The Ringer NFL Show - Week 8 Recap: Backup Quarterbacks Shine, Titans Top the AFC, and a Deep Dive Into the Panthers Offense

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to discuss Trevor Siemian leading the Saints to an upset win over the Bucs (3:22). Then they go through several other games, including Mike White and the Jets' comeback win over the Bengals, Cooper Rush and the Cowboys winning on the road, the Titans beating the Colts in overtime, and more (14:23). Then Steven Ruiz joins Kevin and Nora to talk about what he’s seen from Joe Brady, Sam Darnold, and the rest of the Panthers' offense in recent weeks (1:24:50). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guests: Benjamin Solak and Steven Ruiz Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Missa Okwanga. I'm Ian Wright. And I'm Ryan Hunt. And collectively, we are the Stadio podcast and Wright's House on the Ringr-FC feed. Yes, we are. We come to you three times a week on the Ringr-FC feed. Bring in love. We're bringing love and football. So if you like zooming out and zooming in on football and all the stuff around it, make sure you follow Ringer FC on Spotify or wherever we get your podcasts.

How's that, Rye? I reckon I'll do. Yeah, man. It is the Ringwren NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark joined after a wild and wild. Mackey NFL Sunday by Noel Prince Yaddy. Norah, what's going on? Happy Halloween, Kevin.

Lots of tricks, lots of treats. Some ghoulishly bloody quarterbacks on this Sunday. That was a little gross. Yeah. I want to talk about that for a second. And I want to bring him Ben Solac. Ben, what's going on, bud? Sorry.

They wait for the intro. I was just really freaked out. I, like, looked up from, like, Twitter or doing something to Red Zone. And there was just Matt Ryan's hand. I was very on ready for it. So if anybody does know what we're talking about, Matt Ryan's hand, like, gushed blood at one point today.

Mac Jones's face, I think, was bleeding. Second time this season? Yeah. He's not blown in his uniform? It's concerning. Nor did you get trick-or-treaters? In my building, yes.

My apartment, this is so sad, but I have to say this. You can sign up or not, and I didn't want trick-or-treaters to come during our podcast. So I left some stuff down downstairs. I mean, it's a little late for trick-or- treaters.

Yeah, but you just get worried. You've got to plan for it all. What's going on in Michigan? What if like an eight-year-old walked in here right now? That would be a little weird for the pod. What does he think about the Baker-Bayfield contract situation? Have you heard our podcast? Elite content idea next year, next year.

This is our first year like with like a house. You know what I mean? Sure. Sure. But in a neighborhood, we were ready. We got multiple bags of candy up in this John. We had one family walk through. So if anybody would like to take 119 pieces of candy off my hands, that'd be great.

The exact opposite happened here in Brooklyn. So apparently we didn't know this because we just moved here is that you have to go outside and like sit there and declare yourself as like giving out candy. Otherwise there's so many apartments. It could be weird. And so my wife was like, oh, I'm going to go out there. And she got cooked, man. She was out of candy in 20 minutes.

She had to come in and like find chocolates from like our cupboard just to give to the last family who wanted it. that was, she was underwater, man. You should have just started handing out takes. Just not stand at the door. You guys hear about this Mike White guy? Hey, look, we're out of candy, but. We have a lot to get.

Is there a QB controversy in New York? We have a lot to get to because, you know, we have a meeting at the end of every week and we're like, oh, well, this could happen, this could happen. We did not anticipate Mike White becoming the biggest star in, in this. the five boroughs today. We didn't anticipate the Saints beating the Buccaneers. We didn't anticipate a lot of things. Justin Herbert getting owned by Belichick once again.

This is a pretty meaty show. We will start with Saints 36 bucks 27. This is a strange statement game. James Winston was carded off. He was dancing on crutches on Instagram after the game. That's how we get health updates now is he was one-legged. I don't know if you guys saw this dancing in the locker room with his team. Sounds like James.

So Tason Hill was out for this game. St. Trevor Simeon played instead. Tom Brady did not play all that well. He loses the game on a PJ Williams pick six at the end. Nora, you're worried here about the bucks? No, because the bucks are terrible at playing the Saints. I worry about the Bucks against the Saints. That is the sorts of my worry.

