The Ringer NFL Show - Week 6 Recap: Cowboys Win a Thriller in New England, Cardinals Remain Undefeated, and the Chiefs Rally to Win in Washington

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to discuss the Dallas Cowboys’ overtime victory over the New England Patriots. Then they talk about the Steelers’ overtime victory over the Seahawks. After that the three get into other games, such as the Cardinals defeating the Browns, the Jags ending their losing streak with a win over the Dolphins in London, and more. Then Kevin and Nora are joined by Steven Ruiz to discuss the Chiefs attempting to get back on track after a road win over Washington. Then Kevin and Nora wrap up with a listener question. Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti  Guests: Benjamin Solak and Steven Ruiz Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Mallory Rubin. And I'm Van Leithen. Check out the Ringerverse podcast from The Ringer for all things, superhero movies, nerd culture, and fandom entertainment. We have instant reviews and fun takes on all the latest news and more, available now on Spotify.

It is the Ringar NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Carr joined on a wacky Sunday night by Ben Stillach. And what's going on, buddy? Week 6 felt like it wasn't going to be a thing. And then very suddenly, we got some really good games there down the stretch, saved the Sunday. I appreciated it.

The Sunday didn't need saving, but I'm so glad you'd said right before we logged on here that the game we just saw, Ben Rappasburg, and you know, Smith recalibrated what you think about the entire quarterback position. Mostly, it changes what you think about yourself as a person. You watch that four quarters, and you're like, man, what do I believe in? What do I stand for in this world?

When you stare into Gino Smith versus Ben Rappesberger, it stares right back at you, buddy. Yeah, absolutely. And just lets you know, listen, you would do anything to watch football. You'd watch any football, wouldn't you? You're going to watch Matchen on Tuesday, won't you? Yep, I will.

You're going to bet on it. You just lost a couple, you just lost some money on the damn Miami Hurricanes. That's how much of a sicko you are. Yeah, not too much money. I just lost my dignity. Yeah, absolutely. Which was...

Kevin, you attended that game. Yeah, I did it on that. I did a time. You went to a Notre Dame game a couple weeks ago. Let's not compare a six. to a bear cats game. Go cats. Okay.

Nora Frinciotti's also here. Nora, what horrendously awful football games have you been to this year? I've been to zero horrendously awful football games, Kevin. There's joy and beauty in every single one, including Seahawks Steelers. My wife was, and I were leaving the stadium last night, and she made the comment that she actually likes college football more than pro football because she likes the amount of, mistakes that college players and teams make. And I said, you have not watched up NFL if you think that there's no mistakes at the NFL level.

Can I interest you in the Seattle Seahawks defense? All right. So I was having, I was having a conversation with my boyfriend the other day about like watching sports or watching, um, he was actually about watching people play chess. And he was like, the problem is once somebody does something that I wouldn't do, I lose interest because I'm no longer. watching the situation that I'm interested in play out. I'm no longer seeing whether or not my process would be effective or not,

which is what's compelling to me. And I was like, I got some NFL teams that are not going to be for you, buddy. Yeah. I don't think this is going to work. All right. Let's get to some teams that are working. And that includes the Dallas Cowboys. So the Dallas Cowboys beat, you know, the Patriots on Sunday,

uh, kind of an amazing game. a game that I think that none of us expected. Doc Prescott, 36, 51, 455 yards. It's the most ever against a Belichick-led defense, I believe, in regular season. Zeke Elliott, 6.9 yards, C.D. Lamb, 149 yards, and quit of the game. Winner, Mac Jones, the other side, 229 yards, 15 of 21.

That completion percentage, she looks pretty beautiful. Damien Harris, 101 yards. Ben Solac, the Cowboys. Really, really good. there's a lot that's fun about watching Dallas right now. Even down to like the defense that you know isn't going to hold up but continues to just get the weirdest and most timely turnovers. Randy Gregory torpedo sacks fumble when Belichick pulls out the starting right tackle because he got a bad holding penalty. Fastest sack by time to get to the quarterback in Randy Gregory's career, literally.

Yeah, I would have guessed. I'm not sure I'm not sure a sack could be faster. Yeah, yeah. And then you have the Trevon Diggs interception, which it's like, all right, at some point, Trond Diggs is going to stop catching interceptions.

And then like, right? He's helping. Maybe. Yeah, he's like helping a linebacker get lined up. Like, he's like not in position. Mack Jones just just leads out a ball a little too far in a slant, lands right in Trayvon Diggs lap, pick six. And then in the very next play for the Patriots offense,

they score a touchdown. on Trubon Diggs and you're like, this defense is impossible. But they're such a fun, they're very fun team to watch. I said at the end of the game that nobody's quarterbacking better than Dak Prescott, I'm not sure I myself believe it. I think Lamar probably is playing better than anybody else right now, but man, Prescott's up there. He takes your breath away.

It just, he, this offense is, it's so beautifully amorphous. You'll, you'll watch a drive and you'll be like, that's Kyle Shanahan. And then the very next drive, like, that's our. Arthur Smith. And then the very next drive, you're like, that's Sean Payton. They just take anything they want. I think one of the hallmarks of a good offense, and just in terms of when you're trying to understand, like, who's really vibing is when all of a sudden it can just like be the Cedric Wilson game. Seven targets for Cedric Wilson. Not all of them great, by the way. Like he had like an interception thrown his way in the red zone. It was Dax fault. He had another

ball that maybe could have been caught, but it was good play by the defense. So not like Wilson was amazing, but just we're doing seven targets to Cedric Wilson today. Nine targets to Zeeke. click. That's his highest receiving game. They can get it any way they want, right? Whatever you're going to give me. There was a great sequence. They had a first and 10. All out blitz cover zero. Prescott hangs in the pocket, throws it deep down the field,

seam route, C.D. Lamb. Beautiful throw, beautiful catch. Called back for penalty, first and 20. So what do the Patriots do? No blitz. We're going to drop eight, rush three. Prescott scrambles out, buys time, 20-hour past Noah Brown. You just shrug me. There's nothing you can do.

What is the defense? There's nothing you can do. So they are, they are, they take what you can't defend. And they just hammer it, hammer it, hammer it. Every red zone, where is Jalen Mills? We're going to hit them. We're going to hit them. They're so, so, so good on offense right now.

Really, really, really, really fun team to watch. Could have been a real beatdown if not for the, the red zone turnovers. They're, they're as dangerous a team as you're going to find in the NFL. A lot to like about the Cowboys. So Chauvin Dix has his seventh interception. Not surprisingly, that that's a record when you add in the pick sixes. He's the first player to ever have. multiple pick sixes and seven interceptions in the first six games.

That's a lot. The Dak Prescott number, by the way, 445 yards actually includes the playoffs. I was actually slightly worried Nick Foles had more, but he had like 60 more than Nick Foles in the Super Bowl. So get, come on, Foles. Get on Dax level. So Nora Preciati, we got a great listener question that I'm obsessed with, which was how many moral victories until the Patriots make the playoffs? Oh, they're going all the way to the moral super.

The moral victory Super Bowl. It's like, it's so funny because the Cowboys should have won this game by more than they won it by, right? And you start going through the list and you're like, okay, Dak had an incredible game. C.D. Lamb had a great game. Zik had a great game. Tony Pollard had a great game. Amari Cooper was good. Lamb was good. Dalton Schultz was good. Like, the Cowboys are really, really, really good. And I think a lot of, there were some individually very good plays.

by the Patriots defense today. Mack Jones made some big throws. And we're just spinning our wheels doing the same thing, right? Like, I feel like I've said the six times already. It's like, no, it's just really encouraging sides. Like, they're developing. They're just losing the games, okay?

Yep. You've got to stop doing this. So, Ben, anything with Mack Jones and his development that we need to be talking about right now or is this just the same thing every week? A little bit the same thing every week. The, the two plays that kind of stand out are the first incompletion he had,

which was like, you know, halfway through the third quarter, which is generally good news. They weren't really throwing the ball a lot, but sure. A third and four slant to Jacobi Myers, he puts it out a little bit too far, incompletion,

and then the slant to Kendrick Bourne, same thing, put out a little bit too far, bounced off Kendrick Borne's hands. That's the pick six. Those are the plays that when we talk about how, if you're not going to push the ball downfield, you're not going to be an explosive passing game, those are the plays that are the important ones.

Mack was extremely precise. He was 15 for 21. He looked great. He was very accurate. it. When he was slightly off, they were debilitating plays. They were a third and four field conversion and a pick six. That's what it is to be this methodical death by 1,000 paper cuts offense. It's when you have a slight error.

The ripple effects are so much more devastating than they would be in a more explosive offense. There's a lot to like into England. There's a lot like defensively. Josh Uche looks amazing. Kyle Dugger had a good game. you know, J.C. Jackson looks like he's locked down. There's a lot of like offensively. When their offensively,

when their offensively is healthy, it plays really well. I like the stable of backs they have. This team could be really good. The development of Mac is important. It is the most important thing. It is what remains. And the chief part of that right now is finding a way to get him to push the ball further down the field.

We're going to handicap the NFC later in this show when we're getting into some of the other teams here. But the Dallas Cowboys right now look like they could make the Super Bowl. I mean, this is a conversation we've had for a couple of weeks now, but like I just don't see everybody's a little bit flawed in the NFC. This is not a super team. I mean, it's funny because Trayvon Diggs, Roger Sherman mentioned this,

but I'm looking at the stats right now. Trayvon Diggs is setting interceptions record and pick six records and all that stuff, but he's also given up the fifth most yardage in the NFL. He's not perfect. And there's a reason that the people are still throwing at him. And yet because of those numbers with the turnovers, he might win defensive player of the year if he keeps this up. In fact, if he keeps us up, he should win defensive player of the year because that would be ridiculous.

But take me through Dallas as a legitimate contender, Nora. I think they're totally legit. I mean, I think they're, look, I probably, if you expect them to be healthy at the end of the year, at least healthier, I'm still a little bit more wary of Tampa just because it's Tampa, it's Brady. Like, that's scary. That's always going to be scary. but this is as balanced of a team as I think you'll find. And then even if they lose a little bit of what they've had on defense, right? Like some of those big plays don't hold up throughout the course of the year.

Dax just playing out of his mind. Unbelievable. And I think, look, like my point about the moral victory Super Bowl thing is just like, we really, really have had this conversation. and you got to hold them to their own standard, right? Like they're used to winning a lot of games and they're still just not doing it. That said, you could absolutely give them one, give the Patriots one for this game because I think that what the Cowboys were going up against, I mean, they're secondary.

Like, they played man. They played zone. I think that's a credit to the myriad ways that Dallas can beat a team, right? is like they were just, you know, Belichick standing back there being like, all right, let's try something else. Let's try something else. Let's try something else. Because there's just eight different ways that they can slice it.

I think they were playing a pretty good, at least a defense that, if not a pretty good defense overall was playing pretty well against the Cowboys. So I think that you sort of have to consider it in the context of the day, which was that they were playing a team that was putting up a fight defensively. my point about them not getting credit for moral victories anymore is not to suggest that that there's anything opposite of that. I think the thing with the Patriots that I wonder about because there are a lot of individually promising things and because Mack Jones has pushed it down the field more

than he did early in the season is there's still this dichotomy where, okay, he's throwing downfield more. I think he was six of seven on passes of 10 plus air yards from weeks one through three, his completion percentage above expectation was negative 7.7 on those throws. Now it's plus 15.8. But you're still seeing a lot of really conservative game planning and situational stuff, right? Like they punt it on fourth and four. they punt it on fourth and three, they punt it on fourth and two, they punt it on fourth and one.

On three out of four of those punts, the Cowboys got the ball back and scored a touchdown, a field goal, and then the game winning touchdown, right? So you still see this decision making where they just, they've gotten more aggressive with the throws that they want Mac making, but they still don't feel confident putting him in the situations where it's like, okay, we got to be, like, this is who we got to be if we're going to win. And I think they've had so much less success using like two tight ends. They wanted to be a different offense than they've been when they've been most effective so far this season. Right. And I think there's a little bit of discomfort with that. I think there's

still a little bit of discomfort with like, okay, we went on and spent all this money on these receivers and we have this young quarterback and we're just going to check it to them. Like they don't love being that. It's also been the thing that they've been. most effective when they're doing. And I think you're just seeing this like ongoing push pull about that. And I do wonder what would happen if they just fully embraced it. But we haven't seen that yet. Switching gears here for a second.

