The Ringer NFL Show - Week 7 Recap: The Seahawks Can’t Play Normal Games, Brady’s and Belichick’s Future, and Winners and Losers | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Kevin and Nora start by reacting to the ‘Sunday Night Football’ thriller in which the Arizona Cardinals defeated the Seattle Seahawks in overtime. Then they discuss what the future holds for the Tom Brady–led Tampa Bay Buccaneers and for Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots. They then give their Week 7 winners and losers, answer some listener questions, and pick their clickbait headline of the week. Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. Great show. Sunday night craziness. Cardinals and Seahawks go to overtime. Belichick v. Brady, another Sunday of learning where both those guys are at. The Steelers, Justin Herbert, the Cowboys, and much more. Today's episode of the Ringer NFL show and Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by State Farm. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate. That's like drafting a player that becomes an all pro, the real deal. State Farm agents provide personalized service so you can customize your insurance to fit your needs. like a GM put it together their very own roster.

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How's it going? Happy National Tight Ends Day, Kevin. I can't believe they tried to make that happen. I don't know who started it. Who did start it? I think probably the NFL network or the NFL. The Tight Ends Committee of America? The Tight Ends.

Yeah, the tight end lobby down on K Street. They got together and they said we need a day. And they got one. And they got one. So let me tell you how much footballer was today. how much good football, interesting football, amazing football, all the adsts you want to throw at it. I got into this room and I was ready for the podcast recording

and I didn't have my equipment. I just was going to start talking to you without the equipment. I just decided that that was a thing for me. And so I'm on tilt after that game, after the Seahawks Cardinals game. It was one of the most fun games of the year, Kyler Murray 427 yards, four touchdowns, 34, 48, and more than anything, And I know that this is, you know, we don't like to say it's quarterback first quarterback,

but the idea of Kyla Murray going toe to toe to with Russell Wilson in prime time and again was moved to prime time a couple days out because it's from COVID complications. This is the kind of step that we want to see from Kyler Murray. There's a lot to get to in this game. But what did we learn? We learned. First of all, I've just been giggling for the last like 45 minutes, I think, just sort of like sitting in front of my computer and my telemet. television just kind of chuckling incredulously. But we learned that as good as the Seahawks offense is and as wonderful as Russell Wilson has been playing, their defense is a real liability.

And while the cards look great and it's, it was so cool to see Kyler and and Russell play this game because they're both so elusive. and there were so many times when they're scrambling and they're just finding ways to extend plays and somebody thinks they've got them wrapped up and they just keep going. And I think quarterbacks don't play each other. We know that. But when you have those stylistic similarities that are also just really fun to watch, I think it feeds into that and also just into the general chaos of all of what we just witnessed. So it was really fun.

I do think the sneaky part of it that I'm going to keep thinking about is just to what extent the Seahawks defense is a liability for them. But this was a fun game. Okay. So Michael Sean Dugger of the Athletic said recently that Kyler Murray dropped back 50 times and wasn't sacked once. He was barely hit. And one thing I think when we're discussing Wilson versus Kyler, aside from the fact that Wilson got hit a lot early in his career and in the middle of the school, career quite frankly. One of the things I think that's that's fun to see and to sort of dive into is how much confidence Keller plays with. We saw the smile on the field as he was dropping back to

pass and completing that pass tonight. And I think that with Kyler and with Russ, the thing they have in common most of all is the ability to have play with so much confidence that literally anything is possible when they drop back. And that was what was cool to see, I think, tonight. I think that this was a pretty typical Cardinal Seahawks game in so much that it was just absolutely outrageous and people were saying that Cliff iced his own kicker and that's not true they were going to delay a game penalty so I understand why they did it um Cliff did kick on second you said that well yeah but it was in well I said it in service of a joke so you take so what was the joke it was that it was that it was that

icing your own kicker was a card on Cardinal Seahawks bingo. Oh, yeah. That was a good joke. It's fine. You can take the liberties there. You're fine. But... Comedy comes first with me.

Cliff did kick on second down in overtime, which RJ White from CBS pointed out that, you know, how could you possibly kill Cliff for kicking on second down when that defense only gives 500 yards a game? Like, this is... I do, it's very strange to me, both McVeigh and Cliff for being such young guys, they are not sort of the analytics go for it icons that you'd expect them to be. I think Cliff had a very uneven game from a decision-making standpoint.

The play calling was there. You know, Kyler bailed him out a couple of times. I think that Cliff Kingsbury has gotten better as an NFL head coach pretty much every week. And I think he was starting from kind of a low point, but I've really liked his improvements. But I still think from a decision-making standpoint, he still makes him a very weird. ones. Yeah, and it's funny because I think we chalk a lot of things up to your general primetime Seahawks, Glendale, Arizona chaos. But of course, there are actual people making these decisions. So it is a good point. But I wonder, you know, we were talking about the Seahawks. I think it often

comes up with them, their ability to just play in chaos and to sort of embrace the moments when games go down like this. I think the Kyler version of that is becoming when he's in chaotic plays, right? Because that's when his escapeability becomes important. And I think he has the same sort of, I can do anything. I can get out of this. I can thrive in this madness that the Seahawks have for a game that's just gone completely off the rails. So that's why this was so much fun. I, beyond being additionally concerned about Seattle's defense and encouraged by Kyler and the Cardinals, because I think we had really high expectations for them and then kind of fell off a little bit, I'm still sorting through the, the spectacular wreckage of

all this and figuring out kind of what to think about it. But I'm, I'm curious to see what Cliff says about some of the decisions. making because there's just so many different things that can end up feeding into it, right? Like everyone's exhausted at the end of the game. Everybody was just like you could see an overtime between plays. Nobody wanted to be out there after a certain point. It was and they're sitting when when players were on the sidelines like head and hands.

It's I can't really imagine that level of physical exhaustion, frankly. Like I don't know what that moment feels like. But I think in some ways we underrate the degree to which that's a different game and a different situation once you're at that point with a team. And I'm just really curious to read a little bit more and hear a little bit more about the aftermath of this one because strategy in those situations is really fascinating to me because it kind of looks like the same thing, but it's just not the same animal at all. And I wonder how they processed that and what that kind of influenced.

