gives Kyle like a year off from from this talk. If you want to sort of rank the concerns here. I would say that I'm much more concerned about how does someone whose top traits are mobility and explosiveness come back from an injury like that. That ranks much, much, much higher to me over how is the organization going to deal with the pressure of people criticizing the transition or lack of transition. Not saying that that doesn't matter. I just, I think they're relatively stable. I do believe that the coach and the general

manager have pretty significant buy-in organizationally. I think they're in a decent position to manage that. But the big unknown where I do really agree with what you're saying, Ben, is just, what is he going to be? Like, and that is the thing that nobody will know until he's healed and we got a chance to see it. So that was a bummer. Okay, well, what was not a bummer was having you join us, Ben, thank you so much.

And we'll talk to you soon. Dolphins bills, week three, baby. Football season is underway, so now is the perfect time to download Fandul, America's number one sports book. Because right now, new customers get a no-sweat first bet up to $1,000. That's free bets back if your first bet doesn't win. Just sign up with promo code Ringer NFL. You can take the Chiefs minus 6.5 at Indianapolis, and considering how bad the Colts have looked, Kansas City being favored by less than a touchdown seems nice.

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Stephen, why don't you kick us off? Yeah, my first loser is going to be the Raiders. The Raiders lose an overtime game. I feel like overtime doesn't really do it justice. It was more than an overtime game. It was an overtime debacle. The Cardinals end up winning 29 to 3 on a Byron Murphy fumble return. I think it was Hannah Renfro's second fumble in three snaps, by the way.

Didn't he fumble? I think he fumbled two plays before that. Twice in overtime. But to get there, we had a wild comeback from the Cardinals. And I think it was mostly, like it saved Cliffs, the perception of Cliffs' job security going forward. But this really should create more questions. That fourth quarter was really Kyle and Murray just improvving and just figuring things out and creating plays on his own, especially on those two-point conversion plays. this game, I think it kind of

quiets the hype of the Raiders, but I'm not sure either these teams come away as big winners. Yeah, the Cardinals looked kind of a, kind of like a mess for about three quarters, and then just went to the, hey, Kyler, do something playbook, which is how you get an 85-yard run or 85 yards of ground covered on a single two-point conversion play for Kyler, which was how they made it an eight-point game and then eventually

tied it on the other two-point. So I'm with you. I think like until until the fourth quarter, it was about to be time to kind of end the Cardinals season and now they're one-in-one. So we'll have to see about that. I didn't really come away from this game feeling great about either team. And I'm sure Josh McDaniels is in a bit of a mental pretzel between

his hatred of fumbling and his love for shifty slot receivers. So I'm curious to see Hunter Renfro's snap count going forward. It really like the angel and the devil on your shoulder or whatever metaphor you want to use. I'm sure that's putting him in quite a mental frenzy right now. What do you think Bill? He's probably asking himself like, what does Bill Belichick do? Does Belichick bench Renfro? I don't think he does. Oh man. He probably, I don't know. I kind of think he does. Fumbled twice.

in overtime. He's at least not he's not going to he might just not start the next game. He misses the first snap and then he comes in and has like a totally normal usage, but he gets the symbolic. You're benched for the first snap of the next game. Maybe. I don't know. If Josh is thinking about what Bill would do right now, that is a whole different problem. So I hope that that's not happening. But that offense was a little bit like they couldn't get Devante Adams going this week at all. He had two catches for 12 yards. I just was not particularly impressed by either side of this until Kyler just started doing everything by himself. That's the biggest concern is Devante not getting going. And like I would be less concerned if they were going up against like a Bill Belichick defense

because he's known for like doubling receivers and taking away what you do best. This is Vance Joseph. Like Vance Joseph played base defense for all the snaps against Patrick Mahomes. Like he'll give you what you want to get. And they still couldn't get Devante Adams going. I'm, the thing about the Raiders, the Raiders offense is we haven't really seen this offense. The Josh McDaniels, what we saw in New England work when the offensive line isn't too good. Like, that's when the Patriots seem to have the most problems is when they didn't have an offensive line. And the Raiders just don't have an offense of line. So I don't know how the offense works.