Also, Brady just occasionally like throws terrible interceptions. It's kind of a schick. So I don't take a lot of this. I remember a couple of years ago, he had the same errant throws like two years ago, I think it was he had the same errant throw rate as Mitch Trubisky. The difference between those two players is that when Tom Brady throws a good pass, it's as good as anybody in history of football and, you know,

other guys are not as good. So yes, he does have the capability to every once in a while throw a stinker. It's just like, this is kind of embarrassing, for sure, because of the Trevor Simeon of it all. But the Saints just, okay, they get pressure just rushing for. Latimore comes in and does a number on Evans. And Brady does some weird stuff.

And then the Saints beat the Bucks. And then the Bucks win the Super Bowl. It's just like, this is how it works. I mean, we literally had this last year. We literally had this last year. Yeah. Without Trevor Simeon. Without where there was a Drew Brees involved there at one point, I believe.

That was different. He's on NBC now. Ben, big takeaway from this game. I just think Dennis, Alan is a stud. And I think that we don't. Yeah. And again, like, if it's just he's a stud because in two games a year against the

Bucks and Brady, he's awesome. I'm fine with that. That's enough of a sample for me. But Allen in a world in which we are increasingly appreciating like two high defenses and good situational blitzers, Dennis Allen's like, where have you guys been? Like, he's got his feet up. I've been here five years where I was ahead of this curve. And you look and you go back.

at some of those Brady picks. Like, it's tendency breaking stuff, right? Like, Brady gets you in the wrong spot. Like, Brady knows how to get to where your defense is weak. Well, Chauncy Gardner Johnson just decides to fall off his man because he expects out of trips with this stack release from two and three that I'm going to get an outbreaker from three. I'm going to get an outbreaker from this inside receiver.

So I'm going to drop off and take it. That's a risk, but it's also probably something coach in the film room on Tuesday, right? They got PJ Williams on that game winning pick. That's weak side safety, just waiting for the Chris Godwin crossers. that's that's that's bucks 101 that's we need a bucket we're running gobwin on the crosser from the slot PJ Williams is sitting there that's not an accident man like these these these these plays have been made enough by dennis allen's defense against brady and the bucks that it is not a mistake that they're getting these key picks in these key situations this this team understands what to

take away and how to take it away marshawn laddimore allows you to do that to mario davis allows you to do that absolutely takes personnel but i mean d a had him dialed in and i think that it's so easy to miss in the Sean Payton era in New Orleans and all of the great offense they've had and the different iterations, the different varieties of that offense, just how rock steady Allen's been for the last few years. Can I ask you guys a question sort of of that?

And this is like, this is a very Kevin question because it's just going to ask you to like assign a general ranking. All right, we made it seven minutes into the show. Seven minutes. Seven minutes. If you say the word tears.

I'm not going to. Is there another team in the NFL that you feel you can comfortably, clearly say is coached better overall than the Saints. So that's exactly what I was thinking about when Payton was struggling, not struggling, but when they were choosing to throw the ball

in that fourth quarter, four or five minutes left situation, right? They're down by one. The bucks have three timeouts. They have a first and goal. Everybody expects them to run it, and they're throwing it. And in general, we were like,

this feels like a little bit of a mistake. We'd like to burn some of these timeouts. We expect to be able to score. And I was like, man, like this, I think this is a time management mistake from Sean Payton. And then I went to think about the last time Sean Payton mismanaged the clock. And I just had nothing. You know what I mean? I went to think of the last time I felt like Peyton and the Saints did something poor on like a fourth down.

And I just had nothing. And I realized that like it's really the absence of commentary, the absence of correction that indicates that like I think a coaching staff is really good. And that kind of made me right. I was like, oh, snap, but this Saints team is really well coached. because there's so few in-game problems they have, and then there's so much flexibility, right? Trevor Simmons goes in, and all of a sudden,

they're an eye formation team. Like, you don't get to do that. That's illegal. But they have it, right? They got three guys out there wearing a number of the 40s. One of them's Camara. That's cheating. But they got like two full backs out there,

and they're pulling stuff off. Like, to me, those are the hallmarks of a really, really well-coached team. So I'm glad you asked that question, Nora, because I was kind of thinking that. Yeah, they might be the best coach team in the league. I remember I did a story a couple years ago, and I talked to the guys who caught exactly