I thought before the season that it was entirely possible that the leap we saw from a guy like Lamar Jackson last year, it could have happened with Kyler this year. And the reason I didn't pick the Cardinals to go deep in the playoffs or anything like that was because I just didn't think that the infrastructure in Arizona was there. I think this team can be a playoff team. I don't think they can compete for the Super Bowl or even the division. But I'm starting to believe that Kyler is that special that he can overcome it. And it's not going to be like the Ravens, not going to be like the Chiefs, where he was gifted. all of these, you know, amazing, basically everything else is put into the place and all he needed to do is make the leap. It's not going to be like that. But you look at the Hopkins one-on-one play, the touchdown where he's basically laughing on the field. Those are the kind of plays, I think, that are replicable that you're going to be able to see from Kyler Murray all year. They're four and two right now. I was disappointed and I got off the hype train a little bit when they lose to Matt Patricia and Matt ruling back-to-back weeks, only because I thought the Cardinals were so much better than those two teams. But now they now have a really interesting. stretch.

The dolphins after the by, so they get to rest up after this game, then the Bills, then the Seahawks again, then the Patriots, we'll get to in a second. But I think that that's a really interesting stretch because I don't think there are any easy wins in there, okay? There's no Matt Patricia who they laid an egg against a couple weeks ago. So I think, and again, I really, I hate hitting Matt Patricia with all these strays, but just an example of a coach they should have beat a couple of weeks ago. Okay.

But I think that this team at 4 and 2 in a really tough division, when I see them play a game like this, I think this is a 10 win team. Where are you on this? 10 is maybe a little strong for me, but I do think one of the things that is crystallizing is that it's not that there are no good teams. I think we'll get to the books as well, but we've seen some teams come on really strong, the Steelers. But overall, we're not seeing a league this year, at least I don't feel like we are, where there's just wide bands of, okay, this is the A tier, and then this is the B tier, and whatever comes below that. It always, even the chiefs feel beatable.

So I think a team like the Cardinals, you maybe increase the expectations a little bit because look, we had really high expectations for the Seahawks, and I think still do, but see them as more vulnerable with a better understanding of where they are defensively. So nine wins? Well, they do have two games remaining against the NFC East, if that changes anything. Right.

So you just bump those. I mean, 10's totally possible. No, I'm just saying the upper limit now. The upper limit now is 10. I would not be surprised their playoff team. Listen, I was saying after week two, I was saying they should have started the season five and one because of their schedule. And they didn't because again, of the aforementioned games. But the Matt Patricia unpleasantness.

But I think I tend to because I think Kyler is so special always see the optimistic path with this team. Yeah. And I think I see the medium path with them where I'm optimistic about him generally, but they still don't feel they don't get a lot of tight end production. They don't feel complete always in certain ways to me. And so I wonder how I just assume that that will hurt them in some games down the line. But being able to win a game like this, it's super encouraging. And it was also just really fun. Yep.

I think that this is, I think this was a game that was more entertaining than it was informative. But I tend to think that the expectations I had for Arizona three weeks to go, We're mostly correct. All right, let's get to our headline. Nora, we try to avoid easy narratives on this podcast. We try to not take the lazy debate, debate show, what's your take thing? We're going to avoid all that. Well, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are making it really easy to just do Brady versus Belichick every single week.

And I think there was probably no better week to do it than this week. I'm sorry, we've got to take the easy narrative here. It's Brady. It's Belichick. this was probably rock bottom for the Patriots thus far. Their 27 point loss was the largest home loss under Bill Belechek, second biggest loss in general. Cam Newton's first half passerating was the worst since Bill Belichick

was the Cleveland Brown's coach and held Drew Bledsoe to an 18 passer rating. Cam Newton was at 19. This was awful. At the same time, Tom Brady threw a 55-yard air yards pass starting a 33-yard touchdown to Scotty Miller. He looks amazing. The arm is amazing. The Bucks will take a Super Bowl contender

and the Patriots look like a team where defenses don't think they can pass and the receivers can't get open. And it looks like Belichick does not have a easy way to solve this. We joke all the time. Ryan Rissila does his power rankings, all that stuff about Brady versus Belichick.

What did we learn and where is it right now? I'm, I guess this is it. I'm in a complicated place. I tweeted something during that game where I was like, that sound you're hearing is, is everybody setting up their Brady Belichick abacus counters. And I was kidding. But once I tweeted it,

I was like, this is not going to come off as a joke. Like, this is so how people see this that it's going to seem like I'm serious here. For 2020, I think we're done here. Brady and the books look great. I don't think the Patriots.

They could be a seventh wildcard team, I think, is basically they're stealing. The reason why that narrative doesn't really, I don't find it useful, is that they're actually not playing the same game, right? Like, Brady's goal is to be really great and be on a team and extend his playing career, prove that he can play well somewhere else and carry another team, ideally to a Super Bowl. Belichick's goals, I think, are more long-term in that he obviously, he never wants to lose. He wants to win this year. But he doesn't think about things one year at a time. And so his goal is to reinvent the Patriots for the post-Bradie era. And so in that sense, I think it's a little bit useless to be comparing them week by week this year,

although it's very fun. So we're going to do it anyway. We're going to do it forever. Because that's what we do. Sports are fun. We're just going to have fun by comparing these. It's not, you know, it's not life and death here. Like, we're just joshing here.

It's fine. We're just joshing with the fact that Bill Belichick can never recover his reputation ever. Yeah, it's just, you know, we're just shooting the breeze. But even with that sort of longer framework in mind, it is concerning how they're playing. Because at first, I'd had sort of low expectations for them coming into the season and then definitely got too high after the first couple of weeks, particularly after that Seahawks game, which in hindsight, I feel like we know a lot more about the Seahawks defense than we did at that point. And that might be informative. But what's really going on is the same issues that they've had for the last couple of years, which is just that. the offense doesn't have enough power to compete against good teams.

And when they're in situations where superior coaching and often good defense, although we've seen that fall off too, can't carry them, they actually look pretty helpless, particularly now that their offensive line is banged up. And the problem with that is that once I'd sort of re-recalibrated, I guess, my expectations for them, what I thought was important was to see how Newton played down the stretch because I don't think that they're going to a Super Bowl this year.

So at that point, the most important thing becomes understanding if he's your quarterback and what the future of that is. Right. At this point, that is now a question, right? He gets. It's the question. And he gets taken out for Jared Stidham after throwing three interceptions. And Belichick said after the game that Cam is absolutely their starter going forward.

