The Ringer NFL Show - Week 3 Recap: Ravens Outlast the Cowboys, McVay Outsmarts Shanahan, and More

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Sheil, Steven, and Diante return to discuss, debate, and share their expert takes on the biggest games and story lines of Sunday’s NFL action. Ravens-Cowboys (1:44) Niners-Rams (10:27) Chiefs-Falcons (20:22) Texans-Vikings (30:02) Chargers-Steelers (42:29) Eagles-Saints (49:32) They then survey the league and offer superlatives and awards to the players, coaches, and teams who made newsworthy contributions to the Week 3 headlines (55:54). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Sheil Kapadia, Steven Ruiz, and Diante Lee Producers: Chris Sutton and Tucker Tashjian Production Assistance: Daniel Comer Production Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Kiera Givens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, your boy Johnny Bananas here. The Challenge Season 40 Battle of the Eras is finally upon us. I'll be covering every episode with all your favorite challengers on my podcast, death taxes and bananas on the Ringer reality TV podcast feed, and on the brand new Ringer Reality TV YouTube channel, where you can find full video episodes all season long. So buckle up. Come along with me as we see who will be crowned winner of the Challenge Season 40 Battle of

the eras. Follow Ringer reality TV on Spotify and subscribe to us on YouTube. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capadia here with Deontay Lee and Stephen Ruiz. If you're watching on Fandual TV, welcome. If you're listening on Spotify, welcome. Week three, some wild fourth quarters, some more upsets. A lot of upsets it feels like in the first three weeks of the NFL, we're going to get to all of it. Ruiz, how are we feeling? I'm feeling good. I thought some of the the games that needed to live up to the hype did, but some of the games that didn't, like the Vikings Texans game. I was very disappointed by. We'll get to that later, though. We'll certainly get to that.

I know, Deonti, I think you might have some thoughts on that game. I do. You know, like, this is about time for me to start putting together the fraud squad. So I've got some candidates that are putting together a hell of a campaign so far. And I think that one of those might be, might be in that Texans Vikings game. There you go. We got to get to that game. Didn't live up to the hype, but still some takeaways from that game. All right, let's get to our big takeaways like we do every Sunday night. Ruiz, start us off. Well, I was watching the Ravens and Cowboys game, and I was worried we were going to have to talk about another blown lead for Baltimore. They've had six of them since 2017, which leads the league, 10 point fourth quarter leads they've blown since 2017. But they narrowly avoided

that. And I think the story now is that the Ravens found a bit of a run game. And they found the run game we imagined they would have when they signed Derek Henry and they put them together. in this all-star backfield with Lamar Jackson, I think against the Cowboys, with the help of very bad run defense, I will say, we got to peek at the ceiling of what this Baltimore run game could be. And I think one of the keys was Todd Munkin kind of changing what types of runs he called.

Over the first two weeks, we saw a lot of RPO's where Lamar Jackson has the option to pass the ball if the defense dictates it. Like, they're out of control at that point of whether the play ends up a run or a pass. And Todd Munkin took a lot of heat for not putting the ball in Derek Henry's hands enough. In this game, we kind of took away that option. It was like, we're going to do zone

read, read option plays either the balls in Derek Henry's hand or it's in Lamar Jackson's hand. And we're just going to put the game in their hands. And that's what happened. And they led them to a victory with a very efficient run day. It was a fantastic game plan. I mean, it wasn't, you know, it's kind of similar. We saw the Saints last week go up against the Cowboys and be like, we're not letting their pass rush wreck the game. And then we saw the Cowboys, we saw the Ravens go up against the Cowboys and say, we're not going to let their pass rush wreck the game. I mean, Lamar Jackson throws 15 times. He completes 12 of them. You mentioned they ran all over the Dallas Cowboys. The Ravens had 456 yards of offense in this game. And I agree with you. It really stood out.

I think Lamar Jackson's average throw only went three or four yards. So it was very much, Deonti, I feel like a game plan. We saw the Saints execute and Dallas has to come up with answers for it. But I think Ruiz is right that if you're a Ravens fan, you exhale a little bit. One and two, didn't blow it in the fourth quarter, almost blew it in the fourth quarter. That would have been something, but you come away with the victory and you're feeling pretty good about yourselves. Absolutely. I mean, and there's, I just feel like, for whatever reason, Baltimore just is not capable of having a normal win. You know, there's always just some wild caveat, some weird out of the blue, you know, situation that comes up.

Obviously, the rough in the passer, I think, kind of kept Dallas alive longer than maybe their play had merited. I think that that kind of helped them, you know, get, get that last scoring drive to really make people sweat. And I still think, you know, for as good as this game was and as cathartic as I'm sure that first half felt for a lot of Ravens fans in this Ravens offense, there are some things they have to clean up with outside of, you know, just that one kind of tickey tack rough in the passer call.

They have had issues with penalties all year, you know, and you can say that that's basically the reason why they lost both of their opening games this season, you know, a bad PI call. in the end zone last week against Las Vegas to give them an opportunity to get on the two-yard line or get on the one-yard line and punch it in. And then penalties throughout the second half against Kansas City that really kind of kept them alive, even though I think that they had outplayed them for most of this game. So I think that there are some things to clean up. But I think that for the most part, you saw what you wanted to see today, which is this defense continuing to take the run away from every one of their opponents

and forcing a quarterback to have to be perfect to keep them in the game. and then on the other side of the ball, then really pounding the rock. And like you said, taking the pass rush away from Dallas as a factor in this game. And I would say the key number in this game isn't like the rush yards, isn't the fact that they ran for over 250 yards or whatever it was. It's that Lamar Jackson wasn't sacked. And we spent the first two weeks just commiserating over the fact that this offensive line isn't good enough. And this passing game is going to be able to take the step forward.

I'm interested to see how that looks going forward against a run defense that doesn't allow you to run for. what was it, like six yards per carry, where you're ahead of the chains at all times. But I do think we saw when Lamar Jackson was in obvious passing situations, that his negative play avoidance has become such a key factor for this offense to keep it ahead of the chains, when the run game doesn't work, when the past game isn't producing explosive results. Tom Brady was talking about it throughout the game. Some of the plays that Lamar made that don't look spectacular. Like maybe it's a four-yard pass on third and eight, but he avoided a sack and he avoided a possible strong.

drip sack and a bigger, even bigger loss, I think those plays start to add up. And I think we're starting to see just how much of a floor razor Lamar Jackson is. I think this season, it's going to become a lot more apparent because the offensive line is so weak. And there are holes, very obvious holes along the offense. Yeah, that last drive really said it, you know, not everything you're saying. You're right. Brady was saying earlier in the game, wow, how to get out of that six-yard completion.

But, I mean, they were really close to giving the ball back to the Cowboys. It would have been 28, 25 with a couple minutes left and the Cowboys driving with the chance to win the game. I mean, they're up 286. I thought this game was over. There's 10 minutes left. Cowboys score, on sidekick, score again. Ravens go three and out. Cowboys score again. And then that last drive, Ravens get the ball back. Two-36 left. Lamar can beat you with his arm, third down, beats the by. I think was a blitz on that play. Zay Flowers on kind of the out to the right side, nine-yard completion. And then I love, I mean, I love when the camera guys get fooled or the announcers get fooled. They fake the, I don't know if it was a jet sweep or what exactly the run scheme was,

but Lamar Jackson keeps it for another 10-yard run and Ices the game. So, man, Deonté, without him having both those options at his disposal, without them picking up both those first downs, this Ravens thing is uncanny. Like, I don't know what you do if you're a Ravens fan, these fourth quarters having to watch your team. You can't put anybody away and you're going to be swayed. sweating out every game the rest of the season. I mean, they're far too talented to have had three straight one possession games, and each of them feel like they were on the brink of going the wrong way, if not going the wrong way outright.

I do think that, you know, one of my big concerns is just the issues that they've had with connecting downfield in the passing game. And I'm not, I still need to spend some time kind of looking to seeing how, you know, as sample size grow, what is going on with this passing game. But I feel like we're not seeing them connect downfield as often as I think they should. there have been issues with Lamar getting connected with Rashad Bateman for as long as Rashad Bateman's been on the roster. I think that we are kind of getting a look at maybe what Zay Flowers' his ceiling is. I think that he's a nice YAC threat, but he is not somebody who separates, you know, at least

not significantly enough for him to be a number one or number one-esque receiver in this offense. And for as much as I like the tight-in group, again, you're still dealing with guys that are not, you know, isolation number one. You can put him in that Kelsey role and let them go on the perimeter. and that has been the story each and every year when they play high-level opponents is that when they need to get a bucket in the passing game or when they need to push the ball vertically, they don't have guys that are ball winners.

They don't have guys that are late separators. They don't have guys that can go win at the highest point often enough. And that does put a lot of stress on Lamar. So to your point shield, and I think Stephen echoed this as well, you look at some of these high-leverage situations and you walk away from those saying, man, if Lamar wasn't a superhero, there's no way that the Ravens would be able to win any of these games. And it's just more and more apparent, even when they are playing well.

They need a ball winner on the outside. They haven't had one since Lamar has been there. And I think Rashad Bateman was supposed to be that guy that you could isolate and you could ask to go get a bucket on third and seven. Like you could isolate him. If you get man-to-man coverage, even against the top corner, you trust him to win on that route. He hasn't been that guy.

He hasn't been on the field. And they haven't found that guy. I mean, there are potential options out there. Devondi Adams could be available at the trade deadline. T. Higgins could be available at the trade deadline or our next offseason. if they don't make a serious push for one of those players, like I'm not taking this team seriously as a Super Bowl threat. This team has currently constructed.