And the defense just isn't good behind the defensive line. It's a, it's a tough, it's going to be a tough thing to figure out for Josh McDaniels in this year with so many expectations after the trade for Devante Adidas. Adams. The Raiders were kind of stuck because they're in this division with these superstar quarterbacks. They had a choice whether to blow it up and start over or just go for it. And they ended up going for it, which was, I think, the admirable thing to do. But now this is the downside. Now you're O&2. You just traded first round pick for a receiver. You paid them $30 million a year. You don't know if this is the quarterback you want to go with going forward. It's just, this is a bad loss. And we know what O&2 does to a team. Like, I don't know the stat,

but it's some crazy number. 90% of the time they miss the playoffs. This might be the worst possible start for this team. We talked so much in the preseason and lead up to the season about this division being, you know, the group of death. It feels like we're two weeks in. And obviously what's going on with Justin Herbert health-wise

sort of notwithstanding, it has so quickly separated into two-and-two. And you have, have the chiefs and then probably, I would say the chiefs are the clear leader right now, but then the Chargers and then the Broncos and Raiders are not really in the picture. And that's kind of startling given how we looked at this division going into the year. Yeah, like just using the eye test, you don't even have to look at the numbers and the records. We watched the Broncos play Seattle.

We watched them play Houston today. We saw the Raiders basically throw the game away against the charges in this game. There's a clear division between those two. The top two teams in the division, the chiefs and the Chargers, and what we saw on Thursday night and what we've seen from the Broncos and the Raiders, I'm willing to say that both the Broncos and the Raiders are already out of the race. I really feel like those two, the Chargers and the Chiefs are on their own level. But this game kind of feels like these two teams are in similar spaces,

and they were in the offseason. They both made the playoffs. They both ended up losing in the first round. They kind of had like a veteran team. and it was clear that they were a tier below the top teams in their division. They both decided to kind of go for it. The Cardinals trade for Hollywood Brown, trade a first round pick. And I don't know if either team is better than they were a year ago,

which is kind of a scary thought because they weren't that good last year. And now we have all this hype going. Like the Cardinals didn't have as much hype, but you extend your GM, you extend your head coach. That makes it kind of awkward if you get off to a bad start. This is a bad vibes game all around. Bad vibes game. A lot about the Cardinals, that's a little bit awkward.

I want to talk about the Broncos a little bit more. But before I have one question for you, which is, is the fact that Isaiah Simmons's big play was the thing that caused the fumble that led to the game-winning touchdown and overtime, only going to do more to convince Van, Vance Joseph, that he is his very own Derwin James. Yeah, he's going to have him start playing like corner. He's going to be like the Revis of the Cardinals. They're going to start isolating him, have him show him.

shadow the top receiver every week. Vance Joseph, we need to protect. We can't let him, like, have too much input over the game plan. Are he's going to do stuff like that? I don't even blame Vance Joseph's actually. I blame,

I blame Steve Kheim for drafting Isaiah Simmons and basically forcing Vance Joseph's hand. Because if you draft, like, the versatile, the hybrid player with a top 10 pick, you have to use them as a hybrid player. You can't use them as, like, a boring linebacker. I love how you,

pause when you said, I blame and then we're just searching for the person because I think the dominant theme of the Cardinals right now is just like, who's in charge here? Like, who is, who is running the show? Who is the authority figure? And maybe something we'll find out. But yeah, I think all signs today point to it being Kyler Murray, if anyone. I said I wanted to talk about the Broncos, who are not my, my first loser because they beat the Texans 16 to 9. They're one and one. But I think my first loser has to be Nathaniel Hackett, who got booed in his first home game at Mile High. Obviously, we know about the end of game disaster in week one. And he had that little kernel of, okay, this is literally the first time that he's done this.

