The Ringer NFL Show - Week 7 Recap: Chiefs Pull Away from the Niners, Seahawks Are Atop the NFC West, and the Bengals Offense is Back | The Ringer NFL Recap Show

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

Nora and Steven are joined by Ben Solak to discuss the Chiefs' win over the Niners(2:35). Then, Nora and Steven pick their winners and losers for the week, including the Seahawks, Bengals, Colts, and more (25:33). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz Guest: Ben Solak Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Call me sentimental, but to me, the most joyful moment in sports is the soccer goal. And when that goal happens at the World Cup, well, it's pretty good. I'm Brian Phillips. With the 22 men's World Cup approaching, I'm making a podcast called 22 goals on the Ringer Podcast Network. It's about 22 of the most fire emoji goals in the history of the tournament. We're going to have so much fun. NFL Sunday Recap Show. I'm Norr Pityadi.

Week seven, if you can believe that Sunday is in the books. And as always, I'm here with Benjamin Solek and Stephen Ruiz. Stephen, how is your football Sunday today? It was bad. This week lived up to the hype. It was like everyone feared it was going to be it. I mean, they know what they saw. I'm not going to lie to the people.

Stephen slacked me and Ben earlier this afternoon and said, this week lived up to the hype and then in parentheses, is derogatory. I enjoyed this week. I like, it was a good week of football. I had a good time. And the Eagles were playing.

You won your bets? You won your bets? Is that why? I mean, that's every week. Watch your mouth. But yeah, no,

I was a good week. I watched Lions Cowboys. It was my local game here in Michigan. That was a fun one. Seahawks Chargers was a good time. I'm loving the Seahawks hype. Niners, Chiefs about to talk about was a lot of fun.

That was a great week. It's just mine and Stevens differing perspectives on the world. It's like the dueling personality is on either shoulder. It's really good to, it's good energy for the pod. Ben, with the Eagles on a buy,

were there any teams that you felt like you're able to sort of catch up with this week? Not really. Because like most of my day, Monday is just kind of catching up with the games. All of them that I missed. No film left to grind. No, yeah,

he's seen them all. No, but there's certainly an experience of watching a team live versus watching them on film. We watch them on film and you're like, the Texans are abysmal. And then, like, we were watching the line and you're like, all right, Davis Mills, we got something cooking here.

And then they're like, lose by 18, obviously. But you kind of feel a little more in the moment, certainly. The film is a little bit too clinical, too surgical. Watching Football Live is just letting your emotions trick you over and over again. It actually explains a lot about how opinions are formed. Speaking of watching football live, I presume all of us saw a good bit of the Chiefs beating the 49ers of 44 to 23. that's going to be the subject of our headline this week.

Ben, what did you feel like you learned from this one? I think that as Stephen said on the Friday show, that we might get in this game a blueprint from Domeko Ryan's defensively on how to handle the chief's offense. And even if Domeco didn't have all the talent that was available to him, he would still kind of lay out the pieces. Like Domingo's a really good defensive coordinator. He could kind of give a bit of a script as to a way you could handle this offense.

I think the exact opposite. opposite thing happened. Yeah. Where they got everybody back. Right. The chiefs laid a blueprint for beating this defense. I like, Andy just reached back into like the classic mid-2010s bag of like,

are you facing a really good four down rush? Do you not want to deal with pressure from interior, like penetration players? Here's a screen. Here's a jet sweep. Here's like, you know, a third and one under center play action pass to the flat.

Like they just spammed like everything that Andy's seen over. three decades in the league of like, hey, if you just want Nick Bose's life to suck, and they kept cutting to Bose after these touchdown drives, and he's just walking back to the sideline, like, I just want to hit them. They're not blocking me, but they keep getting rid of it, and it's going to the flats. I don't know what to do. Like, the Chiefs were just, they had the opening drive interception. They had the end of first half drive in which they were, they had to attempt to field goal because they had a touchdown and get called back. Every other drive was a touchdown drive. It was as effortless as offenses looked for the Chiefs, and the

Chiefs were the best offense in the league by like EPA or dropback coming in this week. There was a great like, people told me the Chiefs offense was bad moment by like a lot of people after the game. Did they? Yeah. Did people tell you that? Yeah. This is a very classic like, oh, I thought the Chiefs were regressing.

Like, no, nobody said this. But whatever. This was, it was as effortless as you can imagine against a really, really good defense. They did such a good job neutralizing that front. And then that let them get their athletes into space one-on-one with the Niners. The Niners missed some tackles. 44 points. That's why I'm like a little hesitant to be like the chiefs are back.

Like, because we haven't seen this scoring output, even though they're like number one in EPA and like efficiency metrics. But this is like a classic four to five nickel defense that they were seen in 2015. And like Ben said, they just spammed all the old tricks. I don't think this is like a game that we could take a lot from going forward. I don't know if this is this means like the chiefs or because they had the downfield element this week. And that was new compared to the last. last like month or so. So even after seeing them in, I mean, obviously they lost the bills, but that felt like a

coin flip game in a lot of ways. This 49ers defense has been among the best in the league. Obviously, they were, they were really banged up for a few weeks and got a bunch of those guys back today. You don't feel like you can take any, take much away on the chief side from having those two games? I certainly do. I think they've been really impressive.

No, yeah, they definitely have. And I think they're going to be a top five offense all year. I don't know if it's going to look like this every week. It's not going to be like MVS having a huge game. I think that was the big difference between this week and the weeks we've seen over the last month. Sure. Which have still been good. It's still been good.

So on the 49er side then, they got Nick Bosa, Jimmy Ward, Therverius Ward, Funga, McGlinchy, all of those major pieces back in this lineup. Now, we don't, you know, obviously knowing what we know about Jimmy Garoppelow, we don't look at the 49ers and go, oh, you should beat the Chiefs, definitely. But the way that this got away from them, I think if anything was a little bit of an underperformance, particularly for the 49ers defense getting all of those pieces back. Did you feel the same way? And what do you think allowed the Chiefs other than them sort of knowing how to deal with how aggressive up feel? this defensive front wants to be unless that's just sort of the whole conversation.

What do you feel like the takeaway is for the 49ers defense? Stephen, you can take that. There's such a defense that relies on teamwork and synergy that I think the missed time and the missed practice reps probably matter, especially against an offense.

It seems like it's a bad matchup for them in hindsight. And they were clicking on, and when the chief's offense is clicking, it's hard to stop, especially when you've missed reps. Yeah. Yeah. I would say also, while the Niners did get healthier overall,

no Emmanuel Mosley in this game and losing Diomador-Lanora their nickel corner during this game, right? Like a big note that we've seen in defenses facing the chief so far the season is we're not really scared of Juju and MBS. Like you used to have like a wide receiver who scared us. That was Tyreek Hill. Now you Travis Kelsey, he's a tight end. We kind of know how we want to deal with him. and we feel like if you beat us with Juju and MvS, and you beat us with Jujun MVS,

well, the Niners were already not super great in terms of their position to play that way, just because corner's always been thin for them. But when they had Moseley, Ward, and Lenore this year, they were playing quite well in press man coverage. They won a man up on third downs, and they were doing a pretty good job.

