The Ringer NFL Show - Week 3 Recap: Dolphins Drop 70 on the Broncos, the Cardinals, Colts, and Texans Pull Off Upsets, and the Chargers Get Their First Win | Dual Threat

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Nora and Steven recap Week 3 start by talking about the Miami Dolphins' incredible offensive display in their 70-20 win over the Broncos. Then, they run through their winners and losers from Week 3 (18:50) before wrapping up with the take purge. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Social: Kiera Givens and Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For all your fantasy football needs, check out the Ringer Fantasy Football Show with me, Danny Kelly, along with Danny Hyfitz and Craig Horrellbeck. That's the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Dual Thread. I'm Nora Princiotti. I'm Stephen Ruiz. And week three is in the books. And what a week it was.

And today's headline is brought to you by Columbia Sportswear, makers of the Omniheat Infinity collection. With tiny gold dots that reflect your body heat, Omni Heat Infinity delivers instant warmth without compromising breathability. Cold outside, gold inside with Columbia's Omnihete Infinity collection. Go out anyway. Learn more at Columbia.com slash infinity. There is nowhere else to start, but with the Miami Dolphins dropping 70 points on the Broncos. They're the fourth team in NFL history to hit 70 points, the first since 1966. This was a historic day in the league in Miami in Kansas City. Taylor Swift had to watch the Bears offense not do anything for four quarters.

There is just so much to talk about, but we could not start anywhere other than with Mike McDaniel and Tua and the Miami Dolphins. Stephen, what a day, history. Football games are 60 minutes long and they scored 70 points. That's more than a point per minute. That's more than a touchdown every six minutes. So I want to play dolphin noises every six minutes to represent how quickly the dolphin scored. For the rest of the podcast, just so we can get the same field that the Broncos defense got another touchdown by the dolphins.

Can we do that, Isaiah? There we go. Every six minutes from here on out. Is this a play to get Aaron Rogers to listen to the to the ringer NFL show? Yeah, it's because I don't want to watch Zach Wilson anymore. So if he hears this, he'll heal faster and he'll come back and I don't have to watch Zach Wilson anymore. We're going to have the healthiest Achilles in the league by the time this podcast is over. All right.

I'm all for it. This was just an absolute beat down. It was really fun to watch. It is hard to know where to start with everything that is working for this team and this offense. What was the most impressive out of the 70 points and the absolute total domination? Let's power rank all 70 points. What was your favorite point they scored? It's the run game.

I mean, this is a Shanahan run game. We didn't see this last year with the Dolphins. They were all explosive plays, all explosive plays in the passing game, no run game, no consistency at least. And it's different now. Like we saw last week they played the Dink and Dunk game against the Patriots against the three safety look. The first week, it would look like last year's dolphins, like with the downfield passing. This week, there was some downfield passing, but not a lot. Two-L only completed one pass over 20 air yards.

Mike White had one over 20. 25 air yards. But the rest of it was just them running the football. I think they had eight explosive run plays that's over 10 yards. And it was like outside zone insides. It wasn't like these crazy Mike McDaniel. Like it wasn't like Tyree Kill end rounds. It was like traditional run plays.

It looked like the 49ers run game when it's been at its best. And if the dolphins have that, have the 49ers run game with that passing game. Like, I don't know what you do. What do you do on defense? What do you do when they already have? I mean, you know, they're always going to have. Tyree Kill as long as he's healthy. They're without Waddle in this game.

And then all of a sudden, Devon A. Chain, who they've been working into the mix slowly, he had a shoulder injury in the preseason, he started getting up to speed in week two, but then all of a sudden, four touchdowns, 203 rushing yards, two rushing touchdowns, 30 receiving yards, two more receiving touchdowns, including the no-look shovel pass from Tua. That was like the coolest play I've ever seen Tua make. he's already another incredible speed element to this offense. We already felt like they had the best skill position players, maybe across the league,

certainly the most explosive, certainly the hardest to figure out how do you defend them because no team is going to have the speed to match them. And then here's another guy that just gives them that type of element somewhere else. Through three games, you know how next-gen stats tracks the fastest ball character? speeds around the league.

All six of the top fastest speeds are dolphins. It's all the dolphins. This is just doing. It makes no sense. Tua is at the top of the league in A dot and at the bottom of the league in time to throw, average time to throw, which are two, like those don't make sense. Those are conflicting ideas, like having a short time to throw and also pushing the ball downfield is that's not how it's supposed to work. He does it in a hurry and it's because of how

this offense is designed. It's because of how he he throws the football and how he processes. It's how Tyreek Hill gets downfield, how Jalen Waddle gets down field in a hurry. Like, it's the perfect storm of an offense. And like, I, through three games, it's on pace to be historic. I, I mean, we might be watching one of the best offenses ever, maybe the best offense ever when it's all said and done. This is this is crazy to watch and it didn't even look hard at all. 70 points looked easy. I think there's definitely a conversation here about the history and where they stack up over years and years and years of the NFL, even more simply, is this the best team in the league to you right now? Because I think to me, until proven otherwise, nothing has

been more impressive through the first three weeks of the season. And I think this is a Super Bowl team. I mean, I think it's the second best team in the league because I'm not going to say anyone's better than the chiefs, especially after what they did today. But the fact that I'm saying it's the second best team is crazy to me. I mean, I was very high on this team before the season, but everything that had to work out is working out. Now, there's still like the Tua injury thing, which is like, I mean, you can't really predict that. So, like, there's no point in us like analyzing it really. But, I mean, it looks like they have so many buttons to push on offense. defense. Like even the defense, I think, is something we have to pay attention to. It's easy to

get blinded by 70 points, but like through three weeks, the defense has been, I would say, like, mediocre league average, but like that's good enough when you're scoring 70 points. And like, they're not giving up explosive plays. This is the Fangio model. Don't give up explosives. And if offenses are opponents have to go like 12 plays to score a touchdown, you're not going to keep up with this offense. It's going to be impossible. And then when they get Jalen Ramsey back, I think the defense takes another step. I think it goes from league. I forgot about that.

Yeah, they get the best quarterback in the league back. When they get him back, I think they go from league average to top 10. And if they're top 10, like a top 10 defense with this offense, I mean, I'm saying the chiefs are better now. But maybe down the line, I won't be saying that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, I'm going to have a hard time really with my chest denying any argument that the chiefs are the best team in the league, especially after. They dropped 40 points, but at the same time, I think that Bears team that the Chiefs rolled over is just like the biggest disaster they possibly could be right now. The Broncos actually aren't this bad.

That was a rough showing. Sean Payton got really testy about the historic nature of this loss in his press conference after the game. How more? Third time, the team has scored 70 points over 70. What's the question? What's the question? I just finished telling you. Historically.

Next question. So, but I don't think they're actually this bad. I think the dolphins are just an incredibly tough opponent and there's sort of nothing you can do about it. So I don't know. I mean, it's, I don't. They just scored again. That really got me.

There's a touchdown. It's, what is it? 14 to nothing now? That is the second Dolphins noise. Dolphins chiefs on a neutral field right now. I'm just sort of going, okay, do I think that Kansas City can score? score, can Kansas City score 40 on this defense? Because it's just like, I don't know, that's an easy thing for Miami to do.