Let's give him, let's cut him a little bit of slack. And then almost all of the major issues from week one were just as bad, if not worse in this game. the Broncos had double digit penalties again. They're up to 25 and two games, which is the most in a two game span in team history. They're pre-snap operation. And look, some of that is on Rust too. But it was such a mess that by the middle of the game,

the crowd had started counting down the play clock when the Broncos were on offense so that they wouldn't take a delay of game. So you have this just like incredibly comic situation where the offense is on the field and everyone in that stadium is just screaming like three, two, one, just like praying that Russ is going to run a play. They had their red zone offense has been an absolute disaster. They haven't scored a touchdown in seven trips there that included a sequence where all of the issues kind of coalesced. They threw on third and goal at the one against a very bad Texans run defense.

They were averaging over six yards per carry at the time. and then the sequence that I was referring to was in the third quarter where they had third in inches. They decide Hackett and Wilson, whoever was making the final call there, go for a tight end rush, which didn't work, then settled for a long field goal

in order to not take a timeout and then wound up taking a delay of game penalty and punting, which I don't know if it was quite as bad as the end of week one, but it was really up there. The optics. The optics were bad, though. The optics were pretty bad.

They also ran out of timeouts with almost eight minutes left in the game. So I think he has to be my first loser because I just don't know that I've ever seen a rookie head coach seem like he's in hot water this quickly. It's pretty remarkable. It's Freddie Jones-esque. Like, it's hitting that coaching arc. beat for beat. And this might be worse. Like I think Freddie Chitchens didn't have his major blunder, which was like a, I think they ran like a

draw, a running back draw on fourth and ten. But I think this is his version of that. Is this just, this signature play? This misuse of timeouts. It's like becoming a bit that he does every week. And like the tight end run might have been worse than like the timeout usage. It wasn't just a tight end run. It was like a tight end option. Like he had the option to pitch it, which is just a play

that should never be run when you have Russell Wilson. Like, why not have Russell Wilson do the, do the little speed option play? I think that makes a lot more sense than your tight end. Well, it also made a lot more sense to have Russell Wilson go for it on fourth and five, and that didn't happen either. The thing is, it's just this should be fixable, right? Like, you can have a guy who helps with this stuff.

And maybe it takes more than two games to figure it out. I don't know, man. You made a big investment in the quarterback. You're in a really tough division. I'm not sure you have that luxury. If you're looking for a glass half full or a bright side, it is that this type of stuff is something that not only a coach could get better at. They can just outsource.

I don't know if Hackett is doing that. If he's not, he probably should be. If he is, maybe they might want to think about getting somebody else in that role to do it because it's just been really tough. And I do think that, you know, I don't want to overstate it and say he's on the hot seat. That's obviously not true.

It's been two games. but we should remember that this team has new owners since he was hired. And that's that's not a non-factor. You know, if Condoleezza Rice gets upset about the situation, things could get spicy in a hurry. Yeah. And I feel like it's a good thing for Russell Wilson that Hackett has looked so bad in ways that are so obvious. Because he got off to like, I think it was six for 20 at one point for 100 yards. Like it has not looked good.

Even against Seattle, the offense moves. the ball, but it seemed like it was like a lot of volatile plays where he was just throwing down field, throwing outside the numbers. And there wasn't really a rhythm to the offense. And this week, it was even worse against a defense that in theory should be easy to beat. Like it's a Lovie Smith. He's going to, you know what he's going to run. He's going to run Tampa 2. And that's been the concern with Russ over the last two years is teams have played a lot of too high and he hasn't been able to hit on those explosives. And then he hasn't been able to find a plan B through two weeks. He hasn't found one yet. And I don't know if he's getting

the most help with Nathaniel Hackett. And a big thing during the offseason was that this is Russ's offense. He's taking ownership of it. And you have to wonder like how much of this is Russ's input, how much of this is Nathaniel Hackett. And what happens if that relationship goes bad? That's a big worry because so much about the off season was about how they were working together in ways that Pete Carroll never worked with Russ.

And through two weeks, it doesn't look like a good recipe. Right. Right. And so far that's been more on Hackett, but at a certain point, it's going to fall back on other elements of the offense as well. All right. You got a winner for us? Yeah, my first winner, Jaguars, Jaguars 24, cold zero. I got to tell you, Trevor Lawrence, top 10 quarterback islands looking pretty good today.

