The Ringer NFL Show - Week 5 Recap: Lamar Jackson's Margin of Error Wins, Kenny Pickett's Passing Map Loses, and Brian Daboll for Coach of the Year | The Ringer NFL Recap Show

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Nora, Steven, and Ben get together to share their reactions to the Baltimore Ravens' impressive win over the Cincinnati Bengals. They discuss the advantages of having a kicker like Justin Tucker, go through the Bengals' receiver struggles, and examine John Harbaugh's fourth-down decision-making. Then, Steven and Nora then go over their winners and losers from the week, which include the Jets, Rams, Saints, and more.(25:16) Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz Guest: Ben Solak Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody. I'm Brian Barrett, former Boston Sports Radio Guy, and now host of the new Ringer show Off the Pike that'll cover your favorite Boston teams and stories. From Fenway to Foxborough to the Garden and beyond, we're reacting to all the biggest games and moments with episodes at least three times a week featuring myself and some of your favorite guests at the ringer and in the city. Plus, if the Celtics or the Pats make a surprise trade, if the Red Sox's going to run, or if any news breaks, we'll drop bonus instant reaction episode. two, so you're always up to date with the latest chatter. Get in on the action and follow off the fight with me, Brian Barrett now on Spotify. And welcome to the Sunday edition of the Ringer NFL recap show. I am Nora Pinciotti.

I am here with Stephen Ruiz and Benjamin Sulek, as always, to break down all of the action from week five. We had another crazy, crazy Sunday in the NFL. We're going to start with the headline, which is going to be Bengals Ravens. just watched the Ravens beat the Bengals 19 to 17. Ravens are now in first place in the AFC North. Benjamin Solek, how are you doing? Are you ready to rank some Justin Tucker field goals?

Yes, absolutely. Last year I got to write off of his 66 yard or game winner or whatever. And I realized like writing about Justin Tucker field goals is fun because usually writing articles is like, let's see if we can find a way to encapsulate what I'm looking for. and every single field goal metric that ever existed, Justin Tucker is far and away the first. So it's just like when he walks out there for the 40-yarder, you're like, okay, never at any moment,

I think like, what if he misses? It just doesn't cross your mind in the slightest. What a great luxury. Stephen, I don't know if you heard this, but in the post-game interview, Justin Tucker called himself a system kicker. Does that make him a, is he a ball-knower? No, because he's the opposite of a system kicker.

I don't even know what that means. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But he's very obsessed with the like snap to hold to kick process. Like, you know how whenever you go to training camps, you know, the specials are always like on field C. And there's kind of like, eh, and just like, screw around and just like whatever. The Ravens like drill this stuff.

They met with the Navy and talked about weather. They like, they go through. They're very, the heller and the snapper, like, Justin gets very serious into that process. And so system kicker, got to shout out your holder. Shout out your long snapper. You know, we're all a team. team here. He's very confident. And I, he did like the celebration after the one field goal.

This was like in the third quarter. Imagine if he had missed the game winner, what the memes would have been. That's how you know you could believe in your kicker because he's willing to put himself out there like that. He never would have though. So you don't think that it was fake humility after the game. I was kind of like, come on Justin Tucker. You know that's not true. It is. It is. He like, he celebrates after it kicks. I mean, every everything an NFL player has ever said is fake humility besides a defensive. back defensive backs, just don't even pretend. But every other position is always fake humility.

Not Justin Herbert. Justin doesn't want to talk. Justin just wants to go home and like garden or something. When he was on the pod, every time I asked him a question, he would like, thank me for the question. He's like the most humble question. He's like the most humble question with either yes, no or thank you. That is his preferred outcome of a verbal interaction.

All right. Let's go through these offenses. We've obviously talked so much about Lamar in recent weeks. and there were some throws that it seemed like he was missing in a couple places, but, you know, they were able to do enough to come away with the win. Stephen, what did you think was happening for the Ravens offense that was without Rashad Bateman? Yeah, I think we saw the importance of Rashad Bateman and what he could mean to that offense if he ever gets going consistently. Lamar was having a lot of success against the Blitz coming into this game.

you would assume that our man Big Lou in Cincinnati wouldn't blitz him so much, but that wasn't the case. They had an aggressive game plan. I don't think they had a receiver on the field that they feared. Obviously, Mark Andrews got going a little bit, but, and Devin Duvonne is a good player. I think he's a good number two, number three, somewhere in between their type receiver, but he's not a receiver you can have leading your core. And I think we saw the issues, all the issues with the Ravens offense where it's just so Lamar-centric. And even on that game-winning drive, what did they do?

They just spammed Lamar inverted veer, Lamar keepers to get into position for that game when he field goal. I'm coming away from this game for the Ravens, a little more optimistic about the defense, just because I thought this was a test that McDonald had to pass and he did. But I have the same concerns about the offense that I've had for the last two weeks and this happened again. Just still that too much is falling on Lamar's plate. Yeah, everything is so. It's just he has no margin. for error. It's up to him. We saw him miss a couple of throws and that was uncharacteristic compared to

the rest of his season. But this is like if he doesn't make those throws, the Raven score 19 points. They don't score more than 20 points. He has to do everything for this offense right now. I think the offensive line's getting better. The running game's getting better. But it's still just predicated on Lamar being there. They did get Ronnie Stanley back, which which helps they had to sort of rotate him in and out, which we're sort of seeing teams do more and more. I don't know if we're seeing teams do it. We're seeing David Bactiari ask for it. And then Ronnie Stanley having to do it. That's teams.

That's teams. That's two teams. It's a weird thing. The David Boktiari situation in Green Bay as precedent setting. It is so peculiar. A time theft came. But now it's happening here. So are we calling it the David Bactiari, Ronnie Stanley situation?

We're calling it. No. Just David Bactiari having the same injury for two years and like randomly practicing and not. And then also Ronny Stanley being banged down. but his first game back. Bakhtiari's trying to become the chase Daniel of left tackles, I feel like. How long does Rodney Stanley have to like

be getting spelled snaps for you to and how many more players have to do this for this time? Another week and one more player. But left tackle rotations are done. I'm like that officially on the record. All right. All right. I'm not here to say that they're smart. I'm here to say that there are two of them happening.

And it seems a little bit notable. It's very fair. It's very fair. Ben, you have written so much about this Bengals offense and how they've tried to get their running game and their passing game matched up a little bit. And it seems like we've seen, we saw kind of both sides of that coin in this a little bit. They were able to get 100 rushing yards as a team that said we saw them in a goal line situation where they very much didn't want to run the ball, definitely came out passing in this game. what did you think the takeaway was in terms of how well that offense is meshing together and their attempts to get that functioning at a higher level was from this game?

Yeah, so nail on the head. They ran gun run a little bit more and a little bit more successfully in this game than you'd see them do previously. Also, they ran run from the gun without RBOs. They were just like call a run from the gun. And that was to their benefit. They were moving the Ravens off the ball in the interior. and not generating chunk gains,

but like five, six yard runs, which are very important for this team. They haven't been getting those. Unnecessary caveat, the Ravens are kind of really bad up front right now. They've had injuries. They're not good on the interior. The linebackers are really poor.

This is a team where you should have been able to run the football against them and you did. So that's good and it feels better. And then you get into the low red zone and you realize there's a second boss. What you thought was the final boss is not the final boss. Gun run feels good between the tens. And then all of a sudden,

we get inside the five and that's where you want to forward vertical. Let us run the football. And they are reticent. They are scared of that. They're not calling that. We're getting the ball to Tyler Boyd, 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage before we're getting under center or running the ball, which now this is no longer about tendencies

because you get under center on the goal line. Like everybody's playing run. This doesn't matter what jersey you're wearing, what your tendencies previously have been. Everybody's playing run. This is, we don't know how we feel about our offensive line. That's a little bit now more of a, of a situation. There's also the two cuteness of it, right?

Which I think was well documented in terms of multiple trick plays over the course of a three game, a three play span there with the game in the line. Zach Taylor after the game was asked about the shotgun play on fourth and goal and said that what the team saw on film was kind of

why they wanted to go for it. They saw something on film. What he's referring to is that play. They saw that play. They've seen 9,000 teams from that play on film. It's just this this goal line play du jour that like was really sick three years ago when no one was ready for Patrick Mahomes to under throw it to Anthony Sherman or underhand throw it to Anthony Sherman on a shovel option and now it's like

the little like shovel yeah now everybody and their mama tries to run this play and you can just you can see second level players feel it you can see them like flow at the line and then all of a sudden just like stop and be like the quarterback doesn't usually move like this we've seen this enough time so officially don't run it against a team that runs it a lot. The Ravens have been running that. And apparently they were practicing it a lot during camp. So the defense has seen a bunch of it.