Absolutely sure. The game was out of hand. Get Stidim experience. get get steady some reps but we're now going three games of cam playing he of course missed the chief's game because of COVID but even back to that Raiders win where he hasn't thrown the football very well nobody can get separation edelman is either hurt beyond his usual level of hurt or just strangely not involved but they want like a mere bird to be their number one wide receiver and it's just not feasible. So I guess I could see them finding a way to sneak into a seventh playoff spot if certain things improve. But beyond that, I don't know what the goal would be for them. And that no longer just applies to this season. It's starting to sneak into where do they go from here. And that that's the bigger question, I think. And even for Belichick, I think. And even for Belichick, I think.

would be the bigger question. Right. So a couple things here that are really important. Number one is that when Camden throws to receivers, the numbers are absolutely awful. Nobody's getting open and he's not doing a good job when the guys do get open. The defense does not respect the passing game and they don't need to. And that's going to continue to show itself.

We saw what that running game was capable of against Miami. And I don't know the next time we're going to see that again because of how defenses have adjusted and what they've learned about the passing game. At one point, Albert Breer tweeted this. At one point today, the Niners had scored five times and Kim Dune and it completed six passes. That's where they're at right now. And I think there's ways to get better.

I think that there's, listen, there are some built-in excuses here. The best advantage that they'll always have is Bill Belichick and he's not able to put his stamp on the team when, you know, you have a couple weeks there where you couldn't practice all the time. but this rises above that. They should be better and they shouldn't get blown out by the 49ers.

And the 49ers have had as bad of injury luck as you can possibly have and they're just rolling right now and they're bullying people. And, you know, I heard Chris Collinsworth said this midweek on one of his podcasts

where he said, you know, watch out for a team that just got humiliated. And I thought about that. And I wrote that down because I'm thinking, okay, if the Patriots have something,

we're about to see it. And if Bill Belichick's got something and he can turn it around, we're about to see it. And instead, they continue to get humiliated. And I think that's the disappointing thing a little bit. They're now been pulling to this. They're now winless in October.

They'd been 65 and 18 under Belichick in October. Okay. I mean, there's a million things going on. This is like, you know, those years where like Alabama's down, or I remember the Ron Zuck years in Florida, where it's like every stat, oh, they'd beaten this team 25 years in a row, whatever. We're going to get all the bad Patriots down.

that we'd been avoiding since 2002. This is obviously the first three-game losing streak since then. There's just a lot going on here. And I think, again, I don't want to use this as a crutch, but I actually like to see Belichick in these situations. I mean, like, we talk so much about him problem-solving or whatever, but it's always been kind of minor problems. It's always been, oh, they're down a little bit on defensive backs.

Julian Ellumann's playing nickel for some reason, okay? or Tom Brady spent it for four games, they'll have Jimmy Groplo out there. Like, it's never the big problems. And Bill Belichick has the biggest problem of his recent Patriots tenure, which is they don't have a dynamic offense and their defense is not playing nearly as well

as it should and can't carry it. And so Cam Newton says he's healthy. We'll have to believe him. A couple folks out there, I think maybe his hand is hurt or whatever. But there's no excuse here for getting blown out for letting Jeff Wilson bully you into three touchdowns and 112 yards. When I look at this team, again, I'm starting to think that instead of, and I've branded a

couple teams like this this year, instead of saying, okay, this is a good team playing badly at some point, you're just a bad team, and that's where I am right now. Do we want to praise Tom Brady or do you have more on the Patriots? Well, on the Patriots, the thing you talked about problem solving and the thing that I guess was discouraging when I was watching that game was that what the 49ers did was not at all unpredictable. They're a very balanced offense so they can be hard to defend in that way. But they use a ton of play action. They run to the outside. They make the edges super important.

The Patriots have been seeing just a ton of single high safety looks in recent weeks because teams are. are selling out to stop the run and they're not expecting the past. And again, they're not making anybody pay when it's single high. You got to do that. Hit a chunk play. Hit a chunk play, Cam Newton. Hit one chunk play. One chunk play changes the whole deal.

The whole deal changes if he starts hitting chunk plays, not doing it. No, they're one of the worst. They're seeing some of the most single high safety looks and they're playing among the worst against them, which is a bad place to be. But because that's what they've been saying and because defenses are going to keep doing that until they figure out a way to stop it. And because the 49ers have both schematic advantages but also some personnel limitations on offense and just a style that they play that makes them pretty easy to understand what they're going to try to do, you would think that this would be a matchup where Belichick could get to work doing some problem solving. Right?

And there are going to be some things you can explain away about the defense. You can talk about the opt-outs, whatever. There are some things that I don't feel like I fully understand. For instance, Chase Winovich has been one of their best edge players. And the edges are so important when you're playing the Niners. And he wasn't playing a lot. And I don't really understand what's going on there. But this just doesn't look like a good defense in addition to all the issues on the offense.

And to me, it goes beyond some of the regression prone. stuff that we've talked about with them where they had a lot of turnovers last year. They also have a lot of older guys. So you wonder if eventually there's some drop off. But the thing, the thing is is that Belichick can solve problems. So maybe you can see a path for them to get better because of that. But you can also see a path for them to get worse because it's going to be the trade deadline. And they might decide that this isn't it. And they've got got guys like Gilmore, Tunney, Edelman. They could move. move on from. And they could decide that this just isn't it. And it's better to get something

now than try to milk everything you possibly can for a wildcard spot and one playoff game. I'm fascinated to see how Belichick views his team in the next two weeks. Which we have, which we will see. Yes. I want to see what his evaluation is. And whether, as you said, whether he tries to get younger, I think, you know, one of the things about the Patriots the last three, four years is they've basically cornered the market on not only mid-tier veterans, but older, older mid-tier veterans. They were the oldest, I think it was the oldest defense, maybe the oldest offense in the league the last couple of years, certainly when you adjust for playing time, they were among the

oldest. And the reason, essentially, is not only do they like those guys who make six, seven, eight million dollars, but they like the idea of just smart guys who know what to do. That becomes less important when you're not playing situational football in December. and trying to eke out wins and stuff. It doesn't matter. If this team is just trying to get to eight, nine, ten wins, you might as well just kind of hit the reboot,

do a soft rebuild and get some young guys in there. You don't need a $9 million safety or whatever, or tight end, whatever it might be. You don't need those veterans if you're not, if you're trying to plan for three years out. That's why I think this is all interesting. All right, let's talk about the bucks real quick. So they go into Vegas, I think they have a pretty nice game.