Ward comes into the game, Gimpy, no Moseley on the torn ACL from last week, and then Lenore leaves during the game. MVS 111 receiving yards, Jujis and is just 24, right? If the Chiefs could have been generating all this production from their new top two receivers in the passing game, all year they would have. Right. They were able to do this against the Niners because their receivers were capable of beating the backups that the Niners had in.

That plus the, you know, Miko Harmon is going to score three touchdowns to them on Jet Sweeps games. Like they were so efficient in the red zone too. And that's where this, like Steven said, kind of base 425 nickel defense, really good between the 20s. and then you kind of go to just like match up and win with penetration inside the 20 and the chiefs just have a gadget play and they have a specific call for every single time they get down there like the Justin Watson touchdown

was a wrinkle off of the third and one Travis Kelsey conversion. There's like layers on layers and layers and you're just trying to be like simple and faster and better than everybody and against the chiefs with how much Andy throws at you, that's just like really hard to do. And I think the fact that Hardbin had such success

on those plays is just shows how bad of a matchup this was for this defense because like a four down defense typically wants to push run plays inside whereas like the new meta in the NFL is like clogging up gaps on the inside pushing things outside and the chiefs were able to get that and the 49ers didn't really have help out there what do you think is that so what's the antithesis of that what's like what's the good offense that the 49ers defense would love to play McVeigh. Okay. Yeah. Because one of the things that the chiefs offense does really well.

The Chiefs obviously can run crossers and do run crossers with success. But a lot of like the stuff they run with Kelsey, when he's aligned to the inside is outbreaking stuff. A lot of the crosses they run are underneath and they can run their outside vertical stuff to Mahomes. And they're also able to disrupt flow so much. They're running these sprint outs and they're throwing fast into the boundary,

getting outside the numbers. And then they run the sprint outs for them. They throw back side. Mahomes can do that. Nobody else can, yada, yada, whatever. What they don't really do is just like spam the intermediate middle. Sometimes they do if they have it, if they want it. but they don't need to live on that.

The McVe menu of offenses generally does. And if you want to take that away, you play quarters. And that's what this defense is based on. This is the base course defense. The Mahomes interception on the opening drive, I'm 98% sure, given the film that we have is a quarter's look. Steven's laughing at me, is it? Oh, I don't know.

It's based on that number. What was the percentage is based on? I'm fairly confident it's a quarter's look, but that's an in-breaking route from Skymore. That safety comes down. off the roof, either going to collision the catch point or beat the receiver to the catch point, take that off. So that route is like a McVeigh staple and that coverage is kind of how you beat it.

The other thing is you have Fred Warner. Nobody else can do this and take away the McVeigh defense because nobody else has Fred, right? And the chiefs did a good job not trying to deal with Fred. Not like beating Fred. They were just like, we're just not going to handle this. Yeah. We're going to run everything outbreaking from the inside. and we're not going to kind of run to this area

that field you police. And then they poll guys a lot in the running game. And they say to Fred Warner, you're 6, 3, 2, 30. You're not really built to take guy like, you know, Joe Tuny on a pole. We're going to try to play you really physical like that. And they found success doing so. When you said McVeigh, at first I heard Green Bay and I was a little

thrown for a loop. You know who else is really good at stopping the Green Bay offense? Everybody they play on Sundays. You mentioned Sky Moore, Ben. Do they need to find a different solution at pun return here because second fumbled return of the season today. Is this something that just needs more reps? He obviously didn't do it a lot in college or do you think that this is sort of this

this cannot go on this way? I think the idea of getting Skymore, who like his head didn't return punts in college, reps returning puns such that like maybe he could do that at a high level when you got to the playoffs was nice. Now that he lost you that helped lose you, Chief's game and also contributed to some of the very few points that the Niners scored of this game, which, like, they scored 22, but the Chief's defense really kind of sat on the Niners on like real drives. They had the turnover and the Holmes interception, and then they had the, the Skymore

turnover. Yeah, I would also start to say to Meekle like, hey, maybe, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, on the big games, the important games, it's Meekle time and we'll let Sky keep fielded them. Would that be okay with you if? Well, we'll let Sky keep folding them when we get like, you know, some bad team, like, the fucking years of the past. I don't get why they use him in that situation where you're like backed up because that's when you're not even going to get a return. So there's no like big play potential. It's like fair catch or let the ball bounce into the end zone. Team should have fair catch specialists.

Guys are just really good at judging where the ball roughly like all right. It's end over end. I'm at the 12 and a half. 68% chance to bounce in the end zone. I'm letting to bounce. We need guys like that. But I don't think that's possible. ball judges.

The bounce of a, like, you could get like a center fielder, but the bounce of a football is completely random. And that's, but that's when they, like, play with the spin is when they're trying to get it to check up. So it makes it even harder in that situation to catch a football. Footballs are weird, man. Yeah. Weirdly shaped object.

Yeah. Causes a lot of problems. The Skymoor thing for me is just like, the chiefs are so good and everything is so good, and Andy's so good. Andie's so good. And he's so good, whatever. That they just are allowed to do students. things that team shouldn't do.

Like, the running back rotation is officially and just like, I'm irate, but how am I supposed to complain? You just scored 44 points mode. But it's just like, there are two not very good backs and Isaiah Pacheco. This shouldn't be hard. To which one do you give the ball to?

But continue to be like, it's Jerich McKinnon time on this screen. And like, McKinney goes for 34 yards. Like, okay, great, whatever. Congrats to Joe Tunney. It's just, like, that thing, like the Skymoor thing, like they don't have to actually

care about personnel because the margins are just so wide because the pillars are so good. This game doesn't count for the run game. None of the stats should count. Okay. Pitch me on it. Because of the front they were facing. Like their outside zone run play from the gun worked for the first time in like four years. It hasn't worked since 2018 and it worked. The Niners interior was really rough in this game. They were good pass rush wise, but like no armstead, no Hurst to kind of, no kin law, like the usual influence out in the running game from the interior wasn't there. So do you think that that is solely because they're still missing those guys who are, they're banged up, they're out of the lineup, but those aren't season ending injuries.

They'll have those guys back at some point. Or do you think that we're seeing something that maybe tells us that when this defense came out so hot and looked like it could be, you know, best defense in the league type of thing? Was that a little bit of an overreaction or is it just the personnel? I would say both. Yeah. Somewhere in the middle. Yeah. I would say like, firstly and foremostly, Pacheco and Edwards were 14 carries for 75 yards, which is a good day, but not like an

incredible day. Meekle kind of jacks the running game stats like EPA and efficiency up because he had two carries for 28 yards and two touchdowns. But like traditional handoffs to the backs, the chiefs have like a good day running football, certainly better than the chiefs usually do. But I wouldn't say it was like, saying like, you know, Josh Jacobs, 140 yards. it's three touchdowns, but it's the texting sort of stuff. So I think, first, it's like, it's not like it was like an insane running day on the Niners defense. Secondly, yeah, like the Niners are just going to inherently play from light boxes because

they're 425 and they have two safeties deep. And like instead of being like other lightbox teams that say, okay, we're going to be lightbox but we're going to have like a really big dude here in the middle is going to steal two gaps and we're trying to make the numbers work. They just say, we're going to have so much penetration, so much team speed, so much up front, we're going to have so many disruptors that you're not going to be able to block this up well. there's a compounding effect when it's like, okay, we have no Armstead.