That's crazy. That is a crazy thing to say is just fairly simple. And have you seen the passing map, like the next gen passing map for Tua? It's like the most basic Jimmy G, like typical, like there's no throws outside the numbers, no throws deep, just like a bunch of passes, a bunch of green dots in the middle of the field. And it's 70 points. That's how easy it is for this team to score. They don't have to put up this expansive passing map like you would expect from a Pat Mahomes-led team.

Like if the chiefs put up 50 points, you're expecting like Mahomes' passing map to look crazy. But with this team, it's so easy. That's why I think it's sustainable as long as two is on the field. I'm not worried about what happened last year where they played the 49ers. They played the Chargers and there was a blueprint. And they really never recovered from that. I don't think that's going to happen this year. Just like what I said, they have so many.

buttons to push, the run game, the short passing game, obviously the deep passing game. Their defense is better. Their defense can win them games now and close out games now. This is a good team. I have to ask you something. Have you ever heard of the QB Collective? Yeah. It's like for the listeners, it's like the Kyle Shanahan and Mike McDaniel, it's like all

the Shanahan guys, it's like their quarterback training company. I don't know what it is, but they meet in the offseason and they discuss like quarterbacks backing and stuff. You should see their timeline from today. Just all anti-Shahn-Paeton memes, retweets. This was a personal game for Mike McDaniel. I don't think people realize, like, I think that the Shanahan coaching tree

is going to take their frustration out on Sean Pate whenever they play them. Because I think they were mad about what he said about Hackett. And if you look at, like, their timeline and their past tweeting, like they have tweeted about Sean Payton talking shit about Nathaniel Hackett before. And Mike McDaniel is like,

involved with this company. So I'm not ruling out the fact that he ran it up on him. This was like a Dan Laning Dion Sanders type situation. Colorado got beat down, got the score run up on them. Two days in a row. Bad, bad weekend for Colorado football. You know what's crazy about that is that the Dolphins tried to get Sean Payton and Tom Brady illegally got caught doing it.

And now Mike McDaniel and two are putting up 70 points on the coach that they tried to tamper with. to hire. I mean, that's a real, I guess, no bad deed goes unrewarded or something like that. But if you're in the business of getting back at Sean Payton in defense of Nathaniel Hackett, which I don't know if that's the limb I personally want to go super far out on, but do you, do you quarterback collective? Talk your talk. It's a pretty good day. It's a good day. There is one thing that I wanted to get your take on. Stephen as our quarterback, as the ringer's quarterback guru, as a one-man quarterback collective,

is how I like to think of you. So, Tua's average time in the pocket through three games, it's 2.1 seconds. That's bottom of the league, only behind Trevor Lawrence, obviously to much better results so far. I think that's huge because Tua has also taken only one sack through three games. So it's not just that this is improving the product on the field in terms of how their offense is operating, but if a chief concern with this team, is if the quarterback's going to stay healthy and if the offensive line is good enough

to protect a quarterback who's not a huge guy and who's had health concerns in the past, so far, it's not that they're doing it. It's that the way that this offense is functioning is doing it. But what I don't quite understand is what is letting him get through his reads so quickly? Is it just that this is the Jimmy Garoppolo passing map and that's all that's being asked of him?

Is it that he is just getting the ball out really quickly? Is it that he himself is going through the reeds really quickly. Is it McDaniel's scheme? Like, diagnose how the ball's coming out that quickly and how toa is having to spend so little time hanging out in the pocket. The answer to that question is just yes. Like yes to everything you just said. I think it's like every like Tua deserves credit for it because like the anticipation throwing

into the window and having the confidence to do that to essentially throw blind, not blind, but you're like you're throwing before the receiver gets open. Sometimes blind. Yes. And sometimes blind. He's like staring at Tyree kill when he throws that little. shovel to A. And it was like the

savviest flex to a like that's what's going on. And it was right handed. Did you notice it was right handed? No. He doesn't get extra credit for that though. He is naturally right handed. I saw someone give him credit for that.

No. Okay. I think he has to get credit for it. No. No. I'm saying extra credit for it being right handed. Well then, it's not Drake Maiton to left-handed.

touchdown yesterday. I don't know. If it's, if you, that's a good point. That's a good point. That's a good point. That's good point.

It is his dominant hand though. Okay. Then for the rest of it to be his non dominant hand. There's got to be. Get you a man who can do both is what I'm saying. That's it. Yeah. Okay.

He deserves credit for it. This offense is the anti is the anti bears. Right. We talked about Ben's piece where he just said what's wrong with the offense, everything. What's right with the offense, everything. Like that,

that's the zone. the dolphins are in right now. But to answer your question, I wrote about this midweek, like the way they're using motion is unlike the way I've seen any other offense use motion. I think it, the reason they're able to do it is because they have these burners at receiver. But if you look at my piece, I have like a breakdown with the next gen stats miles per hour run by Tyree Kill. Are you telling me to read the website?

Yeah, yeah. It's the vibe here. I did read your story, but I want you to explain it. I'm talking to the people. I'm talking to America, okay? Oh, no, they scored again. They scored again. Oh, God.

But no, like, when you look at the example I have, by the time Tyree Kill, because he's going on this short motion that lets him, like, build up speed as he gets to the line of scrimmage, he's at 16 miles per hour by the time he crosses the line of scrimmage. He's at 19 miles per hour by the time he gets to five yards. That's, like, top speed for most receivers. And he's getting there at five yards into the route. So they're able to run these deep routes that you usually associate with deeper drops, which lead to more pressure, more sacks.

But they're getting the ball out quickly. So they're getting the best of both worlds. Like what I was talking about earlier with his A dot and his time to throw. Like it's him, it's McDaniel, it's Tyree Kill, it's Jaylen Yonge. It's all these pieces together. It just meshes so well. What I'm hearing is that the Dolphins offense is basically like they're a podcast on 1.5 speed. Everything happens faster.

The receivers are getting to, you know, whether it's 12 or 15 or whatever yards of depth, that's happening in the amount of time that if it would normally be a five-step drop, maybe it's a three, or if it's normally three seconds, it's two-set. Like, everything is just in overdrive. And like I said earlier, I think it's not just that that's going to help them score points. It's going to help them keep two a healthy, and that's huge. I want to revisit one thing from Wednesday. you try to revoke Bill Belichick's defensive guru badge. I think in hindsight he deserves another one for keeping this team. This team's worth 70 points.

What they did last Sunday is amazing. I will own that. That's fair. I did make fun of him. Although, I don't know. Still lost. That's a good point. That's what he would say.

It was interesting to see, just since you bring up the Patriots, you could see comments trickling out from all the locker rooms around the games in the games around the league where other players not affiliated with this game, not affiliated with the dolphins, were just like flabbergasted that this had happened. I mean, I saw some quotes from Gibral Peppers,

who was like, I just couldn't believe they scored 70. You just see guys being in awe of the fact that this had taken place. So we can, for one last time, because I'm afraid that we're going to hear dolphin noises again and the Miami's going to be up by what 21 now. Is that where we are?

I think it's 20. Yeah. It does give you a sense of the historic nature of it all just to see guys going like, holy shit. I can't believe this happened. So very fun, very cool. Yeah. I've never seen anything like it.