I mean, Tom Brady, his numbers are pretty much all the way back. I think that we know now, I guess you could say we know now, that last year was by and large, in New England, a product of his skill guys and what was going on there because he's got some really nice weapons to throw to and Brady's, Brady's numbers are back. Yeah, I think he has a little bit of culpability for last year in New England for what it's worth. I tend, I tend, it was not 100 to zero, nor was it 50. Sure. Sure. But you can also, you know, quarterbacks are people too. Brady can be energized by going, oh, I really like Scotty Miller and Gronk is back and I have Mike Evans and everything's great.

So I think there's a little bit of chicken or the egg there and it's coming from both sides. but he looks really good. And I'd felt like I'd questioned whether that was going to be the case just after watching 2019 Brady and felt pretty quickly that his arm looks good. The velocity looks good. The guy who didn't look great to me early in the season was gronk. And the last couple of weeks, some of that stiffness seems like he's worked it out a little bit. It really does. And it's really interesting, frankly, to watch just because you wonder with older players who have pretty significant injury histories and playing a physical position like that, whether that's even possible.

And I know I felt a little bit of squeamishness at Gronk's comeback attempt just because he'd seemed so happy to take a break from football and actually have his body feeling better when he did retire before Unrex. retiring. And I hope he's able to get back to that quickly. But it seems like right now, physically, he's in a place that I did not expect him to get to this season. And he's, they're working those overrouts to him. That's so comfortable to Brady. And I think having that familiarity in a situation where he's, where Brady's learning a lot of new things and working with a lot of new players. I've got to imagine that someone like Brady who cares a lot about that stuff

is really helpful. Okay. So I'm thinking that the books and the Patriots are playing exactly like we thought they would on say August 25th. You know, after the opt-outs, we see a little bit in training camp. I think that the expectations got

a little bit out of whack with both teams in different directions. Because I think we also how good the Patriots looked in week one. the Bucks, meanwhile, have the weird game in Chicago. They have obviously the weird mis-kew filled game in New Orleans. And I feel like after two or three weeks, I think we thought the Patriots were a little closer to the Bucs

than maybe we anticipated it. And now we're seeing that golf. The Bucs are a really good football team. They're a complete football team. The Patriots are not. The Patriots are making awful mistakes. The tackling was bad today. This is a team, by the way.

I understand the 49ers have a great coaching staff and Jim McLaughlo's back. and all that stuff, and he looks healthy. But this is a team that got the doors blown off by Miami a couple weeks ago. You should not be getting bullied by these types of teams. Now, we turn our attention to Antonio Brown, who's going to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneer. When you first heard about this signing, you thought what? I thought that noise. That's a great.

That might be the best way to put it more. Yeah. Well, the 11-day tenure of Antonio Brown in New England last year was, unfun for a number of reasons. And it was strange to realize and report and understand over that period to what degree Brady had involved himself in that process. And that is the strange thing here, too, because we're seeing a quarterback have a really large amount of influence that

I'm surprised that he has because we're talking about a player in Antonio Brown that Bruce Ariens knows and doesn't have a great track record with and Brown has... Called him a Diva, said he wasn't a fit. Yeah, and Brown has his own history, which obviously we know when you wrote about.

But I'm really surprised. And I'm surprised because Brown was suspended for the first eight game of this season and everybody knew that and teams could have signed him during training camp and he could have practiced during training camp and he still would have had to serve that suspension. But at that point, everybody decided not to the bucks included. And Arian said specifically that they didn't have room and he didn't think it was a good fit in the locker room.

And now they've had some injuries and that calculus changes and maybe some lobbying from Brady is a part of that too. but we just spent however many minutes talking about how many different options they have and how well they've played and making a move like that that to me has some desperation built into it. That was certainly why the Patriots made it.

Desperation for a team that absolutely does not need to be desperate. That's what's frustrating about it. Does not need to be desperate and is also playing with fire in a situation where the last three teams that worked with this guy got legitimately burned by to varying degrees, but there is not a lot of recent history of this working out well. And it's frankly really strange to me that they would do this, not even from a off-the-field perspective, but from the perspective of the negative ways in which we've seen, Antonio.

Brown impact locker rooms and impact teams. You were there the last time Antonio Brown was in an NFL locker room. You know more than anyone in media how just absolutely bonkers that 11 days was. And I think that the idea that Antonio Brown and Tom Brady forged some bond in those 11 days, it needs to be replicated seems a little bit misguided to me. Antonio Brown played one good half with Tom Brady. He played one good half against dolphins. against the then awful, awful, maybe tanking dolphins in September, okay?

And the good connection that they had in the first half of that game did not carry over beyond half time. No, it didn't. And I start to think about the fact that Mike Tomlin, Kevin Colbert, John Gruden, Mike Mayock, Bill Belichick, Robert, a lot of smart football guys there. In fact, all of them were smart football guys. and all of them did whatever they could to get Antonio Brought off the books. Now, there's a little bit of debate of whether or not Belichick would have kept him on the team

or if Robert Kraft had insisted on it. I don't want to get into that right now. But, and I don't, do you, do you have a read on that exactly before I keep going? Well, the thing was that he, so, he'd been, there had been allegations of rape and of sexual assault from a former trainer. There was another incident that came up just the week that the Patriots had him from an artist that he'd hired, which also had to do with unwanted sexual contact. And when that stuff came out, it was not clear if he was going to get cut.

And there was definitely tension over it. The crafts had sort of drawn lines in the sand verbally, at least, about not being willing to sign players with that background. And that was put into question, obviously, by having Brown around. But at that point, it was not clear if he was going to stick around or leave. He was living with Brady. It was already a very strange situation. He was totally coddled in the locker room.

It would be he will take three questions once a week. Team reporters would be placed to ask some of the questions. And it seemed like everybody was on edge. There were certainly guys, and I'm speaking for my own judgment of the situation. They did not say this to me. But there were guys like Devin McCordy and Matthew Slater who probably just didn't know him really at all and didn't work, you know, weren't in the offense and just felt a weight of having to deal with it that definitely consumed that week. But what the final straw was was that when he had the second set of allegations from the artist, she then got a bunch of threatening text messages from his number, which she then turned over to the league and had a lawyer and wanted to get protection.

And at that point, yeah, Robert Clemcoe did a great job of reporting on that story in Sports Illustrated. And it was right after that that the Patriots cut him. So there was already a big, negative, bad, icky situation that was feeding into the general, you know, tough to navigate world of what NFL teams are willing and are not willing to tolerate and what kinds of situations they even should be litigating in the first place in the name of someone who's really talented. But then you also got into a situation where he literally has. had to stay on the rails for 24 hours, and it didn't happen. And that was what led to him getting cut. Right. And since then, he's retired and unretired.