This offense is currently constructed, even with Lamar Jackson playing at an MVP level. I don't think it's a Super Bowl offense right now. I just don't see them beating the Chiefs. I don't see them beating the top teams in this league and outscoring them, especially without Mike McDonald running this defense. We saw that this could be a championship team

with Mike McDonald's defense. But there are more holes in this defense this year around with Zach or coordinating it. I don't know if that's going to continue to be the case, but early on, it does look a little more exploitable. Much easier to get things figured out at one and two rather than O and three. Meanwhile, the Cowboys, I mean, that defense, which I was raving about after week one, whoops, first I wanted to take back from the off season. Now I want the take back from after week one where I killed myself, you know, said I did a bad job in the off season with my Cowboys take. So, yeah, they've given up 56 points in the first half, the last two weeks.

weeks so far. So Cowboys 1 and 2, Ravens 1 and 2 after 3 weeks. Deontay, what do you got? What's the big takeaway from week 3? So I was watching Rams 49ers. That was again that I was really locked in on. And one of the takeaways I really walked away this game with is

just how much the margins for error have shrank for this 49ers offense. And I don't want to put this solely on Brock Purdy's shoulders because if you're missing Christian McCaffrey and you're missing George Kittle, you are missing your two check down yards after catch guys. You can throw the ball too short of the sticks.

And I think if you watch the game, it was clearly reflected in the second half. So I wouldn't say that the struggles of this offense in the second half and allowing Los Angeles to get back in this game and ultimately when it falls on his shoulders, as much as when you strip away some of the yak threats that they have in this offense and it's just Brock Purdy in the pocket, I think that I just got a clear look at how much lower the ceiling is without McCaffrey, without kittle when all you have are high variance plays to Brandon IU. And obviously, Juan Jennings who had, you know, the game of a life today with three touchdowns and over 130 yards receiving. So that was the first takeaway.

And the second piece of this, and more ram-centric. And I think we talked about this week one with Kansas City when they beat Baltimore, right? There are just certain teams that you watch and you can tell that their recipe for success is so clear. And I would say that McVeigh and Stafford definitely fit that type of mold. You know,

they were able to take their chances. against zone coverage or more regulated looks on first and second down, knowing that, hey, even if we get to third down, we know you can't blitz Stafford because he's so good at adjusting protections, changing the play at the line of scrimmage, diagnosing what defenses are trying to do. And even without Pook and Nakuwa, and even without Cooper Cup,

you know, he was able to hang in there and find those zone voids. They're able to get into these condensed sets and take advantage of San Francisco trying to play more man than I expected to see today by getting guys across the field open. So it was just another master class, I think, from McVeigh and from Stafford in terms of handling game script and, you know, minimizing Fred Warner in this game. And then when you get to third down, I was putting the ball in Stafford's hands and allowing him to go move the chains. Yeah, it was really one of those games where it was not dissimilar to Ravens Cowboys, where I was like, oh, this game's over 2414. Rams are up or 49ers up with 12 minutes left. Rams kick a field goal, Niners miss a field goal, a 50-yarder to 2-2-atwell, beating Charlie.

Various Ward. I did not have that on my list of most likely outcomes here in week three. And then 49ers had a chance to win it. You know, I thought, I actually feel like this was an encouraging performance for Brock Purdy. And if you're a Niners fan, you're like, I mean, this wasn't just one guy out. This is you're without McCaffrey, Debo, George Kittle in this game. And they had 425 yards of offense. They had some drops. Purdy hits. Ronnie Bell, I think, was the wide receiver kind of in the face mask on that last possession where if he comes down with that catch where you know you would expect a starting wide receiver to come down with that catch. Then we're probably talking about, man, look at this game, Purdy had without all those

other guys he had around him. Ruiz. What did you make from what you saw or heard of this game? I got a question. And maybe I'm going to come off at like a Purdy skeptic. But was that the best throw to Ronnie Bell? You, Ruiz, a Purdy skeptic? Right. But Ronnie Bell had a couple steps on his cornerback and had to come back to that ball. And it was very underthrown. I know it I mean, oh, please. If that's Trevor Lawrence or Justin Herber, you're not saying that could be better ball placement. The thing is, I am saying it. I don't have to say it that often because they don't under throw those passes like that.

But anyway, no, I do think this is an encouraging performance. But I kind of feel bad for Shanahan, who was so close. We talked about how, like, oh, he doesn't have his stars and he gets to cook. He gets the show that he could do this without his stars. And he was so close to pulling out that win against his closest rival for, like, the scheme lord title belt in the NFL. And then instead of us like spending the week just celebrating Kyle Shanahan for another genius game plan, it's like the opposite. We're going back to the, oh, he blew another lead in the fourth quarter. And now let's talk about how he, his shortcomings as a head coach and whether

he's a coach that can ultimately bring this team to a Super Bowl. I mean, you look back at all of these high profile blown losses for Shanahan. And I don't think there's like a common theme in all of them. Like in the Atlanta Super Bowl, he probably should have ran the ball more. But if you really break down the play by play, like he didn't really, you know, a band. And he's, you know, a band. And he's abandon the run too much. And then in the 49ers Chief Super Bowl, the first one, Jimmy G, if he hits on even like one or two more throws, they win that game easily.

And then last year, they just ran into Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. This game, it's hard to find, like, one incident that you can really put on Shanahan shoulders and blame him for the loss. It was just sometimes you lose games to good teams and good quarterbacks. And I think that's what happened here. So the 49ers, I have one and two. They have all these guys out, but I'm not overly concerned with this team. We saw that this offense could still play at a high level.

level, even without Kittle, McCaffrey, Debo Samuel. I think Trent Williams left this game with cramps at one point. McKivitz, the right tackle, didn't have a great game in this one. And they still scored 24 points and probably should have won this game. And nine times out of ten, they would have won this game. So, you know, I'm sure people in San Francisco are panicking a little bit because they have such high hopes for this team, but I wouldn't be. Deonti, I think if you are panicking or want to feel some concern about the Niners,

I think defensively, you know, they make the big coordinator change in the offseason. And this was Stafford, but this was Stafford playing with not a lot of help around him. And to kind of put up that performance and let the Rams do what they did in the fourth quarter here. I mean, this 49ers defense, it's only a three-week sample, but they're 27th in defensive success rate. They're 26th in EPA per drive. And they face the Jets, the Vikings and the Rams. You know, it's not like they're facing Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. I mean, what did you think?

I know we got to give the Rams credit. And I'm with you. Stafford McVeigh, if they're both there, just they got a chance to win the game. But I would be a little bit concerned about this Niners change on defense from what we've seen so far. I would say I'm a little bit pessimistic, but I think it's less about the play caller and more just like roster attrition, right? Like I was looking at the second half and watching Los Angeles's plan of attack in the run game.

And it was so clear that the game plan all week was, let's find out where 54 is. and we are going to go away from that guy. And, you know, I don't know, the Stevens, you know, Stevens kind of made a bit out of like the Shanahan scope, right, the Shaw McVeyscope where I'm going to pick out a lineback and I'm going to expose every one of his flaws. I think that this was a masterclass in recognizing a transcendent football player

and putting together a plan to take away how effective he is at what he does best. You know, you can go and just watch, you know, the drive that I think brought them within one possession. And they're getting to the line of scrimmage. And you can tell Matthew Stafford is looking. It's like, okay, Fred Warner's its way. All right, we're bringing the run action opposite. We're going to kill this play.

You know, if you have the TV turned up and you can hear the on-field mics, you can hear all the communication to get the ball away from 54. And that was felt. And it's not like they were mashing them up front. You know, they had a 64% success rate in the second half on the ground, but we're just talking about 36 yards on 11 carries. It was more about the right calls and the right spots that were going to mitigate the effects of their best players.

And then when you get to third down and it's Stafford's time to shine in the pocket. Again, that comes back to recognizing when they're sending pressure looks. You know, that's something that San Francisco does really well is walking Warner up, walking Devon Dre Campbell up or wherever the second linebacker is, and trying to create a lot of distress on the, on the protection to get Nick Bosa that one-on-one, to get Leonard Floyd or Javon Hargraves on one-on-one. And you just didn't see anything other than clean pockets in the second half. And I think that's just as much of credit as to how they were able to push the ball downfield than anything. So I walked away from this game feeling more like

this defensive backfield is not good enough to bail this team out if pass rush is not getting home. And some of that, I think, is a credit to Los Angeles. But ultimately, man, I do kind of lean a little bit more in the direction of a coach like Stafford, a coach like McVeigh, a quarterback like Stafford. They're going to get you if you have a bit of a weakness. And Devondre Campbell and the rest of that linebacking core is a bit of a weak point and something they can exploit. And that's what we saw in the second half of this game. Both teams one and two feels like weird sort of paths to get here. Yeah, I'm with you. You don't panic if you're the Niners, you get some guys healthier on offense.

I mean, just every week that offense is going to be a lot to deal with. There's going to be flukiness when they don't put up a lot of points. We'll see with the defense. And then the Rams just, I mean, it's an impressive win. You go on the road or were they on the road. I know they were big underdogs in this game, six and a half, seven points. If you looked at the crowd, it looked like a San Francisco. Yeah. Yeah. They were at home, but not really. I think that's right. They were at home, but it might have felt. like a road game, but still, to come back from 10 points down in the fourth quarter and get a victory is a credit to them. All right, take a break. We come back. Talk a little Sunday night football. What a great NFL weekend that was. And Fanduels giving you another chance to start the season with a big return on America's number one sports book. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed

when you place your first $5 bet on tonight's game. Let's see, the same game parlay. Maybe you do. I like the Jaguars a little bit, plus five and a half. I like Josh Allen over rushing yards and maybe the under on the game. You could do that. You could do something else. Just visit fandul.com slash ringer NFL to make every moment more this season. Van Duel, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL. Must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-mustrable bonus bets, which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. see terms at sportsbook.fandul.com called 1-800 gambler or visit RG-hash-help.com.