So here's an amazing staff from Bobby Bell. So I don't know the sample size on this, but it's at least minimum 60 attempts. When the game is tied or in the fourth quarter or overtime, Dak Prescott has 148 rating, which is 37 points higher than anybody else. in history. Rich Gannon second. Vinnie Desti Berti, Kane 108.

Aaron Rogers, by the way, 105. Ben Solek, is this the best version of DAC you've ever seen? Ooh. Oh. Yeah?

Think so. Why? Because the, so like the 2016 Dawn, right, the rookie season, was behind such a good offensive line.

And we got to remember DAC was not this dude then. Dak was coming out of a Dan Mullen. I'm a spoon feed you the offense approach, right? He needed a lot more guidance. The athleticism was a bigger part of his game and the creativity was a bigger part of his game, certainly. But I would say now he's more accurate.

Athleticism remains. Some of the throws he made on the move today were truly special. But the nuance is the little stuff of his game. Dak, you know, if not for the absurd persistence of Tom Brady, who remains just in a different conversation altogether. Dak would be the best pocket passer in the game right now. And this is not an archetype that we expected to be put on Dak from his experience in Dan Mullen.

It's an archetype you hear a talked about with Dak. He's a black quarterback. We don't typically talk about them in this way. We talk about athleticism and whatever. It's him and Brady is the most cerebral quarterbacks in the game. It is not close. Nobody else is in their air. And that comes from not only being a veteran, not only the amount of time he's put in

and how he's adjusted to having worse offensive lines and new offense. but also the testament to intentional learning. Like when he kind of had that sophomore dip, a lot of it was pre-stop recognition, blitz stuff, getting a little bit jumpy, whatever. He is very clearly put in the hours to become this quarterback who is different than he was at Mississippi State very, very, very hard for quarterbacks to change their play style.

And I would say emphatically Prescott has. So that makes this so substantially impressive. The other thing about it is it means that if he needs to revert, he can, right? Like, the Patriots did a really good job getting pressure on him in this game. Didn't matter. Because if he needs to become scramble boy, he can't.

And that's why you say, they can respond to anything. They can get it any way they want, right? To me, this is the most versatile offense right now. The running game is the thing that's been so impressive to me. It wasn't even that good today. Zeke largely got capped up.

You know what I mean? Both he and Pollard averaged about four yards of carry, but in general, it wasn't a very explosive running day for them. Didn't matter. It's second and 25, first in 20, Prescott's ripping off chunk gains. And so, yeah, I mean, this New England, even though New England's two and four,

and they haven't been amazing, this defense is really good at taking away what you do best, and that the Cowboys were just simply too multiple for that to be the case. So, yeah, I, uh, my, you know, if we're doing like the MVP race conversation already in week six, Dak Lamar Stafford, that's my conversation right now. Buddy, this is an NFL show. We start the MVP conversation like, you know,

yeah, 1 p.m. games week on. April. Yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're late. You're late if you're starting to talk about it now. Do either of you guys... Welcome to the conversation. Yeah. Do either of you guys want the Florida to rip Mike McCarthy? The third and one timeout?

Yeah. Any number of things. They kicked on fourth and one. Greg Zerloin missed. I just... Kevin, it kind of seems like you want the floor to do this. No, no. I was...

That was a classic just like just making sure everyone felt good about me, about me taking the ball here. Um, so I just, I'm, I'm going back and forth and I know that we did this podcast a couple weeks ago with Bob Stern, where, where he kind of made the case from McCarthy and, and all that stuff. But that, that argument has worn off from me. Um, the culture argument has worn off from me. And I understand it can always get worse. And maybe there's things, practice habits. You know, I, Lord knows, there's a lot of teams that don't execute and, and don't tackle on all the stuff because we don't understand, uh, how important. Uh, and practice habits are or whatever, running the facility. But for me right now, I'm seeing a game day coach who makes a lot of mistakes. I'm seeing some play calling, especially in short-yarded

situations. It doesn't make much sense. And it feels like he's getting bailed out a lot. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm wrong. And maybe Callen Moore shouldn't be the coach. And listen, again, this is something that we've talked about a million times. But Arthur Smith is a good example of someone

where I think that there are some Titans fans who say, man, maybe we should just elevate Arthur. And it's not looking so great right now in Atlanta. So I'm not saying it'd be a home run slam dunk. I'm just saying that I'm starting to think if there's a weak spot in the NFC contention argument, it's going to be that he's going, Mike McCarthy's going against a bunch of coaches who are better than him. Am I wrong? So I don't think so.

But I would say that the analytic-minded, clever decision-making head coaches are largely skewed in the AFC. you could reasonably take an NFC playoff route that's like, Nick Bay. I'm talking play calling. I'm talking everything. I mean, you asked me, the Arizona Cardinals are six and no.

Yeah, you asked me Cliff McCarthy last week, right? So there's definitely at least one. But, but now I, I certainly agree. The biggest weakness for me in the Cowboys' entire team is their head coach.

I think he's a detriment. I don't think he's too much of a limiting factor. I generally enjoy how that offense is built. I agree that the situational stuff and this game wasn't great, but I think body of work this season, it's not too much of a concern.

So yeah, he's, he's the weak point. And, you know, I'm certain that we'll get to a playoff game for the Cowboys where that ends up mattering.

It's a question of whether or not they'll be able to overcome. And that's where we go back to when the game is tied in the fourth quarter in overtime, Prescott's head and shoulders above everybody else. You know what I mean? They do have,

in my opinion, a star player who can dig them out of those, those holes that their coach maybe should not be creating, but it did indeed create. So I agree, but also I'm not too concerned. We got to be careful with some of the play calling stuff. It's Kellyn Moore. I like Kellyn Moore. And because I like Callen Moore, sometimes it's sort of you want to be like, well, of course the bad stuff is McCarthy because he has a less sterling reputation right now. Some of it's not him. Like some of that stuff is Callen Moore, I think, is largely doing a.

really, really good job. But sometimes I think because the general consensus is that McCarthy is not everything gets funneled into the McCarthy bad, Kell and more good kind of two streams of thought there. And I think big picture, there's a lot of logic to that. There are some of those, you know, short yardage play calls where it's like, I don't know that that's, you know, who knows what the decision making process is in terms of, okay, what do we like in this situation going into the game, but just, you know, in all fairness, there's another guy on the headset.

Can I ask you a question? Mike McCarthy said he spent a year out of football studying analytics. What was he actually doing with that time? I hope just like getting really into wine, self-care. Gardening. Watching a lot of old movies. It sounds like he was just in a house with Jim Haslant watching film. Well, that's not a good use of that time.

You wanted him and Hazlet to recreate sideways and just drive through wine country. We have the weird part. That actually, that sounds like something that I would like to hear more about. All right. Are we ready to move on? Or Ben, do you have another? I was just going to say, if we're going to do the Cowboys coaching staff, I mean, man, I don't think Dan Quinn's doing anything like that new or that, like, particularly like a revolutionary, but guys are playing fast. And the nice thing about that defense is it's simple and it lets guys play quick and lets

to be explosive. And again, like turnover regression is going to come. They're not always going to look this good. But the idea on trading out Mike Nolan after one year and getting Dan Quinn in was that it would take the defense from bad to average. And that was all they would need. It's been true through six weeks. So kudos to Dan Quinn.

All right. Next game, second headline, Steelers 23, Seahawks 20. Wow. Nora? Uh, yikes. This was an existential nightmare. I would love to, I just wanted like a, I wanted an extra camera just on Al Michaels, not calling this game.

Yeah, I, both reacting to it, but also through the lens of not having to be a part of it. Like, this was just quite something. There's an old story. I was watching a Mets game one time, and it was like the 17th inning. And in baseball, obviously, not everybody. but he works every game. And it was like so late. And one of the guys, probably Gary, said that Keith Hernandez texted from the Hamptons and

just texted, oh my God, the game is still going. And that's kind of what I thought about when I'm thinking about Al Michaels, who's just probably, you know, in a golf simulator somewhere in Palm Springs, just being like, okay, well, let me check the score. Oh, game's still going? Huh. It's like when interviewers always ask the S&M. guys like, oh, do you hate when you're off and the news happens?

And it's like, no, man, I'm on vacation. It's cool. I guess you read more Colin Jost interviews than me. Read a few. Ben Solek. Any takeaways from this game? Yeah. I'll say this.

20 points against the Steelers' defense is nothing to sneeze at. I agree. Gino acquitted himself quite well, with the exception to the fumble at the end. He picked things up. Right. up until the deciding play, I would have told you that Gino played mistake-free football, which is the first thing that you want out of your back of quarterback.

Don't kill us, right? And so we had no bad picks, and then obviously we have that fumble. It's really more so a great play by T.J. Watt. Quarterback in that position is taught two hands on the football. Gino's got two hands of the football. You know what I mean? T.J. lands on the nose of it.

Sometimes that's how it goes. So mistake-free football, understood kind of where his bread was buttered. D.K. MacGath, Big, Long, Strong. Let's just go get the ball in that guy's area. Let him make a play for us. Picked a couple of spots to get explosive. Go middle of the field.

Did a good job managing the two-minute drill, right? Just worked the running back. Had the timeouts, nice and quiet, get to field goal range. That's what you want from your veteran backup. So the Steelers defense had given up 19 to the Broncos, 27 to the Packers, 24 to the Bengals, 26 to the Raiders, and 16 to the bills. This is about par for the course against the Steelers. You get high teens, low 20s.

And so I don't think the Seahawks offense is, is, you know, forsaken. You know, no Chris Carson and no, no Russell Wilson, and they still kind of got the job done. So two and four, scary, especially in that division. Very. Yeah, but you look at the Seahawks schedule and you see Saints on Monday night,

which, yeah, we get Seahawks prime time again, which is just delicious. Jaguars, then Packers, Cardinals, Washington, like they do got to get Russ back at some point, but I don't think they're going to be like 100% out of this picture by the time they do get Russ back. Long road to go. but I think that they can hang.

Yeah, I agree. I think they can kind of be in the mix. I don't see them as a playoff team, but I don't see them as a total tire-fire right-off team. I want to ask about the Steelers here for a second, because they're three and three. They have the same record as the Browns right now. They have the same record.

They play the Browns next week. They play the Browns next week. Or two weeks, excuse me. They have a buy. Two weeks, excuse me. Are they anything right now, Nora? Not really. I mean, we've just, we've gone sort of round and round on this.

The offense just does not have, I mean, we just talked about the cowboys who have secondary and tertiary punches, right? And that is just what the Steelers absolutely do not have. I mean, this defense is scary, but I don't think that they are scary enough on defense to make up for the fact that, I mean, they have basically one mode that barely. in and of itself works offensively. And there are so many things that are sort of sound and solid about the organization. But I don't think that as much as I think Gino Smith acquitted himself well and was impressive out there, I don't think that going toe to toe and ultimately pulling it out against the Gino Smith Seahawks who are sort of a mess on the back end is.

is really a sign that there's something to build off of here. If you were given a list in July of the three and three teams after week six, it would read Broncos, Chiefs, Browns, Steelers, Panthers, Vikings Bears. What a motley crew. It's kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chiefs? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Browns, too, I would say.

And also, Nora would have been surprised. the Steelers won a game. Yeah, that's true. I'm just kidding. My main takeaway watching this game is just, man, Kevin Colbert can draft. Where was he in the GM? Where was he in the GM rankings?

