The Ringer NFL Show - Week 2 Recap: Ravens Stun the Chiefs, Kyler’s Big Day, and the Raiders Move to 2-0

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to discuss Lamar Jackson leading the Ravens past Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. Then they hand out their weekly superlatives to teams like the Cowboys, Raiders, and more. Then Steven Ruiz joins Kevin and Nora to discuss Kyler’s 400 yard 4 touchdown performance in a win over the Vikings. Lastly Kevin and Nora wrap up by briefly discussing some more week 2 games and answer some mailbag questions.  Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti  Guests: Benjamin Solak and Steven Ruiz  Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely  Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From in-depth analysis of basketball and football to life advice, Ryan Rusillo has got you covered on the Ryan Rusillo podcast. Join him as he talks to some of the best names in sports while providing sharp analysis and wit you won't find elsewhere. Check out the Ryan Rusillo podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Ring NFL show, part of the Ring of Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. Join tonight by Noah Prince, I didn't know what's going on.

Kevin, we just had an exciting game of football. I'm so excited to break it all down. It was an amazing Sunday overall. and Ben Solac is here, Ben, what's going on? Yeah, we had a lot of exciting games with football for a lot of variety of reasons. Like, do you look at the score of Minnesota, Arizona, versus Kansas City, Baltimore?

And you're like, those supposed to bid two equally exciting games for the same reasons. And they were not, but who is an awesome, awesome sundown-dell together? So there is so, I know, realistic, as I went to know, Brian, you say, we have a great show tonight.

No, there's a lot to get to. We say that every single week, but there is a lot to get to. the Texans looked plucky. Joe Burrow did not. Zach Wilson threw a bunch of interceptions. But we will start with what we just saw. It is Ravens 36, Chiefs 35,

in the early game of the season, in a game we're going to be talking about for many weeks because it will shape the narrative of the rest of the AFC for many months to come. Ben, what did you say? The best quarterback in the league is Patrick Mahomes. The second best quarterback in the league is Lamar Jackson. And that's not like real because of Rogers and Brady and throwing the football

and a bunch of other things. But when it comes to like, we just do not understand the way Lamar folds the game into pieces. Like we just don't, we cannot wrap right. This is fourth running back. They flip tackles right before the game, man. Like it's not supposed, you're not supposed. You can't do this. It's not legal.

It's not, it's ungodly how he can have two bad picks, one that's not his fault with Sammy phone down. The other is just bad throw in the end zone. Like, those are supposed to be backbreaking plays against the Chiefs. Just, nope. Just Lamar's just going to go God mode, just straight Super Sayan for a quarter and a half. They were down by 11 in the fourth quarter. You don't beat the Chiefs under this context.

Lamar's stupid guy, I can't, I cannot get over how he just changes the calculus of football when he's on the field. I love him to death. He's so much under root for. John Harbaugh is the man. Go birds. But in this case, Ravens. Here's the similarity right now between Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson.

is that in every other Chiefs game, I have a bunch of notes about the Chiefs, and it's about the coverages and the interceptions the interceptions other teams through and the touchdowns

Patrick Mahomes threw in the second quarter, whatever, and none of it ever matters, ever. Because in the fourth quarter, the Chiefs do something and erase everything that happened in the first three quarters.

And tonight that was Lamar Jackson. And that's an important step. So Mahomes, listen, these two teams are both going to make the playoffs. They're both really good. Mahomes threw his first interception ever in September.

which just kind of shows you how dominant they've been. And even when you look at the interception, and we'll talk about Awe a little bit later in a segment, but the fact that he was kind of twisting, literally twisting in the wind, and there's just up, ladies and gentlemen, one minute of Malay Rubin. Fuck yeah!

Oh, boy. You know, I was settled in on the couch and pajamas under a fleece blanket when my husband turned off the television with one minute and 16 seconds left in one of the most important games that I can remember. But we made it through. And so did the Ravens. Just wanted to say hi.

And again, fuck yeah. But did you turn the television back on? How did you get news of the win? I'm not prepared to go through all that again. It was a combination of receiving a very, detailed play-by-play slack from our colleagues, including you guys. Some text messages, very enthusiastic ones from my father and my colleague Jeff. And then in short succession, Kevin asking me to come on this podcast for 30 seconds,

all of which I assumed was good news. Does this change the way you think about the AFC for the rest of the year? Why you were going to ask me if it changes the way I think about marriage, but I guess we can save that for a different podcast. That's a midweek topic. It's a midweek pod. That's what Nora and I would be diving into on Thursday. Well, you could come on.

We got Dimitrov on Wednesday doing team building. We could do the last five minutes. Just you breaking that down. Wonderful. You know, I'll just say before I leave you to return to your sterling analysis, that it doesn't really change anything. It just reinforces something important, which is that there's always hope. You know?

Never let the dream die. One bad opening. game, some turnovers that bleed into the first quarter of the next game doesn't have to spell doom. Here we are, one in one, whole season ahead. This has been one minute, probably one minute in 45 seconds of Malia Rubin. Ben looks so confused. I was told it was coming. I wasn't prepared for just exactly how it dawned. I wasn't, I wasn't really prepared either. No, no, no, wasn't told. I was not told, first of all, this was delightful. A delightful surprise, but I need to understand.

Mal, did you see the fourth down conversion? No. No. Oh, my God. You have to go watch it. I've since seen it. Adam's still trying to get the TV to work again. Oh, so he didn't like turn the TV off like, whoops, I hit the power button. Like, the TV is dead. It's, I won't bore you with all the details.

It involves discovering mere moments prior that one remote was controlling two TVs. The other TV had the Emmys on. I said to him, please do not turn off the TV that had the Emmys on it because I don't want you to accidentally turn off the main TV. Then he did it anyway. Now here we are.

Unbelievable. He tried very hard to get the game up on his phone in time. But they were showing the replay. Oh, goodness. I did get to see Lamar's post game comments. That was nice. That's great. We're going to dive into those in a second.

Great. Wish you guys luck. Can't wait to listen to the pod. Go Ravens. So, Ben, I want to talk about the post-game comments here for a second. Because Lamar Jackson made the comparison to Seattle two years ago, which was the first notable fourth down. It's when the conversation started to change Leaguewater on fourth down.

Now, there's a couple milestones within this going to fourth down. I think Doug Peterson had a lot to do with it. I wrote a story two years ago about how much actually the Kevin Falk fourth down against the Colts and the failure to convert that in 2009. and how important that was actually just the conversation. I mean, all of a sudden, people were talking about it on SportsCenter. And talking about football outsiders is like getting on, you know, is getting on Sunday night football or whatever.

And now obviously PFF is there every single week. And I feel like the conversation has shifted so dramatic. With Dominic Foxwoods on this podcast last week and he was saying it's almost flip now where you get criticized for not going forward on fourth down. We're actually going to get to some of those teams a little bit later. Did you feel at any, when you saw it was fourth, and one, did you know automatically that they were going to go for it? No, because it's fourth of one in your own territory.

And, you know, obviously, okay, Mahom's on the other side. And the analytical responses, well, because Mojom is on the other side, you want to keep him on the sideline, go for it. But still, as a football fan, you're scared of that guy. And you're just terrified of him in general. And you want him to be as far back as possible. That's still instinct, right? And that's the thing is, it is one thing to say, this is the correct decision, which

I believe. It's another thing to say, this feels like the correct decision, which certainly we're all getting there at our own pace and like the quons are ahead of us, right? There are a bunch of like PFF guys and otherwise being like, I don't get why everybody's so excited right now. Like that's what you do. Because it's exciting, man. Like, that's crazy. You're going for it. Yeah, like that's nuts. And I know it's not nuts, but it still feels nuts. And no, it feels nuts. And so when Harbaugh, you know, just steps down the sideline, he says like, Lamar, you want to go for this? You want to go for this? Like, firstly, I feel that my gizzard. Like that's awesome.

But secondly, it's hard by acknowledging that. Okay, I was just told from upstairs that it is the right decision to go for this. Let me check in with the guy on whose shoulders this play will be and make sure he's in line with this. Because there is an emotional aspect of this. There is a human intelligence. We got to be on the line with this. Hashtag NFL as an empathy gap. Nora Pranti.

Wow, Ben. Nora, what you? Flo is yours. The floor is yours for empathy or analysis. Either one. All right. I wrote like 5,000 words about the first thing. So I'm just going to let that stand as it is,

though I hope everybody reads the place. Ringer.com. You can tell, though, that they have an understanding that there are those two sides of it, right? Which I think is so cool because you're hearing through the broadcast that, okay, the way the Ravens do this, they just, they go by the numbers, right? But you know that they are saying that because the coaching staff has communicated their philosophy to the broadcast team as such, which to me says,

they get that there's an alternative, right? Like they are saying to people, we just do, they're saying to the players, they're saying to themselves, they're saying the rest of the coaching staff, look, we're going to go by the numbers here, but we get that situation is going to dictate how you feel about it. So it's having the reliance on what analytics tells us

and what the numbers tell us, but the understanding of the moment and the understanding of just, you know, player psyche to be able to communicate it in a way where people are able to make at least a little bit of that mental switch. Right? Like, I'm not scared of Patrick Mahomes. This will actually help us keep him on the sideline.