The defense was ready for it. Like, don't run it against teams that do it. You don't run it against Andy Reid teams. You don't run it against the Ravens who have been doing it all season. So officially, just my, my, my, this is it. I'm stealing Stevens bit. I am canceling the shotgun, Auburton shovel play in the goal line. Stop running it.

Only the chiefs get to run it because Andy Reid is the best in the same way that only Nick Foles if he ever plays another game. as a starter gets to run a Philly special. Stop it. They don't work anymore. Everybody knows. Come on with your own new thing. Right?

The Bredgo's trying to do fullback speed option. We too. Sean Payton alone, baby. Only one gets these plays. Come up with your own cool gadgets. Can we play a game? Yes. It's called guess.

It's called Guess Joe Burroughs A dot in this game. Because this matters and this is concerning. 6.2. Nope. Well, I think I was going to get it. I was just trying. There's a lot of numbers here. It was 3.4.

Smulla. That's worse. That Hertz was 3.8 this week. Holy smokes. Now, either True Media has like a bug and RBSDM has a bug, but both of them have 3.4 for Joe Burrow. I didn't feel like a 3.4A dot type of game, but this is a concern for an offense that we've been talking about, can they push the ball downfield?

And then you have these last two games where they push the ball downfield a little bit. And then we kind of said, oh, the Bengals offense is getting right. But the thing is the Jets didn't play any too high. And the dolphins played a lot of one high. They blitz some. And when they did play too high, they were like rotating into it late, very late. So it was kind of, it wasn't like a real legitimate Tampa 2 coverage.

Now we see an offense, our defense play quarters against them. And it's the same old problem for this passing game. And we can talk about the running game and the issues there. But if this passing game doesn't work, this team doesn't work in theory. Can we play a different game? What's that? It's called, I guess the number of plays the Bengals had from under center in this game. It felt like five?

How many? Seven. Nine. And they had like 1.83 yards per rush. And it looks like seven yards per pass. You want to be a shot. Like the only teams in the league who are majority shotgun are the Eagles and the Cardinals. And that's because their quarterbacks run the ball 10 plus times a game.

Well, and the Giants, if they start listening to Stephen. Get on the island. You can't be a. 95% shotgun team. It's not 95%. You can't be an 85% shotgun team if you aren't going to evolve your quarterback in the running game.

This is such a... It's difficult because we did this a lot in the Super Bowl run and Bengals fans got outside with us, but this is such an uncomfortable, disjointed, heavily reliant on a few very low percentile things offense. It is just not the way you would want to build it.

I know that the pisses Bengals fans off. I'm sorry, but it is. I'm convinced that Joe Burrow needs to go back to getting sacked a little more. I know he took some sacks on third down this this week, but he was only pressured on 13.5% of his snaps. If your pressure rate is that low and your A dot is still 3.4, that might be a quarterback issue.

I mean, that's like we have, you have to hold on to the ball a little bit longer. It's the average time to throw was 2.26 with an A dot of 3.4 in a pressure rate of 13.3. Like that doesn't make sense. That's all in the quarterback, not being aggressive enough. Especially when the deep ball has been just sort of like, not only their bread and butter schematically,

but this confidence booster, we don't care that you think we're the Bengals were swaggy thing for this team that just seems like it's gone away this season. And it's worth noting no T affects that a lot, right? Because this was the game where, like, you know, as Chris Collins were at it,

was really hammering on the broadcast, the Ravens played some zone. And that was because you can't punish us if we get two sets of eyes on Jamar Chase. It turns out you can't. can like, you know, Michael Thomas had a nice catch, tie the boarded some runs. But in general, you're just willing to live in that world

because you feel confident that you're, the rest of your guys are going to be able to handle the rest of their guys. That's why, you know, the, one of the big things facing the Bengals through the season and then into the off season is the fact that T. Higgins is coming up on his contract. And you really want your star quarterback top five pick, your star receiver top five pick to be enough. But when this offense loses T,

some of those issues that I was talking about in terms of the fragility of this build really come to lights. T is so important for the downfield pass. Yeah, and that's like an argument we had last year. It's like it was so fragile because it was contingent on Jamar and T winning those perimeter 50-50 balls. If you lose one of them, it gets a lot easier to guard the other one. Exactly. And you just get fewer dice rolls, right?

Like it's just like, all right, like there are some games of Jamar's off, but T's hot. You'd lose that. It's just okay. Is Jamar dominating? No. Well, yeah, it's really tough to dominate week and week out in the NFL, especially when schematically. You're not getting the same stuff from your coach that like Justin Jefferson gets. You know what I'm saying?

They're not moving you around. They're like, oh, get him. touches behind line of scrimmage like Debo. Yeah, they run like one jet sweep a game and two screens. It's not actual, doesn't have juice, doesn't have gas. It's the easy buttons. It's not the stuff that like actually generates a winning edge when you talk about creative wide receiver usage.

Okay. So if we're talking about the coaching, let's go back to the fourth and goal that ended up being the turnover on downs. Just an issue with the shovel option or issue with decision to go there. Don't might go in there at all. No, I think that's acceptable. You want a better play. Like you want to feel when you go for it on fourth and goal that you really like the spot you're in.

If your play call ends with Stanley Morgan, ready break, I think that that to me is like that's just not, I just don't love that call. But that's always like, you know, that always these conversations are two-headed monster. It's decision to go and then the call. To me, I just don't like the shovel option anymore. Love the decision to go for it. Just doing the two gimmick plays in that series just shows you how little confidence that Zach Taylor has in this offensive front like winning an obvious. situations. But if like there are other options besides doing trick plays, like spread things out.

Like go into empty, have Joe Burrow have an option to do the quarterback draw. He's had a lot of success with that throughout his career or throw a screen pass to Jemar Chase. They had to, they weren't tackling him all game. Any Devonte Adams, Matt LaFleur, Red Zone packages and install them all for Jemar Chase and just start running that cat across the line of scrimmage and just get him in motion, get the ball in his hands, ask him to reach out, break a tackle, get to the line to game. Like just he's your best player. It's not Stanley Morgan.

What does Zach Taylor do? It's, listen, not much. I don't know. He's not a good game manager. Like the parts of the offense that like his fingerprints are on are just the worst parts of the offense. I mean, calling go balls to Jamar Chase and T. Higgins 10 times a game. Is that coaching? Like, I feel like we're past the point where this is even a debate.

I don't think he adds value to this team. We haven't appointed a run game coordinator of the week. I think so far this season. Well, he's not a good run game coordinator because the run game stinks. Yeah, it's probably. No, he's like a QC coach, I guess. I don't know. The Q could use a little more C in some places.

Let's not be maligning quality control coaches and an integral part of the operation. Great euphemism for a team not playing well. Next time I want to criticize like the Cardinals, but like, listen, cues needs a little more C. I just across the board. You just got to get some more C on that queue. The Q in Arizona needs more. than a little more.

See it. We'll find a spot for him on the coaching staff. We can work him in somewhere. Do we want to talk Harbaugh not going for it on board? Oh, goodness gracious. I suppose we shall. All right. Coul podcast.

Coward. He gave him. He gave him. I was going to try to get away with it. Do you know how I feel bad for? Mark Andrews. Because he had the post game interview where he's like, I'm a dog too and he's a dog and he likes to attack.

And then you bail on him the next, the next very next week. Now if they ask him again, he's going to be like, I don't know, maybe he's not a dog. I feel like he's going to find a way to do some circular logic and, and keep him keep that dog in him. But okay, yes. So the aforementioned situation, fourth and one, there's 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Ravens are up 13 to 10.

Harbaal X have Justin Tucker try a 25 yard field goal instead of going for it. I'm surprised he did that. Maybe Justin Tucker was just lobbying him on the sideline. He just really wanted to, you know, get a little bit more, get some more game reps in, but it worked out fine. It could have come back to haunt them. Obviously, you see one of the downsides of doing that, which is the bagels come out with a lot of urgency, end up scoring the touchdown. They did that so fast that then you have Lamar with a minute and 58 with three timeouts left to get into field goal range for Justin Tucker, which is sort of the only, like if we

talk about Lamar not having any margin for error, that is Lamar's margin for error is like Justin Tucker is your kicker. So sometimes you don't need to move the ball very far. So you kind of saw you saw the way that that the fact that they needed to score a touchdown made the Bengals play. Like that is one of the downsides of doing doing that, although it sort of ended up working in the Ravens favor in the end. Again, I just don't think Harbaugh makes that decision very often.