I can't remember where you put him. He was number one for me. Yeah, yeah. He was number one for Nora? Or did you have Chris Ballard number one? I think I had Ballard won and Colbert, too. I had him number one. And then I saw him like a week later and I said,

hey, you were number one. I'm like, you're number one. I'm like, you're number one on my GM thing. I was like, and I literally just, as I was saying the sentence was just like, oh, man, I regret saying this sentence. And he didn't know what to say and he didn't really react to it. I, you know, he's a great guy. And I was like, man, this is awkward. I really wish I could just leave the situation. But here we are. Right. So we all know what they do with wide receivers. They're insane, right? Deonto Johnson was the leading receiver in this game. Obviously, Chase Cable last year. He's been great so far this year. But like,

Najee Harris was a, again, feature part. He's been a bell cow back for them. Wasn't very effective burning the football was tough sledding. But six catches for 46 yards in touchdown. Pat Fryermuth, who's their second round tight end, had his best game as a young pro. Seven catches, 58 yards. Trey Norwood was his seventh round pick, a defensive back at Oklahoma. And he just plays in their dime and he's plays with his hair on fire. It's physical, aggressive. Cam Sutton, who was a third round pick for them. I want to say like three or four years ago is now a starting corner for them. great, Kevin Dotson, Kendrick Green.

Those are multiple starting interior offensive linemen taken round three, round four. You shouldn't be allowed to do this. The team is so, so well set up to bring in a real quarterback and immediately get the ground running. They have so much young talent. Yeah. That's my thought.

We need to PED test, Colbert. Yeah, so, yeah, Colbert's crack, young man's out of his mind. Congrats to him. It's just a matter of keeping everybody interested and engaged. And obviously, Mike Tomlin as well, keeping everybody interested and engaged in the post-Benzhen Rothesberger projections and promises of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Because if they can turn over quarterback well, which is very tough. But if they can get it done well, man, the infrastructure is nice. Speaking of Mike Tomlin, not pleased with the officiating. Yeah. Oh, baby. Angry Tomlin. Apparently he said, apparently he said before the press conference he was going to be fine by the league.

So he was calling a shot. I love that. I love that so much. Yeah. There's nothing better than I'm about to take a fine. I don't mind. I think there's some internal optimism about next year in Pittsburgh because they can, they can solve. And it's funny because the Broncos GM kind of got roasted for saying that he took a cornerback in the top 10 because he thinks the quarterbacks are actually more available than people think. Guys like Carson Wentz would be a good example. I don't, I don't think he named Carson Wentz, but that that's someone who kind of pops up, Jared Goff, whatever. And I actually ran that past some people. people in the NFL and I was like, did, you know, do people in the NFL think this or is it just sort of a rogue opinion? And they were like, you know, it's actually, if you just look at it, I think that there are more kind of, I don't know, top half quarterbacks who are just available

and trade. If you want to take the money, I don't think golf is one of those guys. But if you want to take, you give up a second round pick and take on the money, like these guys pop up, you know, and who knows kind of, you think about Rogers and Wilson being available. And I'm not saying that Wilson and Rogers would be traded to a place like Pittsburgh. They might. We saw it a little nod last week. But what I am saying is that kind of downriver from those trades might be another trade. You know, oh, Wilson goes here.

Okay, well, this guy's available. And so there's just going to be quarterback movement if it starts at the top. Or the easiest thing to do would just be go get Aaron Rogers. And Tom one and Rogers can nod at each other for 17 games next year. I'd enjoy the Rogers Canada. vibe. I'd enjoy that process. That would be very fun. I think that's

that's still pretty hard, right? Because to your point, Kevin, I think that's right that the sort of, there's a lot of guys in the top half who are more available and the carousel just sort of moves a little bit faster. I also think that there's an increasing question of what a guy in the top half

if he's not in the top quarter really gets you. The Steelers obviously have a good But my question is like, the Steelers look okay right now with a guy who is not good at quarterback and can't really give them anything and can't execute the offense. Okay is maybe a stretch. But yes, I think what I was going to say is that while I think we need to be careful about saying, you know, oh, you can you can just go get an upgrade and it'll solve all your problems because, I mean, it depends what the, where the goal is. I don't think they're going to have to have like Taylor Heineke is what I'm saying next year. I think that's that's valid.

And the other part of this is that, I mean, I don't want to put words in their mouth, but they were sort of, they were stuck with Ben. Like, they didn't have a lot of choice there. I wonder what would happen if you gave those guys truth serum and said, hey, would it have better for that, would it have been better for you for that guy to just retire? But the amount of money and they were able to restructure it as much as possible and Ben didn't want to leave. And that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. But I don't know that that fully, it'll just be interesting to see what those guys who have that record do with a cleaner slate.

Because I think we should keep in mind that it wasn't like they were working off of one when they were like, yes, let's run this back with Ben Rothersberger. That'll be great. is give them truth serum just a euphemism for beer? No, no. Well, I mean, I just feel like if you got like two beers in them, it would be the same thing. I mean, yeah, but I think sometimes people lie

when they've had beer. I think we're going in like a weird direction here. Here's what I think. As a man who's never drank a beer in his entire life, so I have no leg to stand on in this conversation. This is, it's a very interesting. we were just like again for like the 18th week in a row relitigating the Stafford Gough exchange and kind of what that meant for the Rams. And it's interesting to hear the parallels. Like when Nora says

if you get a quarterback who's definitely good but not elite, like how much does that really help your team? That was one of the concerns with the Stafford acquisition. It was, well, Stafford's definitely better than Gough, but how much better is he elite? And one of the common responses to that was, well, Stafford's going to fundamentally change the way the Rams offense looks. And that's the key difference between the Rams acquiring Stafford and the Steelers acquiring X, whatever quarterback becomes available. Right. The Rams had in place McVeigh.

There was a floor in the offensive production that was quite high because of the system. The big thing for the Steelers, as a guy who just said, the infrastructure is great, is that they do not have a proven offensive designer. They do not have a proven system. Matt Canada is an extremely big question mark, even in good context, in terms of how his offense works. And so you can make a hard. sell to ownership to go get aggressive bringing in a quarterback. You can go make a hard sell to

the quarterback that he wants to be here. But the one really key missing piece is right now, you say the offensive identity of the Steelers is X. There's no answer there. And so that uncertainty about just how good of a quarterback do we need to bring in to make this right in the future is exacerbated, is magnified by the fact they do not have the offensive play caller, in my opinion, establish and in place. So it really is a touch and go situation. So I think to sort of eliminate uncertainty, they should bring Rothesberger back.

The devil you know, the best way to seven and ten. Let's get to superlatives. I'll start. It's the 2019 Ravens Award for the 2021 Ravens being dominant again. A 34 to 6 win over the Los Angeles Chargers. Lamar Jackson, 1927-67 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, 51 rushing yards. Here's a stat for you.

He now has the most wins by a starting quarterback for the 25th birthday. Okay, beating out damn morano. He has 35. He doesn't turn 25 until January of this year. So this is good, he's going to be like,

it's going to be like one of those old Haas Radburn records where he's just like a hundred times better than anybody else at this stat. No one's ever going to catch this. Drew Bledsoe, by the way, third all time, Big Ben after that. Justin Herbert had a,

pretty weird day, quite frankly, 195 yards, one touchdown, one interception. According to PFF, under pressure, he was two of seven for eight yards on nine pressured dropbacks. The Ravens and their past defense were pretty much a constant conversation over the past couple of weeks, as was whether or not the Ravens were AFC contenders alongside the Buffalo Bills or whether or not they were on a different plane.

Ben, what did you see, buddy? the herbert coming down to earth was like going to happen at some point i don't think we expected it so uh fully so just completely over the course of one game right like i kept on thinking that this would be the drive where they just kind of picked it back up right this would be the drive with the 40 yard cross field opposite hash dart to jalen guyton or somebody and like there'd be that shot in the arm and that glimmer of hope and even if it didn't come to fruition The Chargers were coming into this game this week, the highest scoring fourth quarter team in the league, 11.8 yards, or points per game, excuse me. It felt even when it was late there in the third quarter, like, all right, they can pour points.

We saw him do it against the Browns. This might happen. And just never really came to fruition. But even with that aside, Herbert's miscommunicating with receivers on five-yard stop rats on third and three. You know what I mean? Like those are routes that in this Joe Lombardi offense are going to be site adjusted, right? they're going to be run to a specific spot relative to what defense you're getting. And they were just, there were misses.

There were misses on easy routes and misses on miscommunications. And I'm on record on this podcast saying Herbert just doesn't miss. And this was a game where he just simply missed a lot. Nowhere near a panic button in that regard. But it was a good look into the limitations of this Chargers passing game. They struggle to get Herbert downfield targets. They struggle to live with explosives. They are a offense that wants to be effective.

that wants to put together more plays, longer drives, more first downs. That's how they've been under Joe Lombardi. He's very much following that model that was set and established with Sean Payton and Drew Brees in the late 2010s. There's no need for that. There's nothing deficient about the pass protection. There's nothing deficient about the receiving core or the quarterback that necessitates that approach.

And it is a better approach to be more oriented on early down explosiveness. And the hope is that Brandon Staley is a very analytical. politically minded, you know, just in the media, like all these things I know. The hope is that his coaching staff will get there by the end of the season. Because this sort of a game is possible at any given time, if Herbert's off, because if he's not doing the magic on late downs,

this is what this offense looks like. It's very aching. It's very slow. It's very methodical. And that can be difficult. According to our buddy, Daniel Popper, Kenon Allen was not targeted from four minutes and 32 seconds left in the first quarter until the beginning of the fourth quarter,

14 minutes to go. That's more than a full half without a target. That's kind of speaking to what you're talking about where this just wasn't a rhythmic game there for the Chargers. Nora, more surprised by the Chargers of the Ravens in this game. The Chargers definitely more surprised. I didn't think that they would be non-competitive. There was a moment when I sort of,

I think I was looking something up and I zoned back into my TV and it was like, leaving Ravens Chargers to bring you a more competitive game, the Chiefs against the Washington football team. And it was like, I'm sorry. What year is it? What's going on here? What?

Yeah, that was strange. I'm less concerned about, I'm not particularly concerned about the Chargers here because Ben's points all totally solid if the third down magic is not there. This is a more sort of methodical pains taking looking offense than we're used to seeing because the third down magic has been there.

I really do think, though, that this was a kind of a perfect storm of bad stuff game. Mike Williams was dropping passes. Jared Cook was dropping passes. The pressure stuff was bad. Justin Herbert has a pretty good track record of being able to deal with that a lot better than he did today. It's also still a pretty small sample size.

Storm Norton was, you know, giving up a lot of pressures. And that kind of makes sense. It's actually more surprising to me how many times they've been able to like, whether the storm there, no pun intended. But you get, I think they've got, they've got the Patriots, they've got the Eagles, they've got the Vikings. I just don't think the Chargers are going to have too many games like this. I also think they just ran into an absolute buzzsaw in the Ravens right now. I agree.

So according to X-Gens to Hats, Brandon Staley, and the Chargers went for it on Port Down from their own territory twice today. In both cases, they failed to get it on a fourth and three in quarter three and a fourth and one from their own 19. I think that there are probably going to be people who are saying that, and we actually saw it today, Scott Peleley actually said it today, that going for fourth down is a fad. And I don't think so. And I think that with the test of Brandon Staley and his whole,

in his mindset is what happens if he gets on a bad luck streak like this and people start saying, okay, it's over and fourth down, whatever, does he still maintain that aggressiveness? Because right now he might be the most aggressive fourth down guy in history. on the other side line, there's John Harbaugh, who's going forward as much as anybody over the past couple of years. So it'll be interesting to see how that develops, you know, Brandon Staley is as in tune with the media as anybody.

He's basically like if a really good podcaster became a head coach, just as far as how good he is with the media. And he's welcome to join this podcast anytime as the fourth person in. Definitely like a second second segment like Wednesday guy. That'd be great. Yeah, yeah. But so I think that there's, there's. There's just a lot that I'm interested in as the season develops with the Chargers.

Ben, I want to talk about Lamar here for a second. So it wasn't a jaw-dropping stats game. There were some jaw-dropping Lamar runs. And they were almost like just the pocket presence and all that stuff. And just the way he embarrasses guys and guys can't even get there. It was funny because I was watching some Malik Willis tape the other day. He's at Liberty. And Kevin was-Going fall draft degenerate.