And I think that's what's so cool about it because you do need both. And I guess, I mean, again, we're not talking about a 5,000-word story here. But, like, that I think is what's so cool about some of these organizations, like the Ravens, who are able to bridge those two things. It was interesting to me because when I was in Detroit and I was talking to Dan Campbell about that, and he was talking about the Saints and how he said he used to be the most conservative guy in the world

and then he would watch Sean Payton go for it on fourth down all the time and then he would look at the defense and they'd be terrified and he was like, oh wait, he had this like epiphany and he was like, oh wait, the defense doesn't want me to go for it.

They're terrified of this. And when you add in Lamar Jackson, I mean, Dan Campbell thought that way about the damn Jared golf. When you add in Lamar Jackson and there was the touchdown, the game-silling touchdown, Collinsworth put it very bluntly,

but I think very wisely where he was like, it's not like these guys don't know what to tackle. It's not that these guys don't know coverages. It's that they can't find the ball. They can't find the ball because they don't know where it's going. And the stress is already on the defense.

And there's just so many different things going through their minds. It's just a freaking nightmare to play against Lamar Jackson. Yes, Nora. That's really important. Just the sort of the mental element is really important. Because we've spent a lot of, you just said it's freaking terrifying to go against Lamar Jackson, but it's also freaking terrifying to go against the Chiefs and to go against Mahomes. And we've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years talking about whether or not the Ravens have a problem playing the Chiefs.

If Lamar has a problem going against Mahomes, if there's something where they just can't get over that hump. And then they start this game and they're playing, they are doing a lot of what they would want to do, right? They've got ball control. They're running more plays than Kansas City. They force a couple punts in the first half, but they're still trailing because the Chiefs are the Chiefs, right? And I think we can pretty much put to bed that if they can come out in the second half, half and overcome that, all of that was kind of hogwash because that is not a team, given the injuries, given the shuffle of the offensive line, given the state of the running game, that is

not a team who in that position was scared of their opponent. They were just doing what they were doing. They were well coached. They kept playing. And I think sometimes, look, the NFL, we get small sample sizes and we draw big results from them because we have to. And sometimes it gets us into trouble because our brain. like to find patterns where maybe there aren't any.

The Ravens might not have beaten the chiefs a few times because the chiefs are really, really, really good. But I think we should give them credit for if they can win in that situation, that team is not scared. The situation is, right, Mahomes averaging 11 yards per attempt and throwing three touchdowns, right?

Like, it was not a bad chiefs game at all. And that's one of the cool things about going for it there in fourth down is understanding, I, this is the window, you know, and they made some of the changes that you'd like to see them make in order to beat the Chiefs. Wink Martindale Blitz Mahomes four times tonight off of Next Gen stats charting. Still got picked apart on it. Right, exactly. Four for four for 73 yards at a touchdown.

It was the Byron Bringle touchdown. Bahamas has been beating the Blitz. He's been beating the Blitz since he walked into the league. He beats the Blitz every single time the Ravens bring him out. And so the Ravens didn't blitz, which Martindale never. doesn't blitz. He doesn't do it. And he sat there and he rushed three and he dropped it into coverage and somebody probably had to like handcuff him to the bench to make him do it. But he did. And did it like work? No, the chief scored 28 offensive points. You know what I mean?

But at the same time, you at least gave Mahomes a different look. You at least went after different things. You at least tried to find some positive regression where on the last three drives of the chief's game, they get interception punt. Bumble. And are you? you're going to get those three drives every single time if you play rush four drop seven rush three drop eight no you're going to lose the next game you do that but this was the game where you got it this is the game where you got the lead in the fourth quarter then you go front of the fourth down you stick the landing and guess what you've beaten the chiefs it might not work next time but you've beaten the chiefs and that's the one thing we do have to remember that if we're a clyde edwardsillair fumble away

from having great different conversation and maybe even saying the same things that we we talked about the narrative being busted tonight we would can do that narrative had that not happened okay um so Again, it doesn't change a whole lot in my mind. Ben, does this change anything in your mind about kind of the AFC pecking order? Not about Kansas City. Like Kansas City can be anybody in any given time. Patrick Mulham's, you may have heard of him. Certainly does for Baltimore.

A big bounceback game. The alarm bells could have been going off for Baltimore. I can't recall what panic level Nora and Mallory gave Baltimore last week on Thursday. I don't remember how high it was. It was pretty low, but I believe we gave them all. level 1.5 or two. But the panic assessed was based on the schedule, right? So in terms of how.

Lions Broncos Colts. But then they have a brutal final seven games of this season. So, and I don't mean to cut Ben off here. But like for me, does this change the AFC pecking order in terms of how good these teams are? Not that much. But for the Ravens to get a W in a spot early in the season, that felt like it had a pretty solid chance of being a loss, that's important because they,

it felt like when they lost that Monday night football game, they lost a winnable game and put themselves in a bad position going forward where they were going to be going through just a brutal stretch run in a tough division and not having enough places to just collect wins to stay ahead. So I think that's what's really, really important here. And it's funny that we're already talking about sort of the playoff math. But in that division, I think it's important.

Yeah. And there's only one buy, too. Like, playoff math, it matters. Conference wins right now. Yep. Yep. And it's funny because so Lamar is in his post game press comments right now. And he said it's great to get the monkey off their back.

And I kind of think emotionally, this is a really important win for them. I talked to Lamar last summer. And he was talking about he is like most young quarterbacks, incredibly attuned. And they all say they don't read anything, but they do. And they're on social media. And Lamar was talking about how. Now, just, you know, in, he would just, like, tweet something.

And before he could even put his phone in his pocket, he'd have thousands of people trolling him about losing to the Titans. And that's something that he uses motivation, but also bothers him, just like it would anybody else. And I kind of think this chief's thing is an extension of that, is that everybody says Mahomes is better, everybody. And frankly, Mahomes is better. But tonight, he wasn't. And, you know, listen, by the way, Mahomes probably played a better game. Some of those Honey Badger interceptions were pretty bad. The fact that he almost threw a third interception to Honey Badger is important.

But they won tonight. And I think that's all that they're going to take away from this. I think this is an emotional lift for this team. Outside of the things we've talked about, Ben, what did you take away from this game? Or what were some of the important things that you identified over the course in 60 minutes? I think Nora brought up a point where talking about that Chief's defense trying to react on the Ravens' go-ahead touchdown drive and how Chris Collinsworth said they just can't find the ball.

Okay, was that Kevin or was that Nora? I can't recall. That was made. That was, man. With similar voices. Yeah, just generally similar vibes. The chiefs emptied the whole bag on that drive, and it was really cool to see. And I remember when Dobbins went down and then Edwards went down, and the concern was, okay, how will this running game stay afloat?

And my thought was, right, well, Lamar's going to be able to keep every running game on the high floor because Lamar, there's just what he does. But it is worth noting. The Ravens run a large variety of things, and they write up from a large variety of angles, right? pistol, gun, under center, whatever. And when you're running this bash action, this back away, where the back's going the opposite direction of the offensive line, and you're running these counterplays with multiple pullers, the back's pacing and the backs timing and his rhythm, they're all very, very important, they're very distinct.

That's why you can't just, like, grab a Levi-on bell and just, like, plug him in, right? We saw Devante Freeman, like, have an explosive run on counterbash, then he just doesn't come back in again, because that's all he's got right now. It is a difficult offense for a back. You have to get through it for a couple weeks to know exactly the rhythm and the angle. in the backfield from all the different alignments on all the different fakes, all the different givs, so on and so forth.

Tyson Williams being good is really, really important to them. He's a little bit loose through the football. He's a little bit too quick, too aggressive, getting to his gap at times. But he is explosive. He's got some slipperiness to him, and he understands the ask.

He understands what he needs to do such that they can run everything. So they have Tyson Williams and Patrick Ricard back there, and they have the whole book. And then, as Chris through Kevin said, you get off its line going one way, running back going another way, Lamar might have the ball, and you already have a generally unathletic linebacker group in Kansas City

that's just frozen, feet stuck in the mud. The fact that the Ravens still have their whole running game available was really, really important to them. And it's a testament to the fact that Tyson Williams, is their fourth guy, has been able to step up and give them a legitimate threat with the ball in his hands, keep that whole book open, allows them to access the entire running game. Yep. And it was not a flawless game by any,

means. I mean, the Marquis Brown touchdown was a Chief's coverage breakdown. There were, you know, I go back to a point I was making before Mallory came in here, but I think that the fact that this was Mahomes's first September interception, and even the way that Mahomes threw the interception, the fact that that doesn't happen more is actually a testament to how good Mahomes is, just to kind of flailing and making that throw. I mean, like, the fact that he isn't throw more interceptions like that over the course of the year is actually a testament to how well he knows his limits, how well he knows when not to throw the ball. He is so good. at either throwing the ball in that situation or not,

just keeping, just tucking it and going down. That was a rare miss on a, on a play like that, and it kind of makes you appreciate all the, all the Ws in those situations. I think the other stuff, I was impressed by the DeMarcus Robinson throw,

we cannot, and the route. I mean, it was an awesome route, but it was a trust throw. I loved it. He had 1.2 yards of separation according next gen stats, it's interesting to me, when you have those kind of throws

against a target who's not your one or two, it was interesting. I was talking to a coach during training camp tour, and he was talking about how all of the great quarterbacks tend to tell him that most of your mistakes come on your fourth and fifth target, your fourth or fifth option, and that you don't have enough trust in them, you don't know what they're going to do,

you don't have the chemistry, and the fact that Mahomes has that kind of trust with the guy like DeMarcus Robinson, who was fourth and receiving yards last year, Hardman was obviously third. I was just hugely impressed. I just remain hugely impressed with Mahomes' ability to have chemistry with every single person on the field. All right, Nora, Nora's reading the monkey off the back postgame quotes.