Does either one of you have a theory as to why? he did because I do think it's pretty uncharacteristic. He folded. Yeah, I think the public criticism angle is probably a little overstated in the sense of like Harbaugh heard all the complaints and got sad and

felt bad that he was doing wrong. That to me doesn't hold water. The public complaints getting to ownership and ownership getting to Harbaugh, that to me is more possible. Not to say that happened, but that, like, to me that's usually the pipeline. It's not like public criticism got to the coach. It's public criticism got

to someone who's in charge of the coach. And then that got to the coach. And then there was that pressure. The frustrating thing is this. The Ravens are up three. They kick the field goal. Now they're up by six. As you brought up, now the Bengals need to score a touchdown to win.

And so they go down the field, they score a touchdown. And then the Ravens have enough time to get down the field and score a field goal. And then, okay, because the Ravens kicked the field goal, got 16 points. They only needed it was a field goal to win after the Bengals scored. So, yay, taking the points works. they were trailing. They were losing the football game with two minutes left, which in the Bengals' other two losses,

they started trailing to the Dolphins with 14 seconds left and started trailing to the bills with one second left. Right. As per the previous question, what does Zach Taylor do here? If Zach Taylor knew what he was doing here, Zach Taylor would have ensured that as like the dolphins did, as the bills did, which is a little bit more situation with those games,

that Lamar didn't have a minute and a minute and, 50 seconds in three-timeouts to get the ball back. There would have been an effort the second they got inside the 20. All right, we need to score here, but we also need to make sure they don't have the time to score. And that's one of the difficult things about modeling and analytics. When should you go for it? When should you not?

Is that it's assuming optimal decision-making from both coaching staffs for the remainder of the game. So if Harbaugh internally sat down in his meeting with his game managers and said, I don't think that guy's going to mess up. We're not worried about them kind of like sitting on the ball. all the way the bills did. All right. Then like maybe, I guess. You were trying to call your shot

and you anticipate Zach Taylor being a meathead and not knowing the right way to coach it, whatever. But the take the points theory working for the Ravens, oh, they keep they feel when they won. Only works because the guy on the other sideline also mismanaged, also played into that. And that's the frustrating thing is that this is like a narrative win for taking the points.

But it doesn't actually hold up when you look at like what optimal decision making would have been for both the Ravens and the Bengals. If this is a narrative win for that, then one could make the argument that would happen in the Chargers game, which we'll get to later, was a narrative win for Staley, which from the outside looking in,

it didn't feel like one. Yeah. I don't think that that's true. That the take the points crowd won't take this as a win for the take the points crowd? I think that's true, but I think that this is like a fairly settled. The thing that's strange to me about this is that Harbaugh did it because he is normally someone who we expect

to make the mathematically right decision in these situations. It's odd to me that he went the other way. I do think that most people, maybe I'm too online with this. Maybe I'm too like just seeing people who, you know, follow all of the bots on Twitter. But like I just think that people kind of understand that that seven points is more than two times three points. Like I just don't understand how this is still so hard if it is.

I definitely think that the majority of people watching Sunday night football when Harbaugh brought the field goal unit out on what we have to also emphasize was a fourth and four inches, right? Because that's very important in the modeling, right? It's the precise placement of the ball. And this was a fourth and the yellow line is next to the blue line. There is a green line on the screen. This is as close as it can get.

That when he tried to the field goal unit out, I am very confident a majority of people went, yeah, it's good call. That's what you do here. Late in the game, got to get the points. Like to me, like, yeah, in our bubble, yes, people are getting it. in the larger NFL watching bubble, no. And that's why, like, Mike Trude goes up in the booth, like analytics invites controversy, wherever the heck you put it, right?

Yeah, the broadcast, like, Chris Consworth, who owns PFF, like, gets, they get so, they do get very skittish of it, which I don't really get. So I guess to your point, that's true. Because we, we're here right now on this podcast talking about this decision and the ins and the outs of it for five minutes. Every 95% of people's football consumption is the actual broadcast. in which like Troy Aitman, sorry, Troy or like Chris or, you know, whomever, is just, apologies, right?

Exactly. It's just for 12 seconds like, well, I don't know, maybe they go for, maybe that. It's because of the numbers and oh, they go for it. Hey, Tony, they're going for it. Like, that's the whole discussion. And so the thinking's not updated. Okay, here's my one defense of the choice. Do you trust Greg Roman in that situation?

It would have been like a handoff to Patrick Ricard or something. Right. They would run the under center jet suite, which is another gadget play Ben's canceling, by the way. Fourth and one under center jet sweep, horrible. All right. We got to start making a list. Yeah. Canceling, shovel option, Philly special for anyone, not Nick Foles. They might have done the Philly special.

I wouldn't put a pass room in. Listen, what did they do on the, what they do on the fourth and three? It was fake, tight end, QB sneak, uncanceled, great short yardage play. And then motion out to sail. And it's like, okay, incredibly. Wait, the short yardage QB sneak was was canceled before? No, no, no, no, no. Just clarifying among cool plays that everybody's doing,

tight end QB sneak, where like the tight end motions in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's uncensored. That's great. We still love that one. But why was it canceled? It wasn't.

I was just canceling a lot of plays. I wanted to make it clear that one. I'm cool with that. It remains uncilled. I'm with you. Yes. Anyway, when they... I think it's not canceled.

It's not uncanceled. Uncanceled implies prior cancellation. Yeah. Stephen, can we get a ruling? This is you. This is your arena here. From my perspective, everything is canceled until proven uncanceled. Okay.

So, there you are. Regardless, that's a W for Ben. On that fourth down, that's like an extremely gutsy call. And yes, there's a chance that the Ravens do that again. But I feel like that's such an easy sneak spot that there's no way Greg Roman messes it up. I don't think this game told us anything about either of these teams. Like, comparatively in the AFC North race. Like, it's still wide open to me.

My main final takeaway is just that the Ravens, two losses were games that they trailed for a combined total of 15 seconds. This is a really, really, really good football team. Issues, weaknesses, stuff to wrinkle out. Really, really, really good football team. Can I leave you guys with one note? Sure. The game winning field goal. This is using the next gen stats ball tracking data.

Oh, I love this. The game winning field goal by the one and only Justin Tucker. It went through the upright. with, I'm going to use math words that I barely understand, but just, you know, take me of my word. With a Y coordinate of 26.52, the exact middle of the field is at the Y coordinate of 26.67.

In much plainer English, that means that that kick would have gone through the uprates if they were half a yard wide. 18 inches. 18 inches of daylight. Justin Tucker would have been, Right this after McPherson's go ahead point after went above the upright, which is in? Extend the uprights.

Extend the uprights. Like, why are we being cheap with, like, with pole? Or like, just think for a second. Like, if a ball hit the upright flush, would it go in? No. Okay, that it's not in. I don't know what we were doing here. Can we have a moment of humility in honor of, in honor of Mr. Tucker and just acknowledge

that at the beginning of this podcast, a game was proposed that was just Steven stating a fact? No, the game was guest Joe Burroughs, A-Dott. no in skip it's a terrible game just to get stab in the dark on a low number all right thank you so much ben your your cue needs no additional C it is perfectly controlled um good to see as always bud five and no eagles baby go birds and the NFL week right on Monday night with Fandle America's number one sports book and one of my favorite things about fandle is picking my favorite props and building the same game parlay perfect for tonight's game on Monday night we have the chiefs and the Raiders and And my same game parlay for that game is the Chiefs plus seven. Patrick Mahomes over 250 pass yards. I think the Chiefs have a lot to prove after losing this matchup last year. And the Raiders kind of celebrated a little too much after the game.

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All right, let's get to winners and losers. Stephen, who is your first winner? My first winner is the Steelers who won 38 to 3. Oh, sorry, the bills who won 38 to 3. The Steelers did not score 38 points decidedly. But this game, the game winning play came on third and 10 from the two-yard line with 14 minutes left in the first quarter. The bills botched the opening kickoff, start their opening possession from the two-yard line, get zero yards on the first two plays. And do you know what Josh Allen does next?