Quarterback film in mid-October. No, if you knew what, if you were, want to know why. It was because sometimes I was watching the new Miami quarterback and I was just like just trying to figure out like what the difference is between him and like an elite elite guy. So I was just like really getting in on the weeds with some of the elite prospects. I'm a real idiot. But I was looking at it. But someone was writing it up and they were like, you know, Malik Willis is Lamar Jackson, but with four or five speed instead of four three speed. I'm just like, that's a huge difference. That is a huge difference. Like that, that is night and day. I know it doesn't

sound like much, but the athleticism the Lamar has is different than everybody else. You could just see it every single Sunday and we saw it when he was in the pocket today, couldn't get touched on some plays. Anyway, as far as Lamar games go, would you think today? Yeah, it's funny actually because I immediately think of that Isaiah Rogers' fumble return for a touchdown that Monday night game against the Colts, where Lamar goes to chase down Rogers in space and Rogers just burns him. And it's a reminder that like, like, you know, somebody said Malik Wilson is like 4-5 Lamar, Lamar's 4-3. Lamar's probably not actually 4-3.

We never got a 40 from Marr. And the thing about Lamar is-we got it. It's just incorrect. At Speed Day, I looked it up. Speed Day, 2017 at Louisville. Remember those fake Urban Meyer 40 times? Are you familiar with those? Yeah, yeah.

At Florida, he used to just be like, oh, yeah, Chris Rainey runs a 4-1. Yeah, well, everybody in the LSU Pro Day runs a 4-3. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, right. So we got that. That was where the 4-3 comes from. Yeah. With Lamar, right, it's not the, I mean, obviously the speed is deadly, but it's,

it's the quickness and the running style, right? It's the herky jerkiness. You just... And the deceleration. It's the acceleration and the deceleration. Right. The best way of putting it is all the defenders have spent a very long number of times. There's many, many, many, many, reps of tackling people. And then Lamar just moves differently than all the people they've tackled. Like, they've tackled world-class athletes. And Lamar just moves in a different way. And so they think they understand, like your body, just your instincts are like, this is how you tackle a person. And then Lamar is just not there in a way that other people aren't. But the pocket presence you brought up was the thing that was to me most astounding day.

The charges were able to get disruption. This Ravens line is not a very good fast protecting line. And it's very silly to say, like, Lamar has very good pocket presence because it's saying, like, you know, oh, like, you know, a giant has size. Like, of course he does because he can escape anything. Like, it seems very silly to say he has good pocket presence, but he does. does. And his calmness, his relaxedness, which at times in Louisville was a problem because he would just kind of hang there and take hits that he shouldn't have taken, so on and so forth,

allows him to extend plays not by bailing out of the pocket, not by making five guys miss and scrambling and pointing people out, but extend plays by buying that extra half second in the pocket by sidestepping a rusher, making a miss, and then throwing from those adjusted platforms. The Mark Andrews chemistry seems to have stabilized after a few couple bad weeks. Rashad Bateman back. He had four catches for four-forced down. first downs, excuse me, that's exactly what they want him to be. The passing game hasn't added anything in terms of designs. The past protection hasn't changed anyway in terms of guys being added.

Lamar is just simply throwing the ball better than he ever has before. If they had like a regular like 2019 Ravens running game, even 2020 Ravens running game in terms of their personnel, this would be quite simply the best offense in the league comfortably. As it is, I think Lamar is playing better ball than any quarterback in the league. I think that at this point with another game or so like this, he's going to become the forefront of the MVP conversation. Whether or not it's sustainable, we'll see. We've never seen him throw this well across the course of a season ever.

But if he can, despite the fact that the running game isn't what it is, then yeah, he's a front runner for MVP, and the Ravens are never ever going to be out of a game. We saw that with the Colts, and then we saw them absolutely sit on the charges for four quarters. They can beat you in a multitude of ways. The Ravens have the Bengals next, the Chargers of the Patriots next.

Nora, you hate when I ask you to handicap the AFC or the NFC, because you don't understand gambling terms, but handicap the AFC. All right. I'm actually, this one, I'm glad that you asked me, kind of feeling like

it's Bill's Ravens, then it gets tough for me. Then it gets really tough for me. I almost want to go, I almost want to go Kansas City here. Why wouldn't you? Well, because they've been bad sometimes,

because they don't have a defense. They were bad. Yeah, I mean, they have been bad, but they're still really, I mean, there's, okay, let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question, Nora. If you had the number one seat, team Nora had the number one scene of the AFC and there was a new rule saying you got to draft your opponent in the first round. At what point are you draft in the chiefs?

Well, I think, I think, um, okay, of the, if there's, if I have then six options to choose from. I think they're my fourth or my third or fourth choice. From the back. So it would be Bill's Ravens Chiefs probably, right? I don't, I definitely don't want to play the Bills. I absolutely don't want to play the Ravens. And then I think about whether or not I want to play the Chargers or the Chiefs. I'd rather play the Chargers.

Okay. I'm a little... It depends on kind of what I'm good at on offense. Yeah. Well, I already explained. It's 22 Noras. It's 22 Norris. So that's almost you can answer that question.

Then it doesn't matter, Kevin. What would you say are your best strengths on the football field, Nora? I think I should. I would draft the Houston Texans and then I would just give them the floor and run away. Wow. All right. Next to proletive. Cardinals 37 Browns 14, not the game we expected, nor are you having the floor.

All right. I'm giving the Cardinals the best record award for being 6 and 0. I'm giving the Browns the most injuries award because yikes. Congratulations to everyone involved in an incredibly strange football game. Dear God, what the heck was going on here. Okay, the Brown start this game. This is just going to be a laundry list of people who are hurt. This is kind of a bummer.

I'm sorry. Okay. They start the game. They don't have Jarvis Landry. They don't have either starting tackle. They don't have Nick Chubb. They lose Kareem Hunt. Baker dislocates his shoulder again.

The left shoulder that he also had a partial laborum tear in. They play again on Thursday. day. Baker said after the game that he will play there, but that he had to pop his shoulder back in and that it, quote, feels like shit. Great. O'Dell aggravated his injury. They're three and three. Their by week is in December.

Yikes. Solid yikes. And I'm glad, actually, that you just asked me to do the handicapping exercise that I absolutely hate. because last week, I still felt pretty good about the Browns in general, but I was looking now.

So right now on 538, they have a 51% chance to make the playoffs. And it kind of feels like, I all of a sudden just feel like there's been this huge swing where I'm really worried about whether or not they're going to be able to do it. Just not in terms of whether or not

they actually have the roster talent if people were healthy to be able to put it together. And like, I trust the coaching staff. And there's a lot of good there. But they are running into the math problem that we talk about sometimes. And the Cardinals are sort of the opposite, right? Where it's like, okay, there are places where we could pick apart this team. But they're six and oh. Like, they're good.

They got a cushion. The Browns, particularly if, if, I mean, I mean, first of all, if Baker keeps playing like this and if the injury, if he's just not feeling good, if his arm's not feeling good, if he doesn't like, I mean, it's not a throwing arm, but it seemed to bother him the last couple of weeks. If that continues and they drop some more games because of this, like, I don't know if I'm overreacting, but it just seemed like yikes. Oof. There's a lot here. I expected an interesting and more and closer game, frankly. I mean, this is something. thing, you know, Mina Kimes and I did a pretty thorough breakdown of this game midweek. And one of the things I thought was going to really matter was Rodney Hudson being out. You know, Jim Monas was on this podcast midweek.

And he was talking about how when he's in coaching interviews and they ask you to rank how important a position is for a quarterback. When you're building on a quarterback, the center is pretty maybe after quarterback is the most important position when you're doing with the young quarterback. And Rodney Hudson's presence in Arizona has been amazing. So I was intrigued to see what happens when he's subtracted from that. And the Browns were so injured that I couldn't actually get a real data read on it. I will say that as the Cardinals progressed, they need to work on their Hail Mary defense. I'm extremely, extremely worried about what Murphy or anybody was doing. It was really a total team effort there.

Everyone knows 10 yards out of the end zone, middle of the field. That's where the Hill Mary wants to hit. All right. It's sneaky, but that's what they like. It was amazing because it was a coaching failure, but also just a, like a talent failure. It was a failure on almost every single level. I will say that Baker Mayfield, according to next-gen-s-sats, it's interesting. That touchdown was the longest in the air, 66.4 yards in the next-gen-stats era.

So there you go. Congratulations to Baker. Put that in your pipe and smoke, at Prince, Iati. The Baker arm strength conversation is one of my least favorites. There is a difference between being able to throw the ball far and being able to throw the ball fast. And Baker could throw the ball very far. And we've always known this. there are times where it'd be nicer if you could throw the ball faster.

And so very happy for Baker. You know what's funny? And I was talking to John Dorsey in an interview when he first drafted Baker. And he was like, wait until you see how fast Baker gets rid of the ball. Said that. Interesting. Ben, worried about the Browns? No, I'm going to say something that's very odd to say about a team that gave up 37 points.

But I thought the Brown's defense played fairly well relative to what was asked of them. We saw the Cardinals. We've seen the Cardinals just destroy teams off script this year. And certainly giving up 37 points isn't good. But they had three third down conversions on their first touchdown drive. A third and six, which was a 40-yard draw call. A third in seven, who's a 15-yard scramble pass. And then a third and 19 touchdown again, a scramble pass to Christian Kirk.

The Cardinals were given three short fields, I want to say, across the course of the game, on which the Browns gave up a field goal, a field goal, and a touchdown. They had two sacks on Murray, Clowny and Malik McDowell, Tack McKinley were able to play fast enough to tackle him in the backfield to cause some problems there. So it doesn't look good on the box score, but structurally, you like what they did. And you understand why with the amount of short fields they were given.

I mean, the Browns couldn't buy a first down. The time of possession of the first half was extremely skewed, and they were giving up short fields. 37 does not look good. But overall, like what I continue to see and believe in with the Brown's defense, is the amount of team speed. Clowny, McKinley, Garrett, they're so fast. Ousukoro Moa, he's so fast.

Newsom, Hill, Ward, they're just quick. And that allows you to be aggressive and explosive. At times that burns you. See DeAndre Hopkins' third and ten touchdown screen throw where they decided to send a zero blitz with their backs against the wall. That's the sort of stuff where you're like, all, you've got to relax. But to me, there were a few very high positive regression plays

that went the Cardinals way, that if we played this game again, the Brown's defense, preferably with a little bit more rest, would be fine. And then the other side of the ball, you see that Odell looks healthier. Donovan People's Jones looks great.

Kareem Hunt's good back, like Chubbs been playing well. Like they have all the pieces. They were playing offensive tackle four and five in this game and just simply could not get away with anything from the pocket. And they're trying to throw Maffa from the pocket.

I'm not sure why the script wasn't more rollout heavy. I'm not sure why the script wasn't more run heavy early downs from the jump. And at some point in the second quarter, they were 65% early down pass. And I know they were down in an early hole, but this is the worst run defense in the league. You can do the best running game. It doesn't really matter what the hole is.

You should be running the football in this context. So a bit of a game planning concern. But overall, like I like the pieces they have on offense and I'm continuing to buy in on this defense. The limiting factor is Baker Mayfield. This was a game, offensive tackle four and offensive tackle five. It shouldn't have looked like this. Baker was under constant pressure. Also, the players that make up that running game were not there.

Right. Yeah. But with Baker, like, I understand and I want to, you know, quickly jump ahead and excuse the fact that, like, he had both of his starting tackles out. It was a really high pressure game, whatever. But at some point, we have to reach an expectation where you know what you're dealing with and you're not holding onto the ball and trying to make five guys miss. Baker looked like he was cosplaying Kyler.

You're not Kyler. You're not that quick. You don't have that good of a release. don't have that good of an arm. You can't play that way. You've, you've done it since Oklahoma. You did in college. You cannot be playing that way in the pros. And that's what creates a sack fumbles, creates sacks, blitzie behind the sticks, and creates bad interceptions. So yes, I know the shoulders beat up. Yes, I know the tackles are bad. But this is the sort of game where you look at the Brown's entire infrastructure and go, they're on a Super Bowl trajectory.