A good day for the island. And the thing that stood out to me besides Trevor, he's who started eight for eight, 61 yards in a TD on the first drive. And Christian Kirk, who was made fun of all offseason. it looks like a 20 million a year. Receiver so far has a 195 yards and two touchdowns through two weeks. But I'm highest on Doug Peterson's offense. This offense is like legitimately fun and I think it's legitimately good. Just because they could do so many different things.

Like they go under center. They go under they go in the gun. They run from under center. They run from the gun. They have play action concepts from under center from the gun. And we've talked about other offenses kind of struggling to find a middle ground. like the Bengals, for instance. But Doug Peterson has found it in two weeks,

and he has a lot of good skill players. Like the Jaguars don't have any superstars, but Christian Kirk is a good slot receiver. Zay Jones is a quality number two receiver. He's not a good one, but he's like an average one. James Robinson is one of the best backs in the league, apparently. Travis E.T.N. has looked phenomenal. He's moving really well after the injury last year.

They have the skill players. My only question going forward is the offensive line. but the offensive line looked good today. The defensive line looked good. They dominate this game on the line of scrimmage, which is a way that we really haven't seen the Colts lose in the past. And it's a way that this division has been won in the past. Like we think about the Titans teams that have won this division.

Good offensive line. Good run game. Dominant defensive line. The Colts, same thing. The Jaguars kind of have that recipe going for them. And like, should we not consider them the favorites to win this division after how the Colts look today? Well, I mean, to your point about the offense,

I think the thing that's exciting about it is that Doug Peterson's offense is really letting Trevor Lawrence kind of play point guard. There were six players that had multiple catches. He's really finding space

for Kirk to be explosive out of the slot, and it does seem like that connection is really good. I think you're very much right to point out how badly the Colts offensive line was just manhandled

by a Jaguar's front that I think is is interesting. I think they're pretty deep. They have a lot of talent. I think they are good pieces for Mike Caldwell to coordinate that kind of like Tampa style good run defense using a good amount of blitzes kind of thing. Like I think they work for that.

I'm not ready to be like, oh, my God, this dominant unit. But it is an interesting group that I think fits what the coordinator wants to do. To your point, we have not. seeing the Colts offensive line get just like demolished like this. They were, they blocked for 54 total rush yards. Matt Ryan got sacked five times. He's now been sacked seven times and hit 18 times over two games. That's really scary just given the financial commitment that they've made to that group. The other issue that I think compounded the trouble up front is that they're playing without Michael Pittman, but this wide receiver group is just not deep. And when you take Pittman out of

it, you're in a situation where Ashton Doolin ends up being your leading receiver with 79 yards. Not a good position to be in. We know that the Colts have this history with Jacksonville where they really, really struggle. And maybe we can say that that's a little bit what's going on. But Chris Ballard in this offseason said, basically, I'm willing to roll with this wide receiver group. I think two games in, that doesn't look like a great choice. I think. I think. think the situation with the offensive line, just not playing like an elite unit at all. I don't quite know. Now, they seemed like maybe they were on a little bit of a downward arrow last season

towards the end. So maybe you kind of see that coming. On the other hand, I don't know what move I can point to there and go, no, it was a bad idea to give Quentin Nelson all that money. Like, you obviously had to do that. That's one of your cornerstone players who has an incredible track record. So that's more of an unfortunate circumstance, but I do think that it's very possible

that if this offense just doesn't work, we're going to look at this offseason and go, man, they really needed to add something to the receiver group and they just didn't. Yeah, and that's been the thing with this team over the last, what, four years, is they haven't really been aggressive in the offseason. They've kind of cultivated their tap space, accrued draft picks. They've made small moves.