Anything else, buddy? It's just a big deal. I just think this is going to be one that we're going to be talking about at the end of the season. I agree. Well, they're probably going to play again. I'll just do my NFL pregame show voice. I think these guys are going to be here in January, folks. Yep.

At least it's one less thing that everybody who doesn't like Lamar gets to say. whenever they want to talk about how they don't like Lamar. He be the Chiefs. We got one done. I kind of feel like the people who don't like Omar find something else to be stupid about. I think they're hugely stupid people. Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like they're losers. All I know is I don't have to go to sleep tonight pissed off because I read 85,000 people being like,

it's a shame Lamar can't carry his team over Patrick Mahomes and the entire Kansas City offense. And that we can all celebrate. At least for tonight. Yeah. All right, time for superlatives. I'm giving my cousin Sal award. for the Dallas Cowboys in Los Angeles to the Dallas Cowboys.

20 to 17 winners over the Los Angeles Chargers. Dak Prescott, good game, I guess. Tony Powell, 109 rushing yards. Zeke Elliott at 71 yards, Ceylam looks good. Justin Herbert, 31 to 41, 338 yards. Two strange interceptions. A lot to get to with this game. Sloppy game. Chargers had 99 yards of penalties.

Big takeaway here, Micah Parsons. had the most pressures by a rookie since Nick Bosa in 2019. That's important. And Dak Prescott carved him up within 20 yards. It was 14 to 14 on quick passes, less than 10 air yards, 19, 19, 479 yards. It was as efficient as you could possibly get. Fentzolak, what you think? Yeah, if you're going to beat that Brandon Staley's style of defense,

you're going to have to be able to throw quick, throw efficient, take the underneath stuff that they give you, stay ahead of the sticks. You brought up the penalty yardage. You have to be able to not commit penalties. You can't get behind the sticks. because that's when Staley can get into his bag. The other thing is, if you can run the football the way they ran the football, then you're going to stay ahead of the six as well.

I'm all the way in on this whole, we're going to involve Tony Pollard in 2021 thing. He was a big part of the game plan of week one against Tampa Bay. He was yet again a big part of the game plan in a week two, averaged 8.4 yards of carry. It's not that Zeeke is bad. It's that Pollard is different than Zeeke. Pollard in the open field is better than Zeeke in the open field period. He's just a better athlete at this stage.

Zeeks still unbelievable Rumbler. Zeke still so good a turning three-yard gains into five-yard gains. So a very, very valuable player. But they've always had this guy in Pollard. They could have accessed, and they haven't done it to the degree to which I think was appropriate, and now they really are. And so you see a game in which Amari Cooper is not really as much of a factor. And the volatility of the optimal wide receiver one thing with Amari Cooper,

like he's just like bad outside of Dallas for some reason. Like that's always been a hamstring for the Dallas offense since he's been there. with C.D. Lamb emerging in year two and with a two-headed backfield, it really wasn't in this case. And so I thought some of the offensive demons that Dallas often would have in games like this, they were able to exercise,

even only scoring 20 points. I thought it was an impressive offensive against the defense that we expect to be pretty good. Dallas is going to be able to hang with people. We can see that now. Tampa in a shootout, they hung, and then against the charges, and what was an ugly game,

and they needed some defensive stops, some timely turnovers. They hung around. So Dallas, to me, is very legit. Here's what the Cowboys have struggled with. This is why the Pollard thing to me is significant. Last, I don't know, 25 years, they've struggled with managing egos. And that's what happens when you have a really expensive running back is there's an ego to be managed.

And I like that they kind of root the Bandit off. They're obviously going to feature Pollard more and more. I'm excited about this. Nora, more impressed by the Cowboys, more disappointed by the Chargers. Well, I was impressed by the Cowboys in particular with how they played against that Staley's style of defense. I thought they were smart to be sort of conservative rely on the quick passing. The offensive line was really, really good. They were creating holes for the running game.

Terrence Steele was filling in at right guard, and he was mashed up with Joey Bose a lot and held up there. That's pretty impressive. That shouldn't go unsaid. I did feel like the Chargers kind of gave it away. If they hadn't had two touchdowns taken off the board by penalties and maybe we're having a different conversation here. And at a certain point, you know, you're getting throws from Herbert,

like the beautiful one to Echler. and at some point you just start feeling like, you guys got to make something real of this. They have all these pieces. Like you're watching Asante Samuel Jr. just bawling out there and feeling like this team should have such a foundation, but we see them give games like this away. That was frustrating to me.

So I think a lot of credit to the Cowboys, but I do feel like if you're the Chargers, you feel like this one got away. Some of those Herber throws were legitimately, spectacular. The echo throw you talked about. Some of the throws. Breath taking.

He has his arm strength. His vision is incredible. But then, but then he has two interceptions, one of which in the end zone was just sort of out of nowhere. I was watching, I don't want to watch the plays,

but I watched the dots. And I just didn't see what he saw at that point. And so that was a little bit head scratching. Ben, when he watched Herbert today against that Dallas defense, which I thought it surprised me. You know, Jalen Smith hanging back there. Micah Parsons being that good

and pass rush surprised me. I mean, not obviously he's a very, very good pass rusher, but to be that good, that quickly in a situation he was thrown into. And they'd moved him to the edge is what we're talking about there. And Demarcus Lawrence was out for this game. Donvin Lewis was out of this game. Randy Gregory was out for this game. So they were missing, they were missing three big guys on their defense.

And I think that that's important. So Ben, what did you think about Dallas defense versus Justin Herbert? Yeah, I saw the Herbert 60-yard rope to Keenan Allen. I blacked out. I don't remember anything else that happened on the charges offense against the Dallas defense. And no, we talked about this a little bit on the. the Friday show. Like there's just stuff Herbert does. It's just not, it's not real. It's fake. It's made up. It's fictitious. It doesn't exist as it's portrayed on the screen. And so those

spectacular plays, we saw them get the charges out of a lot of third downs against Washington. They were unbelievably effective on third down. In this game, they faced 12 third downs only converted on five of them. So some of that offensive magic on those late downs fell away a little bit. I think that right now, if you're looking at what you want to improve offensively around Justin Herberies, you feel very good about how he's played, yet you've only scored 20 and 17 points to two games. You have to get better. We talked about this little bit situational football. Turnovers in the red zone. The amount, the third down conversion rate in week two. There's so much as Nora kind of said, like meat left on the bone. Like, what are we doing with this? He has these spectacular plays, but they don't seem to have the high leverage plays. That's not surprising for new quarterback and new headcount. coach or office coordinator, excuse me, marriage. So you've got to figure out who likes what and how they like to see it, where your go-to guys are in your wide receiver room or whatever. But there is a little bit of a urgency to get this figured out in what figures to be a really

competitive AFC West. So situational football has got to get better, but you still feel really good about the building blocks. Yeah, still bad loss. Still bad loss. Like, I'm disappointed. We should be judging the chargers based off a really talented team with the smart coach. I'm disappointed them. All right, Ben, give an award.

All right. I'm going to give my bad award, actually, because it ties in a little bit of what we're talking about the brand and staley defense and what it gives up for the chargers. My, he's going to run the brand and staley stuff award goes to Rahim Morris and the Los Angeles reigns defense. Now defensively, they only gave up 17 points to the Colts, 24 total points. There was a failed snap on a punt that hit a guy sort of situation. So on the scoreboard, it looks good.

Yeah, 17 points surrender, but there were two drives that got inside of the five installed. And it's not an unfamiliar model to see a defense just. give up short completion after short completion, after short completion, eight-yard completion, five-yard completion with a broken tackle goes for 12 yards, all the way down the field, and then teams get into the red zone and they stall. And the reason for that is you're not covering deep zones in the red zone because the end line is doing that for you. You can't keep going.

So you don't need to be dropping these guys as deep in zone coverage. So now your zones condense a little bit. You're able to come up. You're able to rely on what's been a really good front through the first two weeks of the season, and you're able to get these stops. get two scoreless drives that end inside the five every single week. But that bend but don't break model is kind of familiar. The problem is, is that when Staley was running this Rams defense in 2020, and there's a reason he became a head coach after one year and everybody's trying to copy

what he's doing is because he would give light boxes and he would give underneath completions, yet still be effective, yet still be able to limit some of some gains, still be able to get you into third downs. I think the number one reason was because Staley just has a really good understanding of how to teach this defense. Rahim Morris is trying to bring Tampa 2 philosophy, right? He's a Monte Kiffin disciple. He's trying to bring Monte Kiffin ideas into this zone match defense. Where in traditional Tampa 2, we're just playing zones top down.