His old agent Drew Rosenhouse ended their relationship and asked that he get counseling. And then Brown put a bunch of their texts on Instagram and got upset there. He made a music video out of a New Orleans Saints workout as well, speaking of... True. He has a habit of airing private things. Yeah, privacy is not a big thing. Privacy, he's not a big privacy guy. In March, Aryan said that it was not a fit in their locker room.

So I just look at the timeline of this, and I do not understand what the information, and maybe there's something that we don't know. But I don't understand what piece of information would change the calculus that shows this path being overwhelmingly chaotic and negative. So I'm with you 100%. And I also think that you can't say all of those things about Brown and then go, well, the injuries. Well, no, your comments were not about whether or not your team was healthy. You can't say, well, he's a diva and he's not a fit. But if there's injuries, he didn't say that in March. And now he says there's injuries, tell his Jake Wazer this.

And then beyond that, you know, tonight Bruce Ariens comes out and says that that Tom Brady had nothing to do with this. I don't believe, I don't believe you, Bruce Ariens because everybody's on record. Everybody's on record as, as Tom Brady wanting this. So maybe it's just the world's greatest coincidence that Jason Light and Bruce Ariens happened to change their mind in a player they didn't want. And Tom Brady just so happens to be in the building. Come on, guys. Come on. He lived in Brady's house.

and also it had been reported even before Brady signed in Tampa that this was something that Brady probably won somewhere that that reunion. So it's a huge risk and I don't think they need to take it because this is a complete team that is competing for a Super Bowl now. And so I don't know. Mark Masking, Washington Post reported that the case is not necessarily closed

on all the allegations of the Browns, so there could be further punishment from the league. I don't know. all right let's get to our winner it's the pittsburgh steelers who beat the tennessee titans in a very very i guess you could say weird game because the steelers looked like they were going to blow the doors off the titans and then the titans pretty much i mean they they had a real chance to win this game stephen gaskowski missed a kick it's going to really hurt his hall of fame chances but i saw two separate steers teams today i saw two separate titans teams today, I don't necessarily know what conclusions to draw, nor what do we learn.

My conclusion was that the first half Steelers are closer to the real Steelers, but that the Titans are good. I don't think that there's a lot of shame in that being a close game. I thought that the most interesting part of it was the job that Pittsburgh did sort of massaging around not having Devin Bush, which is going to be huge for them. And, Robert Spillane, who had the goal line stop of Henry and I think did pretty well as the main replacement. And then they spelled him in some passing situations with Vince Williams and Ulysses Gilbert. And they look really complete. They, you know, Ben Rathesberger's passing chart was just like a spray of short and intermediate stuff.

and I just get the sense that they're pretty capable of winning in a lot of different ways. I still think the Titans are really good. So I felt like their first half was a little bit more indicative of where they are than the second half. But there's just no shame in losing a close game or in winning a close game is what I would say. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay, so they don't, so essentially there's a couple things I circled here. Number one is Robert Splane and just how physical this game was and that the Steelers were more physical because I look at this. I knew, everyone knew coming into this game is going to be physical.

I mean, I've been to Stewards training camp practice. They hit the crap out of each other. It is unbelievable. And the Titans are just as physical and they want to play bully ball too. And so that's what I was looking at. So you have Spillane just hitting Derek Henry almost back and at the goal line. And they really did a good job of containing Henry. This was kind of a Derek Henry hype week.

Everybody did the stiff arm story. New York Times did it. ESPN did it all that stuff out of the stiff arm. And then the Steelers were able to impose their physical will. Vince Williams now, I think it leads the NFL with 12 tackles for loss. That front seven is really good. And I don't see, obviously, Devin Bush is a massive, massive loss, but I still see that same sort of general tone from that defense, which is what I wanted to see. You know, Alice Cezora, who covers the team pointed out that Cleveland had the top rushing offense in football last week and the Steelers wrapped them up.

And this week, Tennessee and Derek Henry come in, fifth best rushing attack. The Steelers wrap them up. I don't necessarily care about run defense. I think it's hugely overrated. There's a lot of really great teams that don't care about rush defense. But I think the Steelers' ability to take away what. teams do well is important. Now, obviously, Ryan Tannahill is the engine that makes the Titans go.

And they were able to contain that in the first half. Now, the second half is worrying to me. Number one, Ben Rosberg has three interceptions. Not all of that is his fault. He took responsibility for the one that went to Juju. I basically said that he threw it six inches off the shoulder and he could have placed it better. They don't score in their final four drives.

really left the door open for Tennessee. Again, I think this is the type of game where I say, okay, I'll see these teams in January. But I like the idea that these teams are both physical. I like the, if I had to rank them right now, obviously would take the Steelers. I think the Steelers are probably the third best team in the AFC right now. Next week, they have the Ravens.

We'll be able to draw a lot more conclusions. I pretty much feel the same way about these two teams that I did at noon today. What I feel differently about is it might have been last week when we got a question about whether we'd rather go on-on-one against Aaron Donald or have to tackle Derek Henry. But I do, I feel like T.J. Watt and our guy, Bob Spillane, are now on the list of Bobby S. Can we just nickname him?

T.J. Watt and Bobby S. Our guy are on the list of, okay, you can go on-on-one with Derek Henry, and I'm not like terrified for you. So good for them. I think that he's a little tougher than we are. Oh, yeah. No, this has not. This is good news because it means we don't have to have any part of it.

We're making this list. Someone else can handle it? Yeah. It's not on us. We're good. We're in the clear, buddy. He's 6-1-229. He's not that big.

Yeah, but I don't want to. I'm not, I don't want to either. Okay, so I again, I come away with this. if the Steelers had closed out this game the way they had played in the first half, I think this is a completely different conversation. But I think that the fact that the Titans were able to recover a little bit leaves this game a little bit open to interpretation. That's all.

All right. Now it's time for the State Farm, surprisingly great segment of the week. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate. That's like Justin Herbert coming on in the scene and being one of the top rookie quarterbacks, top young quarterbacks we've seen in a long time. State Farm agents provide personal. service that you can customize your insurance to fit your needs like a GM putting together their very own roster. You need a team that supports you and State Farm's got a great one.