And then you just focus in on the quarterback and you go, that might be the thing that keeps them from it. And that's a scary thing for Browns fans to see. All right. On the Cardinals end, there were three receivers who averaged 15 yards or more, average depth of target, Hopkins, Green, and Kirk. Kyler had his lowest yardage of the season, but he had four touchdowns. And obviously, there's not a lot to nitpick in this game. Nora, I got a reader question, listener question, whatever. That found interesting.

And at first, I was offended by it, not offended, but first I didn't agree with it. And then I thought, I thought about it more. And someone said, is the reason, is the reason, offended really is the wrong word. I'm very rarely mad online. But no, the reason, the question was, is the reason that pundits don't take the Cardinals as legitimate, as legitimate in the conversation for best team in the NFL because we didn't have them in the preseason. And I don't think that's it, but I also think it might be it. I'd like you to answer that question.

Why are we not talking about the Cardinals who are now 6 and 0 as the best team in football? So I guess the best way for me to answer that is that I think we should be talking about them as one of the best teams in football. Yeah, I agree. I think we're used to talking about, I think we're too used to talking about their offense and too used to talking about Kyler. I think at a certain point, the thing that's going missed is that all of a sudden, they have somehow put together a defensive line that can get. some pressure. Even, you know, they don't have Chandler Jones. It's a pretty impressive set of steps that they've made to just to get better there.

So I think sometimes there is a disconnect. I don't really like the media analysis stuff that much. But like if there's, if you have an assumption about if a team is good, why is it going to be good? And then that's part of it, but it's not the whole reason that they've made the leap. Maybe it gets hard to put together. But I think the answer to your question is that we absolutely should be. and I don't know about the best team in football, but like top handful, certainly.

And then the other piece of this is that, again, they're six and no. Things are going to be easier for them down the line. Like they have the best chance of getting a first round buy of any team. And they're just going to have a little bit more breathing room, like the further they go into the season. And look, we haven't done this with 17 games before. And that's the other thing is that does that open up? just a little bit more flexibility towards the end of the year. If they're dealing with injuries, if everybody's dealing with injuries, that's another

little card in your deck, right? Like, if you've just got that breathing room, that really genuinely helps. The other thing is just like, I think there was some smartest guy in the room. Eye rolling, I was definitely guilty of this when they signed a bunch of old players who are famous. Like, that's usually bad. But, like, AJ Green's been awesome. you know?

Yep. Awesome. I very much agree. No, okay. I intricate's been good. He's been good. I mean, but he's also, he's playing with Kyler Murray. This is, guys, I'm trying to not do the Cardinals thing where we don't get the Cardinals there due.

Do you know who they play next week? The Patriots? The Texans. The Texans. And they opened 16 point favorites. Oh, that's tough. We can have the, we will not be having this conversation next week because we will not be talking about the Cardinals 38 to 6th. win over the Texans.

Ben. Actually, Kevin, can I just streamline what I just told you? I thought about it a little bit as you were asking me. I want to win with that. They signed a bunch of old players, which is usually bad, and it's sort of worked out. It sort of worked out. Congratulations to the 2014 all-stars.

Ben. It's kind of the same question I asked about Nora with the Ravens, but let's assume it's not 22 Ben Solax playing out there. Would you like when you're talking about teams you want to see the in the NFC playoffs, who's scarier than the Cardinals? NFC playoffs, I don't want to see Tom. I don't want to see Tampa.

I'd rather see the Cardinals than them. The Rams is close for me. I probably would edge. I'd rather see the Cardinals than the Rams. The reason is because, and this is why I think we struggle to fully believe in the Cardinals is the best team, at least me personally. The Cardinals did a lot of stuff on offense structurally under Cliff that I didn't like coming into this season.

And the Cardinals under Vance Joseph, their defense coordinator, did a lot of stuff structurally on defense I didn't like coming into the season. None of that is gone. And there's a very large part of the pie here in terms of the explanation that's Ben is an idiot, who doesn't know what he's looking at. This stuff shouldn't bother him. It shouldn't concern him. The Cardinals are great.

But in that I am me, and this is what I look at and this what I see and this is my opinion, the fact that, okay, it's just like Kyler got better. You know, Roddy Hudson's amazing. Jay J.J. Watts is amazing. Isaiah Simmons is amazing now. Byron Murphy's amazing. It's like, no, we're doing all the same stuff structurally, but all the players are better.

That smells fishy. This is hard for me to fully believe in that. I want, as an analyst, there to be some identifiable, actionable, change I can point to and say, this is why they got better. And so I'm hesitant to make that leap. If, let's just have Kyler keep playing at an MVP level,

let's have JJ Y and Chandler Jones and Byron Murphy all continue to play at this very, very high level, and then you'll win the Super Bowl and all be an idiot. But as of right now, it's still, to me, very much so, the Kyler show on offense and the chaos show on defense. And that just simply doesn't feel sustainable. Hey, would you rather play the Cardinals or the Packers?

I'd rather play the Packers. The Packers' defense is just, to me, so exploitable. There's so much stuff that I want to go and get. Whereas the Cardinals, that Chaos defense can be pretty devastating. You can hear that Rogers DM zipping in right into Ben Solax inbox. Yeah, Roger owns me. He heard his ears are burning right now. Yeah.

All right. Next one, Vikings of Panthers. Vikings 34, Panthers 28, Benz O'Ack. You're giving it a weird designation. Yeah, this is my weird. I said on last week's show that I just refused to acknowledge the Vikings. Here I am acknowledging the Vikings. On a two-game winning streak, baby.

The three-and-three Minnesota Vikings, the reason why this is a weird game that deserves acknowledgement is because it is, and this is my award, it's the classic Kirk Cousins. The Vikings win a- an overtime game against the Carolina Panthers, 3428. It's okay.

It was at one o'clock. Yeah, yeah. Kirk Cousins final stat line. 33 for 48, 373 yards, so averaging eight yards in attempt. Three touchdowns, no picks, no sacks.

On paper, it's such a good game. It looks great. Half of his yards came after the catch, according to PFF. Does not shock me. I'm glad we had that note.

I was going to make that claim. That's putting the ball in the right place for your receiver. 52% success rate, eighth on the day. EPA for play, 0.270, also eighth on the day. It's very classic, you know, the quarterback for whom, like, film heads and nerds always have the most argument is Kurt Cousins, because analytics-wise, he looks so good. Numbers-wise, both box score counting and advanced stats, it's, he always looks so good. And then you watch him.

Like, you watch his throws. he had Justin Jefferson just without anyone in the district on an early corner post. It's not as if like, oh, a busted coverage. No, the whole play was designed to do this and just missed him by a mile. The opening drive, third and goal from the four,

throwing a stick route to Tyler Conklin, double clutches it for just no reason whatsoever. Just simply like rookie nonsense and then throws it late and it's a pass breakup and they got to kick a field goal. He was just not, he was fine. He was classic Kirk. And then right, every third down, it's, all right,

which bashup do I like? Adam Thielen 101 on the slot fade or Justin Jefferson went on the slot fade. Hopefully I get a DPI on this throw and just chuck it up there and ask your receivers to make a play. So he looks incredible. Thielen ends 11 for 126. Jefferson ends 8 for 80. K.J. Osborne, by the way, has won that third receiver job, 678 and the game winning touchdown, which was a great throw by Kirk. Okay. He's been a, yeah, he's been an important player for them. He was originally Buffalo. You don't get the claim.

He made it four years of Buffalo before his Miami. He entered the NFL from Miami because he understood after the Buffalo quarterback went away that he needed to transfer to a, you know, an elite academic institution. Yeah. So anyway, so yes, KJ Osmore has emerged as their third receiver. He looks like he's playing well. But the Vikings are three and three.

Defensively, they still have a lot of work to do. Offensively, we've had some really nice outings. Dalvin Cook came back, healthy looked great. But they're just a very, very difficult team. believe in. And while I think they'll be around in the wildcard push, I do think that the patience is expiring in Minnesota and Kirk Cousins. We've seen that coming into the season. And even after just a tremendous statistical game, I watch him and I go, yeah, I'd like, I'd like somebody else. I'd like to improve on this position. And that puts Minnesota in a really

tight spot. Nora, Sam Darnel has been real bad without Christian McCaffrey. And I'm starting to think that Christian McCaffrey matters a whole heck of a lot and a lot of other running. because woo this is bad. 17 for 41, Sam Donald in this game. It's not ideal. Are we canceling the Panthers? Oh, I think it's sad. I just like watching them playing defense.

We might have to cancel the Panthers. I'll say this for the Panthers defense, and I excuse me for going on a tirade on this game. I promise myself I wouldn't care about it, and now I'm caring about it tremendously. This Phil Snow defense. You stupid idiot, you made me love you. Uh-oh.

Uh-oh. You're going after Phil Snow. So here's, well, here, it, get them, get them, they do good stuff.

But, uh, coming from, right, the big 12, uh, you know, our three down fronts,

our tight fronts, our, our, our cub fronts, bare fronts, whatever, uh, for this defense to work,

for this defense to matter. Structurally, it's trying to stop wide zone. It's what is trying to do up front. It's, we're going to put multiple guys in these interior gaps. We're going to stretch these plays out. We're going to rally up and tackle.

They have faced two wide zone teams in Dallas, in Dallas and Minnesota and got absolutely boat-raced by both running games. So I don't know if it's a they need more size at edge, Brian Burns and Hassan Radick problem. I don't know if they need

better interior guys. Derek Brown, Morgan Fox, Bravely and Roy, like they have some bodies up there. But they, at its core, if this defense is going to stick in the league, it's got to be able to take away the wide zone run.

And it simply has not for the Panthers so far this year. You know, I don't know if Nora and I have many thoughts on this game. You're the one who wanted to bring it up. I was bad to say, you guys, you guys don't seem as impassioned about the wide zone offense as I am here. The love for the defense. It's okay. I'll get over it.

Ben, you're just, I mean, oh, oh, Kirk Cousins, when not pressured and in a low profile situation was a good productive quarterback. Just so the list of knows, just so the listener knows, we have the headline and then we have six games that we hit in the spurlatives, obviously. And this one was touch and go, whether or not we were going to talk about it. And there was not a whole lot of interest from Nora and I on this particular. a game, but Ben was in. Oh, excuse me. Let's let's quickly, let's pivot to Colts Texans. What do we think about Colts Texans?

There was a guy. I joked about how that game wasn't really happening. There was a guy. There was a guy who texted me or tweeted at me and he said, I was at that game and I fell asleep. And I'm thinking, okay, maybe he was like in the upper deck and hung over. And I said, where were you? And he said, I was right next to the end zone 17th row. I said, okay, that sounds about right. Just falling asleep during a Texan's game. guys, Sam Darnold called two consecutive timeouts, which is a delay of game penalty.

It's not good. Sam, he actually, he had like a couple moments in this game. I don't want to make it sound like it was all terrible. They had a couple nice drives. Sam Darnold makes me feel like he is just, he just has his hand hovering over a button that says, freak the fuck out. at like all times.

Yes. It is a stressful situation. I want him to be happy. Like, I really want him to be happy. I think he had a tough go of things. And I love a comeback. But it is just like that hand is over that button. And you just feel like he wants to press it with every cell in his being.

And it makes me nervous. I wanted to tweet. Twitter doesn't do all a sarcasm. Only Rissa Loh pulled it off correctly. I wanted to tweet a Rissalostow. I just want to say, you all ready to apologize. apologize to Adam Gase yet?

No. It's a very interesting dichotomy in Carolina, where on a play, either one of two things is happening on offense. A, the offensive line is giving up immediate pressure and Sam Donald is freaking out. Or B, the offensive line has not given up immediate pressure.

Sam Donald is surprised by this and subsequently is freaking out that it hasn't happened. So, you know, between a rock and a hard place here in terms of your quarterback managing the pocket. Do you think, you know, sometimes if you have a puppy, you get them those like thunder shirts that sort of hug them? No.