He throws like a 40-yard post route into 20-mile-per-hour wind. Gabriel Davis does the rest. And that's the end of the game. Seven nothing. That was going to be my guess was just a ridiculous throw to Gabe Davis because that was this entire game. I feel like this was like a huge game for the bills, not just because they won by 35 points. But if you rewind to last year, week one, they played the same team at the same stadium.

And the Steelers came out with this game plan where they basically forced Josh Allen to check the ball down. And Josh Allen was not comfortable doing that. And he couldn't push the ball downfield either. Now a year later, it's, it's. seems like Josh Allen has figured out the short stuff and the bills are still really freaking good at pushing the ball downfield even if you play these two high coverages. And that's because of the emergence of Gabe Davis, who goes for three receptions,

171 yards and two touchdowns. This was like the idealized version of the bill's passing game. Gabe Davis, Stefan Diggs, Khalil, Shakir, all contribute. Like nobody's beating this team when this passing game's operating on this level. Josh Allen had five throws of 20 air yards or more. He had eight total coming into this game. This was like an unlocked version. And I'm not surprised because this was the first time that Gabe Davis was really,

he wasn't hurt. He's been dealing with injuries. He hasn't gotten a full workload. He got it today. And then the breakout game came for the whole passing game. Right. Yeah. No, them finding the deep ball is, I think, just really,

it's hard to say it's good to see because they've been such a good offense so far. but going into this game, Josh Allen was 23rd and averaged up the target. And that's not because he can't, right? That's just because they've chosen to play a certain way. But as you get through the season,

you want as many tools in the toolkit as possible, for starters. Second of all, if you have Josh Allen, you have to be doing that. You want to be throwing long touchdowns. So that was one of the few things that we hadn't seen them quite unlock as part of a game plan.

So a big, encouraging development for them, even though, you know, Pittsburgh was playing without its top three corners. I don't think this defense has been really anything impressive, especially since they lost Watt. So take it with a grain of salt, but still, we've seen them do that before. We've seen Josh Allen to Gabe Davis be such a huge connection in the playoffs. So there's sort of no reason to think that they won't be able to continue it when they need to. What did you think of the Steelers? do we have to talk about Kenny Pickett? I mean, hey, if Kenny Pickett got like two extra yards to each side of the field,

we might have had a little bit of a ball game here. Yeah, it was his passing map. If you can look it up, if you find it, it's not good. It's, I don't think it's his fault. It's tough playing against that pass rush. And the Steelers' Offensive Line hasn't been that great. The offense under Matt Canada isn't very well-designed. signed. But I do think there was one issue that I would have if I was a Steelers fan, a Steelers fan

after watching this game, because you had 20 mile per hour wind. You had Josh Allen on one sideline. You had your first round pick, Kenny Pickett on the other. And it looked like they were playing in two different stadiums. Like Josh Allen was completely unaffected by the win, just throwing darts downfield into the face of the win. Kenny Pickett could not throw into the win. He just couldn't. Like the ball was dying midair. He threw a couple passes that were just like just ducks they were quacking and i mean i would be less concerned if he didn't play in pittsburg like he's going to be playing in this type of weather for the next 15 years hopefully if you're the steelers yeah i'm trying to be optimistic let me be optimistic for steelers fans

but yeah it was rough it was one and four this is why this is why you don't make his first start against the bills and against von miller and against that pass rush and against that defense which is so well coach, they're not going to give you anything easy and he didn't get anything easy. All of his like good plays were were basically prayers to the perimeter to Pickens. It was a tough game for a rookie.

I felt bad for him. But I feel like he played as well as you could have hoped. He just didn't show you something that if you had a low opinion of him going into the game that you would change it. Like it's just like a status quo game. I mean, he had some attitude, right? He tried to like fight Shaq Lawson at the end.

So yeah, build an offense around that. I'm into it. All right. My first winner, the New York football giants, pulling off the upset in London against the Packers, 27 to 22, with a hobbled Daniel Jones, which I think,

I think we have to give the Giants a pass on not committing to the option. Because Daniel Jones couldn't really, he started scrambling in the second half a little bit, but for the first half of the game, he was not moving a lot out there. He's hurting. They're missing their top four receivers. They still didn't let Aaron Rogers complete a single deep ball with three of their top

four corners missing. Sequin gets banged up by the end of the game. Daniel Jones is like bleeding everywhere. This was an unbelievable coaching job. And the reward for that is that they're probably going to make the playoffs because they're four and one. And since 2002, 75 out of 100 teams that have started four and one have made the playoffs. Now, you have to adjust that for what would have happened if there had always been 14

playoff teams, which another six teams would have made it if that had always been the case. The 17th game fudges it a little bit. But that works out, let's call it roughly 80% of teams with that kind of start. Make the postseason. That's not automatic. 80 is not 100. And the Giants are in a division with the only undefeated team in football, which doesn't help. But at the start of the season, if somebody had said a quarter of the way through this thing,

the Giants are going to have an 80% shot at the playoffs. Any person in that organization or with an interest in that organization, I think would have taken that. And I really do think that it comes down mostly to coaching because they've outscored opponents 70 to 39 in second halves. and look, the Packers defense in particular, I think has way underperformed expectations, but that's still a more talented team than the Giants with Marcus Johnson and trotting out their second and third stringers.

And that's coaching. That's coaching that's making adjustments. So if we see the Giants in the playoffs, which right now it's more likely than not that we will, I think that's going to make a really good case for Brian Daibble for coach of the year. and more importantly, anyone involved in that team's just got to feel really good.

Yeah, I feel like this franchise needed. Like, we could talk about the mistakes that Dave Gettleman made when building the roster, but the biggest mistakes were coach hirings. Like, they've just failed that at it three straight times, McAdoo, Shermer, Joe Judge, obviously. But it feels like five games into this that day ball is at the very least a good coach. And that just means so much. Like we're already seeing the effect.

it's had on Sequin, who hasn't been blessed with like the best offensive coordinators. Like when you come up with a list of the worst offensive coordinators to get the most out of a talent like that, like a dynamic running back receiving hybrid talent, like Jason Garrett and Joe Judge and Pat Schumer are at the top of that list. So no matter how this ends, I think we could say that day ball has a chance at being a very good coach. And that's a win for the Giants. Well, and also look, like we talk about the mistakes the Giants have made hiring head coaches in the past, but and and DaBel has obviously seems like an upgrade over those guys. We spend a lot of time every Sunday looking at coaching decisions and feeling like there are more than a handful of teams that

are not being well run. So yes, it's an obvious improvement over where they've they've come from. But also he, I believe is a good enough coach where much more often than not. You go into a game, you know, if you're a Giants fan or you're somebody who plays for that team, you're going to feel like you have a coaching advantage over a lot of guys. I mean, I, you know, I think a very popular joke or not joke or comment to make this morning was, man, imagine Justin Herbert with Brian Daible, right? Like, and I don't know that I think that's fair, but there are a lot of Imagine X with Brian Daible, right? he doesn't have to be the best coach in football.

I don't think that you can prove something like that in that amount of time. I don't think that the Giants have a resume that really backs that up. But there are a lot of guys where we look at and go, some of these decisions just seem a little bit deficient. And then you look at a team that has so many injuries and has to sort of press all the right buttons. Playing a team that I think has a really good head coach. But the Packers still look super disjointed in a lot of ways. the defense is underperforming its talent level.

And they're in this game where they're averaging almost five yards per carry. Rogers is still dropping back 41 times. He hands it off 19 times. You know, it's tied 2020. The Giants kept the Packers defense on the field for like eight minutes. They go in this long touchdown drive. And then the Packers offense comes back on the field. And, you know, their defense is exhausted.

The offense comes back. Three incomplete passes. they keep them on the sideline for 26 seconds. And then the Giants come back and put together another touchdown drive. So Matt Lafleur, I think is a really good coach, right? But like, it's just remarkable that I'm sitting here feeling this way and saying this after they won a game against a team that I do think is well coached. So like we talk about how many mistakes they've made choosing coaches in the past.

Well, a lot of teams make mistakes choosing coaches. So if you have a really good one, you're going to be able to count on that advantage fairly regularly. it's not fair to expect dayball to press the right buttons every week when he's working with his talent deficiency. But at the very least so far through five weeks, it has worked out for him. But you could at least see him trying to push buttons and find the right buttons to push it. Whereas in the past, especially with this team, it's kind of been offensive coordinators forcing these, these weapons, these pieces into their offense and not making enough changes. Like Jason Garrett's offense just wasn't. it wasn't tailored to the skill set of the the giant skill players.