In addition to agents, the award-winning mobile app helps manage coverage, pay bills, file claims, and more. With a great price, even greater service, State Farm goes from strength to strength. Nora, what did you think of them on Sunday? He's really impressive and I've got to imagine that it was a tough spot to be in not having even the abridged preparation that other rookies had this off season, but he is now the only player since at least 1970 with 1,500 or more passing yards and a 100 plus passer rating over his first five career games. And it's interesting to look at Herbert. We've talked a lot about Burrow, kind of in the context of what you need to see from a rookie quarterback and what you're looking for them as they develop in the first year when not everything is

going to be perfect. And it's interesting because, To me, the Bengals do not have anywhere near as good of a roster as the Chargers do. But the situation that Herbert was thrown into was one that's really complicated to navigate. He didn't know he was going to be playing. The rap on him at Oregon was not that he was a complete, polished NFL ready guy. And I think it's been very fascinating to see how some of the short and intermediate at passing and the general lack of skittishness is not there, which would have been the expectation. Some of the stuff that he was known for, particularly the deep passing, absolutely is there,

all three of his touchdowns today. They won against the Jaguars or on deep balls. We've seen some beautiful throws from him. But some of the more efficiency moves, how? have been really good too. So I'm really impressed with him in particular because as good as their roster is and as much as he has some support,

that's a really hard position to be in. And I think he's exceeded pretty much everybody's expectations in it. First player this season to have three or more deep touchdown passes, as you said, over 20 yards. Richard Sherman, who I guess had flipped over. He said he wasn't watching the Chargers game because obviously his team was playing, but he said he did see some of those dimes.

So maybe he was on Twitter or something. I think everyone's taking notice. I think everybody was taking notice. What I liked about his deep passing on Sunday is that all of his targets were to seven different receivers. He did not repeat a target once. He's spreading the ball out. He's opening it up. He looks like a different person than the guy we saw in college.

And a lot of that was because of the offense. We had Bucky Brooks on in the midweek show, a great interview if he hadn't listened to it. And he basically said that some of it was they didn't have a backup quarterback. They don't want to leave him open to big shots, all that stuff. But whatever it is, he's playing with the newfound confidence. And the chart is doing a really good job of accentuating his strengths. And so his completion percentage is through the roof. All of his metrics are pointing in the right direction.

I just think that there's probably something special here. And I think with Burrow, it's going to be a building process. I love Joe Burrow. And I love what he's shown the past couple of weeks, especially. What I like in particular is that he's he's got the same confidence and swagger that he did when he's playing in the best college offense of all time, as he does, playing for the,

with these crappy guys who all up in Carlos Dunlap, trying to sell his condo on Twitter. I mean, that, that season's going south very, very quickly. And Joe Burrow is playing like a very confident person. So I like that part of it.

It's, it is really hard, even if Joe Burrow were playing as well or was destined to be as good as Justin Herbert and obviously, Tua is going to be in that mix. I think this early in all of their careers, it's so much about situation, it's so much about play calling, it's so much about the little tiny things that are almost imperceptible at this point. So I think it's way too early to call. I mean, listen, the 2016 draft class with Dak and Wenz and golf, and people were arguing about that in 2019. People were arguing

about that in 2020. They might argue about it for the next 50 years. So the idea that we could draw in conclusion six games into the 2020 class a little bit crazy. But I love what I've seen from Herbert. And I think that there's, there's definitely some, some, some special building blocks. I thought it was interesting. Daniel Popper writes for the athletic basically said that there, there's really nothing that could get Anthony Lynn fired this year. I think he had, someone had asked if Eric Biennamy would be a good candidate there. And he basically said the Spanos family, barring a huge collapse, loves Anthony Lynn, is going to stick with him. So I think that that might be a solid choice. I think Lynn and Herbert and a couple, you had a couple pieces there. I know that

they're kind of, they do have some intriguing veterans this year. So I think that this is, I'm intrigued, I guess you could say. I know I just said intriguing twice in one paragraph and there's a reason for it. Okay. Choose insurance. It always brings its A game. When you want the real deal, like a good neighbor, state farm is there. A surprisingly great player from last week was Jimmy Garapolo and the rest of the

San Francisco 49ers. Okay, let's get to our loser, Nora. And I think there was a really high bar to clear for Mike McCarthy and the Dallas Cowboys to be a loser. is we're pretty much all set on their 2020 and what this looks like. They go out and they get absolutely destroyed by the Washington football team. And a couple of interesting things. Number one, the hit from John Bostic on Andy Dalton was 30, and there's just no place in the game for that.

And I was horrified to see it. But now they're probably down to their third string quarterback until further notice, Ben Danucci. And when Andy Dalton was in the game, and I was told that Andy Dalton was going to be one of the best backup quarterbacks in league. It could have started some places, right? Came to Dallas to play at home,

rehabilitated his quarterback image a little bit, and, you know, get a starting job next year, whatever it was. It turns out the Cowboys look one of the worst teams in football. And I don't want to re-legislate to Mike McCarthy hire again because we know what this is. This is a team.

Jerry Jones did not know what his team was. He thought they could win the Super Bowl now. So he went out and hired a veteran coach. Well, guess what? The talent just was not there. The defense is awful. There's no effort. Mike Nolan might be the worst assistant coach in football right now.

And Mike McCarthy is not a good coach. And I'm starting to wonder if this experiment is going to end very, very soon. Okay. I understand the injury part of it. I understand how many guys are on IR, Wuzier, Lyle Collins, Sean Lee. Joe Looney, Dak Prescott, Tyron Smith, all these guys. I understand it. And this team would look a little bit different.

But you can't get blown out by Washington football team. You can't do it. I know that that sounds extremely like talk radio, but I don't know how else to say this. The Cowboys have the team they deserve right now, which is an awful team that, you know, Marcus Spears said they've quit. That's probably true.

They're going to end up hosting a playoff game 10 weeks after they quit on the season. Nora, thoughts on this bad team. Still time to trade for Fitzmagic. Come on, Jerry. I don't even know. Listen, I don't want to throw hyperbole around. I don't know if Fitzmagic even does anything here. I wonder if this team is just so beaten down that Fitzmagic cannot even rejuvenate them.

That's horrible. That's so sad. And yeah, I guess McCarthy was upset that they didn't like get in Bostick's face a little bit more. It's very hot. It's very strange. Yeah. I don't relate to that energy at all. He was surprised at the reaction from the rest of the team when that dirty hit came in.