I've never seen 70 points in an NFL game. So not even close. No. I'm trying to think of. I wonder when the last, I wonder when the last 60 burger was. It was like Pat's Titans in the snow. I remember like Tom Brady through like six touchdowns and then like came out in the third quarter and they didn't score again. But that's the closest thing I can remember to this.

Every time I looked up at the game, I didn't have this on like my main screen, but every time I looked up, the dolphins were just walking into the end zone. They weren't even running. They were just walking. This was a very funny red zone day just because there were some, some games that weren't always on it because they weren't scoring from 20. or if you were in. And then there was some games where you just never see it because they were never in the red zone.

A very funny, a funny week if you only watched Red Zone to sort of understand what was going on around the league. The Saints had 62 points against the Colts on October 23rd, 2011. I think that was the last time a team scored 60.

Not impressed. Not impressed. 70 points. I'm not impressed. Today's headline was brought to you by Columbia Sportswear. makers of the Omni Heat Infinity Collection. With tiny gold dots that reflect your body heat,

Omni Heat Infinity delivers instant warmth without compromising breathability. Cold outside, gold inside with Columbia's Omni Heat Infinity Collection. Go out anyway. Learn more at Columbia.com slash infinity. Let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll do winners and losers.

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See terms at sportsbook.fandul.com. All right. Welcome back. This is dual threat. We're breaking down in week three. It's winners and losers time. Stephen hit us with a winner. My psyche?

I don't know how I would have gotten to this week. I know what this is. I already know what this is. the Chargers are my first winner. They went 28 to 4 over the Vikings in an interesting game. It lived up to the Chargers Viking. It did not beat the Chargers Vikings allegations. There was absolutely no chance this game wasn't going to be bananas weird.

Do you know how the Dolphins scoring 70 points just like overshadowed everything that happened? Like I didn't even realize this until I just looked at the box score that Keenan Allen. And I watched the game. Had 18 catches for 215 yards, which is an amazing stat line. And I didn't hear one peep about it He doesn't have working hamstrings. That's what's amazing about it. Half of Batman's legs don't work and he went for 200.

Justin Herbert goes 40 for 47 for 40 and 5 yards and three touchdowns in a four point win. Like this team just they just refuse to play a normal game. And it's clear that they're a good football team. But like I said last week, I just think they get too smart in these situations. There was the fourth and one at the end. of the game, the charges are up by four. I think they're, what is there, two minutes left

on the clock, and they can put the game away. And I agree with, like, everyone killed Staley for the decision to go for it. They obviously don't get it, and the Vikings get the ball back with the short field potential game-winning touchdown drive, but they get stopped and the Chargers win. But if the Charters don't get that stop, I don't know if Staley survives Monday,

but people on Twitter and people, like, around the internet, wanted him fired after that decision. I think it was the right decision. I think the problem, though, was the play call. They ran a fullback dive up the middle. It was a condensed formation. They weren't even hiding the fact that they were going to run up the middle. The Vikings stop it easily.

The Vikings who were blitzing every run or every down, basically. You just run into the teeth of the blitz. I thought it was a terrible call by Kellynne Moore. But I thought the decision to go for it made a lot of sense. Go win the game right there. You don't trust your defense. You have the worst defense in the NFL. They have Justin Jefferson on the other side.

They have a quarterback who's willing to just throw the ball up to Justin Jefferson in any scenario. Like, I would go for the win there. I would keep, but I would keep the ball in the hands of my $50 million quarterback who's 40 for 47 with 85% completion percentage, which is the highest for a quarterback who's attempted over 45 passes. A historical day for Justin Herbert and the, in the Dolphins just scored again. Terry Gill, do the end zone. Touchdown. You know that I care about, you're right? Yeah.

You're a treasured colleague. I love doing this show with you. I wish you happiness and all good things. That said, there's a part of me. There's a sick, sick part of me that wishes that we were sitting here. And I got to listen to you trying to find a way to type up Justin Herbert completing, making 47 throws and completing 85% of them in just an inexplicable last second Chargers loss after Brandon's Daly did something.

way too risk-taking and badly executed. But that's not where we are. I do think he's incredibly lucky that we are not in that situation. Were it not for Kirk Cousins seemingly not knowing what the clock said? I couldn't tell if something weird was happening with the Vikings end-of-game situation. So they had first and goal from the six with 41 seconds left. And it just didn't seem like he knew the clock was running or he was really careless with the amount of time that they wasted. 20 seconds go off the clock.

Then it looked like he realized time was of the essence, hurries the offense up, and then makes the short throw to Hawkinson that gets tipped. Kenneth Murray ends up intercepting it and that's the game. I don't quite understand what happened there. It just looked really weird. And it was another example of the Vikings just being super sloppy. They still cannot stop fumbling the ball

and losing the fumbles that they make. They are at eight on the season. Do you know how many fumbles the Vikings lost last year? Six, five. It's more than that. It's 14, but they're more than half of the number of fumbles that they lost all of last season. And they almost had another one. They had one like overturned.

It was almost, I think they called like Ford Progress had been stopped, but it wasn't stopped. Like that was a bad call. I will say this about the Chargers. If they had lost that game, they had a legitimate beef with the referee. There was like five big calls that went the Vikings way. it would have been another unlucky loss for them. I will say that that would have been the cope that I came up with if they had lost this game.

But I do think this is a good team. I think this is a very good team. It's a good team. I'm just making fun. I'm glad that we can celebrate a win in yet another amazing Justin Herbert performance because this was incredible. Best single game completion percentage

for any quarterback with at least 45 pass attempts. I will say the one thing that I liked about Kellyn Moore in this game was like they tried to run. the ball early on. And it was clear, like, the Vikings weren't going to have it. The Vikings have been bad on run defense, but not in this game. The Chargers couldn't run the ball early, and they just gave up on it. I don't think that would have happened last year. I think Joe Lombardi would have just kept trying to run the football, as he did all year long when it was clear, they couldn't run the football on first down. So I thought that was refreshing. But other than that,

it was like same old Chargers bullshit from the coaching staff. I think the fact that they just got to win probably saves another week or two. But the fourth and one was really precarious. That was a real. Oh, boy. If this goes badly, I'm not sure. There might be a call from ownership coming up the elevator. But we're okay.

We're okay for now. All right. My first winner. This is near and dear, dear heart, Stephen. It's the Green Bay Packers and it's Jordan Love, who scored 18 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to beat the Saints, 18 to 17. This was a crazy game, crazy comeback.

Packers are playing without Aaron Jones, without Christian Watson, without Bakhtiari, without Elton Jenkins. And I think the fact that Jordan Love was able to lead back-to-back 80-yard scoring drives to win this one is going to go down as a really important win in his still young 10 years

as the Packers starter. It wasn't a great, it was a really up and down. And, you know, you don't come back by 18 unless you go down by 16. unless you go down by 17 in the first place. He had some overthrows early. The receivers dropped some passes.

This was not a perfect offensive performance by any means. And it probably took Derek Carr going out with a shoulder injury. Saints also missing a late field goal for the Packers to be able to make this comeback. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a ton of ways that you can poke holes in this being a blanket awesome day for Green Bay. But I think the only thing that really matters is just if you listen to them, if you listen to Lafleur in the locker room after this game, he was yelling about how this was the most resilient performance he'd seen in his life coaching.