And I think at the very least you're getting that from dayball. And I mean, like you said, Florida is one of the best coaches in the NFL. And it was clear who was the better coaching staff on Sunday. Your guy, Don Wink, Martin Dale. My guy. Emboldened.

The Packers last real drive in this game. It ends with two battered passes on third and fourth down. Fourth down, they blitz Xavier McKinney. his favorite guy to Blitz. He gets a hand. They win the game. The Packers ended up quickly getting the ball back. After that,

and they did the whole thing with the safety. But yeah. He's going to live or die with the Blitz. This man was playing like his ninth corner in Baltimore against the Bengals against Joe Burrow, T. Higgins, Jamar Chase, and he was still sending the house. He does not care. He does not care.

Not scared to compete. It's like the Tomlin. We do not care. Good coaching. said I have to good coaching. All right. Let's talk about some losers. Who's your first one?

All right. My first loser is the Jacksonville Jaguars who dropped a two and three with a disappointing home loss to the Texans. They lose 13 to 6. It was a weird game. Like this was a game of the Jaguars. If you just watched it without looking at the score at the end, you would think the Jaguars would have dominated it.

Like every time you looked up, they had the ball. And yet, Stephen. And yet they scored six points and they lost the Davis Mills. And it was just like a series. It was like, no, it was like, a couple of bad plays. Like I don't think Trevor Lawrence was that bad. Like if you look at his box score, you're going to say that, oh, this was 20, 21, Trevor

Lawrence. Okay. No, you are being an apologist here. That interception to Stingley. Yeah, that was bad. No one in their right mind should try that throw. No, they should. No, I agree.

That was the one throw that I thought was like the worst. That was the worst play of the game. But I also do think that Stingley deserves some credit because he kind of baited Lawrence into the throw. It looked like he was going to have his eyes on the receiver. And then at the last second, he found Lawrence and then just picked the ball off easily. But other than that, if you look at this game, inexcusable under any circumstances.

I agree with that. I agree with that. But Trevor Lawrence said it after the game. He's like, I've put some throws in there, man. You put on the highlight real. Like there is like eight unreal throws. The thing was, I think Lovey Smith out coached Doug Peterson today. Like if you see the incompletions that Trevor Lawrence through,

they were all over the middle of the field, intermediate area. and the Texans just had zone droppers dropping right into the windows of the throws, forcing tough throws for Lawrence. Now, should he make more of those throws? Yes. Should the bar be higher for a generational prospect? It was the first overall pick? Yes.

I think he's still too inconsistent, and that's what's holding him back from being the top 10 quarterback. I thought he would be by the end of the year. But he's still showing these flashes. These flashes were not seen from any other young quarterback who's coming to the league over the last two years. I don't feel bad about Trevor Lawrence after watching the game. I thought I would feel a lot worse.

Like having seen bits and pieces of the game when it was on live, but rewatching it, I think Trevor Lawrence didn't play that poorly. It was to deal with their red zone offense. Come on. They're playing the Texans. It's that inconsistency. This is a young team. I feel like, and I was guilty of this.

Like too much too soon. After the start to the season, when they had the winning record, they were in first place in the AFC South. We were all excited. They had taken advantage of some bad teams. I still think they're a year away. They've taken advantage of some bad teams. They just lost to the Texans.

That's the whole issue. Yeah, no, consistency. They can't consistently take care, take advantage of bad teams, apparently. All right. We'll see. I'm not off the island. I know you're not on the island still,

but I'm not off Trevor Lentz. Yeah, I was, I was never on the island. I was close to the island. I'm swimming away from the island right now, but I'm willing to, I'll paddle slowly for now, but that's a lot of six turnovers in the last

games. Yeah, it's bad. Shout out Damien Pierce, though. That's a lot. That man has like the density of like just changing the subject. He was like the best player on the field. Shout out Damien Pierce. He, shout out. He bullied a defensive line that has bullied a lot of teams. He has like the density of a bowling ball. That man is hard to tackle. It looked like the Jaguars. It was like CGI defenders trying to tackle him. It like didn't affect him at all. He won them in the game. And, and Lovie Smith. He's very good. All right. Speaking of bullying by defensive line. My first loser is the Los Angeles Rams, who lost to the Cowboys 22 to 10 and are now two and three. This game did not make me optimistic that the defending Super Bowl champions can fix their issues,

the biggest of which is very obviously their offensive line. That has been the case. Matt Stafford, according to true media, was under pressure on 46% of his dropbacks. Again, I am not a math whiz, but that is almost half. Seems bad. He took five sacks, hit 10 times. He's been sacked 21 times this year. Line issues do not seem to be getting any better.

David Edwards had been dealing with a concussion. He also left this game not before the first quarter when he gave up a sack on third one that led to the Stafford fumble that the Cowboys scooped and scored with. I think this is an issue to the point that the offense as a whole is just becoming kind of untenable. We had another game where Alan Robinson was virtually non-existent. He had 12 receiving yards in the entire game. The offensive line is like a number one issue, but without a viable number two to take pressure off Cooper Cup,

this offense can't like stress out a defense at all. And I actually give them credit for trying to figure out what to do. Like you can see them trying to find something that will work. They're trying to, you know, they line Scoronic up. next to him and motionable way to try to get a defensive tell. They're doing trick plays. They're using a fake silent count. Like I really do give McVeigh and this coaching staff credit for throwing the kitchen sink

at the problem. But what that means is that you're desperate and that you know that you don't have the talent you need to win a game. Even if your defense and I get that it's, you know, to Cooper Rush, but your defense gives up 15 points and that ends up not being enough. Yeah. you're not a good team like you're not a good team if you have to play like that they're not a good team and this feels a lot like 2019 the year after they lost the super bowl to new england when defenses started using that blueprint and shah mcvay was just every week desperate for answers

desperate for answers and there's no answer for a bad offensive line that was the problem then that's the problem now and there's another issue like you said it's just cooper cup and there's no one else and this really highlights the importance of odell to this to that super bowl run last year. Having him offer protection against defenses doubling and selling out to stop Cooper Cup was that was the whole thing. That's why they made the run to the Super Bowl because of him. He might have been the most important player besides Stafford and Cup on that team. And Alan Robinson just isn't that guy. He just isn't that guy. He doesn't offer the vertical threat that O'Dell always had. So teams can't just sit on like the intermediate endbreakers that

O'Dell ran a lot of. They can do that with Alan Robinson. That's the issue. It's it's not, it's just the verticality of Alan Robinson's route tree, which tends to be pretty diverse. But it's it's like he shouldn't overnight. I mean, he finally has a decent quarterback, right? Like he shouldn't have just turned into a pumpkin. But I feel like we started to see the signs that he was turning into a pumpkin last year. Like his 50 50, 50 contested catch rate with it was down. He wasn't making as many catches downfield. Like there were signs and it's a player that has had knee injuries. He didn't. and have a lot of speed to begin with. He never created a lot of separation. And when you're running those routes over the middle of the field, it's a little harder for the quarterback to trust you when there's not a lot of separation. Now, if you're running like a go ball down the sideline and there's not a lot of separation,

you can throw a back shoulder fade. But there's no option for that over the middle of the field. They need a fine answer. Maybe it's Odell. Maybe Odell gets healthy again in time for him to come back in December or whatever. and that would unlock a lot of things. But I don't know what the answer is. I think it's a personnel issue.

And there is, I don't know if Sean McVeigh can figure it out. I don't know if even he can coach around this. McVeigh was saying a bunch of times after the game. He just kept saying about Stafford. I think he needs more help. I guess you kind of like that maybe the difference between when this has happened in the past. And now is that he won't quite turn on the quarterback in the same way because he kind of picked him. but that seemed like him kind of calling out.

Like we have some personnel issues. We don't have enough guys who can be week to week winners to just make this offense work. And I do think that if it's Odell, but like you don't know how healthy Odell is going to be, right? Like we don't know what he will look like if and when he's back. We also, I give O'Dell a lot of credit for this, but he might be a little fickle if the Rams are,

the clear little brother in their own division, which I think they're going to be, as long as this offensive line is in a state where, you know, Kyle Shanahan would salivate any opportunity to play them again. Like, he'd play them every single game for the rest of the season if he could.

It's just not something that they can, it's the worst possible matchup, and it happens to be the team that they need to be in their division. Speaking of Odell, we know Odell's dad is watching the tape, and he's breaking it down. He's not going to let him. go back to another bad offense. He's going to see that offensive line and go, no, go to Buffalo.