All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. Chiefs take care of business, I guess. I don't know what the right way is to frame it against the Falcons on Sunday night. Falcons with the tough play call there. But I sort of think Andy Reid better go thank Zach Robinson or thanks Spags or thank Nick Bolton for that win over the Falcons. I mean, I'm watching that game. And overall the numbers, the efficiency numbers of the Chiefs offense are fine.

But as I'm watching it, fourth quarter, you have multiple chances to put the game away. And you go three and out twice against that Falcons defense. And then his game management with, it never really comes into play that much anymore because the Chiefs are so good and they find ways to win. But they had a fourth and goal from the three, field goal, a fourth and two from the Atlanta 26, field goal, a fourth and two from the Atlanta 35, field goal. You got Patrick Mahomes at quarterback. You can't dial.

I mean, just let him call the plays. You don't have to call the plays. That game should not have been that close if they're able to convert on some of those plays. And then I look at this offense as a whole. They had one play of 20 plus yards in this game again against the Atlanta Falcons. It's not a great defense. So Falcons have the bad play call at the end. Chiefs win the game.

Chiefs are 3 and 0. Life is good as a Chiefs fan. But I don't know. I think it's still okay to be like, Andy, come on. You got to do better than that on Sunday night football. Ruiz, what do you think? Do you putting Andy Reid on Fraudwatch, Sheel?

No, you did that, I think. Yeah, last week. So maybe you just gave me the confidence to even mention it here. I did that. And you would expect, like, going up against the Falcons, that was very bad timing for such a take from me to put Andy Reid on fraud watch. But I feel vindicated.

Patrick Mul was 5.6 yards per attempt against this suspect falcons defense. And I'm putting that lightly. 3.9 yards per carry. And like you said, the deep ball, the lack of the deep ball and the lack of the explosive place, which has been a thing for going on three years now, has to be the concern. There's been so much talk about too high and how it's affected offenses and put a roof on passing games. But we've seen other top offenses kind of fight through it and work through it. Like we saw the Bills and Josh Allen fight through it.

Josh Allen fought through it by just throwing it even deeper than he was before and throwing it over those covered. I'm in on that solution. Covered shells. Yeah, the 49ers of the Lions have figured out how to work around it. by running the football. The Chiefs haven't figured out a way to work around it. Their answer to it in the past couple of years has just been, okay, Patrick Mahomes, it's third down.

Can you please bail us out again? And that's what I've been, I've been, you know, beating the drum about this. I don't think Andy Reid's play calling is necessarily making things easier for Patrick Mahomes. Like when I watch the tape, I'm not sitting there watching these plays where guys are running open downfield and thinking, oh, man, anyone could play in this offense.

Like, even, I know he gets a lot of production on like the underneath stuff and the checkdowns. But a lot of the time, that's Patrick Mahomes just like getting through his progressions on time and delivering the ball on time and on target

to his running back. I don't think it's like Andy Reid drawing up the best screen passes. Although that is like has been one of his strengths. We just only see like two or three screen passes a game

because you can't run it any more than that. And then even in the red zone, like some of these creative designs have backfired in the last couple of years where it's almost like just run a freaking football play.

We don't need to like throw it behind our back or put it in between our legs or anything like that. Like you have Patrick Mahomes. It's simple to play football when you have Patrick Mahomes and it just feels like too often

they complicate matters. Like even the fourth downs that you're referring to, you're kind of complicating that decision making, which should just be, I have the best football player in the world right now

and he only needs to get a couple of yards. I think he can do that, especially if I fancy myself a good play caller. And we just haven't seen it. She just let Mahomes call the place on those. He doesn't, you know, you don't need to spend,

yeah, yeah, a lot of time on. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, the lack of downfield, I mean, Deontay, Patrick Mahomes, his average pass is going 4.6 yards this season. Malpractice. Lowest in the entire NFL. He overtakes Jaden Daniels for the time being with that. And it's, again, it's hard to just crush them because the numbers are going to look good. There's only so, the floor is only so low when you have that man as your quarterback. But Deante, it's not as fun to watch. And some of the other.

stuff from Andy Reid. I don't know. They're three and oh. Maybe I'm, am I being too harsh or is this warranted? No, you're not being too harsh. Like, I didn't want to say this on Thursday when we were previewing the week because I felt like, oh, they're playing the Falcons. I don't want to jump out the window with this take and then they go and put up 38 with ease on them. But the point I wanted to make then and I feel even more, you know, reinforced with this now is it's been three weeks. This is a reigning champion, three and O, and they have not played a good football game on offense yet. And it's getting concerning now. I thought that, you know, I thought that, you know, I thought that, you know, some of this would be, you know, teams are even more committed to making

sure that they don't push the ball downfield. So there's going to be opportunities in the run game. We have not seen a run game as effective as I expected, based on what it looked like at its best a couple of years ago. I don't see them taking advantage of light boxes. I don't see the RPO game, we're giving them the same results that it had before. You talked about fourth down. This was never an issue, you know, a few years ago because it was just, it was an automatic. If it was fourth and less than three, you could get Patrick Mahomes out of the pocket, put something in the flat and one thing deeper, and you had no shot as a defense. Because no matter what you chose to do, he was going to find a way to punish it. And to see all these things leave the offense or just become significantly less effective on a week by week and year by year basis.

I'm with Ruiz. I think it's okay to put this offense on fraud watch. It doesn't take anything away from what Patrick Mahomes is or what we know Andy Reid can be in a one game. sample, right? Like, if I have to pick a guy to put together a game plan to go win a road playoff game, I'm not picking very many before I get to Andy Reid based on the resume. But if I'm looking on, you know, a larger sample size, this has now been several seasons of us looking and saying, hey, the things that you promised will be back in this offense aren't back yet. You made this investment on wide receiver to get speed and guys that can create. I don't see creation

in deep downfield passing that aren't gadget plays, that aren't like design shots. I don't know what's wrong with this offense, but we're far away from what I think everybody expected to see coming off of a Super Bowl win and a team that kept most of the core pieces together. Travis Kelsey has eight catches this season. He's averaging 0.78 yards per route run. Like that is very bad. He has less than 100 receiving yards this season. Like that's the main question. Like coming into the season, if you had told me that Rishoree Rice is the best player on the offense outside of Patrick Mahomes, I would have been like, oh, that's not.

That's a nice development. He took a leap forward, but he is the best player, and he looks like the same player we saw last year in the playoffs, which isn't a big step up. Like, this offense is tremendously flawed, and I think we overlooked it because of that playoff run. But looking back on the playoff run, I think, He mentioned this in a podcast during the off season.

Like, that wasn't a great performance for that offense in the Super Bowl until late. Yeah, they had 13 possessions, but they only had a feel. And that's usually in a game, you get 11, and the 49ers could have. take advantage of it. I mean, in a normal game, if they had the average number of possessions a team normally has, the numbers would look really bad. Now, obviously, you give them chance after chance they're going to score. But yeah, the 49ers held them in check until what, the middle of the second half, kind of. They didn't play well against Baltimore. They played bad

in the first half against Buffalo. Like, this isn't a new development, I guess. And that's maybe the most concerning piece of it is that even when they took Travis Kelsey off the quote-unquote pitch count in the playoffs. It was a lot of like low, low percentage plays that were working out for them throughout the AFC playoff run. And then again, to your point in the Super Bowl, that was just, hey, you give this guy enough bites at the Apple. Eventually, he is going to hurt you for it.

But I have not seen anything in a couple of years, basically since the Super Bowl against Philadelphia that looked like an offense that you just couldn't do anything with. Yeah, Xavier worthy to like you said, two catches for 17 yards. I mean, if you thought, hey, they're going to get. back to that explosiveness. I know the reports in training camp, Mahomes is throwing the ball downfield. I just don't like when the answer is, hey, a defense can dictate so much how you play. Take what the defense gives you when your quarterback is Patrick Mahomes. Like, I don't want to take what the defense gives me when my quarterback is Patrick Mahomes. I still want to create those explosives.

And listen, if you're a Chiefs fan, you can point to some numbers. They had the highest success rate of any team in the NFL in week three. And we're talking like this. But that's what the expectation is. That's what the standard is for Patrick Mahom. And it's one thing to be really good at one thing, which is kind of what they are. You know, he can get the ball out and you're going to pick up first downs and move it. But the explosive plays and now lack of a running game with Pacheco out, and they got Carson Steele and someaji Pryne. Some of its personnel based. I mean, Juju Smith-Schuster, these are a lot of guys who really any team in the NFL could have had this offseason.

And those are some of their go-to guys. So, cheese, fans, you're three and now. You know, we're allowed to, we're allowed to poke some holes every now and then in your football team. Three one possession games and very close to, like, you're Isaiah Lakely Toe, a questionable pass interference call, and then whatever happened tonight away from being O and three. So, Zach Robinson losing his mind. Yeah, right. To being O and three. So there you go.

All right. We'll take a break. We got some more games to get to. We'll talk about them all in a minute. All right. we're back on the Ringer NFL show, some other storylines that caught our attention. We referenced this one at the top of the show. We're all looking forward to it.