The stuff that we've talked about where they just love Jordan Love, no pun intended, walked myself right into that, where they just really like playing with him and they just really think that they've got something there and it must feel good to be done with some of the Rogers drama, good to feel like they have a better team than maybe consensus around the league thought they did, that they can stay in games. The Saints are a fraudulent team in some ways, I think, but they've got a good defense.

I do think that matters because when you win games this way, it just energizes everybody around them. And when they can win a game without several critical guys on that offense, I think that stuff does really carry over. it does matter. So even though it's not a perfect performance by any means, the way that they were able to end this game, I just think it's really huge for the Packers going forward. I think it's really huge for how this team feels about their quarterback. I think it's really huge for just how the coaching staff is able to have all of these guys bought in, especially while they're dealing with some of

this health stuff. And if I were a Packers fan or if I were in Green Bay, I just would, you've been bought in for longer than I have been, but I'm bought in now is what I'm saying. And like, With the inactive, oh, there they go again. The Dolphins just scored again. Rahim Moster did it this time. This is ridiculous. I think we still have like five more. With the inactive, this was a very young team too today.

Like I think I saw that the oldest player in the starting lineup was 26 years old. So for them to come back, a team that young, to be down 17-0 in the fourth quarter and to come back in the way that they did, I know the Saints also came back and could have had a field to win the game. but Jordan Love, the young roster, without their best offensive player, without maybe several of their best offensive players. But I think Aaron Jones is like the heart of that offense right now. We saw it in game one. They do. Yeah, they really miss him. They miss him so much.

I think he's the, and Christian Watson, like you don't have those explosive type players out there right now. That's why I think it's hard for this offense to be young and not have that like, that potential to score in two plays where you have to go on these long drives and not make mistakes and avoid pitfalls. Like, it's easy for a young team to, to struggle in that situation. And we saw them struggle for three quarters, but to break out in the fourth quarter, very impressive. And I think it just speaks to Jordan loves confidence.

Like, every time we see this guy, he's just the most confident quarterback, the most confident quarterback with no playing experience that I've ever seen. Even last year when he came in against the Eagles on the road, against the eventual NFC champs, prime time, Sunday night football, down, I think they were down two scores in the fourth quarter. He's throwing like no look passes. He's like throwing a whole shot to running backs. Like the confidence is there.

He has that part down. If he has like, if he just gets consistency. He has confidence in the guys around him to or at least that's what it looks like. Because part of dealing with key players being out is just believing that the backups are going to be able to make a difference. And the Packers have been through this a million times with Rogers, right? Not feeling like he has the trust in the young guys, not feeling like he wants to throw the ball to someone who he doesn't. doesn't have established chemistry with in a critical situation. Watson's out. That's not great. Obviously, you know, you want Christian Watson back and that'll be good when he is back and they want

that to happen as soon as possible. But it looks like they might have something in Dantavian Wicks, fifth round rookie. And Jordan Love is willing to get those guys involved and it matters for the results and it also matters for their development. And I think that that's part of the confidence thing where he just doesn't care. He just, he believes that he's going to take a chance and try to make a play. And if a guy's open,

that's who he's going to throw it to. And I think if you're Lafleur, you're really happy about getting to coach somebody like that. I think you can hear that and how they're talking about Jordan Love there. I think you can hear that and just how they're talking about this team in general there. I'm talking about the coaches and his teammates. Even Jenkins, who was out,

right? There were quotes coming from him where he was just sitting at his locker after the game talking to reporters about how much he loves Jordan Love and how amazing it was to watch the comeback and how much it meant to him and how meaningful it was. Like, this is a real,

talk is cheap, but this doesn't happen every day. The vibes are great. The vibes are chef's kiss, impeccable vibes. And it's a young team that I expect to get better as the season goes on. Like, I don't know what this team's going to look like in December, but I expect it to look better than it does now.

Okay, this is way too positive for us. Give me a loser. Come on. All right, I'm going to give you a loser. Got to cleanse the palate. I didn't know who to give the L to in this game, so I decided on the refs. The Colts beat the Ravens, 22 to 19 in overtime. But, like, I'm putting beat in scare quotes.

Like, so much had to go wrong for the Ravens to lose this game. Like, let's just start with the injury report. They're missing Marlon Humphrey. They're missing Marcus Williams. They're missing Tyler Lindervon. They're missing Rodel Beckham. I'm probably misremembering, like, I'm probably not remembering a couple guys. They have a fumble in the red zone.

Lamar Jackson has the weirdest fumble I've ever seen. He was like trying to do a pump fake. It was almost like a tuck rule type play where like it just landed in a Colts player's hands and they got a turnover. There was bad snaps. There was bad penalty calls, two bad penalty calls. So I'm going to make the refs my loser for this game because I think the refs took a loss or took a W out of the Ravens hands.

They missed a obvious. a space mask call at the end of the game, where if they call it, the Ravens run out the clock and the game's over. And then in overtime, the Ravens have the ball around the 45-yard line, fourth and three. Lamar Jackson passes it to Zay Jones.

EJ. Speed, the Colts linebacker, tackles Zade while the ball is in the air. No call whatsoever. Everyone's looking around for a flag. And then the Colts go on to win the game. The Colts also hit four field goals over 53 yards in the rain, in a tropical storm,

in a storm with a name. And Justin Tucker missed a 60-yard game winner. So like everything that could go wrong for this team with all those injuries went wrong and the Ravens lost. I mean, that's living in the upside down, right? Is when when Justin Tucker misses the 60-yarder and then the other. And then Matt Gay, yeah. Yeah, Matt Gay is just like walloping 50 plus in the rain. Matt Gay is a good kicker.

I didn't mean to slander Matt Gay. Matt Gay there's a good kicker. There's only one Justin Tucker. The Colts average 3.9 yards per play in this game. Like the Ravens outplayed them for 60 minutes for more than 60 minutes. They should have won the game. So, like, yes, it's bad to lose games in the NFL, especially in the AFC when like the margin for error is so small

if you're trying to get a home playoff game. But I don't think this really tells us anything about who the Ravens are going to be, unless they are going to be injured for the rest of the year and play in storms every Sunday. I like you making the rap. There's another one. We got to give one to A. Chain, right? That's got to at least been, if he had four during the game,

he's got to have at least one during our podcast. Is that 35? I think that's 35 points. It's only halfway there. We're not putting out much of a fight on defense. No. We might need that Bill Belchick schematic genius back in here. He's probably not coming after I revoked his gold star.

I like you giving the L to the refs because they definitely deserve one for this game for this week. All the Colts Raven stuff that you just. went through. We talked about how they had some influence in Chargers Vikings. Then probably the worst officiating moment of the week was the whistle blown on what would have been, what probably would have been a touchdown for Mari Cooper, just completely inexplicably. Ref thought that he went out of bounds. I mean, he was going down the sideline, but it was not close. You could see the grass in between his cleats and the white of the sideline. I guess apparently the official apologized.

There's sort of nothing you can do. The Browns end up winning that game, so it doesn't really matter. But that was one of the most egregious officiating moments I've ever seen. So we have to hand them an L somewhere. We need age limits for refs. Or we need that ref combine every year.

You have to earn the job. You have to like Ref Combine. I like Ref Combine. We have to make a certain amount of calls correctly in certain situations. You have to earn the right to be a ref for a season, in my opinion. And this was so bad this day. I feel like people say this all the time, but I do feel like refing is getting worse.