Cooper Rush 10 of 16 for 102 passing yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions. We had joked last week that we were going to sign a Kirk of the week. I don't think this even, this is like a Jimmy Garoppelow of the week. Yeah. Yeah, this is a Jimmy of the week. Maybe Jimmy was the Kirk of the week and Cooper Rush is the Jimmy. Maybe we need to rename the award to the Jimmy of the week. The Jimmy of the week. I don't know. Kirk of the week. Jimmy had a Jimmy week too.

Jimmy's not going to give up that award's lying down. But yeah, we're not going to do like the DAC, like Cooper Cup is way. We're not doing it. My dad texted me about this day. We're not doing it. We don't need to do it.

10 of 16 for 102 yards. Enough, like, we've seen enough of Cooper Rush. Let's get DAC back. It's been fun. Let's get DAC back. It's been fun.

It's wildly beyond anything that I expected for Cooper Rush. And he deserves a lot of credit for that, but we're not doing 10 of 16 for 102 yards, Dak Prescott quarterback controversy. That is not happening. If Dak's not healthy, like different story, but no, we're not doing this. All right. Sounds good.

I just wanted to make sure. So should I give you a winner? Go for it. All right. My winner is the New York Jets. I did not see this coming. I got to be honest with you. 40 to 17.

It was, it was a great game for this offense. I don't know if it was a great game for Zach Wilson. It was a good game for Zach Wilson. but for this offense and like the theory behind the offense and Michael Flore and what they're building and what Joe Douglas is building. Like this is what you wanted to see out of the jets. And yes, like Teddy Bridgewater goes down on the first play. The first play that's rule of safety, I don't know if it should have been.

It seemed like Teddy Bridgewater was trying to throw a screen pass, but the ball got knocked loose. He hit his head. He got put into concussion protocol. Skyler Thompson comes in. And I thought the Dolphins offense was fine. like the game plan stuff like the running game was still very very effective i think they averaged like 0.3 EPA per run on early downs but it's hard to apply a game plan that you made for a veteran pocket passer like teddy bridgewater who's who's good at going through his progressions

who's a crafty quarterback and then you throw a rookie from kansas state from a big 12 offense into the fold against or on the road against a defense that's not good but they have pieces i just think it was like a it was a no win situation for the dolphins but that does not take away from what the jets did that offense that's how it's supposed to look the run game was was great zach wilson was never asked to do anything that was too hard like his third down his third down plays were all manageable he took some sacks he took some ugly sacks but beyond that he made the throws he had to make he did not have to attempt a pass over 10 yards in between the numbers at all this game i think i I think he attempted two and they were both in completions,

but he was doing enough on the other throws to keep the offense ahead of the chains. Michael Ford's gameplay was good. Just a good game for the Jets. This is what you want to see. I don't know if this is going to continue. I don't think they're going to be in first place or be vying for first place all season long, but this is a game you can build on. Yeah, I mean, they ended a 12 game losing straight against the AFC straight.

So it's helpful to remember where we're coming from when we talk about the Jets. for the dolphins, you know, when they beat Buffalo, I really felt like that game didn't say very much about the bills because of the injuries, because of some of the situational stuff that that was sort of high leverage and swings the outcome of the game. And I heard from a bunch of dolphins fans saying like, come on, it can't just be the injuries.

Well, here, I'm going to give you this one. I'm not going to say too much about a dolphin's result when they lose Teddy on the first play. It's Skyler Thompson. They also don't have Toronto. Armstrongstead. They're missing Xavier and Howard. Like, you get a gimmy in that situation. I don't think that that's like deeply representative of what the dolphins are. But the Jets, I'm with you. I'm not expecting them to do this weekend and week out this season. But Joe Douglas, I feel like had been in a

situation where he came in. He got that job. People were so excited, you know, thinking so highly of the Eagles infrastructure that he came out of. And it had been, you know, results had been mixed, right? And I still, like the jury for me remains out on Wilson and we'll see. But the draft class looks really solid. Like Sauce Gardner got another pick. He could be the defensive rookie of the year. Breece Hall was really, really good in this game. Things have certainly turned to the corner for guys that he's brought in. Like, obviously not a not a draft pick, but Shaq Lawson has ended up being such a contributor for them this year. And they had to wait because of the injury. But the guys that he's brought into that organization have started to contribute in a meaningful way.

And that is something that we have not really been able to say. Also, I enjoyed seeing Tyree Kill try to tackle Quinn Williams. Yes, that did not go well. But I'll say this about Joe Douglas. Everything comes down to how good Zach Wilson is. But I do think, at least that was the theory going into the season. But I do think Joe Douglas has been so good around that Wilson pick. and it was as close to a consensus as you could get with draft,

with like a draft class that deep at quarterback. I think he could survive if Zach Wilson like doesn't develop into a starter. I think they'll give him another chance to draft another quarterback because he's been so good at drafting every other position. And there's a lot of young talent on this team. I don't think you give up on a GM that's capable of supplying that much young talent in like what, two or three years. I wouldn't, I'm, I would not be mad about it.

Yeah, but I also, I want to give credit to Michael Flore because I think he crafted a perfect game plan for Zach Wilson against a defense that can make things really hard on quarterbacks, especially young quarterbacks. The dolphins were doing their typical like double A gap stuff, their Patriots style like blitzes and stuff in disguises. Zach Wilson was getting rid of the ball quicker than he did last week. Yeah, his average time to throw in week four was 3.3 seconds. This week it was 2.6. I think that's a testament to the type of offense they're running. They're running a lot of RPO. now. This is a good offense.

Good design. As long as Zach Wilson is like good enough. I don't know if that means he's going to be a franchise quarterback, but I think he can keep this offense afloat in ways that Joe Flacco could. I don't mean to laugh because I actually totally agree with you. And that's a very good point. Yeah, like Joe Flacco is low-key been the best Jets quarterback of the last like three years. All right. We got to move on. My next win is the New England Patriots who beat the Lions 29 to nothing.

Defense shut out the top scoring offense. in the league, or at least what had been. And Bailey Zappy got his first career win, which is, of course, very exciting for Bailey Zappy. That said, I think the most meaningful thing for the Patriots from this game has to do with what happens when Bailey Zappi is no longer playing for them, which is, I think they have looked at the last two weeks where they gave the Packers a game and then beat the Lions.

We're not a good team, but are a good offense and have shown that they can be a tough out. I think they've looked at those games with Bailey Zappy and gone, we need to make this easier on the quarterback. And play action has reentered the game plan. They're leaning on the run game. Ramandre Stevens had an incredible game. 25 carries for 161 yards gave them such a boost. Offensive line ended up looking so much better.

Zappy didn't get hit at all. And they were moving the ball. And then you get to the defense. And, you know, if Soss Gardner is and the defensive player of the year, it might be Jack Jones, who's continued. to be super, super impressive. They get six stops on fourth down, which is an NFL record,

shut out what had been this high scoring offense, which is still dealing with some injuries, but still, you don't become the highest scoring offense in the NFL through the first month of the year by accident. And I just think the lesson is that sometimes it takes teams knowing that their backs are kind of against the wall to run the good plays.

And there is so much of this that, I mean, Bailey Zappy and Mack Jones, you can barely tell which is which in a lineup, right? Like, we shouldn't treat these guys like they are just wildly. And of course, they're very different players. Mack Jones is wildly more experienced than Bailey Zappy. But a lot of the stuff that has kept Bailey Zappy afloat in these two games,

I don't understand why it's not a part of the game plans when Mac is playing quarterback, particularly the play action stuff. It's been something that they've done with him. or it was last year and it just really hadn't been. And I don't get it. And I hope that they look at a result like this and go, oh, we should do the things that help the quarterback. Yeah, it's kind of like you look at Mack Jones's strength as like a processor.

And you, maybe your expectations for what he could do are a little higher than they should be. Like you should be making things easy on your quarterback. You shouldn't be making things as hard as possible just because he might be capable of, of running an offense before the snap and running a dropback passing game. But yes, like I think I said this to you earlier. This felt like a game plan from early last year for Mack Jones. And when he was going so good during his rookie year. Totally.

And then defense has found ways to make things harder on Mac. And we haven't seen the Patriots find a way to make things easier since then. But now we're seeing it with Bailey Zappy. And I honestly think this was just a big win for Bill Belichick. He kind of needs a W. I feel like he hasn't. he's needed a W this year just because like everyone was making fun of him for the Joe judge Matt Patricia thing.