We're just dropping back to the top of our zones. We're letting completions happen in front of us and we're going to go rally up and tackle. The Brandon Staley defense was so good at we're going to cut off this drag route, this drive route, right? I mean, the Colts just spammed shallow routes across the, across the no cover zone, we call it, shallow than five years. yards. They just spammed it because they had it. And the brand and Staley defense could take that stuff away. Darius Williams, who was so good under Staley in 2020, had a really rough outing against the Colson, 2021. So he's going to run the brain and staley stuff is a really good idea in concept

when you put it on the chalkboard. But teaching this stuff and getting it onto the field is really, really difficult because it's a different philosophy of zone. We're not going to play top down, drop the spot, last stuff happened in front of us. We're going to play zone, but we're going to be aggressive. We're going to close down. We're going to jump routes. And Rahim doesn't have his whole grasp of that just yet. And that's okay. But the Rams gave up a very good success rate to the Bears in week one. I imagine they're going to have the same thing against the Colts in week two when the data comes out. Now they get Tampa in week three. And if you can't take away the easy stuff from Tom Brady, guess who's going to throw up for 80% completion percentage of four

touchdowns, Tom Brady? So this is serious now coming into week three. No, so obviously Carson wants his ankle injury is the biggest thing. He did not finish the game. Jacob Eason did. Jacob he said throw a interception to Jalen Ramsey to clinch the game. The Colts, however, have now had three Red Zone trips in the first two games did not come away with points. Ben already talked about how good the Rams defense was in some of the situations. Aaron Donald is a game wrecker. We know that. Carson Wentz is also a mistake maker.

Anything you're worried about with the Colts here more than you were coming into this game? It's sort of the same thing where I just think they're their ceilings relatively low, right? I think they played this game about as smartly as they could have. Well, well, mistakes were made. Mistakes were made. There was an interception on a shovel pass. That happened. We can't erase that from reality.

There's only one player in the world where he could throw an interception on a shovel pass and Nora would look at it and be like, yeah, I mean, that tracks. Yeah, it's going to, like, I think you give him a couple gimmies. All right, so I have a legit question. the reason that was a pick was because Jack Doyle, who's the target, got bumped by Aaron Donald when he was trying to get up field.

I saw that. Why isn't that defensive pass interference? Has a defensive tackle been called for pass interference? I don't think it is because I generally know what defensive pass interference is, but like watching it,

it's like thinking about NFL rules just in a logical sense? It's behind the line of scrimmage. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. If anything, it would be, I'm not really sure. I know it's not. No, I think I think

I think you're right. I think the reason it wasn't called is because just no one expects it to me. Exactly. I would love a rules answer. I don't actually care, but I'm just very curious. We got to get on that. We got to find someone to actually break that down.

All right. I'm going to text Pereira and see if we can get an answer by the end of this show. That would be fantastic. So I'm giving Carson once a get out of shovel pass interception free card. Other than that, I think being conservative in this game against the Rams defense is

is relatively smart, right? So 29% of Wents' attempts were past the sticks. I don't, I think that's probably the way you want to go if you are this team facing that defense. I give them all the credit in the world for doing that. I'm just not sure if it means that you can compete, right? My worry with the Colts is that this is their best possible outcome

is basically what I'm saying. And for the Rams, their defense is not going to be as good as it was last season. Defense is a volatile thing, and they were the best defense in football last year. I think the question is, do we feel like there can be improvements on offense that can counteract that,

or have everybody's projections about the Rams for 2021, basically, Ben, let's take the 2020 Rams defense and give it more explosive playmaking and fewer interceptions on offense. Because I don't think that's happening. but if we say the offense can take several steps forward, yeah, the defense probably takes a step back.

Part of that's because you lose the coordinator. Another part of that is just because that defense was probably going to take a step back no matter what, right? Mix that all together. What does that add up to is the question? If you feel like that adds up to a really, really good football team that can compete in the playoffs, then I think that that's a reasonable expectation. I just think that sometimes,

Like, look, Indianapolis did not throw at Jalen Ramsey. They were doubling and tripling Aaron Donald to all get out as, as offenses usually do against them. And that's just going to happen. Yeah. Right? Like, I don't think that we say mistakes were made for Indy.

I don't know that mistakes have been made for the Rams. I think this just might be what it's going to be, you know? And however far you feel like that gets them is how far gets them. I agree in the sense, like, I don't think it's mistakes are made where, like, I look at something. I go like, that's done, that's bad. That was the case with the third and two jet sweep to Cooper Cup. Other than that, all in all, it was like, yeah, okay, this is how we want to make decisions.

Which McVeigh said he hated. Yeah, McVeigh. And that's classic, like, I've been babing my quarterback for five years and we can't throw a pick in this context. And then you call that plane, like, wait, wait, nope, it's a different KVee. It's a different guy. It's a different guy. That's my bad. That's on me.

But anyway, it's like, right now Ramsey's playing too much inside, in my opinion. They got to go back to saying, like, outside corner is important for us. know, like, that's where Staley was able to mask and maximize a guy like Darius Williams. And Rahim Morris just hasn't done that in his career. He doesn't, I think, have that pitch right now. They're still, like, rallying downhill with safeties and, like, making unbelievable stops, three-yard runs with safety's 15-yard back. Like, that's crazy.

But then the safeties are too deep and they're too apprehensive crashing down on intermediate routes. And it's like Staley, like, knew what he could and couldn't get away with. He knew the buttons to press, right? So it's not that Morris is making mistakes. It's just that he doesn't have the rubric that Staley did. So I'm worried that some of these inconsistencies are going to persist, as you say, right? This is the way it's going to be because Staley had a lot of answers that I'm not sure Rahim Morris has. I just remembered a – I went to a small middle school, so everybody who played every sport,

my worst sport by far was soccer. And I just remembered a time when a guy passed a ball to me in front of goal. And as the ball was traveling, he went, oh, my God, I forgot you were there. He thought it was like another player who was actually going to score. And he thought – thought like, you know, whoever was there was going to score. And then he realized as he looked up that I was the person receiving the ball. And he literally blurted that out.

And it was great. It was great for my self-esteem. And definitely am not thinking about it this many years later. All right. Not a soccer, not a natural soccer athlete. All right. Nora, give you a word. All right.

So I'm giving the at least Russ didn't have to tie award to the Seattle Seahawks who lose in overtime 33 to 30 to the Tennessee Titans. And effectively, in the third quarter and beyond in this game, they just got Derek Henry. Right. 35 rushes for 182 yards, three touchdowns, 5.2 yards per carry. Their defense wore down. And we've seen Henry do this before. And that's fine, right?

Like, we watched the Titans in week one. And they looked like a team that's built around stars, which is a shaky formula to begin with. That wasn't having it stars look like stars. Well, the stars looked like stars in this game. And that's great. that said, the Seahawks blew a 15 point lead in this game, which is actually really impressive because they were 52 and O when leading by at least 15 points at home. I would have guessed they were like two and seven.

Yeah, I was going to say, they've never won a game in their history when they've been out 15 points. Never happened. Kevin, do you hear what I'm telling you? The Seahawks found a new way to end a game. I didn't know that was possible. They're innovating. that was in a horrific horrific game. Yeah.

And what's most concerning about it to me is that look, okay, you get the Henry train running you over late in a game, fine, whatever. We've seen Tennessee sort of go ball control there and beat teams that way before. But the Seahawks offense was not able to go blow with them. And it felt like they were reverting out of looking comfortable in the new system, which we talked about last week. The motion went away.

The tight ends were non-existent. And all of a sudden, it was basically just like, if they can't get big chunk plays deep down the field with Russ creating when he's pressured, then they weren't able to move the ball. And that's concerning to me because, look, sometimes I think we baby this team a little bit. Like, Russell Wilson is incredible. And if they had won this game against a team that I'm not sure is very good, that division would be undefeated, right?

but now they're the only one in the division that has a loss. Who's we? Have you met a Seahawks fan? Everybody besides the-vichously hate their team. Yeah, Seahawks fans hate their teams like at the Super Bowl. That's what I'm saying. It's like the quarter of the Broncos Super Bowl. And Seahs fans are like, this sucks. And the national media is not.

That's what you're saying. So there's two ways of babying a team, right? There's like, oh, it's not that bad. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. And then they're saying, we expect nothing out of a team. that has one of the best quarterbacks in football, right? Like, sometimes you have to raise the bar a little bit.

And my bar for the Seahawks is that they should be beating the Titans. So I think knowing that they should be putting a great bar. It's not that high, right? Don't blow a 15.5 time lead to the Titans and find a new unprecedented way of losing a game. There were so many times that I said that the Titans had no chance in this game. So Taylor-Luan goes out before the game. Obviously, he didn't give them much last week, but still, like, that's it. not only is it a physical thing, it's an emotional thing right before the game.

He was literally in warm-ups. At one point, the Titans had a 4% chance to win this game. And Ryan Tannhill was making mistakes. The whole team was the defense just, if the Titans defense was running actual coverage schemes, you could have fooled me. I just don't really know what they were doing. Obviously, the locket plays, you know, the 60-yard bombs. Russ was just finding guys 15 yards behind any defender.

it was all strange. There was not, you know, we joke about how if you just freeze frame a Josh Allen throw like you couldn't predict the end of it. There was not a time until the very end of this game where you would have looked at this game and said, oh, this is a Titans.

Even the Titans competing in this game was embarrassing. Ben, any of this takeaway since the game? Yeah, no, I very much agree. And I think the thing that you want to unlock for Seattle right now because like, okay, Russ isn't throwing middle of the field. He never adds, he never will. Like, this is what we were worried about. you'd like to be able to rely on the running game more in the second half than they were able to.

Chris Carson's a good back. You brought in Gabe Jackson a large part because, okay, it makes Russ happy's pass protection, whatever, but also like he fits the run first philosophy. And they struggle to run the ball down in the second half. Defense didn't get a stop for all five drives in the second half. They got a turnover on down, so that was in their territory. They were pretty much giving up scoring drives unwillingly. You need to be able to sit on the football.

If you're going to be an explosive passing team and break up these big leads, they don't have that right now. So Russ is always going to screw you on past protection. You build this offense line around the football. Got to be able to do better than this. All right. Ben, next award. All right.