I don't understand why they don't have full-time reps. I will never understand this. It's just like a gazillion dollar league. These people are on national television every week. They're a huge part of games that people bet money on, where the teams who win and lose, their fortunes are changed really drastically. This is a part-time hobby for people? They get paid, it's not a hobby.

But like, come on. What's the hold up? Why are we doing this? I should give the Colts some love. Like, they won the football game. I think Shane Steichen did a great job. I thought, like, on offense, you can see. They had a run game at the very least.

Like, the passing game was hit or miss to Gardner Minchew was, he was getting pressured all game on. Kyle Hamilton had three sacks in the first half. He was an absolute superstar in this game. Like, one of the best games I've seen. seen from a defender all year long. Like he got his hand on a couple balls, tackles for losses, blowing up bubble screens,

plus the sacks. He was a start, but like I did my main takeaway from the Colts perspective is that like Shane Steichen, whatever he was doing right in Philadelphia, has carried over to Indianapolis. Yeah, totally. I have a loser for you. I really have only one thing to say about the Bears game,

which is that the Bears offense got Fox to cut away from a game that Taylor Allison's, Swift was watching in person, that's a new low. I'm sorry. You got to fold the franchise at that point. That is inexcusable. Is the Justin Fields experiment over now because of that? It's all over.

You can't, like, you can't go on like this. The 85 bears never happened. The 85 bears never happened. The 1989 bears, I'm trying to make a 1989 Taylor's version pun here, but I'm doing it on the spot and I'm not really succeeding. But it's just inexcusable. If you're not going to beat the chiefs, I understand, you're not going to beat the chiefs. But put up something of a fight.

I mean, Justin Fields comes out midweek and this is not, if I made a list of whose fault it is that everything that's going on in Chicago is happening, Justin Fields would not be number one on that list. But Justin Fields comes out in the middle of the week and, you know, says that he's so excited to get out there and play without overthinking everything. Be loose, not robotic. well, either he didn't do it or when Justin Fields plays with that overthinking everything, it looks exactly the same. There's nothing, like, nothing changed for this team, for this offense between last week and this game, during which time we went through a like big midweek media cycle about how

everything had to change and everything was bad and was he blaming coaching or was he not blaming coaching. There was absolutely nothing on the field to show for all of that nonsense. And they did it in front of Taylor Swift. I mean, he did play Spags. Steve Spagnolo is known to do this to a young quarterback. Don't care. Do you think Taylor Swift enjoyed Spags' game plan or appreciated it? Okay. I think she was happy to see the Chiefs score a lot of points. Here's what I will say. I'm a little flabbergasted by this story as a whole. And I have a lot of thoughts and complicated feelings about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey maybe or maybe not being being involved with each other in some way, shape, or form. The most exciting thing that's about to happen is that Taylor Swift fans are going to interact with the NFL.

And I just, Stephen, we're more unhinged and more capable of, pattern recognition and problem solving when we set our collective minds to it than any other group on planet Earth. Like the highest levels of the CIA, I promise you, have nothing on these people. And I'm just really excited to see what they come up with in terms of like they can probably fix Brandon Staley. They can fix Brandon Staley's decision. What about the Bears offense? Oh, you know whose offense doesn't need fixing? The Dolphins, they just scored again.

What about the bear's offense? They were watching the game today. Why don't they fix that? Or is that just not? That's a great idea. That's a great idea. Stephen, we solved 33 million internet puzzles last week. No, sorry.

She made us do more than that. It was 40. 40 million internet puzzles. I don't even know what that means. I don't want to know what that means. Okay. So I'm going to tell you anyway. Sorry.

Oh, God. There's a release coming up, and Taylor was going to announce the names of the vault tracks on the upcoming album, which are sort of like bonus tracks, but they're from the past. And she made it so that if you Googled her name, a portal opened up that you could click on. And then if you clicked on the portal, there were little word puzzles that popped up. And it was like a word scramble anagram thing and there was a clue and you would use the clue to figure out what the hidden words were in the puzzle. And then you would type the answer into the Google search bar and you would do as many as you could. And when the collective Taylor Swift Googling community had completed 40 million of them, she gave us the answers to the names of the vault tracks. Wow.

I understood like 10% of what you just said. One of the highlights of my life was getting to explain Chief Zaholic to one of my Swifty group chats today. This is, this is, I don't even know what to say. This is beyond my expertise. I'm just saying that everyone is charmed now and maybe it'll continue to be charming, but this is going to get weirder than anybody has any idea for.

Can I make fun of Sam Howell now? That's fine. Let's go ahead to the floor. My next winner is the Bills. They won 37 to 3 against Washington. In a rain-soaked game, this is like, you probably didn't watch this game unless you were a Bills or Washington fan.

And if you looked at the score, you're like, oh, 37 points for the Bills' offense, they probably look like really, really smooth, really together. But no, this was like a chaotic Josh Allen game, like in a good way. Like, you know, like sometimes he plays that chaotic game and it works out. He was scrambling, he was throwing deep over 10 A-DOT.

Nothing was really in rhythm at all, but really the story of this game was the Bill's defense and what they did to Sam Howell. Sam Howell was sacked nine times. He is on pace to break David Carr's record for sacks. David Carr was sacked on 14.6% of his dropbacks during his rookie season. Sam Howe is currently getting sacked on 16% of his dropbacks. And the Washington offensive line is not that bad. He's holding on to the ball forever. Not only that.

Okay, so depending on your source, he was either pressured on 22, dropbacks today or 18. Either way, he was sacked nine times on those dropbacks, and he threw four interceptions. So on 13 pressure dropbacks, he either got sacked or threw an interception out of like 20 plays. The percentages there are insane. So like basically three out of every four pressure dropbacks, he either turned the ball over or took a sack. It was that bad. And I think if Washington's offense was a little more protective of the football and Sam Howell didn't take nine sacks, I think this would have been a closer game because the bills did benefit from a lot of turnovers. They had five turnovers and they scored like 24 points off of them. So I don't know.

Like this seems like a game where Buffalo got right, but I don't know if that's the case. I do think that defensively they're legit. I mean, we've had three weeks, right? They've given up 22 points in a game that went to overtime, 10 points to the Raiders and then three today. They're not the most, I mean, it's been great to see them get turnovers because that, I think, has been a missing piece for them in the past is just those high impact explosive plays. That can be fluky and who knows how sustainable it is, but it does seem that like what they've done and what they did in the offseason and letting Sean McDermott have even more influence there. It seems so far like it's working and that this defense has coalesced and is a legit force, which is going to be

really helpful if they have to survive some of the Josh Allen ups and downs that I think we've talked a ton about being just baked into the cake at this point. They can be an explosive offense. Sometimes they're not going to be in a weird way the Jets game is, it's certainly not the best case scenario because they lost, but it's sort of, it's an example of how they can stay in a game when they are having an absolute disaster scenario on the offensive side of the ball. whether that's relevant or not, I don't know, because if that happens too much, like, that's just going to, that's going to sink them no matter what. But we figure that won't, right?