And we've seen the better teams around the league make aggressive moves, the Rams are obviously the poster child for that. But we saw the Dolphins make a move for a receiver and how much that has helped. It's not just that the receiving core is thin. Like even when Michael Pittman is out there, he's more of a number two than a star receiver. He's not going to be enough to carry this team

and elevate the receiving core. And now you're relying on Paris Campbell who gets hurt every other week. You're relying on a rookie and Alex Pierce who knows what he's going to be in year one. It was a very, it was a very risky move on, Ballard's part, and I think this is just another example of him being a little conservative

when it comes to team building and it not paying off. And that's been a theme with this team. And that's, we've seen it every time they fail to make the playoffs or make noise in the playoffs, it's because they don't have enough talent. And in the off season, you look back and say, they could have made this move or that move and they didn't. The one time they did is DeForest Buckner. And he's maybe the best player on the team now. Right. It worked out pretty well. Okay, speaking of team building. My next winner is the Lions, specifically the Lions offense because they beat the commanders 36 to 27. That offense has now scored 35 plus points in their last three outings. They've got Amun Rae St. Brown who looks like a legitimate number one receiver. He had 116 yards

and two touchdowns today. This is happening with a pretty banged up offensive line that should be a very good unit, but it's just not healthy, which I think makes it all the more impressive. And And I want to make them a winner here because I am ready to say that despite the fact that the commander's defense, I think, continues to be pretty disappointing. They're more than frisky. Like, I think this is a legitimately good offense, which is very cool. They're going to be fun to watch. The reason it matters is because when you look down the line and think, okay, at some point, there's the potential for a healthy Jameson Williams in there. if he develops well, that's huge.

And then obviously, at some point, they're probably going to figure out a long-term plan at quarterback that doesn't rhyme with Schmerich Moth. And if you look at what they've done in these last three games, you know, going back to last year, it's really, really exciting.

And we had all this lion's hype in the offseason, but I think particularly what their offense has done in the start of the year, really validates where all that is coming from. And it makes me genuinely excited about the trajectory that they're on. And you have to be happy that they're good in a way that looks good for Dan Campbell

because he is a former offensive line coach. He's like all about the running game. And the running game is so much fun and it's so effective and it's been the key to their offensive success. Like you can, if you watch the games like you're looking at Jericho and you're like, okay, that's the Jared golf,

I know. And he's still bad. But then you look at his numbers and they're good. It's like their old Rams days. that's that's success right there. Now the only worry is the defense, but Dan Campbell, like, he's doing his part of the job.

It's holding up his end of the bargain. I love it. I love it. All right, so I'm going to go with my next loser. I think this is a pretty easy pick, the O and two Bengals. They made the Super Bowl last year. It looks like they have the Super Bowl hangover, but more so than them being O and two,

I think it's time to panic about this offense. Because through two weeks, like, what was the big story about their offense? last year, the explosive plays. Everything else didn't work. Their offensive line was terrible. The run game didn't work. Zach Taylor didn't know how to mesh the offense,

but they had Jamar Chase and T. Higgins making those plays. So far through two weeks, Chobarra has one completion over 20 air yards. He had 27 last year where he led the NFL. He only has one so far this year. And now without those explosive plays, you start to see the weaknesses stand out a little more. Like the offensive line being bad matters a little more.

The run game not working matters a little more. Zach Taylor's inability, complete inability to make things easier on Joe Burrow stands out a little more. It's kind of concerning because I don't think defenses are doing some crazy thing to counteract them. They're basically just playing Tampa 2. And it's giving them a lot of problems.

And Zach Taylor, this is year number four. I think people give him a pass for those first two years. This is year number four and he has shown us nothing to prove that he has the capacity to fix a broken offense. Last year he was kind of a long for the wrong. ride, I don't know if he's able to fix this and it needs fixing fast because at 0 and 2 and that division and that conference, no margin for error for the rest of the year. It's tough to come back from this. I think you're right that he is the person on whom the pressure is

going to mount, right? Because I watched their week one game and felt like, okay, that's not great, but that performance with all of the interceptions looks kind of like a statistical anomaly. And if you look at how many of the plays on which Joe Burrow felt pressure turned into sacks, that doesn't feel super replicable, especially when considering the fact that it's going against the Steelers defense that's really explosive and capable of finishing those plays, it starts to repeat itself. And the counter argument, which I think today would lend itself to, is that, no, it's not that the Steelers are finishing those plays.

it's that Burrow doesn't get himself out of them. And that's the type of thing that I think we're going to be talking more and more about of, okay, we don't like how this offensive line is playing, but how much of it is also on the quarterback. And an extension of that, which is a conversation that I hope people have, is how much of that is on coaching and the offense to give him some easy plays that don't lead him to be in those situations where he just holds onto the ball for way too long. because I think Burrow is guilty of that right now.