Man, it sucks. Armstead's a really good run defender from like a penetration style. It's what he does really well. It's what his calling part is. But it's okay, we got Kinlaw. It's still kinlaw. Okay, okay. So now we got to put Hassan Ridgeway out there and Kevin Givens out there.

And it's just like there's a compounding effect where like not only do those guys create less issues. It's now easier to get to Fred Warner. It's easier to get to Dre Greenlaw, who got banged up in this game. And you kind of just the snowball rolls. So I'm not overly concerned. I still think the Snyder's defense is insanely good.

The speed and aggressness and physicality. with that they play is going to translate against a lot of teams because a lot of teams don't have Andy plus Mekyll speed plus MBS speed plus Mahomes judgment and so on and so forth. Like, Chiefs are really good. They're, they're going to need the defense to be able to keep them in, in games because for all the help of getting the tackles back in there, that offensive line against the Chiefs Pass

wretch was having a rough time. And, you know, Jimmy's Jimmy. I don't know what there is to say about Jimmy Garoppolo doing Jimmy Garoppolo stuff that we haven't already said on like 50 different pods. They obviously got Christian McCaffrey in there. He looked pretty good, but this offense still wasn't really able to move the ball. Is there anything? I feel like we spin our wheels with this offense because we just sort of know what it is. Anything that stood out that was different than before other than obviously the addition of McCaffrey.

McCaffrey is going to help. Like they absolutely will. Like they're running, you know, like, you know, motion. across the backfield and McAfra's in like, they're in the pistol. McAfri's out of the backfield. And like, it's a small menu, but it's clearly going to work. McCaffer looks good running the ball the same way Jeff Wilson looks good running the ball. Like I'm not going to sit here and be like, McAfra's going to make the running game 10 times better.

Because we know it's not true about the Niners, but when he's back there, the fact that he can run the ball as well as Jeff Wilson can. And then also represents a really, really big receiving threat of the backfield, makes it really hard on defenses. It's a lot of the pre-snap personnel tipping of the hands, all the different tentacles of this offense you have to prepare for. that's where McAfree really matters, as opposed to, like, good run on toss. Like, that's, you know, he's going to look good on next. He's a good player, whatever. If there's anything that deserves to be said about Jimmy,

because, like, I think that we all kind of, like, we have a blanket line on Jimmy. Like, Jimmy's a play action quarterback. He's got to be open for him. Throw over the middle. He's kind of, you know, blind to anything but what he's looking at. It's the fact that he took five sacks. There is, like, this line didn't play well,

but quarterbacks are supposed to be able to move. Like the safety was an unbelievable play. Frank Clark beats Trent Williams off the snap. Jimmy feels the pressure, hustles to his right two steps, and then just stops. Because in his head he's done. Like, I don't, and like doesn't like go to throw it. You know what it's like.

I know exactly what Stephen is about to say. Go ahead. It's like at a grocery store, the shopping carts that like shut down. when you go outside the perimeter of the store. There's like a lock on the wheels. That is not what I thought you were going to say, but that's so good. Yeah, don't try to get in my mind. But that might have been worse than the Orlovsky the other week.

I think this one was worse. The Orlovsky, oh, you mean Jimmy's Orlovsky? Yeah, yeah. No, the reason why it was so bad is because it reveals how computerized Jimmy's brain is because he starts to move outside of the pocket. and as he moves, sees another free Chiefs rusher. And in that moment, there's like a new primary threat. So Frank Clark just vanishes.

Frank Clark's not real anymore, okay? There's no way to hold two ideas in your mind at once. No, he's got one process. So the second, I think it's Carlottes. It might have been Leo Chanel who shows up there in front of Jimmy. Jimmy's like, oh, cool. Frank Clark's no longer pressure on me. He's not real.

It's just this guy has to deal with now. He's disintegrating. Yeah. So I don't, I can't, I thought I had the numbers in front of me and I don't. I want to say, they had a total of like 13 pressure dropbacks or something like that on on jimmy and he took a sack on five of them threw a pick on another like the there's so much about like oh like lance out into the run of game lance throwing deep down the field it's also the ability to take a pressure which is

going to happen you could have the best line in the lead they're going to give up pressure sometimes and turn it into anything above a catastrophe that's critical for for every offense in the nfl and like yeah, Jimmy threw a touchdown under pressure in this game. It was the Ray Ray MacLeod touchdown, which, like, the ball was dead. It was such a bad throw. It's just he cannot save a play that isn't picture perfect. And that deserves to be reemphasized because it reminds us why the Niners have made the moves that they've made so aggressively over the last few off seasons.

That pass did not go where he meant it to go. The Ray Ray, Ray touchdown? Yeah, yeah. He wanted to go over the defender. It went so far behind the defender that Ray Ray was able to catch it. nuance is not Jimmy's skill set. All right. Anything we're missing about this game before we go?

I will say, and you know, Jimmy jokes aside, a big shout out to the chief's defense that did lock things down a little bit. It looked like this was going to get into shootout territory. It certainly could have, like even in the second half, the Niners were driving. They're able to settle down and get ahead of the sticks in the red zone a little bit. But also, like, they play their man coverage. And then they kind of know that Jalen Watson's going to get. beaten by George Kittle every so often. But they play physical.

They play up Atlanta scrimmage. They play a lot of press and a lot of downfield contact without drawing a lot of flags, which is tough to do is an indication of being well coached. And then I really like their safeties. The safety is cause it solve a lot of problems with them. Thornhill, Reed, and Cook is a good group. I got Willie Gay back in this game as well, to help them between the tackles with some of the run stuff.

This is like, there's going to be like four games every season for Spags where he just like gives up 40 because he just like trying way too much. But they're like the bones of this defense remains. good and it's like all right they just get hot in the playoffs this chief the chiefs are a total juggernaut they tackle so much better than last year that was their main problem so that's a it's a big uh tyrant matthew to justin reed tone change sort of a thing you know what i'm saying like guy who leads the defense is picking in the tackles versus justin read will hit anybody and i just kind of you know like setting the tone leadership like that can

all get over overhyped a little bit but that like the visuals of that matter to a group all right we're going to move to winners and losers. Ben, thank you, as always, for joining us. Before we let you go, there's a whiteboard behind you. Often it gets written up with something Eagles related. Eagles are off this week. I'm seeing written up there. The Seattle Seahawks are hosting a playoff game.

This is a Stephen Ruiz take. Then I'm willing to co-opt and put on my whiteboard. The NFC West leading Seattle Seahawks. The multi-score win against a lot of. Los Angeles Chargers, Seattle Seahawks. The, we beat the Cardinals. Haven't beat the Rams yet. Are they two in the division or just one-on-one?