I would like to get Sam a thunder shirt. You could use a thunder shirt. I want to, this status from ESPN and I've been thinking about it for a while. So the Panthers were outscored 13 to nothing in the third quarter today. And this season, the offense bound scored 48 to 7 in the third quarter. And I'm curious if that's just a fluke or if that's because the Manning brothers have poked a whole in the idea there's any adjustments being made at half time doesn't exist adjustments are over adjustments are over party um not enough time guys are doing their own thing but i wonder if there's anything

you know like there's a whole thing like you see these teams that come out flat all the time coming out of locker or maybe they don't have a plan maybe don't have execution maybe they're not scripting it well um and i just found that to be quite odd and i actually can't explain it except that this team lacks juice right now so yeah i don't know about i don't know about the the quarter stuff either but i will say that in general, I'm trying to find reasons to be impressed by Matt Rule. I'd like to, I'd like to find one. Got nothing so far.

Smok? I hate smocks. The smocks piss me off. But also vests. I don't know why we call him smocks. I like calling out a smock. I believe Nora Prince iani is one who calls it a smock. Does it tie behind the neck? That's not a defining, that's an apron. Yeah, you're thinking of an apron.

You're thinking about an apron. Maybe that's fair. I don't really know what to smock I'll start calling this. I need you to apologize to Matt Ruhl, but I need you to apologize to the smock community. That's my bet.

I'm sorry to Luke. I will say this. I will say this. I was sorry to Dave Miranda. I did a slow news day with Jim Nance 10 days ago, and we did a whole thing on quarter zips. And I heard from a number of Panthers employees

who are really into quarter zips. And I think that if you live in Carolina, you just have to have, as Jim Nance calls it, a layer piece in some form or fashion. Whether that's a quarter zip, boy, that's a smock, an ape. He could do an apron if he wanted to.

It's just a different climate there. No, but I think it's very, I think it must be very quarter-sip oriented because everybody works for Bank of America. Or the Panther, or Phil Snow, or the Phil Snow. Right. Two, one of two options, both of which all roads lead in the same direction. All right. I'm giving my, uh, are we sure he's good award to the Miami Dolphins?

Which, I mean, listen, this can go to anybody at the Miami Dolphins right now. lost 23 to 20 Jacksonville Jaguar. Trevor Lawrence, best game is a pro 319 yards 1 touchdown. James Robinson 17 carries 73 yards. Tua in his return 329 yards 3 to 3 to 47 two touchdowns one interception. A 20 game losing streak has been snapped. There's a lot of qualifiers here with the dolphins. They did not have their top two cornerbacks. They were missing wide receivers. Tua was obviously having his first game back since being on IR but they should not have lost this game.

A lot of end of game mistakes. The Dolphins took a timeout with five seconds left that changed the course of the end of the game. We'll get to that in a second. Barry Jackson from the Miami Herald called it the worst timeout since the Joe Philbinera. That's what we're dealing with right now. This was a strange game that I think, you know, I think some of the dolphins media are now starting to question the entire rebuild, which Nora, you and I were doing a couple weeks

ago. I'm just wondering, like, is everything on track? Is everything, you know, with the continued ascension of Herbert, you can make the case that you can do so many things right. And the dolphins did. Now, they made some bad picks. They made some mistakes along the way. But if you don't get the quarterback, the quarterback is going to erase some of those mistakes. He's going to be the final piece of the puzzle, the biggest piece of the puzzle.

And I think you kind of see the limits of a multi-year rebuild if you don't pick the quarterback. I think that those sort of, that sort of drumbeat gets louder and louder at one and five right now. not a lot to like right now about the entire franchise. Ben Solek, anything stick out to you about this game at 9.30 in the morning in London. Yeah, no, I caught the end of it as I left church and I got like, you made the right decision, brother. Yeah, no, it was funny. I caught like the failed fourth down attempt and then there was an ugly sequence by the Jaguars. And I was like, oh, I missed nothing.

This is as I expected. The thing that I try to understand now with Miami is when we parcel out the blame, we have a and Brian Flores, who took over an extremely poor roster. And from the outside looking in, like I like the way that B-Flow handles himself, right? So they start 0-N-7 in their first seven games. They go 15 and 9 in the next 24 games, and now they're 1 in 6 in their last seven games.

So you look at that and you go, okay, it very much felt at the time that Flores took a bad group, got them amped up, got them believing they could compete, believing they could play. Not like we're seeing like Joe, judge tried to do in New York, Dan Campbell tried to do it in Detroit, and he crested that hill. And he got a group of players who were struggling. He got them co-last, he got them in a system,

and they won a few games in a division of one, got some Ryan Fitzpatrick play cool. And now, beyond that hill, now that that cell kind of peters out, you can't always be that team. We can't always be the underdogs, the plucky guys, whatever. He's struggling from a system perspective to get talent out on the field and beating the better teams. but then also you look at Chris Greer's drafts and you go, did they even get talent? Did they really add players? Like they've got, okay, Byron Jones

and Free Agency and that's awesome and everybody retains Xavier and Howard, excellent. That offensive line remains arguably the worst offensive line in the league and they've tried a lot to make it better. It's not happening. Wide receiver has been a revolving door of players who are oft injured

and who are miscast in roles. They spent such an early pick on Jalen Waddle who they apparently refused to target more than six yards down the field, running back remains by committee for the second year in a row and they seem to not be able to figure out their committee every time Miles Gaskin gets the ball, he does good stuff and then after he has a good game, they bench him.

I don't really know why that's happening. So there's blame to go around on both the personnel and on the coaching side, and it's going to be difficult for ownership to, I think, identify who really needs to be retained both from a GM and head coach perspective but also the trickle-down effect of your position of coaches and some of the players on your roster

who aren't being put in good safety. situations to succeed. So I don't think Flores is a bad coach. He had a really bad game, made some poor game management decisions, but I don't think he's a bad coach because my view is obstructed by where the roster is right now. The problem is Miami spent all their capital. By this point, that was not supposed to be the case, and it still is. So now you have to start asking, do we reset this clock or not. Right. So there were so many different mistakes that they made at the end of the game. Went 12-yard reception by Chanel, timeout Jacksonville, time-out Miami, nine-yard reception, and Lawrence Dichinald and then the kick.

And so I think that now we start to wonder where this all goes from here. Nora, the dolphins. Well, so if we're doing the blame pie thing and the thing that we're blaming the pieces of the pie for is why the rebuild is off the rails, I think my number one is, and you can sort of put one and two together, but I think number one is just the number of high level draft picks that have yet to pan out. Most of those are offensive linemen. They've really, really, really tried to spend there through the draft.

And it just has not worked. They are basically questioning every position on that offensive line. And those are high level draft picks that they really went for. Number two, kind of goes into this. That's that you don't know if you got the right quarterback. I mean, it feels like you got the wrong one when you compared it to Herbert. But just in terms of Ken Tua, be a long-term answer there.

That to me feels more likely to be a no than yes. And because of the injuries, I think there's still time to turn that around. The jury should still be out, but I don't feel good about that if I'm the Dolphins right now. Then number three is that I think you have a head coach. And I am in some ways biased in this because I felt like I got to see Brian Flores up close in New England just be an incredible leader for that team and add value in a lot of ways that would translate to, in particular, getting a young developing roster up to speed, which we saw at least in a small sample size, him do initially.

I do think you have a head coach who I really believe that he is those things. Like, I think he has them, and maybe this is starting to wane because it's been such a tough start to the season, but I think he gets them to believe that they're a good team that they're capable of winning games. I think that he's good in public. he's level-headed. I don't think he's very good in games right now. He threw the challenge flag twice and was wrong on both of them in this game. That's something that's happened before.

He doesn't have a great look. Clearly some people are questioning whether or not the Brandon Staley's of the world are doing it right. I like to think that they are. He doesn't have a great record in terms of going for fourth downs, the aggressiveness stuff. he's a first time head coach, right? Everybody's going to have weaknesses. Maybe those can get fixed. Maybe they can't.

But I do think that there's a pretty clear issue right now. And in some ways, if you wanted to put a positive spin on that, it's like, okay, you can learn those things. You can get somebody in the booth. Have someone talk to you. Like, that's a fixable thing. But while I still believe that he's a good, I don't like saying culture guy, but that's sort of what I'm driving at. I don't think he's a great in-game coach right now. And when you're sort of on that razor's edge of we got to keep the wheels on the track to the extent that we can

hear, that's tough because this could have been a win and it ends up a loss. And there's a couple in-game situational decisions that go the wrong way. You have to deal with a lot more questions and a lot more uncertainty than if just those couple of things had been the opposite. So I certainly don't think that this is like a number one problem for the dolphins, but I do think that it is a problem. Yeah. And listen, I could spend an hour time with the dolphins. We're going to move on. But this

is, these are the type of games you have to win. And like, there's built any excuses here, but don't lose to the Jaguars. Like, you're not in the rowing in the right direction. Like, he just made Urban Meyer look very smart. Urban Meyer is just begging to be fired and is doing

nothing to suggest he's an NFL head coach. And Brian Flores, like, let me hand Urban Meyer this win. All right, Nora, Packers 24, Bears 14. All right. So this is just the Aaron Rogers Loves Revenge Award. This is just delicious. Fun game, the most fun part of it, by far, was that Aaron Rogers, after scrambling for a touchdown in the fourth quarter,

made it a two-score game. He was picked up by microphones and cameras on the broadcast, shouting into the stands, I own you. All my fucking life, I own you. I still own you. I still own you.

Now, this is Aaron Rogers shouting at a soldier field crowd. He's beaten the Bears five times in a row. After the game, this is the part. I mean, that's just spectacular, first of all, right? Like, that is good drama.

We love to see it. Thank you, Aaron Rogers. After the game, this is where I think it gets truly spectacular. He tells the Green Bay media that he, quote, blacked out in a good way. And then explains that before

he yelled that, he said, I looked up in the stands and all I saw was a lady giving me the double bird. So here's what we have. We have Aaron Rogers scoring a touchdown, his team in control of the game,

and he looks up and he sees just some Bears fan flipping him off. And he goes, I am going to existentially crush you and the organization that you are here in support of. And I am going to do it so mindlessly that I barely remember it afterwards. And that to me is something that I feel should be meditated on. Aaron Rogers is great. I think Aaron Rogers has taught us all a valuable lesson this season, which is that sometimes passive aggression. and don't get me wrong,

Aaron Rogers can do that too. Sometimes passive aggression is just nowhere near as fun as downright aggression. Like when he gets up on that press conference podium and says, I do not like the general manager. Or when he tells some unsuspecting Bears fan that he owns the Chicago Bears franchise.

And always have. And always has and probably always will. Aaron Rogers is great. I rest my case. Ben ever blacked out? in a good way? I don't think so. I don't remember most of my wedding,

but I was crying the whole time. You were? Oh, yeah. I cried at TV weddings. At a wedding officiated by my own father, yeah, I webbed the entire. Okay. I was worried about my wedding,

so I chewed gum. I went old full Pete Carroll. Oh. I got to the back of the church. I took one look at my lovely wife. It looked very beautiful. confirmed it was the woman I expected and then didn't look at her for the rest of the service.

Guys couldn't handle it. You just couldn't handle it. Yeah, that's the class I've ever gotten. So an unmarried Aaron Rogers has to do this because he's never cried through a wedding, is what you're saying. Well, you don't need to... I am unmarried and I was at a wedding, I was at a wedding this weekend where I was told not to open the program

because I was going to, like, my friends were like, please keep it together just at least until the ceremony begins. And then I started looking at the program. and they were like, don't open that, don't read that. It's not going to go well. I read the program and began to cry and did not stop for a very long time.

I empathized with that struggle. Now, Aaron Rogers. I love villainy. It's very good. It's very good for sports. It's good for enjoyment. I'll never forget. I'm a big college softball fan.

And there was a college softball, like everybody, they all know each other. They're all friends. And then there was one girl, Samantha Scha, she was a pitcher for Oklahoma State, and she just hated everyone. And it just made the game so much better. And it was a moment which I learned to appreciate the villainy of a star player,

just being like, I hate you, I hate all of you, and I'm better than all of you. And that is an extremely engaging figure to watch and enjoy. You have 10 seconds. Tell me what I need to know with the current state of college softball. The Oklahoma Sooners are the New England Patriots Brady era of college softball. and everyone in Texas and Oklahoma's recruiting like crazy to try to beat them and they still can't and it's delightful to watch as a sooner fan I should say. Okay.