I think the offensive line that, you know, they tried very hard to improve in the offseason. At the very least, it hasn't jelled yet. But if it's going to have a chance to, particularly now that the defending AFC champions have to climb out of an O and two hole, there's going to have to be, I think, something that Zach Taylor does to improve what they do on first. downs just just make those results a little bit better so that they're in more manageable

situations they do have the jets coming up although I don't think that defense is like a total walk in the park but then after that they've got the dolphins and ravens that's not like you're not playing the 85 bears two weeks in a row but that's that's that's hard that's a that's a just lost to get right against and you just lost a cooper rush so we can't really take anything for granted here. So I did not see this start coming from the Bengals and agree with you that this is sort of the week when if you were like me and didn't feel like it was a big deal last week, I feel a little bit corrected by this performance. Yeah, it's it's not looking good for this team. They got to figure it out. I think they need to win. They're already a must win. They got it. They

need to win next week. They need to win next week. Must win week three games. Yeah. My next loser is not really either one of the Patriots or Steelers. The Patriots beat the Steelers 17 to 14. They're both one in one. I think that's basically where we would expect either one of those teams to be at this point in the season. My loser is the new look Patriots offense that we talked about in the preseason and through training camp. Because in this game, later in the game, when they settled into it a little bit, they went back to a lot of the power. runs that we've been more accustomed to seeing from them in past years.

There was a particular sequence at the end of the third quarter when there were three straight plays where they sprung runs of six yards, eight yards, and then 16 yards. The guards were pulling on all of those. It wasn't the only thing they did in their run game. They mixed in some wide zone calls after that in the fourth quarter. They kind of closed out the game on a very good drive where I think they were able to kill six and a half minutes or something off the clock, mostly with the run game at the end.

But when they really needed some consistent, you know, to move down the field consistently, they kind of went back to their bread and butter in this game. And it led to a much better showing from the offensive line. I do think we saw a little bit how different this Steelers defense looks without T.J. Watt, but still, Mac Jones wasn't sacked. They averaged four yards per rush.

And I found it very interesting that after the game, Kendrick Bourne gave a quote where he said that there were a bunch of things that we've scrapped from the preseason and that they'd worked on in the lead up to the season. And they just decided, look, we weren't good at that. So that's not great, right? Because you maybe wasted that time. And I'm not saying they won't continue to mix that stuff in going forward. but it did seem like going back to what we are more used to from the Patriots

correlated with a much better day for their offensive line, which I think had been the main culprit of why it didn't look good in week one and why it especially didn't look good in training camp in the preseason. So I will definitely be watching to see if they do more of that going forward. I mean, it makes sense that it's not working because I think from the outside looking in the Shanahan type of offense, the formula is quite simple. It's like we're going to run outside zone and we're going to do play action. But like those Shanahan guys have a billion variations of outside zone.

And they like one little thing changes when the defense throws something at them. Like maybe they'll toss the outside zone instead of handing it off. And that makes a world of difference. Unless Matt Patricia is in on the Shanahan McVeigh group chat are like shared on the Google Drive, I don't think he knows those methods for fixing the offense. So I'm kind of happy they've already scrapped that and they might go back to this offense. that I think Belichick and everyone on that staff knows. I wish I had it in front of me because I made a bunch of notes on this at some point during

the preseason because I'd just been in San Francisco and I talked to a bunch of those guys. And somebody had pointed out to me that there's a group of offensive line coaches. Some of them have run game coordinator in their title, whatever. There's a group of coaches that know that system and they just get traded back and forth by those teams. They just work for all of those coaches who run that system. and they really, really know it. And I had just been in New England and there had been a couple shaky practices.