One-on-one. One-on-one in the division, but that's probably good enough. Yeah, yeah. I'm with every passing week, a little Gino, little Kenny Walker, a little, Arkees-Goodwin, no, little, what's the UTSA course in? To Re-Wlin. Yeah, I'm in there. I love it. Okay, so it's Seahawks, and then our 49ers,

Next best in the division for you? I think the 49ers are plainly a better team than the Seahawks. But the way this season is going, you just think this is going to work out this one. Yeah, the good teams don't win football games this year. I don't know if we've caught up with that. But the Giants are six and one. They've never led it in a fourth quarter ever.

The Jaguars are 0 and 5 in 1 score games. They're 2 in 5. This is an unbelievable season. Absolutely ridiculous sport. All right. Thanks, Ben. Bye, ma'am. And the NFL week right on Monday night with Fandle, America's number one sports book.

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Okay, winners and losers time. Stephen, hit me with your first winner of the day. My first winner is the division-leading Seattle Seahawks, a sentence we all thought we'd be saying. We should have kept Ben here. In October, yeah. Ben says they're going to host a playoff game. I had that take earlier in the week. I'm feeling it. Okay. They're ahead in the division by like one game. It's October. Let's start,

stop doing simple arithmetic here. I agree. I agree that like usually this would feel like a fake team. Like it's a backup quarterback. But when you watch them play, and I say this every week, like Gino looks like a real quarterback. This doesn't look fake.

And you look at like the underlying numbers. Usually when like a backup quarterback comes in and has this success, they're doing something. schematically to make his job easier. But like Gino's playing like big boy quarterbacking. It's not like a college system. It's not like a play action heavy system. He's going through like real dropbacks.

And he's making tight window throws downfield. So they beat the Chargers 37 to 23, 37 points. On a bad defense, a defense that's banged up. They lose J.C. Jackson. Look like a bad injury. Probably out for the year. They obviously don't have Joey Bosa right now. They're playing like nobody.

he's at receiver. Like a guy named Jason Moore got onto the field at one point. They have like a Ben Skoronic type archetype of receiver plane. I didn't even catch his name. Mike Williams goes out to an ankle. A Ben Scoronic type.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the darkest timeline. Like if they did a casting call, they would be like, we need a Ben Skoronic type. And this guy would be perfect. So everything is going wrong for this Chargers team.

But on the other side of the spectrum, everything is going right for the Seahawks. Everything's going right for Pete Carroll. like every swing they took this offseason has worked out, been a home run. I don't even think they thought Gino would be this, but he's become like a top 10 quarterback with his play, not even just stats wise. Kenneth Walker, a day two pick that people complained about because it was a running back. It's a value pick.

He looks like a stud. 168 yards, two touchdowns. It was his third straight big game. Markey's Goodwin is making plays. They did lose D.K. Medcalfe. He got carted off, ruled out quickly with a knee injury. but the offense, like, didn't miss a beat without them. It's just a good team right now.

And we've seen the defensive turnaround over the last two weeks. Yeah, I, I'm not. My criticism of penciling them into host to playoff game is actually not at all that they seem like a fake team. I actually, I agree with you. They're a pretty legit team, particularly Walker had 92 of those yards on rushes against eight or more in the box. That's an 11.5 yard per carry average in those situations.

if he can take pressure off Gino in the passing game by keeping doing that. And if the defenses that they face are going to keep doing that, and especially like the charges are so snake-bitten about defending the run that I think they sort of overloaded against it. But that's really, really legit. And it seems like that defense that was really struggling earlier in the year has kind of solidified themselves. I'm just saying that they're ahead in the division by, is it one game or two?

Now it's one game. It's one, one, one. We can't start being like, oh, they're leading the division. It's October. I'm not saying that they're the better team, but at a certain point, it's one game. It's one game in the standing. Through Gino, all things are possible. Through Gino, all things are possible.

It's not too early. What's up with the Chargers? Steve, I know this is your Seahawks take, but come on. What's was like this was supposed to be a Super Bowl contender. It can't just be injuries. I mean, it's not just injuries. There's like a schematic. problem on offense that makes it hard. It makes it harder to run this scheme that it puts so much

on the quarterback's plate. And if you don't have like receivers that can get open. And even before the Mike Williams injury, they didn't have Keenan Allen. They haven't had him since week one. They haven't had that guy that can rely on third down, fourth down to get open against man coverage. Mike Williams, as good as he is, he's still like a 50-50 ball winner, a high variance player. You throw it downfield to him. You hope he catches a jump ball. But you don't have that reliable target. And until Keenan Allen gets back, I don't think the offense is going to work at all. And then now we're seeing injuries pile up on defense. I think like the philosophy of Brandon Saly's defense is still good. He just doesn't have the horses to run it. Like they can't tackle.

And when you run this like bend but don't break defense, if you're giving up three yard runs, that's fine. But when those three yard runs from six yard runs, that just makes everything else harder for your defense. Turn into 11 yard runs. Yeah. And that happens way. too often for the Chargers. So it's just like not a viable approach when you're not tackling well. And when you're giving up deep plays through coverage bus like J.C. Jackson before the injury was just, he had some mental errors throughout the season.

It's just tough. There's like so many issues and it's a lot of like chargering. But on top of that, there's this underlying rot to the roster and the offense and the approach. Yick. All right. My first winner, the Baltimore Ravens.

Steven, can I give you some advanced analytics? Let's do it. The Ravens are eight and two in games immediately following a Taylor Swift album release. Did you know that? I did not know that. Where'd you get that? I don't know that. Somebody tweeted it at me today.

I didn't even fact-shack it. I'm just going to hope it's true. So the Ravens finally won a game that they didn't blow in the fourth quarter. I can't say that this Ravens win is predicated on an awesome Lamar game. he had 120 passing yards. It was the sixth fewest of his career. I do, however, think that this team had a huge monkey on their back with the fourth quarter meltdowns.

And it seemed like it was starting to happen. The Browns go 75 yards in two and a half minutes. Cream Hunt scores on this way too easy two-yard touchdown. Their leads cut down to 2320. There's nine minutes left. But they hold the Browns off. Lee Carrison blocks the potential game tying field goal. and then Gino Stone forces a fumble.

They get the impact plays and they get the stop so that they can hold on, get to four and three, stay atop the AFC North. They are still having issues with the offense. They're still having issues against the blitz on offense. But I want to give them credit because up to this point, this was a team that was statistically outperforming their record and fixing it in the record column.

does matter when you've had these just like not even fourth quarter meltdowns but meltdowns in the last 30 seconds of a game, two minutes of a game. It just was such a relief to see the Ravens not have that happen again. Yeah, because when the season ends, the Ravens don't get to go back and be like,

yeah, but our DVOA was better. So we get two extra wins and make the playoffs now. Like you need to win these games. So only we get to do that. Yeah, that's right. For those underlying metrics to matter. So, and this was a problem going back to year. Obviously, they've blown double-digit leads, but they had a problem closing out games

late last year after Lamar's injury. They still were losing one possession game, like week after week after week. It bled over into this season. So to win this game, I do think it's like a good morale booster. But man, that passing offense, it's just, it feels like we've been having the same conversations about this team and about the offense for the last two years since Lamar's MVP year. And like, the problems don't change. It's still like, oh, does Greg Roman have a good enough passing game? Are the receivers good enough? Is the offensive line good enough? And the answer just when we're asking those questions week after week, that suggests the answer is no. Right. Because it's been two and a half years. And Ronnie Stanley was was talking after the game about, oh, we're finding our

identity. We're going to be this ground pound offense. And that really helps us. you know, figure out who we are and be who we are. And I just was like, I feel like I've heard this. I just feel like we've been here before. But still, they got a win. And given how the last few weeks have gone, I think that is that, that does matter. You got a loser for me?