That seems like one of the worst games that Josh Allen is ever going to have at this point in his career. But if it's 15% of that, you know, if just a few elements of that chaos are rearing their heads now and again, I do feel like they can trust this defense to keep them in games. Yeah, my only, like, concern through three weeks is that they've beaten up on bad quarterbacks. and like that's been their thing is they've been a bad quarterback defense that's been picked apart by good quarterbacks. But I do agree this does look, it looks more like the Bill's defense we saw like three years ago rather than the last two years.

And I think McDermott taking more ownership of the defense is responsible for that. Like you're seeing more creative designs. You're seeing more pressure designs. It's not just lining up and playing like they did last year. And I think one of the encouraging things is like Micahai made a play, Trey White made a play. and these are guys that were hurt last year. And there's no guarantee they were going to come back just as strong as they were before they got hurt.

I think you are starting to see that. And even like Terrell Bernard, who took over for Edmonds, he made like five plays in this game. He turned the game around early on. So they're getting contributions from some key players on defense. Do you know who wasn't getting key contributions from players on defense? The Denver Broncos. The Dolphins just scored again.

By the way, Tramaine Edmonds, targeted 11 times gave up 10 catches for 88 yards and a touchdown in Chief Spares. So I do think that Kansas City showed Chicago what they think of one of their big offseason acquisitions and it didn't go so great. But your point stands, I will say, yeah, Bills have played some iffy quarterbacks. They looked pretty good against Aaron Rogers for those four snaps. Three pressures, right? Right. Take it.

Another winner for me. CJ Stroud. Winning that dumb Colts game last year that I and many others, but definitely myself included, made fun of the Texans to no end for might have been the best thing that ever happened to these guys. CJ Stroud is so good. I am totally bought it.

He's got 906 passing yards in his first three NFL games. He's the third player to get to at least 900. The others, do you know who the other two are? No idea. One of them completed 85% of his passes today. That's Justin Herbert. The other is Cam Newton. Not bad.

Not bad company. A couple good players. Also has 121 pass attempts as a Stroud without an interception through his first three starts. That is the most, the highest number of pass attempts before throwing a first interception in NFL history. He is playing without most of his starting offensive line feeling a ton of pressure, at least a good amount of pressure. And he is so cool in the pocket. He's throwing darts to Robert Woods. He's throwing darts to Nico Collins and tank Dell.

I mean, go look up at that deep ball from the first quarter to Dell if you want to see just an absolute dime. He's accurate. He's calm in the pocket. I do not think it is too early to say that Houston found a real winner here. They beat the Jaguars 37 to 17. The Jags looked really sloppy again and definitely have problems. But that's still a 20-point win over a team with real playoff aspirations. from a team that we thought was a bottom of the barrel NFL team,

and they are better than that. It is not, there's just sort of no circumstance under which this year is about this year for the Texans. But CJ Stroud makes them is good enough already, looks good enough already, and has made this offense with some receivers who are probably underrated coming into the year, has given them a viable enough passing offense, that they will be in games. they will keep most of their games interesting this season. That is way more than I expected from the Texans. Will Anderson, another big game.

So both of those draft picks look like they're turning out just about as well as could possibly have been expected. And I mean, I don't know. Maybe Levy didn't do them quite the, didn't do them quite the disservice that we thought he did. Because this could not be going better as far as I'm concerned. No, and two out of three games, we've seen good games from Damiko Ryans, like good game plans. from that defense. We, too, was a little iffy against Colts, but like Shane Steichen,

it might be one of the better offensive play callers in the NFL. So that's another thing that, another green flag. And the thing about Stroud is, like, we've seen rookie quarterbacks get off to fast starts, but usually when it's a rookie quarterback,

there's like some scheming going on. There's a good supporting cast. That's not the case here. This is real quarterbacking. Like, he's doing real dropbacks. He's not doing like play actions and RPO's and all that. These are real throws into tight windows that require,

real anticipation. He looks legit. Like he looks like a top 20 quarterback right now. He is so calm when he's facing pressure. It is, I mean, they're doing enough. They're keeping, he's not getting like walloped back there, but the pocket is closing a lot of the time. And he just stands there.

And he just waits for a guy to get open. And then he throws a dart. Like, that is real professional quarterbacking. And I just, I think you already know that they have the, the core elements to kind of know where you're going as a team, right? If you say, okay, we're going to go into an offseason or something and, you know, that's, that's getting ahead of ourselves. Because again, I think they're going to be in basically every game this year.

Like they have something offensively. They have something defensively. They're really well coached. They play with crazy effort. But when they do get to next year, they're going to be able to do it and say, we have the quarterback. We have a defensive playmaker. We have more pieces.

especially in the receiver room, then it seemed. At least it seemed to me. I mean, I made tons of fun of this receiver group in the offseason because Robert Woods and Nico Collins did not sound as impressive as it is looking right now. And then they have the head coach.

Right. And those are building blocks. Those are all that, you know, that is a real direction for a franchise. This is, really encouraging. And I just don't know how the Texans could have gotten off to a much better start than this this year.

The three building blocks that they added this year, Ryan's, Anderson and Stroud, like Stroud has been the best rookie quarterback. Anderson has been the best rookie defender. And I think you can make the argument that Ryan's has been either the best or the second best rookie head coach. Yeah. Three out of three. Very cool.

More speculation from Jacksonville Corners that. Doug Peterson re-took over play calling. I don't know if there was Zepruder film analysis of when he was wearing his glasses or not. That's been a recurring bit. What I do know, again, another game where they were incredibly sloppy situationally. Another 5 of 13 on third downs, 0 for 1 on 4th downs. Their first half drives go missed field goal, punt, blocked field goal, punt, fumble. So it is a comedy of errors.

and when they get into a critical down, they just don't know what to do. And I'm really surprised that we've seen this from the Jaguars so far. A lot of it seems to stem from the offensive line having problems, but they're not finding the answers schematically. And I do think that you're first, you look to coaching first, just because the places where it looks worse

are the situations where you're going, okay, like come up with your best play here. Dig deep and find the best thing on the sheet and try to convert and they just can't do it. Especially like in the red zone. You know, he's not struggling in the red zone, the dolphins. Stop it. I hate this. Like they can't finish off drives.

And maybe if the end zone was a yard wider, they would score some touchdowns because they've had some guys catch the football and not get their feet down. but like I'm less concerned about the offense like I think they're going to figure things out because Doug Peterson's a good coach Trevor Lawrence is a good quarterback and they have good pieces I'm worried about this defense long term like I don't trust Mike Caldwell

as a defensive coordinator I don't trust a Todd Bulls tree defense without the talent that those bucks defenses have had and you see it it's just unsound they get gashed all the time I mean there were some weird touchdowns in this one the Texans had a fullback return

to kickoff after fumbling the ball. That was very weird. That kind of like ruined any momentum that the Jaguars had coming out of the half. It looked like they were. That was an incredible return. It really was. He outran guys.

He like stiff-armed a dude. It wasn't like he just like broken easy one either. But that ruined. It looked like the Jaguars were going to come back at that point. And then the kickoff happens and that's the end. And then like the Texans, to their credit, end the game on their own. I would be worried if I was a Jaguars fan. But I do think on offense, they'll be fine on defense.

I don't know if it gets better until they find a new defense coordinator, honestly. All right. Last loser. The Dallas Cowboys. Or maybe it's the Cardinals. You're not supposed to win the games. I know. The Cardinals beat the Cowboys 28 to 16 by two possessions.