Vikings, Texans, C.J. Stroud versus Brian Flores, Sam Darnold versus Domingo Rines. What's this going to look like? And Deontay, it kind of turned into a little bit of a dud and a game that was over before it started. What caught your attention in that football game? I mean, to me, like, the result is ultimately determined by bad turnover variance. right you had a fumble you had an early interception that allowed minnesota to you know kind of get ahead and control the game script and you had a late pick when they were down a few possessions you know cj shot trying to make something happen a little miscommunication with nico collins but i don't want

to take that and make that the takeaway because i think that there's something a little bit more rotten about this offense schematically um and philosophically and this is something that we've been talking about since week one this is something we really been talking about since last season and it's just the poor run game plan. I mean, this almost transcends the stats. You can turn on the condensed game. You can go to the All-22. And on first down, I mean, you just see everyone in Minnesota's front seven players. I mean, they've got their cleats dug in because they know what's coming. Guys are just slanting in the gaps. You know, you have guys in running back's lap before they even get a chance to secure the handoff. And it's so clear, not only are they predictable in the fact that

they want to run on first down. It's how they're going to run that's being taken advantage of. This was an issue last week as well when they had an opportunity to really pull away from Chicago in the second half. And that defense was able to kind of dictate the terms and keep themselves in it. You know, they just didn't have enough offense to win that game. So if you look at their total production on the ground today, it was 14 carries for 38 yards. And of those eight runs on first down, they went for 22 yards, which is a 25% success rate.

There's no, like, there's just no justification for that. especially as you're down in the game. And I can understand philosophically if you're saying, hey, we want to dictate terms to a defense. We want to make a manageable second down, try to get to third down. All that's great when you have a quarterback that sucks. Your quarterback doesn't suck. Your quarterback, CJ Stroud. You can push to try to turn first downs into first downs.

You don't have to try to dink and dunk and hide what's wrong with your offense. Because the truth of the matter is that the run game is what's wrong with this offense. And the more time they invest on that in early downs, the more you're going to, going to put your quarterback in a position where it's third and long, third and forever, and a defense like Brian Flores is in Minnesota is walking seven, eight guys up to the line of scrimmage. And now you're going to ask this guy to play hero ball against the look that he can't possibly predict because of just how wild these blitzes are and these pressure looks are from Minnesota. So it was just so clear to me that Bobby Sloick is not raising the ceiling of this offense,

not raising the floor either. And this is really just C.J. Stroud, once again, in bad situations, down and distance-wise, and you got to bail them out. And if they fall behind in the game script, they're going to be in trouble. They've been flat out, one of the most disappointing offenses in the NFL through three weeks. I thought this offense was going to light it up. That was Deont. I was getting the benefit of the doubt to slow it before the season.

I said, I already had an injured offensive line. They didn't have these same past catchers. It's going to look different. Now, C.J. Stroud has all that experience from his rookie season with him. And then I'm watching, you mentioned it. This isn't a one game thing. I mean, if anyone watched Bears Texans in Week 2, that was. that was pretty ugly in the second half on the season.

The Texans ranked 29th in offensive success rate through three weeks. How is that possible with C.J. Stroud? You have an MVP-level quarterback. And Nico Collins and Tank Dell and Stefan Dixon, don't tell me, okay, Joe Mixing was injured. Other teams have much more significant injuries. If your hopes are riding on Joe Mixon, like you're in a bad spot also. I was going to say, yeah, if Joe Mixing is a solution, you have bigger problems. Sometimes you get that voice in your head.

Someone's going to respond with this on social media. I got to get it out. I shouldn't think like that. I shouldn't admit that I sometimes think like that, but sometimes it creeps into your head and you can't help yourself. So, Ruiz, I don't know if you were as high. I know Deonté and I were very high on this Texans offense coming into the season. But like this is, I don't know, is it a matter of going up because the Vikings defense is very good.

The bear's defense is very good. Like, what's your sort of level of concern with the way Houston played and how much credit do you just attribute to Brian Flores and that Vikings defense. There's a lot of concern. Like, as you mentioned, these problems are carrying over from last year. Like, nothing has really changed. And we saw, we've seen Bobby Sloke go up against these top defensive minds and get embarrassed, get flat out embarrassed.

The last time we saw him before the season was against the Ravens in Baltimore in the playoffs. And he didn't have an answer then. And it's the same problem. We talked in the first segment about the smart game plans by the Ravens and the Rams about, you know, taking the teeth out of the pass rush. The Texas didn't do that in this game. They haven't been doing it all season long. The best way to beat the Flores Blitz packages is to avoid them altogether,

to avoid obvious passing downs. And by running your head against, like running into a wall over and over again in the run game, like you're setting yourself up for that. And then it kind of exposes one of the weaknesses in this offensive system that has taken over the NFL, the Shanahan system, where the pass protection system isn't very robust. It isn't very good. and when you're going up against a defense that can throw anything at you on third down,

like you really see that exposed. And I think we saw that today. And this isn't Kyle Shanahan. This isn't Sean McVeigh, like fixing it on early downs. This is Bobby Sloick. We've never seen that have to fix an offense before. So, yeah, I would be questioning them. And then Deontay brought up the problems on early downs with the run game.

The passing game is not any better. Like, Sloak isn't scheming it up in the passing game either. Coming into this week, actually, I think after this week, too, C.J. Shroud is third from last in EPA on early downs behind only Deshaun Watson and Caleb Williams. That's unacceptable. Those are bad results for a team with Super Bowl aspirations and a team with this much talent.

That's the one downside of being an offensive coordinator who inherits all this talent and who has this young, just brilliant quarterback. It's that when things go wrong, you're going to get blamed. And I think it's fair to blame him for these problems. Yeah, when you look at the, if you look at the quarterback and you look at results like that, I mean, the offensive coordinator has to take some heat. And then credit to the Vikings, fan, they've done it three weeks in a row. Right now, they have the best defense in the NFL based on EPA per drive, talking about a coach who is doing his job.

Brian Flores, how it's like, man, can he do it again? There was some smoking mirrors with what they were doing last year. I don't know. Now teams have seen it for a year. And they're coming right back. And they're playing really well. their plus 55 point differential on the season that's second in the NFL. Sam Darnel, I think, had some ups and downs in this game, but he leaves with an injury,

comes back and throws a touchdown, throws four touchdowns in this game. So Deontay, the Vikings are making me look really dumb. I thought this team was going to stink coming into the season. They're 3-0 and like nothing in the number suggested. It's really fluky. This game was such a great dichotomy because for all the things that we just threw at Bobby Sloick, none of it applies to Kevin O'Connell. or just that staff in general, right?

Anyone could have hired Brian Flores, by the way. Let's not forget that. Both first he goes to Pittsburgh to be an assistant, doesn't even get a coordinator's job. Then anyone could have hired him to be a defensive coordinator. And now he looks like the best defensive coordinator in the league. Sorry, had to interrupt with that. No, I mean, it's the truth.

And I think that when you look at Brian Flores and you look at Kevin O'Connell, these are two guys who just have like an elite level understanding of what their team needs to be successful on a week-to-week basis. right like you can go you watch this game and it's clear that kevin o'conno understands i don't want derrick stingly and demico ryan's to eliminate my best playmaker jason jefferson on passing downs so i'm not going to give you the option we're going to target justin jefferson downfield on early downs play action game deep over the middle of the field and he had you know three three of his three targets on first and second down went for 54 yards and his air yards for attempt on those targets

was over 13 yards so i'm trying to get this guy away from coverage i'm trying to trying to find deep holes. When I know the Demico Ryan wants to play a little bit more soft zone coverage, we're going to give you the play action looks to, you know, kind of pry open, you know, that space between the second and third level. And it's made especially effective because they've quietly had maybe the best run game in the NFL to start the year. You know, I didn't expect Aaron Jones to be this productive behind this offensive line. And I think that what we've seen now is that they've just very slowly and meticulously built up an offensive line and tight end group.

and to fit this scheme and allow them to play kind of downhill, you know, run game against defenses that really want to give them those too high looks to take away Justin Jefferson. So there's just a great, like, symbiotic relationship between the run and the passing game for them. And then when you look at the other side of the ball to your point shield, I like Brian Flores a lot, but I look at this death chart and I'm like, this thing stinks outside Harrison Smith. Like, what are I supposed to like? I even pace a little bit. That's not what I would consider a great linebacker. He's like a hipster, a hipster favorite, not like an all-prose.

And the same for Van Ginkle, right? Like, Van Ginkle's like a guy you go get in Madden to go user because he's got like decent ratings across a bunch of different, you know, things. But he's got the speed and the agility, but not the awareness. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and you're seeing these guys

be impact players. And I think that that just speaks to Brian Flores, understanding that if I don't have a lot of Front 7 talent, we're not going to play New England Patriots defense and just give you a bunch of odd fronts in cover one. I'm going to give you the most insane stuff up front and make you spend all your time dealing with that

instead of trying to pick apart where we're weak in the secondary and at the second level. It's just been a clinic in understanding your team, playing to what works in the modern era. To me, this is very clearly going to be football hipsters, the team for all football hipsters and football nerds, because they do so much well on early downs, and they're able to avoid these bad.

situations. You know, Brian Flores had a bunch of third downs today and only two of them were with less than seven yards to go. And one of those was in garbage time. That speaks to winning on early downs and getting yourself in position where you can do what you do best, which is still these exotic looks at offenses. Yeah, we talk so much about those exotic looks, but you have to earn those. You have to win on first and second down to be able to earn those situations to get after the passer. We heard during the broadcast, Tom Brady was talking about this in regards to Mike Zimmer and their week two game where, yeah, they have these pass rushers, but they couldn't get into pass rush mode because their run game,

their run defense stinks and their interior defensive line stinks. And it's not like Flores, like DeAndi said, is dealing with the best personnel. This isn't like the Legion of Boom Seahawks he's dealing with. But one thing that he doesn't get enough credit for is, and it's real, it's like a Belichick type thing, is he finds defensive players that can do a job, and he asks them to do that job.