And I understand the impulse to think that, but I just, what do you want? Do you want a brawl? Do you want them to start a brawl? Yeah, that was like. Do you want the benches to clear? Everyone's like, doing like, doing like the west side story. Like, everybody comes in snapping. What exactly do you want here?

I was surprised by that, too. I mean, there's not a whole lot. lot more to say except this team stinks. Patrick Daughtry from Roto World joked, and it's not even a joke that the two four and one Eagles should rest their starters for the next nine games. I mean, I, unfortunately, the Eagles are my pick to win the division now because I look at the giants and the football team and say no. And then I look at this Cowboys team. I don't think this team is capable of winning games. I don't know where these wins are going to come from. Someone has to win some games here. And I don't see.

Anyway, I mean, so the numbers out here are just disgusting. Trey Wingo had this, that since the merger, this is going to be basically the worst division of all time through seven weeks, which is not much of a surprise. And the punting to tie eagles are going to end up with that tie end up. And that's half a win. And a division where nobody can win a game, that's big stuff. So, I mean, in it, listen, in a week where the Falcons where Todd Gurley fell down into the end zone, and the lions were celebrating, like the Cowboys getting first loser

says a lot about this franchise right now. McCarthy also, McCarthy told NFL Network, I guess, the brilliant advanced analytic stat that if you win at least four division games, you often win the division, which on a day when we just talked about,

he said the weird thing about wanting a brawl or whatever, that still took the cake as the strangest comment. And I don't know if something was lost in translation there, but at this point, Mike McCarthy has not given us a lot to say that the benefit of the doubt should be there. I believe he is on a five-year contract. And obviously, sometimes teams move on before the end of a coach's contract,

but there's a lot of reluctance to be paying four years for someone who's no longer working for you. So I don't know that this is as bad as it would need to be for a move to happen there. How could it be worse? How could it be worse? I don't know. That's my question. If you were to design something worse, and I understand the Doc Prescott part of it,

but this team was bad before Doc Prescott went out. And obviously they were trending in the wrong direction. My McCarthy seems to not have any answers. That is my overall problem is I just don't see a guy who's ready to solve problems. Okay. And the fact that Daniel Jones fell down in the open field and the Giants blew that came on Thursday night didn't even warrant a mention until now in this NFCE's conversation shows you how deeply troubled the entire division is.

What you would do if you wanted to make it go from bad tourists is you would have an expensive star running back who wasn't playing very well. Oh, wait. On a long term deal. It's tough. It's a tough one. Yes. let's get let's improve and stop talking with this awful cowboys team and let's talk about the equally

depressing i'm not even sure i don't even if you're a falcons fan i think there's kind of a gallows humor to it all i think falcons fans have processed that dan quinn has been fired i think they're kind of laughing now i don't think anybody's laughing in dallas i think jason garrott losses were kind of funny you know there was something to it and he's always clapping and he's he's got some reaction my mccarthy just there's just there's just nothing there, man. It's not funny. It's not anything. Anyway, the Falcons.

So the Falcons have now lost three games when they had a 95% or above win probability. They account for about half of all losses that have occurred like that this year. There have been seven of them. They've accounted for three of them. They've now lost to the Cowboys. There you go. The Bears and the Lions that way. today was the most interesting.

So I guess the Cowboys' Wants was interesting, but this was maybe the funniest, I guess you could say. So Todd Gurley, all he needs to do is not score. He falls into the end zone. And Jamie Collins, in an image I will remember for the rest of my football life, Jamie Collins, the Lions linebacker, starts celebrating to the ref to signal there was a touchdown. He wanted the ref to know there was a touchdown. So there's a photo out there, I tweeted it out, where he's saying,

signaling touchdown. Another defensive back is kind of pointing to the to the ref as if to say he's in the end zone. Todd Gurley is dejected in the end zone because he's realized he's accidentally scored a touchdown. So this gives the Lions of the ball back. Matthew Stafford drives length of the field and the last play of the game. They tied the game up. They went on the extra point. I don't know how this is possible. Nora help me. There's really only two things that you need to know beyond what we just discussed. The fact that the Falcons lost because they can't even not score right

is spectacular. The second thing, you talk about the gallows humor that is sort of consuming Atlanta. All sports, by the way. Yeah. Arthur Blank's yacht, his giant boat has been in Boston Harbor

for the last couple of months. And I don't know if it's a family member using it or if they rent it out or whatever. But it's been in the harbor. And I walk by there a lot and I see it. And recently I've started looking at it and just going, I don't want to get on that boat.

Yeah. You don't want anywhere near it. I just don't want any affiliation with a falcons entity where if things go wrong, it's going to be really bad because it just seems like it's a treacherous situation. It reminds me when airlines, there was an airline a couple years ago that had all NBA teams. like every NBA team had its own branded airplane as part of the promotion. And you'd see these airplanes. And it was like, you know, a Phoenix Sun's airplane.

And it's like, you're getting on that airplane? You're getting on the Sun's airplane? You're getting on the Falcons boat. You're getting on the Orlando Magic airplane. You get on an airplane. You see an Orlando Magic logo. You're not getting off immediately. Come on.

Yeah. This is just, again, we're running out of ways to say it. And what's fascinating to me, it's almost, almost like the Daniel Jones thing, right? Which is you're good enough to get there and get this lead in NFL game over some okay teams. I mean, they should have beaten the Bears who are probably going to make the playoffs. And yet they can't close it out.

It's, you know, the same gene with Daniel Jones that gets you into the open field and NFL game should prevent you from stumbling. And yet, here we are. It's a cousin of what I call the Nathan Peterman thing, which is just the incredible middle between being good enough to make the NFL with being the worst player in it. That's fascinating to me. And that's where the Falcons are. It's where Daniel Jones in that run is.

And in a separate category is where Nathan Peterman is. All right. Now we're doing honorable mentions again. Two minutes to cover everything. I think we're going to do it this time. I believe in us. Bill's for Chess. So we saw that Adam Gase gave up play calling and it didn't really.

change anything. They have to play. Not a guru. Not a guru. They're playing the Chiefs next is mainly what I think. Four yards of total offense in the second half.

This is, they had a okay first half. They were up briefly on the bills. Producer Craig asked if the Jets were back. They're not. This is, I don't know what to tell you. This is, I can't believe giving Duel Lagan's play calling duties.

didn't work. Packers Texans. Aaron Rogers is really good. Yeah. I don't know. The Buck's defense also might be very good. The Buck's defense. Oh, yes. So I, I am, I'm with you on that. I think that the bucks, I think the bucks, we're going to look back on last week and realize that that was the Bucks announcing themselves as Super Bowl contenders.