I do have a loser. I have multiple losers, actually. Just old people in general. Just older people. No, no, no. The old, the old. Sorry, grandma. Yeah, sorry.

it's rough out here. No, the old guard of quarterbacks. Okay, yeah. We have like two left over from the past generation. Like Ben retired, Breeze retired. Obviously, Manning retired a long time ago. But Brady and Rogers were the ones that were still getting it done. Like Rogers had two straight MVPs.

Brady's throwing for 5,000 yards. And he's like throwing passes. He never threw in New England. But now you look at their stats and they're starting to look like older quarterbacks. And here's my takeaway. After watching both of these two play, I feel like the narrative, just the one that makes the most sense if you're not paying close attention is that the 45-year-old quarterback is just losing it. And then the guy that just lost his star receiver in Devante Adams probably just doesn't have enough help.

And that's why they're problems. I would flip that. I think Brady is the one that needs more help and he's still playing at a high level. He's still making like tough throws outside the numbers. He threw a couple passes up the seam that were like throwback passes that you're, used to seeing him throw to gronk, but they can't run the ball. And it seems like they have this psychosomatic problem where they can't run. And even though like the play action game is working, the fact that they can't run stops them from calling play action more. Like if you look at like

the numbers, the play by play numbers, still the same level of production. But the rate of them calling those plays is way down. It's down of 16%, which is a very, like a league low number, almost. So I think Byron left, which just has to get over this, this problem with not calling play action when the run game's not working. And I think that would at least help Brady in the passing game. I don't think it's going to solve all

their issues, but I think it would at least like boost the passing efficiency. And with the, with the Packers, like, I don't know the answer after today. Like, part of it, the problem is Aaron Rogers. Aaron Rogers is missing throws that he made with ease last year. And that's the biggest difference between this year and last year, even more so than I think

Devante Adams not being there. Yeah, I mean, with the Packers, the running backs had 12 carries today. I think there's a disconnect between, look, the quarterback is really, really empowered in adjusting plays, calling plays, deciding how they function on offense. I think that's a big part of why those guys

aren't featured more. But the running backs are the best thing that offense has to offer right now. And I don't really see them treating them. that way. I think they would probably be better if they leaned on those guys a little bit more. It doesn't seem like they're going in that direction.

And that's the part that's scary to me because that says that there's, whether there's a disconnect between coach and quarterback, coach quarterbacker in sync, but the front office has not been operating in a way that's in line with what they want to do

if it's the coach and the front office are more aligned but the quarterback is sort of going rogue. I don't know what it is, but the philosophy is not in sync there because you're not seeing them lean on the players who are the most explosive, the most exciting, the best that they've got right now.

With the Bucks, I mean, you mentioned Byron Lefich, I also do think that it's sort of time to acknowledge that we're seeing, you know, I like Todd Bowles as a coach quite a bit. I think he deserves a lot of credit just for how his career has played out. And he's usually been in situations where it seems like he has been a value ad for a very long time. And I think he deserves a lot of credit for that. He is a defensive coach.

And we often see those guys get into a top job and behave very conservatively. And he is the head coach of this team in his first year in that job. And they've been very conservative in a lot. of ways. There's been some of the decision making with go kick stuff, but also what you're talking about with not feeling like you can use the play action unless you're, like some of that stuff, those old school ways of thinking about football seem very, very, very present with this team. I don't think that Brady should be able to get totally off the hook. It's so true that once and while he will, and not even once in a while, a few times a game, he will unleash a throw

where it's like maybe five guys in the NFL can do that. And he apparently is still one of them. And he didn't have a lot of, you know, guys were dropping passes all over the place. Mike Evans dropped, what, like a 63 yard would have been touchdown or whatever. So there was some stuff that was not helping him.

We've talked about the offensive line. But I do think that he looks like he doesn't want to get hit. I think we've talked about this. It's not so much that he physically doesn't seem to be able to do things that he used to be able to do. it just seems like he's not all the way in on the field and, you know, committed to hanging in the pocket, taking a hit. And those pockets are collapsing quickly these days. So I do think there's a way where Brady's showing his age, but you're right.

It's a little bit less dire than the way that it seems like Rogers has really fallen off. Yeah. And they're not like clearing out the windows that he was attacking over his first two years where he's throwing a lot of like deep in routes and like crossing routes. They don't, they're not hitting on those anymore. And those are usually like paired with play action fakes because they draw the defense up. And I think that's the one thing this offense is missing right now. And I do think that's where Brady's age might show up a little bit is when he has to drive the ball. And you saw in this game, he threw a couple in the dirt.

But if, if those were like chest level for the receiver, they might have been picked off because the Panthers were just sitting on those routes. They're floppy. Yeah. So, like it's a little bit of everything, but I would put more of the buck struggle on the supporting cast. and the play calling. But the Packers, I think there's a lot more to that. And then we saw like the disconnect between LaFleur and Rogers when Rogers says during the week, we need to simplify the offense.

And then the floor's response is, I don't know what that means. And I'm like kind of with them. Like what does that mean? Can you explain that? Because like. Also, I feel like it's just Roger Rogers. Right. Like you're not Zach Wilson.

This is a bad sign. You're like almost 40. You're two time defending MVP. we do not need to simplify the offense. That should not be the answer. But apparently that's just like do more Aaron Rogers stuff, like do more stuff that he likes. It seemed like they were in gun more.

I think it's just sub-tweeting the young receivers being like, you don't understand what to do. Yeah, yeah, probably is. Even today, I don't think they were running as many option routes, but like the throws were just off. Like Romeo Dobbs had two chances to make clutch catches and maybe he should have caught the passes. But they were tough passes to catch because Aaron Rogers

like threw him at the ground. or he threw him into a hit by a cornerback. Like you could blame that on the receiver, but that's not good quarterbacking. But you can also blame it on the quarterback. Yeah. Bull said the bucks were in a dark place. Aaron Rogers said everything's fine.

I'm obviously paraphrasing, but he said something in his postgame presser where he was like, this might have been the best thing that ever happened to us. I'm not sure it was. All right. Next, next old man quarterbacking L goes to Matt Ryan,

because we talked last week about how it seemed like the Colts were sort of trying their luck as a past first offense. And I know I think we talked about this. I said I wanted to see it again. Well, we saw it again. He attempted 44 passes today. It did not go well. He threw two picks to the Titans who I think just sort of decided, hey, let's pay some attention to Michael Pittman.