He doesn't ask them to do too much. And I think that extends to the other side of the ball. where I watch a Kevin O'Connell offense, I'm never thinking, oh, he's putting too much on the quarterback's plate. And the other thing I'm never thinking is, when are they going to get Jefferson involved? Which is, like, it's a hard thing to do. Even if you have one of the best receivers in the league,

we've seen receivers disappear in games all the time. And it just never seems to be the case when Jefferson is healthy. The game plan is always Jefferson-centric. And now they have a couple more guys in like Aaron Jones, where they can build other parts of the game plan around that guy and take more pressure off of Jefferson's. I think this team is very good. My question is still the quarterback.

I know Sam Darnel is playing really good football, but he still gives you those chances to make a play as a defense. And I think that's going to show up the more we see them against better defenses. To his credit, I thought that would be this week, and it didn't happen. So maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, maybe the best coaching job in the NFL so far, Kevin O'Connell, Brian. I also love, even though Flores his yes, from Belichick, Trey, he's doing his own thing. in a league where all fan Giotry, Shania, and tree.

Just get somebody think for themselves and do the job. You know, that's what you get paid for is to come up. I know not everything's new, but still, you can be creative. You don't have to do just what the guy you coached for always did. So good job, Brian Flores. All right. The three and O Steelers, Ruiz, they take down the Chargers, 20 to 10. Are you excited?

Are you not excited? Are they fraudulent? Are they for real? Where are we with the Steelers and what happened in this football game? I don't know if they're fraudulent. I don't know if they're for real, but I do know this. This is the first Steelers team that feels watchable in like six years. They're on pace to finish with a positive EPA for the first time since 2018.

2018 was the last time, like, Juju Smith-Schuster was catching 100 passes in 1,300. That's how long it's been since this team has fielded up a watchable passing game. So Fields deserves the starting job just for that alone, that accomplishment alone, because it has largely been him. This run game has not been very good. And the most shocking thing is Fields isn't doing this as a scrambler. We've seen him take major strides as a passer. He's on pace for his lowest time to throw, his lowest sack rate, his lowest interception rate, his lowest off-target throw rate.

He's targeting the middle of the field. We saw that on a couple occasions. This game against the Titans, or against the Chargers, sorry. And the other thing is he's getting the ball out on time. He's getting the ball out in rhythm. He's hitting his checkdowns and he's not putting the ball in harm's way. Now, I think the Steelers were kind of helping him out early on by keeping the ball. the ball at the middle of the field. But over the last game and a half, like in the second half of

the Denver game, you saw him kind of turn it on and become that passer that we thought he could be at Ohio State. Now, there are still very clear weaknesses in his game. He still holds on to the ball for a little bit too long. He still stares down receivers. It still takes a little too long for him to make a decision to throw the pass and then actually get the pass off. But he's not turning over the ball. And I think that's doing enough to win this job because that's what Mike Tomlin wants to see, right? He just doesn't want to see the quarterback lose the game. He's been dealing with that for like six years now, even going back to the end of the Ben Rolfesberger era. So not only does Fields provide this higher ceiling, I think he provides a higher floor than we expected.

And now that he's taking strides as a passer, like, where are the advantages that Russell Wilson has over him? Like, where are the clear advantages? Because it's certainly not as a runner, certainly not as a thrower at this point in their respective careers. And if it's not as like a processor in the pocket, then like what reason do you have to go back to Wilson? Yeah, I thought going into the season that he would not be able to cut down on the negative plays enough to where Tomlin would say this guy gives us our best chance to win. But he threw an interception today. That was his first turnover the entire season. I mean, this guy had 41 turnovers in the previous three seasons for the Chicago Bears. And it's not really getting lucky.

He has somehow, they have somehow gotten through to him about the style he needs to play if he wants to be on the field. And he's taken to it. And it seems like he had to do more in this game than he's had to. had to do in the previous games this season. I mean, 25 for 32 for 245 yards, only takes two sacks. This is the guy who took sacks at a historic level with the bearer. So yeah, cutting down on those negative plays, creating the explosives. I don't want to overrate the Steelers' offense. This was like a mediocre offensive performance, but that's a huge win for them. Mediocre offense plus the defense they've got, Deonti, that's like, I don't know the deck can win the Super Bowl

or get two rounds in the playoffs, but that's probably the best way to maximize the talent on the roster. This might be maybe not a good team, but a better than competent team. This is a legitimately competitive team. And a lot of this, I think, is a credit to Arthur Smith and breaking through to Justin Fields

and getting him to trust that like, hey, man, you can plant your feet in the pocket and just work through a progression. And I think that they've also taken some of the things out of an Arthur Smith offense that would ask him to do things that he's uncomfortable with. You don't see high degree of difficulty throws in the middle of the field.

They're not asking him to throw digs. It slants and hitches, things where either guys are on the move running away from defenders, or I'm going to get you the ball to a receiver that's squared up facing you and let him go do the work after the catch. And the only real high degree of difficulty walls you see him throw is stuff that you knew he could do since he was at Ohio State. And that's like throwing fades, right? You get one-on-one to George Pickens.

Go ahead and take your chance. And you saw a couple of those, even though they weren't really able to connect today in the way that we see at different points, right? And that's not even something that they need to connect with more than two or three times to earn the respect of a defense. So they've done a really good job, I think, of building out a passing game that's viable. And I don't know if I ever believe that that was going to be the case,

no matter who was the starter here. And then on the other side, like, I've taken a lot of crap for maybe not giving T.J. Watt enough credit. And I think that it helps going up against a rookie tackle today. But you watch that pass rush against Justin Herbert, as they started to get a lead and put a lot of pressure on them, a lot of pressure on the chargers to have to pass a ball to be able to stay in the game or take the lead.

And you just saw exactly how they can kind of tear off and get after quarterbacks. And TJ Watson me has maybe been outside of Max Crosby, my favorite edge of watching the league so far to start the year. Their defense is now allowing 8.7 points per game, 8.7 points per game through the first three weeks of the season. to your point, Fields has had, Steelers had five plays at 20 plus yards today. So it doesn't have to be,

if it doesn't, they don't have to play the Chiefsway where they're stringing together, long drives, that might not work for them, but can you hit on enough explosives and not turn the football over to give your,

to give your defense a chance to win the game? And I don't think we've seen the ceiling of this offense. I know they're 3 and O right now, but I don't think we've seen the ceiling. This run game hasn't been very productive. And when you have Arthur Smith coordinating the run game

and you have Justin Fields as a key cog in the run game where defenses have to respect it. And then you found this rookie center and Zach Frazier, who could be like a future all pro. Like they have the pieces to have a very productive run game.

We just haven't seen it yet. So if they can figure that out and Justin Fields continues to play an efficient brand of football, like I'm not ready to say Super Bowl, but I do think this is a team that can compete for a very challenging AFC North.

And like the play that I think really illustrates what Justin Fields brings to this offense. I would go back to week one. They hit on a, big play. I'm not sure who the receiver was, but they kind of like rolled our sprinted Justin Fields out to the left and they threw like a corner back the other way. It was like a very long pass. But it just shows you the full field stress that Justin Fields puts on an offense.

Because if you don't respect that little sprint out, he could take it for 50 yards. And if you do respect it, then he could throw it 50 yards all the way on the other side of the field. Russell Wilson can't do that anymore. He can't pose that threat anymore. And if you have a quarterback that can, like it doesn't matter if he has weaknesses in the past game. You could build a productive offense out of it. We've seen that in other places, and I think we will see it in Pittsburgh going forward. I want Mike Tomlin to know that, like, nobody's going to think you're not an honorable man anymore. If you come to a press conference and say that Justin Fields is a starting quarterback now.

Like, it's okay. It's time. Great leader. Man of your word. We all understand. Give the guy the job. It's clearly his job. Yeah.

They're 3 and 0. I mean, 3 and 0 leading the AFC North. Nobody was expecting that. All right. I was watching Eagle Saints in the early window. Unfortunately. A three nothing game in the fourth quarter. One takeaway is that, you know, I said, I didn't say Fangio was on fraud watch,

but I said, you know, I kind of said someone could say Fangio's on fraud watch if they come out and they get cooked by the Saints offense. That did not happen. This was the Vic Fangio that the Eagles were hoping when they made the changes in the offseason. Hey, can just the coordinators change our team? offense, I don't know, but defensively, Vic Fangio completely shut down this New Orleans Saints offense that was just running through teams the first two games of the season. I mean, the Saints scored six touchdowns on six possessions to start the game in week two against the Cowboys.