Now, continue with the Packers. Yes. So the Rogers villainy is something that I think is a lot of fun. It's great when he's at the peak of his game and screaming at Bears fans. That is when he is the most enjoyable player to watch. The Packers, I talked a little bit about this last week, how they're still kind of trying to settle into an identity on offense. They've got a really nice thing going with the two-headed backfield.

and I think that that running game is continuing to kind of power this engine, even as this passing game tries to figure stuff out. The Bears did a lot of work taking away Devante Adams. He got one explosive catch at the end of the game, but generally a quiet game for Devante. And that I think is the model, right? You take away Adams and this passing game is a little bit disjointed. It's still like high completion percentage,

but it's just not as explosive. It's not as easy, not as effortless, not as surgical. But they're able to lean on that running game. Even with another injury up front to Josh Myers, the center, bears have a had to beat up defensive line and they're able to take advantage. So the Packers, five and one now after that Saints lost. They've won five in a row. Their defense is playing better ball.

They're running the football better. And again, like Myers got hurt, but presumably they're getting healthier. David Bakhtiari soon to come back, Marcus Vald of Scantling soon to come back. Packers team is very much on the upswing. We're not seeing full domination. So we're not really talking about them as like top NFC contender, but just steady, controlled wins down the board. impressive writing of the ship in Green Bay, in my opinion.

We're seeing full domination of the Bears. I mean, it was tight there for most of the game. I mean, over a long period of time. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right, right, right. After the game, Matt Nagy said the Bears need to, quote, understand the why of how this happened today. I've got some clues, Matt.

Any Justin Fields notes, Ben Solac or Norfolk's guy? Yeah, the box score keeps telling us he's not playing that well. And I watch him and I'm like, that's how it's supposed to look. Is he like, is it a long-ed- Anti-Curthousins? Anti-Curthousins? Similar in that way, absolutely. Still dealing with some drops.

They don't have the best wide receiver core. Obviously, the line is still banged up. Took four sacks, a couple of them were bad, through a pick. It was on a play. He thought he had a free play. So he launched it to the back of the end zone. And it got picked off, and it turns out he didn't. The clear off-sides was not called.

So two picks in last four games. It's a, believe, free play and a typical ball line of scrimmage. Risk averse football. able to move the ball with some clutch third downs, able to run it, tough as nails back there, bounces back from hits. Like,

if you were in a regular football environment, not whatever the Bears have done with their quarterback situation for the last couple years, you would be looking at your rookie and be like, we feel really good about our future. As it is,

you're like, dear God, let's protect this guy and also what are we doing at head coach. But in a vacuum, you're looking at feels like going, we picked a good one. We got a right one here. He's going to be able to play really good ball.

I think that, again, 14 points belies just how well this this offense is playing. Cleo Herbert as well looks like he's legit. Like they've got young guys to build around. All right. Ben Solac. Rams at Giants. This is another game that you plucked from obscurity because you had to take.

You have the floor. You told me to do this one, I feel like. No, no, no. You said I have a giant. Whoa, whoa. You had, no, you said, we were going to correct the record here. You said you had a Giants offense take. And we were going through all the other possibilities.

And I was like, you know what, for our sixth game, I said, quote, I'd like to see, I'd like to see Ben take a sledgehammer to some dorks. I don't even know who you're going to do. Just let it rip, baby. Guys, this can't be how we finally talk about Daniel Jones. Oh, no. And it is a little bit unfair, right? I don't think Daniel Jones is a dork.

Pulled off a quarter zip in the post game press conference. I saw it looked great. So on a week by week perspective in terms of EPA per dropback, Jones in weeks one through 0.14.12.2.2.6.15.9.8. Those are good games. Those are fringe top 12, top 14 performances. Did you just do like the first nine digits of pie, Ben? That was lightning fast. Because the numbers aren't important. It's just that they were good. And then 0.007, so very average performance in week five when he was on the field and then minus 0.22. We had a very traditional Daniel Jones game today. Unfortunately so. He threw three interceptions.

one of them wasn't too bad. Two were absolutely terrible. He fumbled the ball twice. One was recovered. And it's worth noting because there's been a lot of very interesting editing of history in terms of Giants fans

like talking about this game. The Giants were up 3 in the second quarter and then Daniel Jones started turning the ball over and then all of a sudden they were down 21 to 3. Make no bones about it. The number one problem in this game for the Giants was Daniel Jones. To Norris point,

and those earlier EPA plays. It was not previously, but in this game it was. Offensive line had some injuries, of course. Yes, they were getting early pressure, but Jones went back to his old ways. What many Giants fans believed he had exercised in terms of the turnovers, returned. So four sacks, three interceptions,

then the two fumbles. Daniel Jones now, you know, the last three seasons of giant football had been one in five, six, and ten, four and twelve. So for four years then, under David Gettleman, adding the 5 and 11, 2018 season,

they're 16 and 38, so they're winning about 30% of their games. For two years under Joe Judge, they are 7 and 15, so they're winning about 33% of their games. All of this to say, that in the post-game presser today,

Joe Judge was asked, what do you tell the team, how do you motivate them, how do you capture their attention after 1 and 5? Because at this point, it's basically a lost season. And he said,

there's a lot of ball left to be played. No, there isn't. plenty of ball has been played with your general manager, your quarterback, and you as the head coach. We know what you are. We know what the team is. You beat the Washington football team twice a year.

And then other than that, you don't really do, Jack. Joe Judge, Logan Ryan communicated at the podium that one of the messages Joe Judge sent to the team at the halftime locker room was that no roster spots are guaranteed. All roster spots are up for grabs. You got to compete. Yeah, Joe, Judge.

Not all spots are guaranteed. indeed, namely yours. And then finally, he played Daniel Jones down 38 to 3 in the fourth quarter behind an offensive line with multiple starters out with injury, was asked about it and said, we're going to compete for 60 minutes. No, you didn't. You were down 38 to 3. Team down 38 to 3 didn't compete for 60 minutes because you got, ran out of your own building. So again, like talking about like Brian Flores and kind of, they took over a really rough roster, but then was able to establish at least some idea of a competitive and winning culture, and then that translated into production. Joe Judge continues to talk about a tough, hard-nosed competitive team,

and then that team does not show up on the field. This is a very highly paid defense, James Bradbury, Leonard Williams. Williams had one of his better games of the season. He showed up, but Bradbury's been struggling. Adori Jackson has not been an impact player. Leonard Williams was not a high caliber player throughout the season. I know he had a multi-sac game today, but in general. And then our offense, everybody on this offense,

everybody is a Dave Gettleman acquisition. Evan Ingram and Sterling Shepard are the only two significant players who aren't. The whole offense aligned, starters and backups who've been playing are Dave Gelleman acquisitions. They don't play well. So it's a question of what am I hanging my hat on here? They should have given up a fake punt. This is ex-special teams coach Joe Judge. They didn't have anybody over the gunner.

It only got called back because of it supports my conduct penalty. And Joe Judge, there's a great cut of him on the sideline screaming. watch for the fake, watch for the fake. Put someone over the gunner. And it doesn't matter you're yelling, watch for the fake. Putting a player there. That's how you avoid the fake. What are we talking about?

So I continue to enjoy the complete lack of self-awareness around Giants brass whenever they get in front of a microphone. Dave Gettleman believes he's doing it the right way and Joe Judge believes he's doing it the right way. There is incontrovertible evidence in the win-loss column that they aren't. And that reality is going to dawn, hopefully, in New York ownership by the end of the season. Because the change needs to be made.

I don't see how it, I don't see how it cannot. This is Dave Gettleman's team. Right. They've not gotten better. They've gotten worse. Everything that Dave Gettleman has said that they're capable of doing has been proven not to be true. Right. Joe Judge was not a good hire.

He was a little, he's been a little bit better than. So I think people thought he was a disaster because he's unproven. and then he was a little bit better than that. Like, I mean, this is a separate conversation here. But I'm in my aunt and uncle's house, and they're both huge football team fans, Washington football team. And they're like, well, he's so much better than we thought he was going to be. But it's like, you don't get an award for that.

You don't get an award for being better than awful, right? Like, they'd be better than, well, we thought this guy was a joke. He's not a joke. Okay. So Joe, Judge, congratulations, you're not a joke, but it doesn't make you good football coach. Yeah. And that's why we need to move on.

Right. And that's the thing is, like, even with Daniel Jones, who the first four weeks of the season were like arguably one of his best stretches. You can't sit here and say honestly as a team, yeah, we're going to fire our general manager, fire our head coach, reload the roster, but then also get Daniel Jones a second contract

based off what we think he might be becoming now that we're in year three. That's the thing. Even if Daniel Jones is rounding out, he ain't worth the risk in New York because there's not going to be stability here. You're not going to be able to build around him because this team's going to get torn down

before it gets rebuilt. And so even if you're feeling good about Daniel Jones, which I'm still very tepid on that idea, let him go sign his second contract somewhere else. Much rather take the risk on a guy being paid a rookie deal than a guy being paid a second deal. So to me, the Giants are, again, in arguably, unavoidably in hard reset mode.

And this season is proof of that. I want to tell one second about Seth Wickershap's book, which is really, really good. And in it, he says that Jimmy Johnson told Bill Belichick, If you just sit back that don't do anything, just sit back, don't do anything, have a margarita, that 20 of the 32 teams will remove themselves some competition by just screwing up, being stupid. That's beautiful. And what's interesting to me is that for most of NFL history, and recently, quite frankly,

the Giants were never in that 20. The Giants were almost always, with a couple of exceptions. Now, the Giants have been bad, but most of the time, they've at least been on track to be in the 12th and have not removed and have made good decisions, have made good hires. Whether that's Bill Parcell, having Bill Belichick his defensive coordinator, Tom Coughlin era was really good. Even the bad, if you want to say Jim Faw was bad, fine, he made a Super Bowl. The fact that they are this bad is mind-boggling to me. The fact that we have no expectations for them, that Dave Yettleman has been. blown the draft over and over and over has had no understanding of player value.

And all of the things, somebody apologized to me on Twitter because they went at me when I said Gettelman was a joke. And I say, listen, there's no, don't, no one needs to apologize here. We're all educated guessing. But what I will say is I was about 90% confident when I was making fun of Dave Gettleman four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, that this wasn't going to work out. Sometimes you're like, oh, wow, man, I'm really going at Zach Taylor here. I hope Zach Taylor doesn't come out to be like totally prove me wrong.

You're a little bit on the fence about it. Adam Gase, Dave Gettleman, those are the guys where you're not on the fence about your takes. You're like, okay, I can say whatever I want about these guys because it's going to be completely proven true. And it's mind-boggling to me the Giants have let it get to this point. And that's my Giants take. Norak, Daniel Jones. Yeah. You don't re-sign him.

I think it's pretty obvious. I just don't really know what National Football League this conversation belongs in, right? because it just seems like somehow because the Giants have had stable ownership for a long time and playing a big media market and everybody knows who they are and they won some Super Bowls, it's like, well, slow and steady, you don't get four or five years. Like you just don't. Nobody does unless like, unless you're Bill Belichick. Like you just don't get that much time to prove yourself.

And the time is basically up and they just haven't done it. Yeah. Dave Gettleman himself when he drafted Daniel Jones got, got me. massive criticism for it said to Peter King, check in with me in three years and see where we are then. This is year three. Knock, knock, Dave.

Knock, knock, brother. Yeah. Ah, it's the, uh, me reaping, me selling me.

Aha, the consequences of my own actions. Behold. Well, look what we have here. All right, it's time for Ruizans. Wow.