It wasn't even like a one score game. They were ever 180 yards in the first half. They average four and a half yards per attempt before contact. on the ground. I didn't see that much of this game. Is that what the Cowboys just got ran all over? Like the Cardo's coaching staff might be really freaking good, by the way. Their offensive coordinator, I had no idea what his name was before this.

I had never seen this guy in my life. I'm like looking for his name right now. I haven't written down and I've already forgotten it. Shot, no, it's not Sean Coosven. Drew Petzing. Drew Petzing, yeah. That's not a real person. but he's good

he was gaming today like he was the run game it was like RPO read option countered pulling guards inside zone outside like they were doing

everything in the run game and like they were setting up Josh Dobbs for they were giving him easy throws to make that were downfield I really think this coaching staff has something to it I know we've made fun of Jonathan Gannon

so many times throughout the offseason but I swear like the cringe is working whatever he's doing is working This is a well-coached ball club. Is Josh Jobs good? No. No, he's not bad. He's a useful quarterback.

He can run the option and he can make a throw 15 yards down field. And if you have that going for you, you can put together a nice offense. I mean, I think the story of this is that Mike McCarthy is Mike McCarthy again. Like, oh, yeah, I forgot this team was coached by Mike McCarthy and just got out-coached by Jonathan Gannon. Because that's what happened, I think. You could put this on DAC. You could put it on the receipts. receivers. You could put it on the defense that didn't really show up at the beginning of the game.

I thought they just got out-coached, like on both sides of the ball, especially on offense. Like Jonathan Gannon, the game plan from my perspective was play conservative zone defense, give them nothing over the top, and make them beat you on 12 play drives. And the Cowboys tried to do that, but they had 13 penalties in this game. They had so many mistakes. They had like free snap penalties. It was a poorly coached team, a bad game. game plan that didn't know how to figure out what Jonathan Gannon was doing, couldn't take

advantage of that at all. They couldn't run the football. They were missing three offensive line starters. That had something to do with it. But these are the games where you want, like you have Mike McCarthy. He's supposed to be this offensive coach. Like he's supposed to be giving you an advantage as an offensive play caller and they just didn't get it. They couldn't figure out this very basic simple game plan. And I think that's the difference between what this offense had last year and what it has this year because Kellan Moore is the really creative pre-snap motion, getting matchups, manipulating defenses, spreading zone defenses apart. And I don't think you saw any of that with the game playing today. But even that, if Mike McCarthy is supposed to be giving

them something different from that, then with that many penalties, you start asking questions, like, did they look at the Cardinals and overlook this game, look at their first two results for the first two weeks of the season when they were really, really dominant and go, oh, this, you know, we're missing three, three offensive line starters, whatever. It doesn't matter. It's Arizona. It doesn't matter. Again, I didn't see very much of this game, but just what you're telling me based on the

penalties and based on the result here, it's at least fair to ask the question. And if what Mike McCarthy is not supposed to be bringing or is not, you know, if it's not the, we have an answer to overcome some personnel deficiencies if we're dealing with injuries and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then you hope that it is something like general organization, motivation, not being sloppy in a situation where maybe you think that you can get away with it, but it's the NFL. You're going to get burned with that eventually. And I wonder if a little bit of that was going on.

Any thoughts there? I mean, I didn't see it. It didn't stand out. I'm sure there was some, like, a bit of that, them overlooking the Cardinals. But I really think this was schematic. I think this was X as a nose. I thought the Cardinals coached a better game. And like you said about the Jaguars, it's showing up, like the offensive problems are showing up in situational play calling.

Like that's what it is. They can't score in the red zone. Five red zone trips, one touchdown. That's why they lost the game. That's what Dak said after the game. And he was right. You know, went to the red zone more than five times and scored more than one touchdown, the Dolphins. I can't believe I agreed to do this.

It's a good bit. You have anything more to say about this game. No, it's startling. I am an incredibly easily startled person. Everyone in my life loves nothing more than to play the game where you like hide around a corner and jump out at me. And I am always startled by it. And therefore I am always startled by this this chirping dolphin. Do you think Jonathan Gannon does that to people?

It just startles people. That is the stuff of nightmares. No, but I really think the Cardinals coaching staff is good. I think we're going to regret those jokes we made. We're going to look very, very stupid. I am not going to regret them. I don't care if he's a, if he's a good football coach, then more power to him. He's corny as hell.

And that's okay. That's not a sin. But it's still true. We need a cringe coach. Like I'm tired of seeing like Sean Payton types to be good at coaching and Bill Belichick's be good at coach. I want to see, I want to see like a Nathaniel Hackett thrive one time. I mean, finally getting that. I don't know if Nathaniel Hackett is exactly thriving today.

but the coach is collective is that's true that's a good point anything else from this i have a i have a i have a nathaniel hackett related take for you to to close this out as long as we're done not really i just think like if you were worried about mike mccarthy this was the game that you were worried about and i and it it is going to force me to reconsider how i view this team and how i view their ceiling because this this was the game that we were all worried about right my last loser is the new york Jets. Lose to the Patriots, 15 to 10. I just don't know how you can see this game and think anything other than that the Jets

have to do something about Zach Wilson. He played an absolutely terrible game. And even so, he had three chances to go win it in the final three minutes of this game. This is how those went. On the first drive, on the first potential game winning drive, he took a safety. on the second one, turns the ball over on downs after throwing on fourth and ten to the line of scrimmage. So the receiver would have had to catch the ball, beat like generously two defenders in order to convert and pick up the first down. Third one ends up being the incomplete Hail Mary.

I'm sorry to keep bringing her up, Stephen. But Taylor made it on the red zone camera twice over the course of this day. the Jets only made it on once. Zach Wilson got the Jets on Red Zone half as many times as Taylor Swift did from standing in a box next to Donna Kelsey drinking vodka cranberries. You have to try to do something else. Wilson ends up 18 of 36 for 157 yards. The overall stats are bad.

The situational moments are terrible. It looks like the team is. revolting. Garrett Wilson was getting it into it with Hackett on the sideline. Wilson was right there. There was a moment. There was a shot of Garrett Wilson where you couldn't really tell what he was saying. I'm not a great lip reader.

But the best guess that people were coming up with was that it looked like he was saying he can't throw. Sala comes out after the game and says that Wilson, Steven's like losing it. He knows ball. Certified ball knower here at Wilson is just absolutely losing his mind because this offense is so bad with Zach Wilson. Sala with a straight face manages to get the words. Zach Wilson gives us the best chance to win out in his press conference,

says that he's not worried about the locker room. This is after Jay Glazer reported this morning that the Jets had turned down interest from Matt Ryan and Carson West, which is just the darkest timeline. Congratulations, the Vikings' law. lost, give them a call. Do something. We can't, like, we cannot go on like this. I don't care what it costs. I don't care what it takes. This is just bad. And I don't think that, I really don't think that Sal is going to be able to keep this team together if, if they keep letting

Zach Wilson go out there. I just think that this team spent all of the offseason getting hyped up to the high heavens about their chances this year, about the fact that this was. going to be their chance to be a great team to be a Super Bowl contender. Of course, they know that that changes when Rogers goes down, but it is a tough pill to swallow and to deal with the frustration of this kind of ineptitude when, by the way, this was an eminently winnable game. The Patriots did not play a good game and they were lucky to win it. Yes, that's a good defense, but they had three shots and got absolutely nowhere.

and everybody can see it. It's just really obvious. So I don't think that he can keep. I don't think that, you know, I don't think that you can say Zach Wilson gives us the best chance to win with a straight face twice. I'm not sure you can say it once, but hats off to Robert Sala,

who managed to do it this afternoon. You can't let him go back out there. This has just got to be the end. The sideline shots of Sala, when, like, Zach Wilson does something bad are just getting so depressing at this point. He looks like he, like a man without answers,

and he doesn't have any answers on the roster. I totally agree with you. I think it's malpractice to go through this full season with Zach Wilson as your quarterback. This team is good. Like all of the spots outside of all the spots that we wondered, would they be good at those spots, like good enough to win a Super Bowl outside of the quarterback position?