In this game, Saints have 12 first downs, 219 yards and one touchdown. And it kind of goes to what you guys were talking about with Flores, that can you get some of these teams in obvious passing situations where you can actually do things. Well, the Eagles couldn't stop the run the first two weeks of the season, but in this game, they stopped the run beautifully, allowing 3.1 yards per carry. Jalen Carter, who had been kind of a disappointment, maybe not a major disappointment, but hadn't been as impactful the first two weeks of the season. Incredible in this game. Saints lose two offensive linemen, and he kind of just takes over the game, possession after possession there and their rookie Quinnion Mitchell, the cornerback played fantastic in this game

as well. So Eagles defense was looking terrible through the first two weeks of the season. This was not a pretty game. They win 15 to 12. There were all sorts of ways they could have lost this game, even though they outgained the Saints 460 to 219. And they still almost lost the game. But Vic Fangio no longer on someone else's fraud watch. How's the Derek R MVP campaign going? Yeah. This is a pump the brakes game for, I think, the Saints offense. And, and, Derek Carr. It's a reminder. I said, you know what I need to start doing? Every year after like each week, I need to write down what I think. And then the next year, when we get to that week, I need to look at my little book and go, was that stupid? Or did you actually think that? Because it is only two weeks and you have

nothing else to talk about. But yes, a bigger sample might tell us different things about some of these people. I've been doing it for like eight years now. Questioning and being a skeptic of Derek Hard never does you wrong, never lead you down a bad path. I'm telling you. He only attempted 39 passes coming into this game. In hindsight, maybe we jumped the gun by saying that this is a new Derek car that is emerged. He was pressured on, I think it was eight dropbacks today, but he averaged negative 0.5 yards per play when he was pressured. Coming into the game, he was averaging 18 yards per play on pressured dropbacks.

So that was a wild swing. That's regression towards the mean. I think the performance we saw out of Derek Carr is regression towards the mean now. I still think this is going to be a very good offense. I think they ran into a bad matchup. I think on Friday I said, I expected a low-scoring game in this one because I thought Fangio plays the type of defense that would give this type of offense problems.

So I think going forward, we're going to see the Saints offense performed somewhere in the middle. They're not going to be scoring 47 points on every defense they face, and they're not going to be scoring 12 points against every defense they face. I think it's still going to be a solid offense, and we've seen this defense still plays at a very high level. They made Jalen Hertz look like a bob. bottom 10 quarterback on Sunday.

So I still have reasonably high hopes for this team, and I still think it's the favorite to win the NFC South, especially with the buck showing against the Broncos today. But I don't think Derek Carr is going to be producing a MVP campaign this year. Yeah, you look, he needs to be. I think we, you know, in respect to us, I think we did give Clint Kubiak a little more credits, say the scheme, some of the stuff they're doing,

and he's making the plays there. But I agree. I don't think either fan base is probably feeling great, Deonté, about this game. If you're an Eagles fan, which you are, then you could say, I know, I don't.

Yeah, you don't feel great. How do you feel? They win 15 to 12. They're two and one, yet they were doing some of the dumbest things you could possibly do on a football field for three quarters of this game. I sent out a tweet before a half time

asking if everything was okay at home for Nick Siriani because I just didn't understand the game management late in the second quarter, you know, and I think that there's something to be said for a coach that maybe has good feel for a game and will ditch what's being asked, you know, by analytics because, hey, this is what I think my team will respond to most. That's not how some of those decisions came across in the second quarter.

That looked like a head coach who was maybe searching for something, who was maybe coming out of the first two weeks, coming out of that poor, you know, that botched two-minute drill on Monday night football that wanted to get a big conversion to get a touchdown before halftime so he could have the fist pump, look in the stands. I'm going to shout and come to, you know, the press conference and bang my hand on the table. about I know my team and I know what I need to do to win. And that came up as a complete zero. And I think, you know, before the Devonthe Smith injury that kind of forced them to play 12

personnel and run the ball, I just felt like the offense was so disjointed. They were having such a hard time, even when things were getting open, getting guys the ball. I think that there's still a lot to be worked on in terms of this team's response to pressure and checking plays. And I don't know if all that falls on, Jalen. He definitely still has his issues. will hold in the ball, scrambling without a plan, delivering the ball late.

But you can see pre-snap, he's recognizing things and trying to check plays and wide receivers don't know what the signals are. You see pressure looks from New Orleans. He's ready to throw the ball hot. Wide receivers have not turned their head around yet, so he can't throw the ball to guys that aren't looking for it. So there's still, I think, a lack of rhythm in a way that I may be expected to see more on the defensive side of the ball than offense. So I am a little bit concerned about what this offense is going to look like outside of

Sequan Barkley, who was just very clearly outside of AJ Brown, the most valuable player on this team right now. Yeah, and some bad injury stuff with the Eagles. And, I mean, they lost Lane Johnson, their right tackle to a concussion in this game. They lose Mackay Beckton, who was playing really well at right guard. They lose Devante Smith to a concussion or looking into a concussion in this game. And AJ Brown was out of the game. So they had no Devante Smith, no AJ Brown, no Lane Johnson.

Yeah, Darius Slay. So those are some of their legit. best players in this game. And they escape with a little 1512 victory that's not going to have you planning another trip to New Orleans for the Super Bowl, but has them at two and one. All right, we will be back in a moment. We'll hand out some awards from the rest of the games. All right, welcome back to the Ringer NFL show. We're to do something a little different this week. Try it out, hand out some awards, some superlatives. We just made them up from different things we saw today. And we're going to hand them out. I'll get us.

started. All right, here we go. I watched the Lions Cardinals, and I'm given the, this is why you should give me the bag award to Lions offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson. You know how this happens when the offensive coordinator's like, I'm up for a job? Like, I need some owners to see that, you know, I got that creativity. They had this play. They beat the Cardinals 20 to 13. Is it hook and ladder or hook and lateral? Do we have a judgment on this? I go hook and ladder. I feel like the lateral role, I feel like is just one too many syllables. Okay. All right. Hook and ladder. I'll go hook and ladder. If I'm wrong, if it's supposed to be hook and ladder, I'll tell me, but they just called one of these in the middle of the game, and it was beautiful where Jared Gough just hits Amman Ross St. Brown on a little

under and he flips it to Jemir Gibbs and it's like a 20-yard touchdown. So I can just picture Ben Johnson being like, I got to get one or two of these in the game plan so that there's an owner out there watching being like, hey, we got to give that, you know, get like a David temper. I'm not letting this guy leave the room. I'll give him, you know, three. $300 million over six years or whatever it is. So Lions had a nice game. That play stood out. Jared Goff completed his first 14 passes in this game.

They were just going kind of up and down the field. And then they struggled to put the Cardinals away. But they win this game 2013. And Ben Johnson gets my first award. I mean, if I was like an assistant coach who was a potential head coaching hire, I would do everything in my power to convince that David Tepper to offer me a contract. That seems like the best boss to work with. Not like after you signed the contract,

but in terms of getting paid and getting the bag, like you said, like David Teper's the guy. Just asked Matt Ruey. He's probably still getting paid by the guy. Yeah, I think he is. I think he definitely is there. All right, Ruiz, what do you got? What's your first award?

My first award is the ugliest next-gen stats passing map award. And I'm splitting the award between Baker Mayfield and Bo Nix. I had the misfortune of watching this Broncos game, the Sean Payton Bo Nix revival game. They finally came good on all that off-season talk. We heard about Bowdo Nix. We heard from Sean Payton all year long. But I think you saw the dichotomy between how these two offenses want to play.

Like the Bowdo Nix passing map is just a bunch of short passes underneath. He did complete a couple passes over 10 yards, which is a first for him. He threw his first touchdown here. But more importantly, he didn't turn over the ball. And you saw him kind of participate in the Sean Payton guardrail game play and that he gave to his past quarterbacks when Drew Brees got hurt in New Orleans, where you're just going to dink and dunk, you're not going to make mistakes, and we're going to keep the offense ahead of the chain so you don't have to, you know,

pass the ball in these obvious passing situations. And then on the other side, Baker Mayfield kind of had that same thing going. But that wasn't the plan, I don't think. I don't think Tampa Bay came out to, like, give him this, like, rookie quarterback's workload. I think they wanted to push the ball downfield. They just weren't able to against this defense. And I think maybe we jumped the gun on anointing Liam Cohen after that first week performance. against Dan Quinn because we've seen this offense just kind of get more conservative as the

weeks have gone on. And we've seen the worst of Baker Mayfield, who's trying to kind of trying to fight that conservatism and still push the ball down field as he likes to do. And we saw that turn into mistakes this week. And we saw it turn into mistakes last week, but they weren't punished. So I do have question marks about this this Buck's offense going forward. This bucks offense that I was very high on after the first week. This is an ugly box score, Ruiz, for Baker May 25 for 33 for 163 yards. That's 4.9 yards per attempt. An interception and he takes seven sacks.

Yeah, that's the number. That is a bad offensive performance for a Bucks offense going up. Listen, I thought you were going to give, you know, give Bo Nicks some praise. They win the game 26-7, 352-yard. No, I was talking to the wrong movies. You got to go to a different podcast with that. All right. There you go.

Broncos get their first win of the season. Deonté, what do you got? What's next? My superlative here is the least enthusiastic to be out of the house. And to me, that was Michael Daniels and the Miami Dolphins offense. And I don't know if I've seen more of a surrender before half than going play action pass from midfield, leaving seven guys in the protection and just watching Skylar Thompson pat the ball until he just gets smoked from behind. because I guess you can't call in,

I guess you don't want to kneel for morale's sake, but you don't trust your quarterback to do anything other than run like scripted play action passes. I don't know, like it's so tough when you're watching an NFL game and a team maybe gets like a 10 point lead and you know instantly like, oh, that's it. Yeah.