Kick me out, will you? All right. Now it's time to bring in Stephen Ruiz for Ruizens report. retrospective. You focused on the chiefs. They were in Washington today. You were also in Washington today. You got the local broadcast. A lot to unpack, Steve. Yeah, I hadn't gotten what NFTs were all about until today, until the Spotrak tweet about Patrick Mahomes' contract. I want to own that tweet. So let's back up here and tell the people who are not as online as us,

happened today. So Spotrack is a contract website. And a lot of times what their commentary will be is kind of like, it's either nuts and bolts contract stuff or it'll be like Carson Wentz has $40 million in dead money if he's released next week, that kind of stuff, right? It's very dry. It's like the C-SPAN. It's sub-tweedy. It's sub-tweedy oftentimes because you need to know. The only reason you need to know contract stuff is if it's bad, normally, normally. If a contract is done. And in the first or second quarter, after Mahomes threw under a bad interception, we'll call it a bad interception because it was, they tweeted about how much he has due in 2022 and 2023. And people correctly were just like, dude, what? Like, what? We're doing this?

We're doing the, when can the chief to get out of Patrick Mahomes' contract discourse? course. I want to be the only one that can interact with that tweet. I want to be the only one that can do bits based off of it. I want to be the only one that could, like, I understand what it. Like the Wu-Tang album. Yeah. Yeah.

I want to be that. Martin Schreley. Yeah. We've got, we've got like thousands, thousands of those weird power generators they use for crypto and NFTs. And it's just so Stephen Ruiz can quote tweet Spotrack. Ruiz is in a basement.

Just hopping on the pod for Ruizans. and mining Bitcoin so that he can be the sole possessor of the Mahomes contract. But here's the thing, like, we all are kind of guilty of this because we were all like, what's wrong with the chief's offense? And like coming into the week, they were number one in points per drive by a wide margin, number one in yards per drive by a wide margin. Patrick Mulal's was like at the top of all the advanced metrics. There's nothing wrong with it.

They score a bunch of points every week. And they just turn the ball over at the worst times possible. and that happened again, and that's why we got all these tweets in the first half, because they had three turnovers with, I think it was inside Washington's 30 yard line, and now they have 10 on the season in opponent's territory, second place on the list, Jaguars with only six. Okay. So let's talk by the chiefs here.

Is there anything that actually you are worried about with them from an offensive standpoint, first of all? there are concerns, but there are concerns, like in the context of what we think of when we think of achieves. Right. And just he has intercept. He's throwing interceptions. And some of them in the case of the Tyree Kill one today was, you know, it went through his fingers

basically. And like, what are you going to do if you're Mahomes? Some of them have been bad. But we're judging it against one of the best and most efficient offenses in the history of the sport, right? And it still is the most efficient offense in the sport. Right. even with these turnovers.

And I don't know. I just don't have any issues with the offense. And I really am not overly concerned about the defense. Like the defense stinks, but not in a way that we haven't seen this chief's defense stink before during the Mahomes era. And like I'm thinking back back to 2018 when the defense was one of the worst in the league. They still made the AFC championship game and lost in overtime.

I think this defense is going to be better when they get Chris Jones back. I think they're missing a starting corner. I think wards out. it's going to be better in the second half. I'm totally fine with the Chiefs. Like, I think they're going to still make the Super Bowl. Is the Super Bowl? Okay.

So why are you laughing about the Chiefs? No, no, no. It's funny because they're three and three and we're just like, oh, man, they're going to beat the seven seed and they're going to beat everybody in the playoffs. And then you just came in and instead of, like, qualifying the take, you were just like, oh, they're going to make the Super Bowl.

It's just funny to me, I enjoy the confidence of, of just saying it was out a bunch of qualifiers like Nora and I. I disagree with those a little bit. I think it's a problem for them. Get him, Nora. Get him. So Mahomes had six turnovers all of last season. And he has six now.

Obviously, that's not great. The six last season was lucky. It was both the product of him playing incredibly good football and also turnovers are kind of random. And he got lucky on a few of those. This is a quarterback who is the most valuable player in the sport right now. but who also has more of a tendency to take some risks, which a player of his caliber should, right? Like there's more good than bad that comes to bad,

but who has a tendency to take risks and make risky throws that didn't show up last season. If you have that defense, it is a problem to give the other team the ball back as often as they are doing it right now. They're near the bottom of the league in turnover differential. And I still feel like when, If the other team gets the ball back, they're going to score like half the time. I think it's a bit of an issue.

I think they've got a little bit of an issue. I mean, do I think they're a bad team all of a sudden? No, but I think they've got a little bit of an issue. I think they're, you know, I think there's two to three teams that are better than them in the AFC right now. And that hasn't really been true, even in years when they've lost. It's been like they aren't quite seasoned enough or they were still trying to figure it out, but there were still, there was still something about them that was like,

oh, no, this is the best team. I don't know that they're quite there anymore. I'm, I'm, I think I'm more worried about the chiefs still than you guys. Stephen, I'm building a culture of competition. You have the floor to own Norris take. I think this is the product of two things. One, the only time we've seen the chiefs on Sunday night football was their worst game of the season against the bills last week. And then two, everyone saw that crazy Mahomes interception on Red Zone, because I think Red Zone was in on the game when it happened. I think that's like adding to this perception. Like their offense is still, before this, I think even with this week,

it was better than it was in 2018, which was like the peak of their offense. And I do think where the turnovers are happening matter, and they're all happening in the opponent's area, which helps the defense a little bit in that regard. So it's not like they're giving the defense short fields. The opposing offense still has to go 70 yards to score to take advantage of these turnovers. So that's why I think Mahomes.

Mahomes is good situationally. Like he knows that's what would happen if he takes a risk and throws a pick. I don't think that they're like, this is a great team, right? Like this is the sort of nuance of this. The bar is very high. Yeah. Conversation.

But I just think, so I think I don't have the notes in front of me. But Mallory and I were talking about this last week. Where they are in offensive and defensive DVOA, just the extreme difference in terms of being that good on offense and that bad on defense. there was like only one other team that had had those extremes. The team went like nine and seven and I think won one playoff game. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen to the chiefs, but like if if that is what the numbers are telling us is sort of what could happen when you're in this type of territory,

that's not great for them, right? Like, yes, we have to acknowledge when we talk about it, how high of a bar they've set. They've also set that bar. They want to clear the bar. So it's not, it's, I don't think that's totally like arbitrary. No, I think it's a valid concern that the defense is so bad that maybe Mahomes is turning the ball over because he feels like he has to score on every possession to help the defense. And this is my midweek take. And we talk about it with, I talked with Mina on Wednesday.

Daniel Jeremiah said he missed on Mahomes in the draft because he was, he didn't realize he was trying to do too much. And so what happens when Mahomes is trying to do too much? That worries me a little bit. Yeah. That's the best way to put it. I think I am worried a little bit. Yeah, I would be more concerned if these weren't like the goofiest turnovers you've ever seen. Like if you did a compilation of the turnovers, they are like legitimately like the goofiest turnovers you will ever see.

It's not, they are like turnovers in general are kind of fluky, but these are extra fluky. It needs like the Nickelodeon theme underneath the highlight real. Right. MVP level. You put yakety sacks to a compilation of their turnovers here, you're getting at least like 5,000 links on Twitter, I'm telling you. You should do it.

Come on, Rudy. Do it tomorrow. That's your thing. That is my thing. Compilations is funny music. All right, anything else about this game that people need now? I feel like we as an NFL watching community

have just kind of given Washington a past for starting Tyler Hineke, every week. Like, get a real NFL quarterback. Taylor? Taylor? Like, I just...

Should we just call him Tyler now? Taylor? I don't even know which one it is. I remember, like, three weeks ago, I realized which one it was,

and I was like, oh, I had been calling him the wrong one, but apparently I'm still calling him the wrong one. I just told you the right one, and then by the end of the sentence, had reverted to doing the wrong one myself. I still don't know which one it is.

Taylor, I, Nike. So you're declaring nothing, nothing to worry about with the Chiefs and Malbes? The offense, no. The defense is bad. It's bad. But the defense is still Super Bowl caliber for you,

given what the offense can bring. Right now, no, but by December, I expect it to be better. Like, defense is very volatile, and I don't think what happens in the first half is really going to matter what that is going to affect what happens in the second half. I think Spags will figure out something by December.

And if they're just like 20th in the league by December, that's enough. Right, exactly. That's what, that's what, I don't know what they are right now, but that was when the Cowboys went from 28th to 16th in one year, and now the Cowboys might make the Super Bowl. Schematically, so everybody talked about the Daniel Sorons and the one Thorne Hill changed before the game. Did the defense do anything that impressed you? They got a little bit better. I mean, listen, I know going against Heineke, you can't really tell anything. But was there anything where you said, okay, this, this looks like it might work.

No, I don't think you take any positive. it from that game defensively just because of who you were playing, the pass rush still isn't very good. Chris Jones isn't there. And I do think they were tighter in coverage or weren't as many wide open passes, but maybe that was just Heinrichi not knowing where to go to fall. I don't know. It's hard to say.

All right. Chiefs offense, total exoneration. They're still going to the Super Bowl. Thanks, buddy. See you this week. All right. All right. We're getting out of here with a listener question.

This one is from Will. Is there a coaching equivalent to the Ewing theory? Because if so, John Gruden is on that list. No, I think it's still the Ewing theory if it's coaching. But what we saw, and listen, this is early, early returns. It was not against a premium opponent, but it was Raiders 34. Broncos 24. Derek Carr had 341 yards, two touchdowns, 18 to 27 passing.

He looked pretty good. This Raiders team, post-Gruden, post-everything, their outlawful. look as what, Nora? So I guess my reaction to that question, to your question, the reader question, is basically that players are good at compartmentalizing. They've obviously been through a lot there. I don't think it's really either, right?

I don't think that they are jelling together and reacting to the circumstances that they didn't choose, but were suddenly in. And I don't think that it's really like, you know, addition by subtraction. I think it's just sort of this is a big group of professional football players who had been up and down

and had done some good things and weren't playing a premium opponent and there you go. I think to the extent that it's an interesting question. I think it's more of a long-term question. I think it's just kind of like in terms of today, the Raiders play it a good game. Yeah.

So I'm in agreement with you about especially the opponent and the kind of the week that they had, which, I mean, it was one day that he resigned. I would say that from a organizational standpoint, they get to, I would assume, enact Mike Mayox's vision, which we get to find out what that is. I'm not ready to say either way, whether or not Mayox is going to be some great GM. And we don't even know, by the way, people, you know, oh, they just do the, they just draft Clemson or Alabama players from the national championship game, and that's it, like, whatever. Like, that could have been Gruden, you know.

Mayak is a pretty smart football guy. I've talked to him a handful of times. People who know him say he's brilliant. And I think that some of the stuff gets overblown about, oh, he said this about, you know, he said this about this quarterback or he would have rather had quarterback A over quarterback B and it turned out to not be the case. Like, listen, if you made every single GM show their big board,

there'd be a lot of mistakes on there, a lot of mistakes. I mean, like, by the way, the Cowboys would rather have had Connor Cook than Dak Prescott because they wanted, they liked Cook's college offense more, okay? Like, Paxton Lynch, another example. Like, sometimes things happen in a way they weren't intended to and they work out. So the Mayock thing to me is interesting to see his philosophy. But what I'll say is that, you know, I don't think Gruden was doing such a great job here that they won't get better.

I mean, there's probably, they were mired in mediocrity. So I think they'll get better because John Gruden was going to be their coach for the next seven years. And I didn't just expect much of that. So it will be, there's so many serious things that we've talked about it on a number of pods now. But I think the biggest thing from an organizational standpoint is they'll probably get better because I just didn't believe in Gruden's vision. So that's that. All right. Thank you to Ben, Nora, who's still on the line.

Stephen Ruiz and Arjuna Ramikobole. and Isaiah Blakely for the production help. This has been the Ringer NFL show the Ringer podcast Network. The next podcast on this feed is going to be Tuesday. James Jones, Jason Goff, and Ryan Jazeer with the players podcast. I'm back on Wednesday, diving into a deep topic on the NFL. Don't know what that is yet. Thursday, Mallory and Nora will be back.

Nora, what are you going to talk about on Thursday? We're going to figure that out. I love that. It sounds like we got a lot of concrete plans for the feed this week. We might do some young quarterbacks. We might do that next week. do something else this week. Stay tuned.

All right. It's been the Ringanafellow show on the Ringer Podcast Network.