So this is my good award. And I have named it the Redemption Tour Award because I feel like we're getting a lot of like revenge games and whatnot. You feel bad for Tyrod Taylor, who over the last couple of years has been the preemptor to Baker Mayfield in Cleveland who just had to suffer through the Hugh Jackson year. He then goes to Los Angeles Chargers. they stab him. That happens. Justin Herbery goes and becomes a starting quarterback. He looks incredible.

He ends up in Houston, and we all kind of just cast Houston to the side, because we were like, this is a bad football team. It's just completely misrun franchise, whatever. They've come out and looked pretty good through two weeks, and Tyler is a big part of that. Office coordinator Tim Kelly's in his bag.

They're doing really, really cool stuff, running pistol, condensed sets. They're running play-pass stuff with that pulling guard, and they'll run RPO's with pulling a guard and pulling an H-back. Like, it's very, very hard run, sells. Nico Collins of Bernie Cooks both look good. And they're throwing those guys in rhythm,

in Shrine, and letting them create after the catch. And then you've got Tyrod who just isn't making mistakes, being accurate, and running in key moments on third downs and in the red zone, which is a lot of what he's done previously. And I think that not only did we underestimate in general how good the Texans might be with just veteran mercenaries, kind of in the building professionals who know how to prepare, and they're at least high floor players.

they've got a pretty good offensive line. But I think we forgot just how good, like, Tyrod was in front of Baker. And we only got, like, a game of Tyrod with the Chargers, but, like, they were going to sit with him. Like, Tyrod is a pretty solid veteran quarterback. And against a team like the Browns, which is a pretty good defense, he was lacing him up. I mean, his first two drives, you didn't have any completion.

He had a touchdown. He was being aggressive down the field. He was being quick and decisive. So I really much enjoyed watching that Texans offense in general and also watching Tyrod. Shout out to the Browns individually. This is a game that pre-executive. previous Brown's teams would have lost and they just controlled it. Relat on the running game, didn't make mistakes,

then shoot themselves in the foot. But the Texans are like for real. They're not a complete wash, not a complete joke. I don't think they're a good team or a high school. They're legit. And if you don't take them seriously, Brown's coming off of the emotional game against Kansas City, then they can get up 14 to 7 on you the way that the Texans did against the Brown.

So Texans, legitimately fun to watch. Legitimately do some cool things. And I'm happy for Tyrod. Okay, a couple things. So Tyrod ruled out for Thursday night's game. He has a hamstring injury. I will, Roger Sherman had an amazing joke that the actual Tyrod Taylor Revenge game

is if Tyrod got to perform a surgery on the Charger's doctor. I'll also say that in the same way we talk about the bars here, in the same way that the Seahawks have not cleared the bar of beating the Titans. The Texans had a very little bar

and they've already cleared it. Shout out David Cully, who I certainly made fun of. I thought this team was going to be a complete joke. Listen, I did not shout out David Cully because he willingly took a fourth and two. Oh yeah, explain this sequence of it. This was unbelievable.

Okay. So the Texas have the ball. It's third and 15. They're just on their side of midfield. Quick pass to Brandon Cook. Their own 38. Yeah, on the 38, quick pass to Brandon Cooks. He picks up 13 yards.

So it's fourth and two from the Browns 49 yard line. Meanwhile, it was a flag down. Offsides on the Browns. The Texas have a choice. Fourth and two from the Browns 49 or third and 10 from their own 43. And they elect to keep the play. So it's fourth and two from the 49, which means they're going to,

go for it or something? Sure, right? I think you just take third and ten and see if you can do it again, but whatever, we're going to go for it. They trot out the punt team. They try a coffin corner punt and goes four yards deep in the end zone. So David Cully could have had third and ten, but instead took fourth and two to punt the football away. You can't get too greedy there.

The camera cuts to Kevin Stefanski after they decline the penalty, and he just goes, what? That's his whole reaction. Keeping him off balance. It reminds me a little bit of this old Saturday. live scale with Will Ferrell during the Who Wants to be a millionaire craze where he won a hundred bucks on the first question and then he was just like you know what I'm good and like well that's not really how the game is played like you have to keep money he's like no I'm take the hundred bucks and

just uh just start a family you know just start a little nest egg and uh and that's that's that's what it is uh nor any takeaways on this game well sorry I'm still having so hard I'm so glad you brought up Roger's tweet because I thought that was just absolutely hysterical um I really felt like it was good on the Browns, right? Because to Ben's point, this is the type of game that they, that past iterations of the Browns could blow, particularly they were still without OBJ. They lost Travis Landry early. I think Adam Schafter reported they think it's a sprained MCL.

So that's a little concerning that their wide receiver group just hasn't really been able to be what they built it to be. But they just didn't do more than they could do, right? Baker, I forgot what his completion percentage was, but it was like through the roof, just taking the easy underneath stuff, relying on that run game. It was just professional football.

I actually think it was nice that we could see two professional football teams play good professional football in this game, and we should celebrate that. Yay. Norah, your next award. All right, so I am giving the most impressive two-o-start award to the Las Vegas Raiders who beat the Steelers 26 to 6 to 6th.

17. There was actually, there was a graphic about this on, on Red Zone about who had the most surprising two and oh start. And I was thinking about it because the one, there were a couple on there that were, they were using teams. They were sort of comparing it to last year's record. So there were a couple that weren't really that surprising, like the 49ers and stuff. But the two that I was thinking about were the Raiders and the Panthers. And the Panthers, that one's sort of like, well, we just didn't really expect the Panthers to be good at all. The Raiders, to me, is more impressive because it's a strength of schedule thing, right? Like they've played two good teams, or at least teams that have very strong units, and they've been able to win in different ways,

and particularly with Derek Carr playing really, really, really well. So he was 28 to 37. The Panthers should have one week one. The Panthers should have won one week one. And if we didn't see week one saints, we might have thought the same thing about the Panthers, week two as well. The Raiders are clearing a bar

that we did not expect for this. Right. And Derek Carr was great. He was great against the Ravens, 382 yards, two touchdowns. What's really encouraging is that he's continued something that actually was sort of creeping through last season, which is that he will push the ball downfield, which was always the thing with Derek Carr, right?

So he's four for four for 134 yards on throws of 20 plus yards. yards. This is behind a really banged up struggling offensive line that could not, you know, run block to save their lives. So he's doing this in a not particularly advantageous situation against a really, really good Steelers defense. Not only that, they're getting some help from their defensive additions, which is not a sentence that I expected really to ever say about the Las Vegas Raiders, not congruent with recent Raiders history. But you're just watching them. And it's not adding up to something that I think is going to be one of the most dominant defenses in the NFL. Like,

They're ways from that. But Gokwey, Crosby, Solomon Thomas. They're continuing to get pressure. Next-Gen stats had them pressuring Rothesberger on 31% of his dropbacks, which was the second highest pressure rate he's faced in a game since last season. KJ. Wright's contributing. Casey Hayward looks great. So it's just been two weeks in a row where the Raiders look like a team that, first of all,

they're not shooting themselves in the foot. But second of all, they're getting really good quarterback. play. They've got explosive playability on offense and the defense is really coming together. Apparently the one thing that can take them down is penalties at the flipping goal line, because that keeps happening. But other than the fact that they just face a really tough upward battle in the division, I think they're a really encouraging team and just really exciting to watch. Like, it's exciting to watch good Raiders football, I feel like. Okay. So we're going to get into whether or not this can last in a second. But I kind of hate this

analysis early in the season where team plays really well and then the overarching theme becomes well they can't beat the chiefs they can't beat the chargers like well fine let's get to that later but let's appreciate what the raiders have done the last two weeks um so first of all the pass the daric car had to henry rugs was 46 yards in the air that ties for his career long um it was a beautiful pass i mean it looked amazing the whole play looked amazing the spiral looked amazing everything um i kind of feel like we're in this era where quarterbacks coming to the league great and they stay great. And I kind of feel like that is unique in NFL history. And I kind of feel like guys like Derek Carr have kind of kind of had had weird or career paths. Maybe, you know, this isn't

like a novel, right? It's not to start to finish. Everything is linear. Everything is clear. There are guys like Derrick Carr who have popped up and had success like this. I know of the career. Remember, he was an MVP candidate a couple years ago. But a lot of guys have lulls in their career. A lot of guys look like they're on the way towards being on a second team and, and they redeem themselves. Um, 817 yards first two weeks of the season, that's a franchise record. Um, there's just, I, I just kind of like this Raiders team right now. I like how much John Gruden says the F word and it gets picked up by boom mics and then their announcers have to sort of hand wave it away and make a little joke about it. Um, I do want to get angry here for a second.

First of all, shout out to the Raiders, Raiders pass rush. They pressured Ben Raltzberger on 31% of his dropbacks. Second, highest pressure rate in a game since 2020. If you had said, one team was going to get 31% pressure rate. You would not have guessed in this game. It was going to be the Raiders. Having said that, maybe Ben can help me out here. Isn't there a new coordinator in Pittsburgh who's supposed to do new things?

Because I heard a story last night. I was with one of the guys at dinner I was with went to Duke. And he told me the story about how Steve Spurrier one time was suspended for a game. And he just was at the golf course. And he would just have the golf pro drive in his cart with note cards for plays to run. So he was secretly coaching the team from the golf course, even though he was suspended. Is that what Randy Fickner's doing with the Steelers? He's still secretly the coach?