And then I went to San Francisco. And there was a little bit of like, it's not so easy. If you don't know all the techniques, it's not so easy. And the Patriots have had really good offensive lines in the past doing something different. There is something, I think, to be said for the fact that they might be trying to modernize their offense a little bit. but if you know how to teach one thing, that is going to be something that's hard to go away from, right? Because it's really, really hard to just get up one day and be like,

no, we know all the techniques that you need for different situations when we're trying to run this incredibly different type of running offense. Yeah. And speaking of offenses that are broken, my last, my last winner is going to be Jazeel. Because Giselle apparently knows best. And Tom Brady should have listened to her when she told him to retire. Because the Bucks are two and O.

They are tied for the best point differential after this win with the Chiefs at plus 26. They beat the Saints 20 to 10 today. But it was not a fun day for Tom Brady. Our boy, Tom Brady, was throwing some hissy fits on the sideline. Throwing some tablets. It's, I don't know if there's an easy fix for this offense. There's a lot of talent. We've talked about it.

But their main problem, and maybe Chris Godwin coming back is the solution. they're just not getting anything over the middle of the field in the intermediate areas. It's like all outside the numbers and when you have a 45-year-old quarterback, you don't want them making the toughest throws on the field. You want him making those over-the-middle throws

that he had so much success with last year. This year they only have two completions over 15 air yards between the numbers. They just can't access that area of the field unless Brady can convince Gronk to get back and Godwin or Godwin returns 100% and there's no like rust to shake off with the ACL injury. I think the offense is going to struggle a little bit over the first half of the season.

It's going to really be on this defense to carry the team. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't want to take too much from this game, particularly on the Saints side, because we learned that James Winston apparently has four fractures in his back. If you're an accountant, you can take a week off if you have four fractures in your back. I do not understand why this man is playing football. Apparently there's some padding involved.

I don't know. He didn't look great. Nothing looked great. You will not hear me criticize a man who has four fractures in his back, however, because I don't even know how he was on the field. Brady just doesn't look like he's having a good time. To your point about, you know, he thought about retiring, ended up coming back. We've seen him spike a tablet before, but he wasn't a happy camper out there.

So it's certainly something to monitor. A great advertisement for Brady's face guy, though, because he was really mad. like he didn't bust a seam or anything. Like, like it was just all intact. Bust a seam. That's brutal. It's absolutely brutal.

I was going to say that when he spiked the tablet, it didn't change his average depth of target either. All right. I'll give you my last winner, which is the city of New York. Because the Jets beat the Browns, 31.30. It was this crazy comeback.

They were down 30 to 17 with less than two minutes. They should have lost this game because Nick Chubb scored with a minute and 55 seconds left, but if he had just gone down instead of scoring, the Jets had no timeouts and the Browns could have just run out the clock. They did not do this. And the Jets ended up coming back. They were covered an onside kick. It was absolutely nuts.

The Giants beat the Panthers 19 to 16. They're 2 and 0 for the first time since 2016. All of that led to a day when the Mets Yankees jenks. Jets and Giants, all won for the first time since 2009. I think we are honest. It is the Jets and Giants, who we would have been concerned about holding up their end of the bargain on that. And this morning, probably like an hour before any games kicked off, I had run to grab breakfast. And I was walking down 3rd Avenue.

And I see this guy biking up the street wearing a Joe Flacco t-shirt. and a Jets hat. And I just thought to myself, oh, you, you poor sweet summer child. And I was wrong. So congrats to that guy. He is a winner as is the entire city of New York. What a day for that guy. I don't know how much you take from these two wins, like going forward for this season.

But if you're a Jets fan, like you saw. Almost nothing. They happened. That's what you take from them. They did happen. But you saw Garrett Wilson have a big game. And that's something to take. You know, you put that in your pocket and you go forward.

He looks like a star receiver. and you wanted to see a first round pick hit. And I think you have one here. Like, Zach Wilson is up in the air. Mackay Beckton has had a, he's had some flashes, but he's had an uneven start to his career. Garrett Wilson hitting would be so good for this franchise. And then as for the Giants,

I feel like this is like the ideal start. Brian Dayball looks like he can win some games as a coach. And Daniel Jones still looks like Daniel Jones. So you're not afraid of the front office committing to him long term after this year. Ideal start for them. I'm going to their game. next Monday. It's going to be the first time I've gone to a football game in person and like forever. I worry actually a little bit, particularly after what the Cowboys were still able to do

against the Bengals. I'm a little worried that Micah Parsons is going to give that offensive line some, some issues. But I'm kind of excited. I'm not a Giants fan, but like the fact that I'm going to this game and not totally dreading it is like, that's good. That's a big way. the Giants. It's a good place to be. Giants are back. All right. We're going to close it out with our non-headline story of the day.