The answer has been yes. Like the defense has been as advertised in all three games. So it's too, that would be tough. I don't know how you talk to the locker room. When they can see it. They know he's not good enough. They know he does not give you the best chance. Maybe in the, in the locker room right now over Tim Boyle,

but there are other guys out there you can sign. Tim Boyle. How did we get here? How is this real? How is this real life? I feel like Robert Sala, he looks like when he gives that like depressed, blank stare, he looks like it's like one of the Dutch masters, like one of those paintings where it's just somebody.

you know, it's like a woman in profile with the most depressing blank stare you've ever seen. Like that's what he is giving. Just six times a game when Zach Wilson feels the slightest bit of pressure and then just loses his mind. Yeah. Like I don't

at this point I don't know what type of offense they can even run for them. They've tried every they've tried every approach. And no, we can't even let's no, we can't even, we cannot even respect it by hypothesis. the sizing what they could do.

They cannot do anything. There is nothing to be done. Bench the man. Get a new quarterback. Do whatever it takes. The Cardinals scored 28 points with Josh Dobbs. There's got to be something better than this out there. There is something better you can do.

Call Matt Ryan back. Seriously. I don't know. I would rather have Carson Wentz than this. Commander's Carson Wentz was probably about as bad as Zach Wilson has been for the Jets. Before that, every stop of Carson Wentz's career, even though he universally was booted off of those teams because they

didn't like him as their quarterback. It was still significantly better than what Zach Wilson is giving the Jets right now. You just, it's, it's over. It's done. We can't do it anymore. I agree. No more Zach Wilson. This is an anti-Zack Wilson podcast from now. We're not talking about Zach Wilson for the rest of the season. I don't know if that's going to be possible, but. I like it. We're going to try. New rule. All right. Last quick break and then we'll come back for the take purge and get out of here. Welcome back to dual threat. Steven, let's finish up with the take purge.

As always, thank you to our friends from the Ringer Fantasy Football podcast. For the take purge concept that we like so much, what do you got to close us out for the day? I'm going with, I don't think the panther should start Bryce Young when he comes back from injury. I think they should keep Andy Dalton in there. I think the offense functions better. I think we saw Adam Thielen. There was a lot of Adam Thieland. disrespect over the last couple of weeks.

And Adam Zeeland went for 11 catches and like 120 yards and a touchdown. Like Adam Zeeland went off today with a real quarterback. That's kind of mean to Bryce Young. But it was a quarterback who was operating the- quarterback. But he was actually operating the offense. Like Bryce Young isn't throwing the ball downfield and he's holding onto the ball forever.

That's a terrible recipe. You can't run an offense like that. And I think having Andy Dalton who can at least distribute the ball, they can call some quick game. They can go under center. They can call a QB sneak if they want to, if they have to. I think it makes them look like a better team. And I know they lost,

they ended up losing by three possessions in Seattle, but that's a good Seattle team. And they were competitive with them for three quarters, more competitive than we've seen them be over the first two weeks. I think they should consider playing Andy Dalton and letting Bryce Young learn from the sideline. I think he has to get acclimated to the speed of the game. He has to practice.

He has to learn. I think he has to like learn the administrative stuff of the position. so he's not thinking as much. I don't think you want to be in a Justin Field situation two years from now when he's like, oh, I'm just thinking too much out there. And I think playing him early, especially the type of player he is, the type of quarterback he is with his size, I think could be a mistake. I don't see the benefit of rushing him in there.

So you think you would let him sit for a while, learn behind Andy Dalton and hope that when he comes back in some of the problems, they end up not just being, all right, he doesn't have the frame. He doesn't have the body type. succeed in the NFL. It's just that it was too much too soon. And if his processing speeds up, some of the issues go away. Yeah, because there's like a mental block when you watch him play over the first two weeks. Like he's just like not, he doesn't look like Bryce Young at Alabama even. And I think some of that is just like maybe he's being overwhelmed by information. It is the NFL and

it would make sense. I don't know why we default to just rushing guys in there all of a sudden. This is the number one overall pick. Right. So if they're going to do this, if there's anything to be done here. They got to figure out how to sell it because you can't go, it's pretty hard to go benching your supposed franchise quarterback number one overall pick who you drafted despite outlier size concerns after he comes back from an injury and, you know, let's call it week three, week four, the season depending on when he's healthy. I think Frank Craig said that he could be back as soon as this upcoming week and that he wouldn't have concerns about putting him back in when he's healthy.

But you do have to figure out how you're going to sell that move to the team. That's probably easier because if they're a better team right now with Andy Dalton in there, then the guys on the field know that. But you also have to figure out how to sell it to your owner. You got to figure out how to sell it to your fan base. And that's tough. I just think they're putting a lot. I don't totally know how you do that.

I just think they're putting a lot on his plate. And maybe the mistake was just rushing him in there to begin with. But like when you hear them talk about him during training camp, especially, they're like, oh, yeah, he's running the huddle like a veteran. He's making calls at the line of scrimmits, like a veteran. And then Thomas Brown this week, they talked about him possibly playing on Sunday without practicing. And Thomas Brown was like, most rookies, like, I wouldn't want to play.

But that guy, I would be comfortable playing, even if he didn't practice. Like, that's a lot to put on a guy, especially a guy who's overcoming historical tininess. historical tinniness that's terrible I don't know take a little off his plate that's all I'm asking don't rush them back from injury at least what about just when they do need to run a quarterback sneak what if they just always run the you know the the the push the eagles the one the eagle is popularized

and they bring can they put Andy Dalton in and then Andy Dalton pushes Bryce Young and they just all they all do it together I think it would work No, I think Brengung just goes under the center's legs. Wee, not Meg. Low man wins. All right. I have a take.

Let's hear it. My take is that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey met for the first time at roughly 7 p.m. in the bowels of Arrowhead Stadium and had never met before in their entire lives. And on that note, we're going to end the podcast. This has been dual thread on the ringer NFL show feed. I'm Norb Rensiotti. he's Stephen Ruiz on Monday. Ben Solac, Shilukapadia, extra point taken.

That's what's up next. We will be back midweek and on Sunday for all the breakdown of week four. Thank you, as always, to Isaiah Blakely for producing this episode. And to Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgapal for additional production supervision. And to you for listening. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem call 1-800 gambler or visit the ringer.com slash RG. Must be 21 plus and present in select states.

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