And then Matt Ryan's going to try to make Paris Campbell the number one receiver. And it didn't go great, which I honestly don't think is that surprising, given how the team sort of has been built. I don't think that this Colts team is built to win like that. And somehow it worked, which was sort of encouraging, particularly because being super pass heavy might have helped their offensive line issues. But that really came crashing down to Earth this week. And I do give the Titans some credit because I think I wrote them off a little bit too

much early in the season, particularly when Derek Henry was really not looking like his old self, that's still kind of true in terms of explosives, but he's a productive runner for them. And because their offense depends so heavily just on having that workhorse back who's going to pick up yards for you on a steady basis, that allows them to be themselves. It's allowed them to be this great red zone offense because Tanna Hill can move around and Henry's obviously such a threat there. It's not as good as it has been,

but it's more solid than I thought they would be. So I give them credit for that. But unfortunately, the Colts get the L here for their new pass first strategy kind of crashing back to Earth. Yeah, I feel like the Titans have gotten a lot of mileage out of just being a serious football team

in that division of like, where there's like a lot of non-serious football being played. everyone is constantly in their flop era. Yes, yes. And they're just like steady. They just like move along steadily and eventually the other teams fall back to Earth. Like Jacksonville loses another game today where they probably should have won. Jacksonville still has the best point differential in the division and it's like not close.

Yeah, but they let Daniel Jones run for a hundred yards. Right. So like now you're thinking, okay, this team is not making the playoffs. The Jaguars, you do that to Daniel Jones. You allow that to happen. I forget like it hasn't happened since 1947. that a Giants running quarterback. Daniel Jones is a really good runner.

I'm like falling into stereotypes being like LOL, the derpy quarterback ran. He's a good runner. We've talked about this out way. He is. But if you, this is a stat that I'm making up right now. If you allow Daniel Jones to run for 100 yards,

you don't make the playoffs, 100% of the time. You just can't. It's not allowed. I'm sorry. It's not allowed. The Titans would never allow that to happen. That's what I mean when I say they're like,

they're a serious football team. And they just take advantage of these three other teams just bumbling and stumbled. and stumbling around. And it's going to happen again this year. And look, their formula, so this is from next gen stats, Henry had 126 yards on 29 rushes when the Colts had seven or more defenders in the box. That's 4.3 yards per carry.

That's like exactly who Derek Henry is for them right now, right? Like he's not breaking off 25 yard, 32 yard explosive touchdown runs where he's stiff arming people and it's a crazy highlight reel. Like that is not happening. but he's gaining positive yardage consistently, which allows this offense to function how it wants to function. And then Bud Dupree and Jeffrey Simmons combined for 12 pressures a sack and a turnover forced by pressure.

So that's sort of exactly who the Titans want to be, right? Like they want to be disruptive defensively. They want to get takeaways. They want to be able to move the ball consistently on the ground. I don't think it is a formula that is going to allow you to keep up with, say, the bills or the chiefs, but it's solid enough to pull away when things are not going right

for the other teams in the division. They're the one team that it feels like if a game is coming down to the wire, the one at AFC South team, where you feel like they're going to win the game, where the other three teams, you feel like they're going to find a way to lose a game, which is not what you expect it with Matt Ryan.

That's kind of why they traded in Carson Wentz and then replaced them with Matt Ryan is to have an adult in the room, of an adult. I think that's like the terminology they used. But Matt Ryan is throwing bad interceptions. He's throwing Carson Went's interceptions. That's what it looked like today.

Jeez. That's a tough break. All right. Let's turn things around. Let's get another W going here. What you got, Stephen? I have the Bengals offense. The Bengals scored a thousand points today against the Atlanta Falcons.

That's an NFL record. No, they only scored 35, but it felt like if they wanted to score 100, they could have. I think Joe Burrow had 350 yards pass. at the half, Tyler Boyd had 100 yards in the first quarter alone. It was like, now, I don't think A.J. Terrell playing the whole game would have made any difference. But when he went out with the injury early, it was the Falcons might as well have gone home. The defense should not have been on the field. There's no secondary, even trying to stop the bangles from passing the ball.

It felt like. But I got to give Zach Taylor some credit. We don't give him a lot of credit on this podcast. but I feel like they have found themselves. Joe Burrow said it last week, and it appears that they have, they've just ditched all of the undercenter, Sean McVeigh-type stuff that you thought you were getting

with Zach Taylor, and they just gone full spread. We're just running RPO's on early downs. We're doing the same passes, same concepts we ran last year out of like empty and out of the gun. And it's working again. Jamar Chase is breaking tackles. Joe Burrow hit on a couple deep balls today.

I know one of them, the Falcons guy, the Falcon safety fell down, but he still hit on it. He hit another deep ball down the sideline. He hit another back shoulder fade that Chase took for a touchdown. It feels like the Bengals again from last year when they got hot at the end of the year. I want to see what happens when defenses adjust because we haven't seen the offense operate like this, where it's just pure gun. And I think there will be an adjustment, the more they put it on tape.

And I wonder if Zach Taylor's going to have an answer to that. But until then, I think the. offense is going to work really well. And for the next couple of games, maybe for the next month, they're going to score a lot of points. Yeah, I mean, Burrow had 335 yards on passes of 10 plus air yards. That is the Bengals that we knew last season when everything was going right, right? Except the fact that Boyd had the game that he had with 155 yards,

them having a slot receiver who's producing is a big deal because we think so much, okay the Bengals everything is is outside outside outside Jamar Chase win at the catch point do that over and over again if it works going to score a lot of points if it doesn't work absolutely nothing is going to work them having a good presence at slot receiver and and picking up yards that way I do think matters because it just it just stresses other areas of the field um normally if they do keep committing to this identity on offense, you know, you worry a little bit about the red zone. I think for them, even if they face some defensive adjustments, they do still have

those ball winners. So I think they can find ways to get around it. It'll be interesting because, like you said, we don't always give Zach Taylor the most credit, but he's making adjustments. It's really all you can ask. And now we get to see what happens when defenses sort of try to find a counter for this and what they do. That's what I will say about him as a coach. Like that's a strength. He has shown, even when the Bengals were bad, like pre-burrow, he's shown a willingness to change things and change the offense on the fly if it's needed.

Yeah. But even still, like, even in this game, there were just little moments where you don't trust them fully. Like, at the end of the first half, there's like 15 seconds left. They have the ball around midfield. They're punting. They could punt it out of bounds. and like the Falcons are definitely kneeling the ball if you pun it out of bounds.

They're not they didn't. I think Marcus Marriota threw 13 passes when they were losing by like 20 points to the whole game. Right. They were not not the type of game script Marcus Marriota wants to be. No, that's not a go situation. But they pun it to the pun returner and the Falcons guy returns it and they get in the field goal range.

They give up three points that you could have easily avoided just by punning it out of bounds. And then there's a fourth and short. They go into empty. And I tweeted out at the time like empty. fourth and short, empty just seems bad because you no longer have a run threat and that just makes things easier

for the defense. The advantage in that situation is that the defense has to account for the run. When you go into empty, they don't have to do that and they could play more pass-heavy coverages. And then like Bill Barnwell had looked up the numbers

and actually when you go into empty on fourth and short, your success rate drops by like 10 percentage points. And these are like the little things that make the difference in playoff games and that might lose you a Super Bowl. And that's why I still don't trust him as a coach, even though I do think he's done some good things in the grand scheme of things. Yeah.

Well, it'll be interesting because clearly they're going to test this philosophy out. And they are now on tape with it working in some respects. So I don't know what their schedule is coming up. Who do they have next? They have Cleveland. They have Carolina. And then they have a buy. And then Pittsburgh and Tennessee.