Because Matt Canada was the offensive coordinator, as far as I'm concerned, on paper here. But it looks like Randy Fickner's offense. He's not doing the things we were promised. It just looks like nothing has changed. I understand the limitations of Ben Robertsberger, but I thought this was supposed to be a little different. Ben, help me. Right.

So it's, I understand the limitations of Ben Rothesberger, but I thought this would look a little bit different. The limitations of Ben Rothesberger are such that, I don't know how different it can look. Right, right? Like, there's no way to manufacture explosives besides bubble screens to Deonti Johnson, of which they threw like seven? And then Chase Cable's got one-on-one.

Throw it. Throw it now. Throw it quick. Ah, catch it. You know what I mean? Like, that's the whole model. Like, they're leaning on, right, the greatest hits from last season. And you can move, you know, Pat Fryeuth around six different times before the snap. If you want to, that's still kind of going to be the model. I don't think there's much flexibility in a 38, 39-year-old quarterback who's this physically

limited. I just don't, I don't know what you can access there. So, like, the coordinator's new, but I think it's all the same. Okay, I thought you were going to say that, so I had a follow-up question. Was Matt Canada the right offensive coordinator then? No. Okay. That's, yeah.

Right offensive coordinator was, I don't know, someone's going to run the eye formation, right? Like, you got to like zag so hard the other direction. But simply, you know, I think that Pittsburgh is aware that at this point, the hope was that Rothensberger was going to want to retire. He isn't. And out of respect for him and in the many years he's played quarterback there, you're just going to kind of ride this thing out and then hopefully be able to pick things up quick with a good defense when he does choose to retire.

Okay, so last award, we'll do this quickly because we have time limitations here. This is Nathan Peterman Award for Interceptions and Bunches, and it goes to Zach Wilson, and it goes to Joe Burrow. I want to talk about both of these guys. I'm going to start with Wilson here for a second. So here's a stat via Richardson meeting. Oh, boy. Zach Wilson is the fourth rookie quarterback top five pick with zero past touchdowns and four

interceptions in a game in the last 20 seasons. The last three quarterbacks to do it. as of Sunday are Zach Wilson, Sam Darnold, and Mark Sanchez. Okay. A lot of Jets on this list. Alex Smith did it previously in 2005. So the last three, we have three Jets rookies in a row to have done this. So a couple of these interceptions were bad bounces, bad passes and the turning to bad bounces. The first J.C. Jackson one was off a tip.

It wasn't, you know, it was thrown into coverage, all that stuff. the third one, the third of the fourth one, just an awful throw. I mean, just a throw where when you deliver it, it's like the process of when you're locking your keys in your car and you know you're doing it and you can't help yourself. That was what that throw was. Looked like it was intended.

I watched the dots. I watched the film. I just didn't see anything to lead me. Like, oh, you know, he just got a bad angle on it. Nope. Just awful. Awful. It looked like, look like he was just throwing an out route.

out there to J.C. Jacks. Fourth one to Devin McCordy, just an arm punt, and he had time. And maybe that's the ghost thing. Maybe that's Belichick. And listen, I understand the whole Belichick game plans for rookie quarterbacks thing, but at some point, that's got a, that's got a break. At the time of his fourth interception, Zach Wilson had four completions. Interestingly enough, so Robert Salas said at the end of the game, that's, oh, he wants to know that it's okay to play a boring game of football. He's an electric dude, and he's competitive as crap and he wants to win so bad, but sometimes it's okay to be boring.

That's probably the lesson from this one. similar to what Dilfer said on Rosillo on Monday about Carson Wentz, which is he just needs to learn how to sort of punch out and get a bogey. Carson Wentz is always trying to make something happen. Sometimes we see that there. Wilson's different guy, but he's so electric. And one of the things about Mahomes that nobody realizes, they do realize.

I don't know why I said nobody realizes it, but they do realize it. He doesn't really make mistakes. Like in the playoff run a couple years ago, I remember the crazy staff that he was making mistakes on like 4% of his throws, which is insane. He's throwing down the field, but he's not making mistakes. And so Wilson's got a lot of work to do to be that electric and also play a flawless type game. He was hit six times today, sacked four times, seven passes defended, go with four interceptions, according to the athletic. The Patriots have now won 11 straight games against the Jets, the longest active winning streak for any single opponent.

Let's quickly get to this game here, Nora, what did you say? Well, I guess what we're learning based on what you just told us is that the, I guess, coaches, quarterback gurus in media, use, play a boring game as stand-in for stop freaking out and throwing off your back foot

and, like, running around with your head cut off. I would be curious, do you know of those other Jets quarterback incidents? Did those come against the Patriots, too?

Did either of them? Mark Sanchez was against Buffalo. But he actually did have, he did have four interceptions. He had five interceptions against Buffalo, four interceptions. But the difference is, that it's not, it's, he had to touchdown against New England.

He had zero, the stat is zero touchdowns and four interceptions. Got it. That was against Buffalo. He managed, Sanchez redeemed himself with one touchdown against his four interceptions against New England. Yeah, I mean, look, is Zach Wilson going to be a total bust? It's obviously way too early for us to talk about that. But what's happening here is that the Jets' infrastructure is, is going to get tested, right?

And some version of this, I don't know that it was going to look this bad, but I would encourage Judd's fans, whoever else, to not totally freak out based on this. I know this sounds sort of like Patriots homerism, but Belichick does do this to quarterbacks. Like, I have watched it happen before. I saw the Sam Darnold seeing ghosts game. And there is something to that where they just get freaked the heck out and things spiral. So while I don't think that this is like, oh God, Zach Wilson doesn't know what he's doing at all. It's like this is a young quarterback who hasn't been in similar situations as this before. And he needs a lot of help.

And what it means is the jets are going to be tested less so than it seems on whether or not they got that pick right. And more so on whether or not they can find ways to support him, right? Because they were probably going to lose this game. It feels worse because it happened in sort of spectacular fashion. But the outcome is not really all that important. important. What is important is, okay, does that teaching point that was communicated in the post game press conference, does that make its way to Zach Wilson? Right? And does that actually get, does that penetrate? I'm starting the time. We have 15 seconds. Talk about Mack Jones.

He looked good. I mean, I'm stealing your session here. No, he for one pass further than 10 yards down the field. Okay, but he was the only, only one of these quarterbacks who did not throw a pick today. Two. Only one of these quarterbacks who didn't throw a pick. The timer's gone off. Let me get to my second part of this, Ben, and then we'll get to what you think of both these guys. So Joe Burrow has three interceptions in a row, the worst of which I think was probably

the Roe-Kwan-Smith pick six, right over the middle. It's interesting, I've talked to this before, but I talked to Burrow in Trinicamp, and he said that the vision problem for him, obviously vision is his strength. But he had these vision problems where he went from being able to see everything

in a diagnostic of just seeing what he called a wall of people. And when I see a pick like that, kind of think he's still struggling with that. He had some of the garbage time things. Jamar Chase said, by the way, we waited until the last minute to take shots. I think he wants more of a vertical offense, et cetera. Jamar Chase told me that his favorite plays at LSU

were when Joe Burrow just said, hey man, just run down in the field, I'm going to throw it up to you. And that's kind of what happened to that. Big wide receiver answer right there. Yeah. And so when I see a Roquan Smith type pick, I think that these vision problems are still there.

He'd gone 190 straight attempts without throwing interception, then he threw three in a row. Shaky offensive line all day. This was bad. Ben, put a bow tie on both Burrow and Zach Wilson. Do we need to press the panic button on either of these guys? Wilson, no. Wilson could have been drafted by the San Francisco 49ers,

never seen Belichick ever in his rookie season, and he still would have been a high interception quarterback. It's who he is, right? Like Wilson said during training camp, I'm going to try things in training camp, This is where you practice to try stuff and experiment. The problem is that's how he plays in games. Like, that's who he was at V-R-U, right?

And that's what he was always going to be a high interception player because he's always been a risk-faker. He likes to test the limits of his arm. So to me, Zach Wilson four interception game was like chalk. You know, that was going to happen. That's okay. Jets are on a long horizon. I'm not so much concerned with Burrow in and of himself, in a vacuum as I am with, as

we always talk about, kind of the, the Bengals process, as Kevin loves, the infrastructure around, right? Uh-oh. Like the Roquon Smith pick. Bengals process catching strays. Okay, so the Roquan Smith pick is a great example. The Bears are playing zone. Bengals are in four by one, unbalanced set.

They got four receivers from one side of the formation. So the bears are going to flood the zone to that side. They're going to push all the short zones over one. And they're going to make sure they have extra zone defenders to that side. Bro, one step drop. It's five-man protection. He sees that it's third and four. His receiver turns around where he expects.

There should be a hole right there if it were standard zone. his left tackles on the floor because he immediately got knocked down by Robert Quinn, I'm throwing this football because this is what the whole offense is. It is empty. It is five-man protection. It is quick game. And so he's been getting hit all game. So the clock is off in his head.