And Aaron Rogers is still really good? By the way, how good is Aaron Rogers stock now that Mike McCarthy looks like he looks in Dallas? extremely high. Also, guess whose receivers got banged up and didn't sign Antonio Brown? I know. I do know the answer. Just saying, it's the Green Bay Packer. Chiefs Broncos. I just want to talk about the flea flicker fumble. Melvin Gordon keeps fumbling, and that was the weirdest one. Talk about my rule smock. Pantos Saints. The Smok is back. I know they lost to the Saints, but I don't care. The Smock is back. I love the Smoff. Are the Saints back?

I don't think the Saints are really back, but I think the smock is back. Okay. So something is back in that game. It's the smoth. Not again, two weeks in a row. All right, I have a fan question. And there's three variations of this.

So we got the same question number of times. And I'll start it here. Could D.K. McCaff or should D.K. Metcalfe play defense. We got it from a guy named Afon's AAU team. We got it. from another guy. I can't pull up. I'll find it here.

Let's answer the question first. What do we think about D.K. Maccalf? And the initial question was, should he just play third down pass-fressing special? So we saw him chase down Buda-Baker on Sunday early in this game. And I think that he might be the best open-field tackler on the Seahawks. Go ahead. I think that's right.

Situational pass-fresher is the perfect spot for him. It's not going to require a lot of meeting room time. You just pin your ears back, D.K. Metcalf, let's go. Kevin Clanch is the one who asked. His name's Kevin Clonch, not Kevin Clark. He said, I am Kevin Clark. On third down passing situations, who's stopping that man? Great point.

I think functionally it doesn't. You probably get D.K. McAf hurt. But I support it generally. I just think that's a little too many snaps for our guy, D.K. That's all. That's all. You could, you could take him, you could spell him a few snaps on offense. I guess the question would be how much would he have to practice?

And then you take away from the offense. I just think that that, that, that's a bit, you know, we're talking about situation of football here. At some point, you'd have to practice a little bit more. I think from a, I think maybe he, you know what he should do? You know how sometimes they have like tall receivers play the hands team or, like, on Hail Mary's, like have them back there. Like I remember, like, I think like, Randy Moss, Kishon,

Johnson, Calvin Johnson, like sometimes teams are just throwing them back there on Hell Mary's just to bathe the ball down, right? I feel like if it's like the Super Bowl and it's a final drive, I don't think there's any harm I'm putting D.K.MECF out there to just try to sack the quarterback. 100% of great. Last drive of the game. The other thing that I think they need to do is get rid of the Pro Bowl and replace it with some sort of like tag.

Sack race, tag field day activities thing, very heavily featuring DK. Maccalf. Okay. Another variation in this question from Ross Keys. Could you beat D.K. Maccalf in a hundred meter race if you had an 80 meter head start? Yes. I haven't done the physics on this, but I think no. I think I'd Daniel Jones and just fall down. Oh, that's very possible. I still think I go, but that's toward the border of when this becomes impossible. It depends if D.K. McCaf is there or not, or if I know, if they're just like run as fast as you can, I would, I would be able to do it. But if they were like, you're racing D.K. Metcalf,

that's where you have the problem. It's similar to Rino Handel and Melodyn, I used to talk about this all the time where it was like, how quickly would you be knocked out by an MMA fighter, right? And the actual question is whether or not the MMA fighter knows you can't fight or not. Because if he thinks you can fight, you can buy yourself like 20 seconds by just,

Because the fighter's not going to come in hot. He's just going to, like, fill you out a little bit. But if he knows that you're liable to get knocked out, he's going to come over and knock you out in two seconds. Anybody could knock you out in two seconds. I thought it was going to be the opposite of that. I thought it was going to be if he knows you can't fight, he's going to be nice to you.

No, no, no, no, no. If he knows he can't fight, he's going to knock you out. As soon as you possibly can knock him out, yes. It's not for me. It's getting knocked out is not for me. All right. tomorrow's Click Bay headline. I've got a good one.

Are the Jets back? No. Are the Jets back? It's not. Are the Jets back? I'm going with, is Steve Belichick going to get demoted by his father? So I thought about that. I'm not going to, do you think that that's a possibility?

And would we, and would we know about it if it did happen? We wouldn't know about it is the thing. He's not the decent. We wouldn't know about it. But we would just see like a little bit more Gerard Mayo activity. Right. And I also think that. people get, and you know this,

probably better than I do, people get demoted on that staff sometimes kind of in fluid situations and they get promoted again, right? Like the old thing was like Matt Patricia was sometimes just going to like casually lose play calling duties and maybe get them back later. You know, like I remember Michael Lombardi saying this

and this was just in general when he was doing the GM Street podcast. I remember he was saying that, you know, Bill will come in one day. And it could be anybody. It could be D-line, could be receivers, whatever. And I'll say, okay, well, we tried it your way. Let's try it my way.

And that was the code for Bill's game planning this week for you, buddy. And that was not specific to anybody, but we could be getting that on some position group at some point in the next couple weeks is all I'll say about that. Not Patricia caught another stray. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to talk about the Cleveland Browns, who obviously, obviously, beat Joe Burrow and Cincinnati Bengals this week. That got just pushed down because of the Sunday night game and all the news. What I will say,

I think there's going to be some click-baity headlines on O'Dell Beckham being out for the season. I think there's a lot there. Number one is O'Dell gets hurt on a Baker-Mayfield interception. Number two is they play well without him, which I think that you could see some obnoxious sort of debate showy stuff trying to argue whether or not

a team is better without a star play. I am always, always against that argument, no matter who it is. If the problem, if there's a problem with a player being on the field, the problem is not on the player if he's talented. The problem is on neither of the system or what's going on with him. You can find ways to make O'D Beckham productive and they have this year. And so if someone tries to argue that, and I already saw it on Twitter, I already saw it on Twitter.

If someone tries to argue that a team is better without a star player, you can almost always always not take those people seriously, is what I'll say about that. Brown's very good, Miles Garrett, dominant force. I liked what I saw out of the Browns, even though it was a crappy Bengals team, all that stuff. At some point, again, I'm going to keep saying it. The weirdest year of all

time, seven playoff teams, it's just a math problem. Just keep winning games. Everything's going to be fine. All right, Nora, we'll be back on Thursday. Tootaloo.