I feel like that's, like I said, for the next month, I think they can get on a roll. Then after that, the schedule gets harder. they get Kansas City. They get Cleveland again. They'll have a different quarterback by then. They go to Tampa. They go to New England. They play Buffalo.

They play Baltimore. So like this stretch, they have to capitalize on it. Yeah. That'll be interesting. All right. Another winner for me. The Dallas Cowboys ever heard of them?

And this win really belongs only to the Cowboys' defense. I shoehorned this into our rundown because we sort of had to talk about DAC coming back. Dack didn't have a touchdown until the fourth quarter. This is actually an L for cable television. This is my new take here is this is an L for like sports studio shows. Dack was not that exciting. Got really lucky because the defense, which, man, this might be the best defense in the league.

They had five takeaways in the second half. The offense was able to turn those into 21 points. they are so disruptive that it kind of almost didn't matter. I'm going to choose to say what the quarterback did instead of who the quarterback was, so as not too stoke controversy. And the Cowboys just keep winning with their defense. You know, I do not to feed into the Dak Cooper Rush discourse. I've always been of the opinion that that was not a conversation and would

never be a conversation based on how Cooper Rush played. I will say this. If DAC is not good and he wasn't that good today, that is the thing that can open up that conversation. I'm not saying we're having it. We're absolutely not. I'm just saying that it has always hinged much more on what DAC looks like than what Cooper Rush looked like, which was fine in a context where nothing was being

asked of him. we've now seen DAC and it looked pretty much the same. That is more meaningful to me than anything that we saw with Cooper Rush. But for now, so far, so good, they stayed winning. Yeah, it was like a performance that didn't move the needle in any direction. It wasn't a good game. It wasn't a bad game. It was just like a guy coming back from injury.

He missed a couple throws high early on. That could have just been nerves. And I think more so than the DAC versus Cooper Rush debate, I think it's more of the Cooper Rush offense versus the DAC offense. sure and I was kind of worried that when they went back to DAC Kellyn Moore would be like oh I have like a starting quarterback who could do the dropback stuff who could do the hard stuff and they would they would abandon the good stuff that worked when Cooper Rush was in there I only watched the gate like casually I wasn't

watching it in depth but it looked like that's what happened like they were leaning on Dak to be that dropback passer again and yeah just find a middle ground and I think this team could really take off because like you said I do think this is like the best defense in that out right now. Yeah. Yeah. No, their ceiling is, is a lot higher than I thought it would be. All right. Another loser? Yeah. My last loser is actually a winner. The Jets win 16 to 9 in Denver. Zach Wilson, though, I feel like there's so much to be happy about with the Jets. Like, even with Breece Hall's injury, which is just such a shame, he was such a fun player to watch. And he made that offense go. And watching Mike LaFleur get the most out of him was really fun. But he goes down with the ACL.

injury or Robert Solowl, I thinks it's an ACL injury, which would probably end his season. And then the Jets still win the game. They go five and two. It's the first time they've been five and two since 2010, which was the last time they made the playoffs. But Zach Wilson, it's hard to feel good about anything about this team because he is the centerpiece. If he isn't good, it doesn't really matter what Joe Douglas does building up the rest of the roster. I know they're winning in spite of him, but I don't know how long that's going to last. They've been winning against backup quarterbacks.

And I'm not trying to take anything away from them. The defense has been very good. Sauce Gardner is already a top 10 cornerback. Three more past breakups today. And two of them, like, with the game on the line, Quentin Williams might be the most disruptive player, not named Aaron Donald. Elijah Vera Tucker has moved around wherever he's needed to be on that offensive

line, has been good doing it. Garrett Wilson looks like a player. I know that the Elijah Moore stuff is kind of bad looking, but I think there are a lot. Bad looking? I don't know how else to say it, but apparently a personal... The opposite of good? Yeah, not good.

But a lot of, there's a lot of good pieces, but then Zach Wilson, like, he looks like Sam Darnold again, like smaller Sam Darnold. He can't make a play in structure. You can't make a play out of structure right now. I don't know, like, what are you hanging your hat on other than the fact that he was the number two overall pick? Yeah. I mean, hanging your hat on not a lot.

I guess there's it's worthwhile to keep getting him reps, right? Yeah, right. We all have the memory of Josh Allen and now the size differential between those players is really, really significant and makes it a completely different situation.

But I do think that there have been lessons learned about guys needing time to develop, particularly the sort of boomer bust, super high ceiling, low floor guys, and Wilson falls into that category. I'm with you. It's not encouraging and particularly look. Like Joe Douglas deserves like this roster is is fairly healthy and and even Brise Hall goes down.

You have a guy like Michael Carter who's fine. Yeah, yeah. Going to be able to step in in there and take those snaps. But he doesn't have anywhere near the home run speed of Hall. So the offense is not going to be able to run through him in the same way. So I guess what that adds up to is. we're just going to see. Like, we're going to see how good or bad it is when Wilson has to take a little bit more on his plate because I don't think, you know, I've been so impressed with this coaching staff and how they've designed that offense.

But at this point, it's that's what they got to do. It worked with Breeze Hall because he gave you those explosive plays in the run game. It replaced the explosive plays you usually rely on the past game to get. But they have this guy that was like breaking off 30, 40 yard touchdown. runs. So it didn't really matter. That's why they were winning without Zach Wilson, really throwing the ball and pushing the ball downfield. It's tough. It's tough because he is a talented player. Like you see the flashes of armed talent. You see him still get out of sacks that he should take. But the way he plays, he puts himself like in danger. He took a lot of hits in this game. He's spinning out of pressure and like

kind of spinning into hits. He has had injury problems, like even going back to BYU. You before his breakout year he had injury problems. So there's like a lot of things working against him. And I mean, you obviously have to hang with him. I just don't know if he, if they're going to be able to keep this up without that, that explosive element in Breeshall anymore. Because the passing game, it just doesn't work.

So I will say in Zach Wilson's defense, he has gone from being in 21. he was one of the worst play action quarterbacks in the league. And he's probably a league average play action passer right now. And you have to do that to be viable. Yeah. In the offense that he's in. So it's not as though there aren't sort of like fundamental,

boring but necessary quarterbacking things that he has improved at doing. He's just still only, you know, he's completing 50 something percent of his passes. and doesn't always seem like he knows what's going on out there. So it's not all adding up into something that's encouraging, but we should give him credit for the fact that it's not as though there has been no improvement. No, yeah. There are little things that you see. But he spends like a concerning amount of time with his back to the defense

looking in the opposite direction because he's trying to get away from pressure. Like more so than any other. Like can next gen stats look that up? How much time in seconds has Zach Wilson spent? We know you're listening. looking in the wrong direction. But he has a 36% success rate on pass is thrown beyond the line of scrimmage. Only Justin Fields and Baker Mayfield have been worse.