Go, throw, throw, throw, throw. And there's no moment where he goes, check the backer. There's no moment where he says those guys aren't where they should be in their zones. And then it goes right to rope one Smith. And he comes back on the next right. And it's Jalen Johnson, isolated man coverage on a deep comebacks. That's all they're throwing. and then what were yada yada yada the third pick he's getting hit straight in the face because the running back can't pass with it right so the the whole kit and caboodle is not good in Cincinnati and that puts burrow in consistently disadvantageous spot so while i don't like three consecutive picks he had a hundred ninety nine consecutive throws with that one he's usually a risk of verse quarterback i expect him to go back to that but again the infrastructure here does not help a quarterback in those moments where he struggles it's a pick six you know what i mean because they don't have anything else to lean on besides burrow solve it go it's you it's you

do it. Like, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

that's, that's, that's, that's the Ruees report ruminations rundown. Oh,

what's his topic this week? Kyler Murray, ever heard of them? Aw. Yeah, I saw him make a couple plays this Sunday.

That was a good game. Well, he gets to talk about him, you don't. Bin moo. Who's the, who's the, who's the,

who's the, uh, the guy, well, first of all, did you see the, did you see the, the damn

Vikings radio call? Yeah. Oh, I didn't read this. They had them making it. No, it was a rough one. They were like, oh no. They were like, Greg Joseph is the name of the kicker.

It's Greg Joseph, which is like the most planned name in history. Game ball to Greg Joseph. Every, every, this is, you know what the, you know what they have to stop doing? They have to stop having kickers that have two, two first names. Jake Elliott, Eagles.

Justin Tucker. What's you talking about? All right, we got to go. The jury's still out on double-named kickers. Ben, thank you. We'll see you this week. Thanks so much, team. All we're going.

All right. It's time for the Ruiz report rundown. We'll keep adding to that. I did get a DM. So a lot of people, this is unsolicited, because we said we were workshopping the name. A lot of people DM me to give me names for this.

And the most creative by far, it was all like some of like Ruiz's razors and stuff that was interesting. But one guy hit me with, with 13 Ruizans why. And I can't stop thinking about it. We're not accepting it. But that one, that's a guy

who thought a lot about this. Well, why not? A lot of reasons. First of all, the number 13 has nothing to do with the show. You're not doing 13 different things you learned yet. Second of all, that shows content is different than this particular segment. Fair.

Yep. So we're just going to keep moving with it. We're going to keep moving forward and adding words to what this is. So we're doing deep dive on Kyla Murray. Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals beat the Minnesota Vikings who were just trapped in hell. This was an amazing game. We learned a lot.

Kyler is that dude. If you didn't know that, you know that now. I'll let you have the floor. What did you learn about Kyler Murray today? My first take was going to be that he's the new Russ and that the Cardinals are only going to play weird games from here on out. But then I stopped watching the Cardinals game and flipped it over to the Seahawks game and realized, no, the Seahawks are still very much the champions of that realm. Undefeated. But, I mean, I came away thinking that Kyler is a legit MVP candidate.

And that's not necessarily a good thing for the Cardinals this year. Because he almost has to be that type of player for this offense to work. it's still very much Kyler-centric. Like Cliff is like, Kyler, just go do something fun. And that's the only way we're going to be able to move the ball. And that's what it looked like on Sunday.

I was kind of worried that would be the case after that week one game where they exploded for, what, like 36 points? And yeah, that's what happened on Sunday. It was just all Kyler all the time. Kyler do something. Most impressive thing you saw him do today.

I would just say just the scrambles, just keeping plays alive. Like he made a couple throws downfield, but those guys were mostly wide open because I don't know what the Vikings defense. Well, the throw to Kirk at the end was outrageous. Yeah, the fourth down throw, which is like a throw we saw last week against the times to Kirk again, like they beat cover zero. And that's been a big thing Cliff's been talking about during the off season. And that's really where we've seen the most progression is against these blitzes and pre-snap stuff. He's making more audibles before the snap, which is a good sign for a 30-year quarterback.

For me, it's still like that middle ground. like he can make the throws to the wide open guys when his first read is open he can scramble around and create big plays in the passing game but he still can't find that like plan B he goes straight to plan C which is the scraming but he still can't like go from one to two to three and find an open receiver like his second or third read and I think that's like a height thing like he's just not comfortable in the pocket he wants to get out of the pocket because he can't see over his line and maybe that comes to him naturally like in three four years but right now it's like he's not going to get any taller.

So I don't know if that's ever going to be part of his game. And some of the, you know, some of the, if you look at his passing charts, he has had trouble with turnover's middle of the field and people do think that's part of that's height. How much of this, how much of those scrambles were just Minnesota's, I wouldn't say an ability to cover as much as it was an ability

to just randomly fall down. Yeah. And like he's gotten two defenses that have specialized in that. Like the Titans also, the first play of the game, the cornerback fell down and DeAndre Hopkins was wide open. He got this again, and I think it was the first drive against the Vikings, but Kyler didn't see him. But that's my question with this team. They're 2 and 0.

I think they have the best point differential of all the 2 and 0 teams, but they're the one that I'm, like, kind of most skeptical about. Like, what is this going to look like when they play good teams? And they're going to start playing good teams eventually. They play the Jaguars this next week. Next week. They're going to go 3 and O. And Kyle is probably going to throw 4,000 yards. and rush for like another 200.

But after that, that's when I start to have questions. And I think that's when it's going to fall off. So they're going to put Urban Meyer in a torture rack next week. And then the Cardinals are going to play the Rams in L.A. on October 3rd. And that to me is when we find out. And that, that to me, is the biggest question. That's Aaron Donald. I mean, you saw Kyler was getting away from everybody,

but then he got wrecked by Dinell Hunter because Dinell Hunter is a freak, right? So there are still guys who can catch up with him. he can't just run around there forever. He knows it to take a hit, by the way. He knows how to fall down and all that stuff because he's been doing it his entire life and he's smaller than everybody else he gets tackled by.

But that stuff is important. Okay, the big question here is the Cliff Kingsbury question. If you were to rank people in the world best equipped to have Kyla Murray as their quarterback, where is Cliff Kingsbury for you?

About 90th? Yeah, yeah. He's not high on the list if the pool is just... Worldwide. Worldwide. He's like in the 98th percentile, but that's not that impressive. Yeah, no, I'm looking for a rank.

That's more than 90. There's thousands of football coaches. Tens of thousands, probably. Like, I have more faith in a guy who just plays Madden online. Like, I play Badden Online. Oh, no. Oh, no. I play Madden online a fair amount.

Oh, no. And whenever I was trying to be like, you know, I, you know, there's college coaches who may be good, you know, Lincoln Riley would be better for the Cardinals. Sure. No, no. You were going to go like good Madden player. I have more faith in Clif than a guy who plays Madden. Well, it depends how good they are.

Listen, when I play online Madden and the Cardinals come up, I'm like, ah, shit, I'm losing this game. I got no chance against Kyler. But when I see the Cardinals play in real life, I'm like, this isn't going to work. I do think that Cliff should let Kyler live in his house. Explain. I think that's Tyler's house now. But does Cowher want to do that?

I don't know, but I think he deserves it. Okay. So that offense, take me through specifically, Stephen, like, what Cliff has done in all seriousness. He is. He is probably better than the Madden guys. But what long-term concerns you have with this offense as Cliff has the reins just because we know Cliff is not a top, top, top NFL coach. That's what we know. That's the point I'm trying to make is that he's not a,

he's never going to be a top NFL coach, and Kyler is going to be and is already a top NFL talent. And when those two things are not aligned, there's always going to be questions. So take me through that particular question and what needs to happen for, for Cliff to become a better coach or if he has. I think Cliff,

I think he sees himself as a play caller, first and foremost, because that's like how he came up in coaching. But I really think he's a good ideas man. Like, philosophically, the offense makes sense. And it, like, jives with, like, everything the nerds have been telling us. They run into light boxes only. They pass a lot.

Yeah. The problem is his passing game, like, his run game is very advanced. And it's unlike anything else we see in the NFL, and it's completely modernized. The passing game is still old school air raid, five-man protections, just basic route concepts. And a lot. And the same route concepts over and over again. Whereas, like, in college, you can get away with that because you just rep it all the time. And you're playing bad teams against the pros, like, NFL defenders are too good.

If they recognize what play, you're running, they're going to shut it down. I really think he needs to, like, give up control of the play calling. But I fear that that's what his identity as a coach is wrapped around. So he's not going to want to give that up. Like, he would make a great run game coordinator. It's just the passing game is just not great. It's like the Raven situation. It's like a great Roman situation in a completely different way.

Yes, Nora. Noah's bent over laughing, thinking about Cliff is the wrong as demoting himself to run game coordinator. Steve just demoted Cliff Kingsbury to run game coordinator. Before we do that or before we short shame Kyler too much, the office. Wait, wait, wait, wait, nobody short shamed him. Oh, there was some short shaming going on a couple minutes ago on this very podcast. Let's not rewrite history here. I deal with data.

It should be known that the Cardinals' office. offensive line is also not great. Right. Right. Like, Kyler was, Kyler was scrambling around a lot of the time. One, because he's great at it, but two, because he had people to run from. Um, I think he was pressured 23 times according to, uh, PFF and had 12 hurries and they got him for three sacks and also weren't blocking particularly effectively in the running game. So, Stephen, do you feel like, like, where does that fit into this conversation, right? Like, if he had better protection, would some, um,

of these issues be less significant? I think the protection issues are more of a cliff problem, if that makes sense, because he does still rely too much on the five-man protection. Like you said, the offensive line's not good. You can't get away with that in the NFL. Like keep a running back in the block, keep a tight end into block, and he just doesn't do that. With Kyler, it's going to be like a Russell Wilson thing where it's always hard to judge his offensive line.