The defense has kind of been suspect. But like this was the perfect. This is the ideal game for Belichick to bounce back. Well, and for Patricia, right? This is a Matt Patricia revenge game. Right. You're playing one of the worst defenses in the NFL. You're Matt Patricia.

You obviously coach there. You, you help contribute to this defense like the foundation of this defense and why it's so bad. But like Bill Belichick, we talked about the lion's offense and how it's like kind of old school. They run a lot of run concepts. They run a lot of like pulling guards and power runs. And it's very exotic. Do you know who's built to stop that type of offense? Like a Bill Belichick defense.

He knows how to stop an old school offense. And I think this was just up his wheelhouse. And I don't like I don't think this is like proof that the Lions offense is going to just totally fall off a cliff now. But I do think that I think just this was like a terrible matchup and a good matchup for Belichick. And he took advantage of it showing that he still has his fastball when you give him a chance. Well, the lines have been coasting on very good vibes. So we'll see what happens now that they've gotten a stinker in there. Great uniforms, though, for the Patriots. Can we just go back to those uniforms full time? Oh, it looks so good. And the way they painted the end zones

looked fantastic. 10 out of 10. Another team that needs to go back to their their 1990s throwbacks, the Seattle Seahawks. Oh boy. Which they're my next loser. Are you on the war path? They like ruined a great Gino day. Like if they win this game, we're talking about Gino, where there's Gino MVP discourse tomorrow. Another great game for Gino, three touchdown passes. He averaged over 10 yards per attempt. It should have had a game winning throw late in the game.

He had a bunch of deep throws to Tyler Locke. He had like an improvised throw to D.K. Metcalfe that turned into a touchdown. Didn't matter because they couldn't stop Tassam Hill. And I was going to, we were going to make Taysam Hill a winner because he had, what was it, nine carries, 112 yards, three touchdowns. He had a passing touchdown. They averaged 12.5 yards per play. when he either took the snap or through the pass.

Amazing. Just like Taysam touches the ball, automatic 12 and a half yards. 1.3 EPA. Sean Payton is like rolling over in his television studio. Was Sean Payton holding Taysam Hill back? He's going to unretire. Yeah, I think he supported him too much.

Like Taysam Hill needed a hater in his life. And Sean Payton wasn't giving him that fuel for that fire. So, but like 1.3 EPA per run by Taysam Hill, 78% success rate. And we were going to make Taysam Hill a winner. But like this isn't like the the Dolphin spring, the Wildcat offense on the Patriots that one year. Like we know what Taysom Hill is. When Taysom Hill's back there, we know what it's a wildcat formation.

You can't handle the wildcat? You can't handle the wildcat. Like Pete Carroll. I don't even blame Pete Carroll. I blame the nerds. Not even just the nerds like the film people. We all bullied Pete Carroll for playing cover three and playing single high. And like the NFL's changing.

You got to do the two high thing. And he hired all these new coaches. and they installed this new offense, our new defense, it's a softer defense. They can't tackle anymore. They can't tackle. They couldn't tackle Taysam Hill. According to PFF's tackling grade, which I think is just like a glorified tackle rate, they're 29th in tackling this year.

And that was before this game when they couldn't tackle Tase of Hill. Where's Gus Bradley when you need him? Bring back Gus. We need a harder Seahawks defense. And I'm saying like they're soft and I'm like saying like, oh yeah, they need to like be stronger and man. up or whatever. I'm saying like the philosophy of the defense is to play softer to like force to play light boxes and try to hold the offense to like four yard runs. But when you can't tackle four yard runs

turned into seven yard runs and second and three is very easy for an offense and very hard for defense. And that's what we're seeing with this team. The Gino. Yeah, it's it's tough that we can't talk about talk more about this Gino performance because it really felt like he heard everybody's takes that like, oh, he he runs this offense well. He's better for the system. And was, like screw you. I can take the Russell Wilson playbook and make that better too. I'm going to scramble. I'm going to throw deep.

Great throws. Great throws under pressure. Tough scene. We could talk about it. But, you know, Taysam Hill single-handedly killed the Seahawks events. I mean, it's typical.

You know, he's, he might do it next week. He's going to keep it up. He's going to be in the MVP race all season. We'll have plenty of time to talk about it. All right. Last but not least. Well, my final loser.

The Arizona Cardinals. Technically, they lose to Benjamin Solax Eagles. 20 to 17. Yeah, to talk about the queue needing a little bit more. We can talk about why the Eagles were tied with the Cardinals in the fourth quarter in a minute. But the thing that we have to talk about here is what happened at the end of the game. It's second and 10.

There's 36 seconds left. The Cardinals are at the Eagles 34. Kyler scrambles near the first downline. He thinks he gets it even though he's short. He thinks it's first and 10, so he spikes the football. Really, it's third and one. So the spike makes it fourth and one. I'm sorry.

I don't understand how this happens. And then they go to, they have to kick the field goal. So they kick the field goal. And the kicker they've signed up the street misses. The Eagles are 5 and 0. The Cardinals are two and three. It's not good.

It's just not good. I just don't understand how that happens. I saw people tweeting that there might have been a video board that had it wrong. In which case, like, I take some of the blame away from Kyler. But like Cliff, man, this is your job. You got to know the situation.

You got to know if you converted the first down. Please be sure before doing something like spiking a football when it's going to prevent you from running another play. This is like a team that's just comprised of like a series of bits. It's like every game is just a series of bits. Rondale Moore is definitely a bit. He's a bit. Cliff Kingsbury is a bit. It's like they're coached by a picture of,

Ryan Gosling that was drawn from memory. That's with Cliff Kingsbury. He's not even a run game coordinator anymore. He's a sketched Ryan Gosling. I don't know that I get that one. But all right, we'll workshop it. We'll work. I don't know.

I don't know either. But I think you buried the lead here. It was a double XP weekend on Call of Duty. So I don't know if Kyler Murray did his four hours of study. We're not blaming Kyler for this. I don't know if he did his four hours of independent study this week. We're not flaving Kyler for this. Kyler's all they have.

We should take away his PS5. No, we should take away Cliffs. Rondale Moore privileges. Okay, I'm fine with that. Kyler can keep his PS5. That's fine. Okay. Are we concerned about the Eagles, though?

No. Okay. No. I think so they're a little banged up up front and it looked like what they were having. It seemed like that was really affecting the throws they were asking Hertz to make. That was a Kenny Pickett ass passing chart for Jailen Hurts. Do you want to play my favorite game? Guess the A dot?

All right. 4.2. 3.8. Okay. Yeah. That's fun, Stephen. Not as low as Joe Burrow, but yeah, it's a great game. It's a great game.

Love it. Peacock is interested. They might make an offer. Can I put it on peacock? Would Peacock use a game? I don't know. That's just my go-to. No, like the New York Times by Wordle would make more sense.

I'm not very cultured. Okay. All I have is peacock. I got a free peacock subscription. It's the only thing I watch. Oh, God. That's an incredible bit. Just like what someone's references would be if they just only watched peacock.

Okay. No, I'm not that worried about the Eagles. It's definitely something to monitor just because if the health situation doesn't get better. Yeah. Kelsey left the game. We will need to see if they can come up with some counters so that it's not just Dailen Hertz throwing, what was it, 3.8 yards? Yeah.

just a bunch of RPAs. Yeah, let's not do that. But I don't, I want to see it at least one more time before we start getting concerned. I would agree with that. It was a weird game. They won the game on the road against a team that I, as much as we make fun of the Cardinals, they've been competitive in some games in most games that they've played in.

So like it's still, it's a good win for a young team. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I'm with you on that. And they're also like, they're five at all. Right. Let's not lose sight of the big picture here. That's true. Okay, the last thing that we were going to talk about was Brandon Staley.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. We had to talk about this. The Chargers beat the Browns 30 to 28. And we could not, for the life of us, figure out if Brandon Staley was a winner or a loser. Do you have an argument either way, Stephen? I'm going to say he's a loser because I feel like whatever slack he was given or provided by ownership or whoever would make the decision to fire him or not. I think it got smaller after this game with it.

So the Chargers were, I think there was like a minute left. It's fourth and two. They're up by two points, I believe, near midfield. Yeah, well, it's either fourth and one or fourth and two,

right? It's a little bit unclear. But yes, they're on their 46. There's some disagreement between the fourth down models, the various fourth down models. There's so many.