He scored three touchdowns during this four-game win streak. It's tough. It's rough right now. It's rough. It's not what you want. All right. And in continuing the tradition of losers who are maybe winners, I guess I should be giving a loser right now,

but I'm actually going to give the dolphins a winner. I like it. Mostly because, look, Tua did not look great. Probably had four or five would be interceptions dropped by the Steelers defense. But they won the game. They won 16 to 10. They got back in the win column. Mostly because Kenny Pickett, I think he saw no egg binogany,

but just decided to throw a pass to him anyway. maybe because he'd seen someone one day thread a pass by a defender to the back corner of the end zone before. It didn't work very well. Probably the real take here is the loser is Kenny Pickett for having his small hands discourse. Yeah. Reignited by this game. But I do want to credit the dolphins for just getting back in the win column. because they're in a situation where every team in the

AFC East is going to be chasing the bills. I'm sure there are Dolphins fans who will say, oh, they beat the bills, but let's be serious. But the Jets obviously got really bad news today for their offense. And the dolphins had been through some rough circumstances over the last few weeks. So I think the fact that like now they get to breathe a little bit you know Mike McDaniel I give a lot of credit for what he's done with this team and this

offense it does seem like things once things started going south and there was the controversy with the concussions and the handling of that he said some weird stuff I really he seems like a great guy and is really interesting and the offense is cool there have just been bad vibes around that team I feel like for the last few weeks so I think just writing the ship and that way and getting a win matters. I mean, just getting through a game with the same quarterback that you started the game with. Yeah. It's the first time since week three.

That's where the bar is. And I do think that this is a W for the Dolphins because it appears that Mike McDaniel is good. Like, I think that's what we've established is. Yeah. And I say that because Tua had a bad game. It looked like a bad game. But then you look at his stat line after the game.

He averaged 7.5 yards per time. good one touchdown zero interceptions a 92 pass rating i mean those are fine numbers so it's kind of like mike mcdaniel has brought the jimmy g effect over to miami he's like successfully established that where he can get a quarterback who even when he looks bad when you're watching the game that he's still getting production out of it the offense is still moving the ball now they had some drive stall in the red zone but i i think the offense looked a lot better with tua and the one thing you could say about Tua. Even if you think he's not a great quarterback, even if you're high on Tua, you're part of Tua not. He is really good for this offense and how it operates. Like that skill set of like being a

great RPO, he's a great RPO quarterback. And they're, and McDaniel has found a way to build offense around that. They've started to do the under center stuff a little better. It wasn't working at all over the first month. Now it's starting to get a little traction. I think this was a good game for the Dolphins, even if Tua looked bad. I think it was important for them to win a game where Tua looked like this, just to prove, even if Tua doesn't continue, like those first three weeks where you look like an MVP candidate, if he doesn't carry that through the full season, they could still make the playoffs. That's a really good point.

It's sort of proof of concept for this all works together, even if they're not wildly exceeding precedent for how the same players performed or what our expectations would be. So, okay. I'm revising that from we went from an L to a W question mark to a full W. We are going to end since we are approaching the trade deadline with our non-headline segment of the week being trade focused. Stephen and I are each going to just throw out a potential trade. And if you will allow me to start first.

I actually just found this fascinating because. so I just wanted to share it. I saw Jordan Roderick, who covers the Rams for the athletic, posting on Twitter about the Rams potentially being interested in calling the Broncos about Bradley Chubb. And she cited that there's a good relationship between the front offices there. Denver might want to recoup some picks because of the Russell Wilson situation. They've got this promising young defense. That all makes a lot of sense.

She also said that she's been hearing for a long time, that the Rams will be aggressive and exploring options for their pass rush at the deadline. The fact that the Rams are still in like buy, buy mode, that is what I wanted to talk about here. All of the logic is so perfectly sound. She's an incredible reporter. So I really, really trust that that is the thinking within that building.

Let's just establish that the Los Angeles. as Rams inside their building right now are like, who can we add so that this team has more high profile players on it? Wild. Wild. We're still doing it. Just just a commendable commitment to the bit. Incredibly dedicated to their philosophy. We did a all in week before the season started. We did the all index. And I think we're going to have a midseason update in the Rams. Thank you. for playing the part and giving us more to write about if they do pull this trade off or pull off any type of trade before the deadline

because this team just looks fundamentally broken. It kind of feels like the Jalen Ramsey trade where they made that trade and was like, okay, like Jalen Ramsey's a good player and like two first round picks, very high price, but like it makes sense. But then you look at the standings that the Rams were like six and eight

and their offense was totally broken and they didn't make the playoffs. But it ended up working out for them like two years down the road. It worked out in the long run. So maybe that's like the goal here. It's just like this isn't for now. It's for 20, 24. And we're going to win the Super Bowl again.

Okay. All right. Maybe I'm sold. I love it. I love a consistent personality. Yeah. You could set your clock to the Rams making naive trades midseason. Okay.

So I give you mine? Please. Mine's more of a bit in that it's never going to happen. But at the same time, when you think about it, the more you think about it, the more you'll think maybe these teams should do it. I think the 49ers should trade Jimmy Garoppolo to the Jets for Zach Wilson in a second round pick. The Jets get a quarterback that can run this style of offense, like an adult quarterback who can run this style of offense. I think it makes the the Michael Flore offense viable again. Obviously, Michael Flore was in San Francisco. He has experience with Jimmy G.

Jimmy G knows the offense. He doesn't have to learn anything. You can just step right in. He's been running it for five years. The 49ers get a day two pick back. They obviously, obviously need draft capital after the Christian McCaffrey trade. They get that back. They get another young quarterback who was, I mean, obviously he struggled, but he has talent. And I think if you put him in an actual Kyle Shanahan offense with weapons, real weapons, I think it's not going to be good, but it might work like it worked for Jimmy G. And then you have insurance for if Tray Lance gets hurt again. Now you have another young quarterback that you could potentially groom into a better player, like a viable starter, long-term starter.

If Trey Lance can't stay healthy or maybe the accuracy problems prevent him from ever really starting long-term, I don't know, it's like another young quarterback. And then you get rid of Jimmy G, get rid of the cap hit. It's a win for everyone. I love it. I love it. I'm in. I'm sold. I'm sold.

You're on the island? I'm there. I'm on this mini island. I guess, you know, next week we'll find out of Kyle Shanhan's there too or John Lynch is there too. They make the playoffs. with Jimmy G. I'm saying that. Do they make the playoffs with Zach Wilson?

No. Come on. I think that's the problem. Yeah. The 49ers definitely don't make the playoffs with Zach Wilson. But like if you're the 49ers, do you want to make the playoffs? Yes. Their entire vibe right now is we will do anything possible to make the playoffs. That is true.

But like we know how this ends. We know how it ends. Do we need to see Jimmy G like throw a back foot interception? NFC championship game maybe. Yeah, but it still ends horribly. That like that hurts even more. I can't wait. So nihilistic.

All right. We're ending the podcast before Stephen says that they should just cancel all of the regular season in the playoffs and he will hand select two teams. They can play a Super Bowl against each other and then that'll be it. It would actually be a lot less work for us. All right. This has been the Ringer NFL Sunday recap show. Thank you to Stephen and to Ben earlier for joining.

us as always. Next up on the feed, Sheel and Ben will have extra point taken their deep dive of week seven. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely for production on this episode and to Arjuna, Ramgapal, for additional production supervision.