It's like a chicken and egg situation where, like, is the line bad? or is the quarterback just holding onto the ball and scrambling around too much? I think we know the Cardinals line is bad just by looking at the depth chart. It's not a good offensive line. But Kyler does make things a lot more difficult for them. So I think he makes a mediocre offensive line

look a little worse, even if at times he makes it look a little better because he avoids sex. All right. We'll get you out on this. You gave him some MVP buzz. Give us the path. What has to happen?

What has to go right? What, you know, who has to have a word? season that we anticipate for Kyler to win the MVP. Map it out for us. I mean, I feel like Tom Brady is going to, is on pace for like 60 touchdowns. They've won nine straight games with 30 points or more. And that's never happened before, I think. Only the Patriots are in that verified error in history.

So, yeah. And they're not going to be challenged in that division as we learned today with the Saints laying an egg. So they might go like 16 and 1, 15 and 2. And if Tom Brady throws 50 touchdowns at age 44, he's going to win MVP. Jesus Christ. And then Mahomes fatigue. I feel like Mahomes has to go far and above his normal standard just to win MVP now.

He's in that realm. We threw his first September interception of all time. So there's a real question that whether or not he's washed. So I'm with you. I like your new bit of saying Herbert's washed every time he throws an interception. But just, but seriously, Herbert might be the fourth candidate. The skepticism in Kevin's voice that you're hearing, Stephen, is he wasn't ready to claim that as a bit? Sometimes there's private bits and public bits. And that one is not in any way. Like,

I'm happy to make that public, but there are some, some of them the text chain, you know, you just, you know. Sorry, I'll keep, I'll keep your, no, the Herbert wash bit is actually quite good. So we're going to keep. No, I like it. I feel like I could tell the difference between public. Oh, no, you definitely can. Trust me. You definitely can. To fork away from this discussion, I wonder how many seasons Tom Brady has thrown for more touchdowns than he has years of age. Seven. That's your guess, seven? Yeah.

Okay. Stephen Ruiz. Thank you, buddy. See you next week. Thanks for having me. It's time for hurry up. All right. Saints Panthers, Nora.

All right. So Panthers win 26 to 7. Kind of a womp womp for the Saints, but they were missing seven coaches because of COVID. They just put Juan Alexander and Marcus Davenport on. I are. So not the right direction. there, but I'm more interested in the Panthers because they look like they have something with Darnold. He wasn't necessarily like creating for them, but when he had time to throw, he had over

three, three seconds to throw in the first half. He was 16 of 20 for 216 yards, 10.8 yards per attempt. So a pretty good quarterback when the situation around him is good, which is probably what they were hoping for. We, by the way, wanted to go deeper into the Panthers. And we asked our Panther fan, Resident Panther fans, Stephen are racing city and watch them. So blame him, Panthers fans. Wamp, mom. All right. Broncos, Jaguars 13.

Urban Meyer is in a bad place right now. Teddy Bridgewater has the Broncos as only one of two undefeated AFC teams. I kind of like this plucky Broncos team. They've got an interesting defense, obviously. Cortland Sutton 159 yards. Love to see him showing out. Trevor Lawrence up and down game, one touchdown, two interceptions, 118 yards. Not good right now.

now. Bill's Dolphins. Nora. All right, bills win 35 to nothing. Big takeaway is that two, it gets hurt. Carter to the locker room in the first quarter. According to Tom Pallisero, he has bruised ribs. Dolph couldn't do much without without him with Jacoby Brissette. So you worry about when he gets back. For the bills, even though this looks like a blowout, Josh Allen was still pretty inaccurate. According to PFF, he had a career high 10.8% turnover worthy play percentage. That is a stat that has some competition. So a little concerning there, even though they next game 49ers 17 eagles 11 pretty ugly game on both sides uh Kyle Shanahan kind of did his thing saying that he's glad that they went on the road and it was

ugly win and all that stuff trace sermon goes down let's hurt but the 49ers defense was good jimmy gropolo was I mean fine hundred and 89 yards but I think that they need to quarterback who can move a little bit more going forward I don't know Debo Samuel 93 yards. Uh, and by the way, we just have to talk about every game. So we, we violated our hurry up time, but I don't care. But you know who was supposed to run out of time? You know who's supposed to run out of time?

Tom Brady, 48, Falcons 25. Take it away. All right. Tom Brady, who has not run out of time through five touchdowns. He completed passes to 10 receivers. Arjuna just assessed us with a flag. Whatever.

I'm powering through it. Tom Brady doesn't get flags. I don't care. I don't care. Brady's just on fire, right? That offense is cooking. He was throwing past the, sticks 58% of time according to PFF.

Here's the thing that I'm interested in. Going back to last season, he's thrown at least four touchdowns and four consecutive games, which is one away from Peyton Manning's record. Peyton did five in a row. Peyton Manning's on television now. So we get to hear him make jokes about it. So even if you hate Tom Brady and watching him thrive in Tampa Bay is less than satisfying, you can look forward to Peyton Manning joking about how Tom still hasn't

matched his record. So there's the bright side. All right. Two listener questions. The first one is from Alex. Would you rather buy stock right now in Justin Fields or Trevor Lawrence? So Justin Fields, if you did not see today, came into the game after Andy Dalton left. And we don't really know the status of Andy Dalton. He finished the game with 60 yards, one interception, a 27 rating. Fail forward fast year for Justin Fields. What did we think?

All right. First, I just have to tell you that I just went to Twitter and Stephen Ruiz is posting cutups of the Panthers game. So we'll have some midweek Panthers content for you. The man can't be helped. The man can't be helped. I would buy stock in Lawrence still just because I think we've seen, even though it's been intermittent because of the situation there, you still look at him as the downfield accuracy is just so spectacular in moments that I'm willing to sort of hang on to the priors there. We also just have seen very little of fields, right?

It felt like when Dalton got hurt, like he could play a bunch of this game, but he didn't end up doing that. Yep. And obviously we'll have more breakdowns of fields. And obviously, the sample size will grow and we'll have more discussions on it. Right now, I mean, he was just thrown into the fire. And it didn't look all that good. But, you know, a lot of young quarterbacks are struggling right now, except the only one who didn't throw an interception today, Mr. Mac Jones. That was Nora's point, not mine.

The other question we have with what's just came in. a couple minutes ago, and I just want to throw it out there. From Matt, there are 53 Alabama players on NFL active rosters, the exact amount to fill out a roster. If all the Alabama players became their own NFL team, how many games would they win? So first of all, who's QB1? Is it the aforementioned Mac Jones? I mean, I think right now, who's looking at NFL ready? I mean, Jalen Hertz, is in the mix there?

to his banged up. It depends who it's not it could be Hertz but I think there's just you got to have a more specialized

roster, right? So you got to have a backup quarterback. So let's go with a Mac Hertz platoon. No love for AJ McCarron here.

Doesn't he own a sushi restaurant in Tescalo? He does. He does. I wouldn't look into it. It's a little bit problematic.

We're not into cancel culture here, but it is a little a problematic. Anthony Averitt, by the way, I didn't shout him out in the first thing. He had an incredible pass breakup that really swung a lot of momentum in the game in the Chiefs Ravens game. He'd be on that team. Marlon Humphrey would be on that team. I guess those guys both play in the same team. It'd be a really good team. It'd be a really good team. I'm just

looking at it right now. Eddie Jackson, Levi Wallace, so an interesting day today. Jeddrick Wills, Trayvon Diggs, who had a big game today, Jerry Judy, Petrus Santana Seventh, I mean, there's, I'm not going to do, we're not going to sit here and do. I'm just doing alphabetical, by the way. We're not going to do Alabama. I'm just saying this would be a 12 win team. Yeah, it's definitely, definitely a winning record. Nasha Harris.

The other name for an NFL team comprised of all Alabama players is the Miami Dolphins. I mean, some of them, some of them. Jalen Waddle will be on there. Quite a bit of them. Yeah, but a lot of the top ones are on other places, you know. It's not like Belichick and Rutgers where he just took all of them in mass. Yeah, Kevin, it was a bit.

Oh. Well, Belichick actually did that bit with Rutgers. The bit came to life. He lived it. He lived it. I'm just looking at Derek Henry, he'd be on that team. Julio would be on that team.

I mean, this would be a damn good team. Really good and run defense. 12th. I'd have to go through the entire roster and see if they actually have, I assume they would have everybody at every position. But assuming they would, it would be a 12 or 13 wins.

team, I guess. I don't think they would beat like the Chiefs because they just don't have the quarterback play. And we don't know about the coach either. If it's saved, then Andy Reid would, would, uh, who went? Jonathan Allen. Dude, there's a lot of talent there. Alabama's pretty good.

Yep. Uh, all right. This is fun. Good stuff. What an app. What an app. Next up on the ring NFL feed this Tuesday is Ryan Shazier, James Jones, and Jason Gough also listen to Jason Gough's

Chicago podcast, The Full Go. I'll be back on Wednesday talking about NFL team building. It's going to be a really cool discussion. Nor will be back on Thursday with Mallory Rubin. Friday show will have Ben and Stephen, who you already heard tonight with Caitlin Jones. I love that show.

They'll be preview in the week three action. I'll also have a slow news day. I think I'm filming two. I think only one's going to come out with a pretty generally famous quarterback. Really cool conversation. it's going to happen there. And then the other episodes with a beloved media figure.

I think that will come out next week. Thank you to Ben, Nora, and Stephen. Thank you to production assistant Isaiah Blakely for production help on this episode with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramqbal. This is the Ringar NFL show on the Rinner Podcast Network.