Like Seattle really didn't have to do anything after it got a 10 point lead. And that's considering the fact that they turned the ball over, you know, within the inside of their own 20 yard line, you know, there was just nothing. that Miami's offense could do. I do think that Ryan Grub is a little bit better as a first year play caller than I gave credit for. And that's considering the fact that that offense went a little dead

in the second half, I think that he's really good at designing things that work for this wide receiver core, especially for D.K. Metcalf. You know, when I'm watching Seattle play, I feel his presence much more than I had in years past, especially under Shane Waldron. I think a lot of that is Ryan Grub understanding,

like, hey, we can use them on double moves. You know, we're going to get him back to what he did that made him so draftable when he was coming out of Ole Miss. It's all looked at the vertical tree. We're just actually going to get the guy of the ball short and see if he can go create something after the catch and use that to kind of set up the more vertical shots instead of just running 10 fades and hoping that he comes down with two of them. So I like what they're doing on offense and Mike McDonald clearly just has it used defensively. Like there was no chance Miami was going to sneak by or get any kind of trickery, you know, to be able to find any kind of rhythm offensively. So yeah, this game was over, I think, about halfway through the first quarter when Seattle got a 10-point lead. We haven't really seen Seattle go up against a great team so far, but I can't wait to watch this team go up against a good team and see how they measure up, especially on the defensive side, where I still think they need to add some pieces, especially along the front seven to get this Mike McDonald defense up and running like it was in Baltimore.

And then obviously on the other side, like to see Ryan Grub against a top coordinator, a top defensive coordinator and see how Gino Smith fares in the passing game. Gino Smith right now is... It's insane. I don't want to put a number on where I'd rank him and sound outrageous. But for all the talk the last couple weeks about passing being down and quarterback play being a little shaky, none of that is an issue in Seattle. Gino is playing at an even higher level than he had two years ago. He's playing like really one of the top five to eight quarterbacks in the league right now

on a down-to-down basis. For the reasons you just laid out, like he's the hardest quarterback for me to rank right now because I don't want to say something outlandish and be like, oh, he's a top five quarterback right now. Like he's in, he's the next guy out of the elite conversation. But I think like that is the case. We saw C.J. Stroud struggle a little today against a very hard defense to go up against. We've seen Justin Herbert take another injury and he hasn't, you know, had the volume numbers

in this run first offense. Joe Burrow has struggled. Dak Prescott has struggled. Beyond the elite quarterbacks, the ones that we like readily accept our elite, elite. Gino Smith has far and away been the best quarterback of that group. And I think you can make the argument that outside of Josh Allen, he's been better than all the elite quarterback so far this year. He's playing a really high-level brand of football right now. And I don't think anyone, or I don't think like the national media at large has noticed it because we haven't seen them

play on a big stage. But once they do, and if he's able to reproduce this performance, I think he's going to not only be getting his flowers finally, I think he's going to be inserted into the MVP conversation. I don't know, I don't think he's going to win it, but I do think he'll be in it at some point this season. Next week, Ruiz, at the Detroit Lions, the Seattle Seahawks, Monday night football. A team Gino famously plays well against, too. He's played well against him the last two seasons, so that's going to be fun. See, yeah, it's a nice sort of measuring stick game for a three and O Seahawks team that took care of business today against the Miami Dolphins 24 to 3. All right, my next one here. This is the Just Between Us Award.

This is for a take that I would only share with my friends, not to the entire ringer NFL audience. So we can turn the mics off, turn the cameras off here. Panthers might make the play can make the playoffs with Andy Dalton. Oh, no. He was awesome in this game. I mean, Ruiz, he might need to be your next Gino. You know, see it coming before everybody else.

He was dealing in this game, 26 for 37, for 319 yards. They were going up and down the field. This wasn't just like dink and duck. He was making some high degree of difficulty throws. He unlocks Deonté Johnson, who's just like, you know, dancing around defenders, eight for 122. Xavier Leggett is making plays. They had 437 yards of offense, the Carolina Panthers today against the Las Vegas

Raiders, a Raiders defense that has some players, you know? They've had some good games this year and last year. They dominated this game. It was legitimately impressive. I know you picked the Panthers to win outright. I was a wuss, and I picked them plus five and a half. But man, they took it to the Raiders. I'm looking at the NFC South.

The Saints and the Bucks are two in one. The Panthers are one and two. And the Falcons are one and two. Like, is there actually a big difference between any of these quarterbacks? Derek Carr, Baker Mayfield, Andy Dalton, and Kirk Cousins. No, not really. Cousins is like the class of that group, which tells you everything you need to know. But I mean, it just goes to show you how far Bryce Young has to go before he can even become

a viable NFL. Like, he made this offense look historically bad. They had 13 points in his last four starts. Andy Dalton needed three drives to pass 13 points. After three drives, they had 14 points. And if you go back to last year, the Seattle game, like, he's thrown for 600 yards in two games. I've been beating the drum for this offense. I've been saying this offense is not that bad.

The offensive line is decent. The receiving court is good and they've invested in it. They've given him every chance to succeed in this offense. He was just a bad quarterback who can't play in this league. At this point, I think it's past the point of debate. And I'm just happy to see that the rest of the roster can now be truly evaluated. And I think it will give the Panthers a better sense of direction on where to go in the offseason, where it's not like, oh, nothing works.

So we have to start from scratch. If they make the playoffs, I think we need Ruiz and an Andy Dalton jersey for that wild card round. They win one more game. I'll order that. There you go. Nice win for the Panthers.

You haven't had a lot to cheer about. Nice Sunday afternoon for you. All right, Ruiz. What do you got? Any more? Yeah, I'm giving the Howie Roseman quarterback factory award to the Green Bay Packers for a franchise that actually deserves,

that moniker. I don't even remember when Howie said that. Didn't he say that after they drafted Jalen Hertz? And Jalen Hertz hadn't even developed into the all-pro quarterback. So that was based on what? Carson Wentz and the Chase Daniels contract, Nate Sudfeld? I don't know. But let's give it to the Packers

a team that actually deserves that moniker. I am just astounded by what I'm seeing from Malik Willis. And I was a huge Malik Willis fan coming into his draft. Like he was my QB1. I would have taken him at the back of the first round. That's how dumb I was about Malik Willis. But maybe I wasn't that dumb because Matt LaFleur, in three weeks, has turned this guy into not only a serviceable

starter, he hasn't thrown enough passes to qualify for any major statistics, but if he did, he is second in yards per drop back, EPA per drop back, success rate. I think he's second, no, he's third in QBR. I mean, he's not just playing serviceable football. He's playing like great football. And then today, I think we saw a lot more out of him as a passer. Like that one throw on third down. It was like a crossing route where he fitted into in between this tight zone window. I didn't think he was capable of stuff like that. And he's hidden he's hidden vertical shots down the field with touch. He's not turning the ball over. He's scrambling. He's turning negative plays into positive plays. He's been a good football player. And I think it just speaks to

how far talent can can bring you at the quarterback position. We waste so much times on these on these quarterback prospects who have middling arms who don't have pocket presence or aren't terribly fast. And I think we waste development time on them where we could be developing super talented quarterbacks like Malik Willis who can lead a run game, who can have, who could throw downfield, who could push the ball down field.

And I'm just happy to see that he's finally getting a chance because there is another scenario where he just languishes on the bench and his career kind of dies out and never gets this opportunity. But I think now having seen what he did in Green Bay for these two weeks, and I don't know if he's going to play any longer, I think he is going to get another chance to be a starter in this league if it's not in Green Bay. I'm going to piggyback here. I have a superlative to give off based on this game,

and it's not about the quarterback. This one is called high school bullshit. And that's Matt LaFleur's offense. Because this is, I would say that this is the offense, the kind of offense I'm most likely to have the game playing against going into a Friday. And I mean that, like, as the biggest compliment, right? Like, you know, we talk about, you know, Sean McVeigh and Kyle Shanahan and Kevin O'Connell as these guys, like, you can tell that they like having great quarterback play when they can. But there's a, like, sick part of them that's like, how much of an expert football coach can I really show myself to be if I don't have a high level quarterback?

And I feel like Matt LaFleur took this offseason and spent a lot of time watching like how much zone read, how much zone read stuff is out there? What are the different like pistol run game stuff that I can get into this offense? And I think that he's been enamored with that for a little bit and obviously wouldn't subject Jordan Love to that kind of punishment. But I think having Malik Willis as a backup gave him an opportunity after Love's injury to kind of play around and see exactly how much he can get out of this offense. And you see that with the way they're using tight ends. Tucker Crafts is look really good as like a chess piece that they can move around as a blocker.

You know, in these like zone arc plays where he gets up to the second level, Malik Willis is keeping the ball and he's a lead blocker. You get to see them use, you know, wide receivers on swing passes, running backs on screens. They're giving you this 20 and 21 personnel looks where they're flaring guys out into the flat and running basically like zone triple option stuff out of it. And not only does that fit Malik Willis, it gives you a change up that is really interesting to me. And I think it kind of stamps why he was able to take Jordan Love and make this offense work for him immediately once he became the starter. Right. And that's not to take away from what Jordan Love does as a ceiling razor,

given his talent as a passer. But you just look at what Matt LaFleur has been able to build with the running game on short notice with the quarterback, that it does still have some limitations and also building that guy's confidence to push a ball down the field. I have nothing but the best things to say about the Packers right now. And we're just not going to acknowledge the fact that they won the last two games because they forced five interceptions.

I'm going to give more credit to Matt LaFleur instead. Shout out Will Levis for just becoming like a turnover artist. It's like he's finding, new and innovative ways to turn over the football. It's fun to watch. Yeah, if I had another superlative to give, he will win the Matt Shaw, a pick six award. Three turnovers and eight sacks for Will Levis. You can't say enough about the Packers coaching staff. I mean, so many coaching staffs, if their quarterback goes down and they don't have a viable backup, they're just, they're ready to make every excuse possible and blame everyone else. And the Packers figure it out.

I mean, two wins. Imagine when Jordan Love went down and you knew they were starting Malik Willis, if you thought they're going to win the next two games. They have 378 yards of offense in this game. He goes 13 for 19 for 202 yards and rushes for 73 yards. I'll tell you the other thing, as you guys were talking, I was thinking about it. It gives me more confidence that if Jordan Love comes back and is limited in some capacity, which he most likely will be, that they will figure out solutions to put him in position to succeed rather than just, hey, let's do exactly what we were doing when you were 100% healthy.