Everyone has a model. ESPN and Ben Baldwin definitely both said go. They also both had that it was fourth and one, which the playbook, also said that it had fourth and one. The yellow line, as we know, is unofficial. It looked at the very least, like a very long fourth and one. And I think on the broadcast they said fourth and two,

it looked like they had two yards to go. According to Next Trend stats, it was 1.7. And their model, which is based on like the exact yardage instead of like fourth and one, it was based on fourth and one point seven said to kick the ball. So I think you can make the argument either way. My problem wasn't with the choice. was with the play call. Like the Browns were just all on,

they were all over every call. The Charters made on a key passing down. And this was another one. Like they played like inside leverage against Slant. Mike Williams had no chance. Herbert had no chance. They turned the ball over. They get bailed out by the defense,

which I, maybe that's the argument for Staley is that they didn't get the fourth down and they still won the game. Well, they, I mean, they got bailed out by the fact that Kate York missed the, the field goal kick from 54 yards, which.

That's a, that's a long kick. It is a long kick. but they still like they get the ball back. They're in Chargers territory. Yeah. They can move the, they advance the ball 10 yards.

Um, and they do the Browns end up losing because they, they miss the field goal. Um, I don't know. It's, I do trust generally speaking, trust the models on that stuff, except for the fact that they're all being like it was fourth and one. Um, so you obviously go for it. It wasn't really fourth and one. So I would be curious to see how all. of the different models work the math out on that. I agree with you that like it worked out for them.

You can't really call them a winner though. Like even Keenan Allen who's, who's hurt was tweeting, like, what are we doing? Which I think is an important reminder that, okay, we talk about this stuff. We talk about the differences between how we react to these things or look at the all the different models versus how just the general broadcast audience reacts. players are not as like enlightened as we might think they would be sometimes. So just the fact that this seems clearly like something that he has to explain to the players as well, just doesn't doesn't seem great. You don't think Keenan's following a fourth down bot on Twitter in Ben Baldwin?

Maybe you should. I need all the bots to tag Keenan Allen and tell them to follow them. But they're also, I also can't make the Chargers a winner here because how does this team still have a bad rent defense. Every single year, they're like, we're fixing it. It's never fixed. They gave up 213 yards and three touchdowns on the ground. I know it's the Browns. I know the Browns have a very good run game. I don't care. Your entire offseason was about this. Do you know what they didn't change? The linebackers. It's still the same linebackers. And they're terrible. And they're terrible. And like the sideline reporter for CBS was like making a point that Brandon Staley after every

drive was like going over to the linebackers and being like, you guys have to be better. You have to fit the run better. Like she said it. like five times throughout the broadcast. So that was obviously a pointed emphasis. But until they fixed the lineback at core, you're just going to be able to run on them. And by the way, it felt like Nick Chubb was going to score

every time he touched the ball. Every single time he touched the ball. Every single time. And that's, that's a Nick Chub thing as as much as it's a Chargers thing, but it's also a little bit of a Chargers thing. Yeah. It's just infuriating.

Speaking of linebackers, the Browns traded for Dion Jones from the Falcons after this game. I think the compensation was late round pick swaps in 2024. I think they're trying to replace Anthony Walker's snaps essentially. I just was a little bit surprised by it or found the move somewhat notable because it's further proof that that team is just like very all in. They are they are the Midwest or Cleveland the Midwest.

We're calling on the Midwest. They're the Midwest Rams. The reason the compensation was so low is he's got a $12 million base salary next year. So that bill is going to get half deep, but apparently they think that that's something that's going to make a difference for them. It's not. It's not like three years ago it would have made a difference. But like Dion Jones since the injury, like just not the same player. It's just it's not going to make a difference, which is why it was a late round pick swap.

Sorry, Cleveland. I could be wrong. Sorry. Sorry. Drew Barry. Stephen Ruiz doesn't like your trade. I'm not crying with Dionne Jones film. So I could be wrong.

All right. Let's get to the non-headline story. I believe you have, Stephen, you might even have a game for this one. Yeah, I'm going to test you. I've been trying to gamify everything tonight.

But we love it. I've discovered the greatest play in the history of football. And we talked about it earlier. So lock brought it up earlier. So it's the play that I'm sure you've seen. The Ravens tried variations of it on Sunday night against the Bengals. but basically you motion in a tight end under center and he calls a quick hike and then he does a cuby sneak basically you're doing a cuby sneak with a tight end so i went back uh through true medias

i think it's like the last five years they have it it's been run 12 times how many times do you think it's been it's gone for a first down um well you said it's the greatest play in the history of the NFL so i'm going to i'm going to guess 12 no it was 11 and do you know why wasn't 12 because Kyle Eusecheck ruined it. I'm shaming, I'm bringing shame to him. Blake Bell should bring shame to him. Blake Bell is like the patron saying of this, this play, by the way. He's, he's done it five times for the chiefs, for, for various teams, by the way, for the

chiefs and, and the cowboys. And he's converted every single time. But I want to also ask you to guess, who do you think was the first offensive coordinator to try this in the NFL? It happened in 2020. I will give you a hint is an NFC team that has made the playoffs once

since he's been the offensive coordinator and they have not won a playoff game. An NFC, so in 2020, an NFC team that has made the playoffs once since he's... And they made it in 2020. Is it the Eagles? Is it Stuyken? Scott Turner, Washington.

Tough scene. Tough scene. What I want to know, what I want to know is if you can sort the stats based on if the quarterback at the moment of the sneak, if the quarterback at the snap, you know how they chart like motion at the snap? I want to know if the quarterback is like pointing wildly

in a direction away from the play at the snap because I think that that is what makes this play foolproof. Like Patrick Mahomes, because Mahomes did this with, they did the chief ran it with like Noah Gray. Yeah. Mahomes sold that so well. like when I was little, my parents had this joke where they would just like they had a fictional,

this fictional character named Jean and my dad would be like, look, there's Gene and no one would be there. Mahomes sold that like from here to Sunday. It was so good. So that that is what I want to know. True media does not have that filter. Sadly, it doesn't have the quarterback. We're going to talk to our friends at True Media and see if we can see if we can get it added. But maybe that was the difference between the Philly Special working for Nick Foles because he did like a,

little like fake quarterback miming thing. He was like pointing before they called it. And then like the Bengals didn't do that and it didn't work when they tried it. So maybe that is the key. Football is very complicated, but also sometimes if someone points somewhere, you look where they point. But let me, let me trace the origin and like how it evolved. Okay.

Tell me. So Logan Thomas does it in November of 2020. About a month later, the Cowboys do it with Blake. The Cowboys do it with Blake Bell against the 49ers. The very next week, the 49ers do it themselves with. Kyle Use check. Shanahan. Then Blake Bell gets traded.

I don't know if he gets traded, but he goes to the Chiefs next year. Week one, they do it again with Blake Bell, where it's the first time the Chiefs have done it. They do it three more times during the season. They all work with Blake Bell. And I also want to call out Mike Tariko tonight.

Because when the Ravens faked it, they like fake the sneak to Mark Andrews and Lamar threw it deep to DeMarcus Robinson and he overthrew it. He was like, oh, that's what the Chiefs do with Travis Kelsey. The Chiefs have never done it with Travis Kelsey according to true media. you're confusing these white tight ends like Noah Gray and Blake Bell with Travis Kelsey. They're not the same. Justice for the non-travis Kelsey chiefs tight ends.

Wow, Stephen, thank you for taking me on that journey. That's fascinating. You're welcome. I hope teams continue to use this. I do. That was what's funny is before we recorded this, I was going to be like, is there going to be a counter to this? Like, is a team going to come up with a counter if teams start sitting on the quarterback sneak from the tight end? And the Ravens did it.

And they had a wide open guy and Lamar missed it. Such a shame. The lore for this play would have grown if Lamar hits that. Yeah, but that's good. That's good in the long run. It's going to let it like stay underground for a little bit longer. That's a good point. Does that count as play action?

It should. It should. This has been the Ringer NFL Sunday recap show on the Ringer podcast network. I'm Nora Prudziotti. Thank you as always to Stephen Ruiz and to Benjamin Solac and to you for listening. Next up on the feed tomorrow, we will have Sheel and Ben with extra point taken. Their deep dive into week five. Ben Power Anchors with Jason Goff and Austin Gale

is coming up on Tuesday. I'll be back on Wednesday with the Island. Sheel will be back Thursday with The Scramble. And then the Ringer NFL preview show with Danny Hafeitz, Ben, and Stephen will preview week six on Friday. Thank you to Chris Sutton for production on this episode and to Arjuna Ramgapal for additional production supervision.