And Stephen, I think you've got that covered this week. What caught your eye? We're going to talk about Ben Skoronic, a player that I have had my issues with in the past because every time I've ever seen him play before, he's a receiver for the Rams, by the way. Got B for Scaronic? Yeah, because every time I ever see him play, he's dropping a key pass for the Rams. Like, that's like his bit. He's always doing it.

He did it in the playoffs against the Bucks. I think he did it against the bill. never throw to Skorotic, but it appears that Sean McVey has found Skoronik's true calling, and that is as a fullback of all the positions. The Rams put him at fullback. I don't know the exact number of snaps, but I know that the Rams had two backs in the backfield on 21 plays. I think Skoronik was the fullback for most of those plays.

But this is kind of, it's kind of funny that they're putting a receiver at fullback, but I think it kind of matters because this is not the type of offense we've seen Sean McVeigh run. always been in an 11 personnel, one back on the field, one tight end, two receivers. This is kind of like him waving the white flag to Shanahan. There's kind of a civil war within their little coaching tree. Like, do you want a fullback on the field or not? And I think this is a W for Shanahan because McVe is like, we can't run outside zone with just one back. We need we need scuronic at fullback. We need a fullback. And I think I think he's kind of cheating off of Kyle because he got the fullback with a name that's hard to spell. and hard to pronounce. This is his Kyle use check. Wow. Wow. I really hope that Kyle Shanahan just like dials up McVey tonight.

Late in the night. We know McVeigh doesn't sleep. He's vexed by the trials and tribulations of a life in football. And I hope in the wee hours his phone lights up and it just says Kyle and he picks up. And Kyle Shanahan just says, so a fullback, huh? and just totally gloats. That's, I'm not, I'm not even going to try to find out if that happens because I'm just going to pretend that it definitely will because I would like to live in that

world. But I think Stafford averaged 10 yards per dropback on those snaps. So like you see how it works. It helps the run game. They can get more diverse in the run game. Their offensive line isn't too good. So can kind of help in pass protection. And play action is just more effective when you have more bodies in the backfield.

And he's a receiver so you can kind of like create mismatches if you spread things out. this is a good wrinkle for the Rams. I'm interested to see how it works going forward. That's cool. Yeah. And if they win the Super Bowl again, maybe they'll have to give, do you think they'd have to give Shanahan a Super Bowl ring?

Yeah, you have to give him one. And then you may, hopefully Scoronic wins MVP, just to bring it full circle. All right. That would be very exciting. Thank you, Stephen. That was eye-opening.

I appreciated that. I want to be put at fullback now. Now I feel like that's the new position to be. Like, you know that we did the Cordale Patterson, wide receiver slash running back last year. This is the new wave. Wide receiver slash fullback.

The next hybrid player. Very excited. All right. Thank you so much, Stephen. This has been so much fun. What an exciting week, too, we had. We've really had a pretty good weeks to start the season, both in week one and week two.

A lot of good. It hasn't been good football, but it's been exciting football and interesting football. And that's all we ask in the podcast and business. Just give us something to talk about. Just here for the drama. This has been the ringer NFL show. on the Ringer Podcast Network. Thank you for listening. Next up on the feed tomorrow will be Sheel and Ben. They'll do a deep dive into everything that happened in week two. On Tuesday,

Jason Goff and Austin Gale have power rankings. Stephen will be doing his quarterback rankings segment on that show as well. I'll be back on Wednesday with the island. Sheal will be back Thursday. And then Danny Hafeitz, Ben and Stephen will preview week three on Friday. Thank you, as always, to Isaiah Blakely for production on this episode and to Arjuna Rangipal for a production supervision.