So you've got to be feeling so much better as a Packers fan now than you were a couple weeks ago. Deonti, you brought up like Kyle Shanay and Sean McVeigh doing this stuff. We've never seen those two succeed with the quarterback this limited in the past game. Like, Shanahan couldn't do this with Trey Lance, who was billed as a way better passer. And I think was a way better passer in college. We haven't seen Sean McVeigh do it.

I know he hasn't been able to start a runner as talented as Malik Willis, but there was the Bryce Perkins game. Like John Wolford was a decent runner. He had Blake Bortles back there. And like you never produced this type of explosive offense. It's not like they're just surviving. Like you've laid out the numbers. They are thriving with Malik Willis at quarterback.

I don't know how many times I'm going to say that before it just becomes locked in my brain that it's actually happening. I can't believe it's happening. And again, I was very high on Malik Willis. And I didn't think it would happen this soon, like him looking serviceable as an NFL quarterback. Yeah, fantastic job. I feel like the theme of the show has been. coaches who are figuring it out and coaches who are not figuring it out. All right, I have a few to

to empty out here. The I Need More on this story award goes to Derek Henry's eating habits. Who heard this nugget during the game from Tom Rinaldi? He said, I think it was Tom Rinaldi, maybe not. He said Derek Henry during the season doesn't eat anything but a banana until four or five o'clock. Now, listen, my favorite offseason pastime is trying some like weird nutritional fad for a couple weeks and then quitting because I'm like, why would I ever want to do this? So I need to know more about, and Derek Henry. I mean, the guy, I would imagine, he needs a lot of calories, but he's, that's what he told them. He doesn't eat anything but a banana until four or five. I mean, he's kind of like me during NFL season. I'm like on my computer. I'm on Twitter.

I'm watching the film. I'm writing. I'm constantly staring at blank Google Docs. I forget to eat sometimes. Sometimes I'll only have a banana before dinner time. So I'm just like Derek Henry when you think about it. Do you actually do that? Do you wait a long time before you eat sometimes if you're busy? Every now and then my wife will come home from work and I'll be like, I haven't eaten all day. And she'll think I'm like exaggerating. She'll be like, oh, you probably had lunch. You probably had like a bar or something or like, you know, a sandwich. No, no. Sometimes I'll go until 4 p.m. without eating just because I'm so locked in on the football, you know? Listen, I left a cooked bowl of oatmeal on the counter and didn't realize that I hadn't eaten

my breakfast until like the mid, the midday slate had begun. I was like, man, I feel a little felt a little famished. I don't know what's going on with me today and didn't realize all I had was my coffee because I didn't eat. It's the ADHD. That's what it is. That's what it's kicking our asses, including Derek Henry. He's just like, just like a normal person. See, once you get older, the Capadias as they get older, they're very accustomed to a routine. And when they don't follow that routine, their entire life gets just thrown into a hurricane and they can't function. So I will not be doing that unless, you know, I'm just scrolling through Instagram on like February 19th after the season's over and someone's like, oh, this, you know, this thing where you just eat

a banana until 4 o'clock, you're going to be feeling great and live longer. And then I'll be like, all right, let's do this, the Derek Henry diet. All right, that's one. The next one, the passing the torch award goes to Ravens Cowboys. Maybe it already happened, but Brandon Aubrey's got the belt, the kicker belt, 65-yarder in that game. Justin Tucker misses a 46-yarder in that game. I don't know how much to be concerned about the Ravens, but man, what a weapon for the Dallas Cowboys to be able to line up for a 65-yarder where it's not like just an emergency situation and the guy just drills it. So there you go. I have a question. Like, he was the best kicker in the NFL for like a decade.

Does everybody know it's okay to say that Justin Tucker's like not a good kicker right now? Like it's okay. He'll still get his gold jacket, you know? Like we still have all the old moments. He did put in a 60 plus yarder. At an advanced age, that was very impressive in Detroit, couple of seasons ago. I think it's okay to say, if you can't nail a 46-yarder indoors, that we can probably start having a conversation that we're probably over the hill with this one.

I do think we have to be worried about whose hands this power is in to be able to kick field goals from any distance. It's Mike McCarthy. That man loves to kick a field goal. We're going to get a 70-yard attempt before the season's over. We're going to get a 70-yard attempt on third down. somehow. He's going to figure out a way to kick the most conservative field goal you've ever seen in your life. I can't wait. The other thing I wonder about is like the goat conversation.

Now, this isn't probably, you know, an hour of 20 or whatever we are into a Sunday. But Tucker is like the goat. But if Aubrey's just going to be hitting 65 yarders like this, I don't know how long it can last. But the goat title, I don't know. Doesn't Tucker? Watch out. All right. Last one. I can't watch this anymore award goes to the Cleveland Brown. Listen, if you guys are going to make me watch Giants Browns, I'm going to come up with a superlative to talk about it on the Sunday night show. That offense freaking stinks. They had a bunch of O line injuries, but Deshawn Watson just makes the O line problems so much worse. I mean, we spend so much time talking about this team has a weakness and the quarterback makes up for it or the coach makes up for it.

He was sacked eight times against the New York Giants and took 17 hits and they scored 50. 15 points against the New York Giants. The Giants did not force a punt last week against Washington, and they couldn't score more than 15 points at home against the New York Giants. The Browns through three weeks of the season are 32nd in offensive success rate. The worst offense on a down-to-down basis in the entire NFL. I don't see how this gets better. Again, they had O-line injuries. They still got Watson. They obviously don't have schematic answers to mesh with whatever skill set he has at this point in time, they stink. Credit to the Giants.

Dexter Lawrence was a monster. They actually move the ball on offense, but I'm going to be asking off of Brown's games going forward, although if I get stuck with the game of the week, I'm probably going to have to watch more Browns games. He's got to get benched at some point, right? Like, I have no doubt, zero doubt in my mind that James Winston is a better quarterback than him.

This offense would be better. It's not even a debate to me. No, it's far beyond the point of debate. It is very clear why they are starting Deshaun Watson. It's because of that $230 million contract. They almost have to start him. But if he's going to continue to play like this, when you have a bad offense,

you always have these games where you get the fluky early touchdown. You're like, oh, today's going to be different. We're up seven-thous. That's what I thought. That's how it felt. They got the fumble on the kickoff return. They score on the first play. I think it was like a 25-yard touchdown.

And then like the next 30 plays, they get 25 yards combined. And like, that's really what the offense looks like. And that's what it's looked like for these first three weeks. And I don't think it's going to get any better because, like you said, the problems all come back to the quarterback. And the other problems on the offense are highlighted by the quarterback's weaknesses. What you just described, I'm like, oh, you know, Giants fumble the kickoff up, touchdown to Marry Cooper. This one's going to be a blowout.

Probably don't have to pay attention in the second half. Meanwhile, the Browns do nothing the rest of the game. Like you said, I think it was their next 30 plays or something. They had 25 yards. And the Giants looked like the more functional team here. There's no doubt about it. Now, Miles Garrett got this foot injury. So this Brown's season is going in the wrong direction.

We'll leave it there unless you guys don't have any more, right? You're going to be like, man, I thought she was going to go on until like four in the morning with all these nonsense awards. The guy had stuff to get off of his chest. I'll throw Tom Brady an award. I think he's getting better as a commentator. I really enjoyed his commentary. Today was good.

Okay. He's showing enthusiasm. I like that. Did you like that? Is it the analysis? Is it the more comfortable? What do you say? What are you hearing? To me, I think that this is a matter of when he has quarterbacks that he's watching. We're going to get good Tom Brady. And if he does not think very much of the quarterbacks he's watching, I think you're going to get more of the dry, you know, lack of analysis,

just kind of throwing stuff out of the wall and talking in platitudes, Tom Brady. Yeah, I think like the respect and the reverence he showed for Lamar Jackson as a pastor today was something like you don't really, hear from other commentators. You hear like the boilerplate analysis on Lamar. It's like, oh, yeah, he can run, but like, you know, he has his limitations as a passion. Like, Tom Brady, if you were listening to him, you, you heard the respect of him in the pocket as a decision maker, as a guy who avoids mistakes and keeps the offense ahead of the change. Like, those are the things that I respect about Lamar Jackson and that I see other quarterbacks who get some

praise aren't really doing for their offenses. So it was cool to see that. And then also on the other side, like him kind of sticking up for Dak Prescott and kind of explaining the problems with the Cowboys offense and where they're emanating from and how they're not getting a lot of separation in the past game and how the run game kind of bleeds into the past game. So I don't know. I just think it was like a fresh perspective that we don't typically hear from guys who have been in that role for a long time. I think maybe it kind of like fades out of you the longer you're in that role because like Tony Romo isn't the same commentator he was when he first started. He seems more like a normal commentator than he was. So hopefully that doesn't happen with Tom Brady,

but I'm enjoying the quarterback analysis more than anything. It's a great point. He complimented Lamar Jackson on doing quarterback things, not just for, oh, my gosh, this guy's, you know, fast. Look at him, turn the corner. It was the actual quarterback things he was pointing out during the broadcast. So that's a great thing to point out. Great thing to end on for us.

Thank you to Stephen Ruiz. Thank you to Deontay Lee. Appreciate Christopher Sutton, producing additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ram Gopal. Also our friend, Dan Comer. We'll be back later this week on the Ringer NFL show. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gampler or visit RG dash help.com. Call 1-888-88-889-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit MDGamblinghelp.org in Maryland.

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