one touchdown pass from Drew Brees. And the point of the exercise there and talking to these full backs and third string tight ends and these guys from the practice squad and special teamers is that there were these guys who they wouldn't even know at the beginning of the play they were even like going out for a pass route, right? And Drew would just say, hey, no, no, no, no, like you're going to go this way. And then they would just figure it out. And that's an extension of Peyton is the creativity that flows throughout the entire

offense is the defining trait, I would say. And just amazing what they were really interesting to see last week, Drew Brees. narrate James Winston. I don't know if you guys saw it on the Manning cast. And you could tell, like, you'd look at his eyes. And there was one point where he just kind of mumbled, what are you doing? And like, Sean Payton's offense is a gift.

And I think that it kind of offended breeze that James had a little bit kind of relinquished out a little bit on Monday night. A couple of questions for you, Ben. So according to PFF, Tom Brady had three turnoverworthy throws today. That is, if you look at it at 75% of his turnoverworthy, throws on the season. Is this just a Saints team having his number? And it being an off week, we've seen so many of them, as Nora said, he just has a

Saints problem. Or are we, is this something where we need to start talking about the next couple of weeks? No, I don't think so, right? I certainly think it feels like it's a Saints problem. The lack of Antonio Brown mattered. Yeah. When you consider like that Johnson-Garner Johnson interception, that's Tyler Johnson, not understanding the replacement for Antonio Brown.

He's got to clear that guy out. Like, your job is to get vertical no matter of the car. It doesn't matter if you're uncovered. It doesn't matter if you're off your line. Get that player out of that zone so he can't fall off and make that pick. Brown's not making that mistake, right? So, like, there's a little bit of that that's going on. The credit also goes to Dennis Allen as well and the tremendous work there.

The other thing that should be noted is a huge boon return to the Saints roster this week. And that's David On Yamada, the defensive tackle, who had the fumble recovery after the Marcus Davenport forced fumble on the rush. On Yamada, after they've lost Sheldon Rankins, he's their best. best pass rushing defense tackle. He was before Rankins, but like they could literally like rotate it a little bit. Once you get Onyamata back, you can start pushing that pocket. And when you push that pocket, it makes it so much easier for Cam Jordan and Marcus Davenport to land, to land their rushes. You need to maintain that interior rush to help out the edges. This defensive front

has come back to full strength. On Yamada is a very underrated player. So him being back with, I think, a big impact in them, keeping Brady in the pocket, making him throw off platform, getting that disruption that causes a fumble and interception. So he's back, which is a very big deal. And not for nothing, but also on the offensive line, the other trenches, they're playing like James Hirsch and Calvin Throckmore and not missing a beat. Like that, again, that goes to the coaching point as well.

So, yeah, they're getting reinforcements back at the right time. But in general, to me, it's Brady against the Saints. I'm not going to overreact to it unless I see it for a couple weeks. Producer Isaiah, play the reckless speculation music. I don't know what that is, but you're going to play. Nora, James Winston is probably out for a couple of weeks. at least.

He's on crutches. He's on crutches. He's on crutches. He's on crutches. He's on. Extended time. Jane Slater had. Jane Slater said that she heard it was an ACL and it was that would be the season.

I'm sorry. I apologize. I did not see that. I assumed he was on crutches so it would be at least be extended time. To be clear that that report was not an ACL tear. It was just an ACL injury. So little, we'll see. So what I'm about to ask assumes he's going to miss a lot of the season.

Tastom Hill has had a concussion this week. He will come back at some point. Trevor Simeon played today, played fine. Wasn't anything to write home about it. I think he gets overrated because he's Trevor Simeon and people like Roger Sherman spam us with Northwestern updates. But there's a quarterback market out there. Philip Rivers, I just saw, finished his high school season last week.

If you're the Saints right now, the move is what, Nora? What about Tyrod Taylor? Hmm. I mean, I don't, don't, give me wrong. If you can coax Phillip Rivers out of retirement, sure. Absolutely by all means, uh, more realistically, um, I think, I think Tyrod would be a reasonable option. Ben, I'm not going to like suggest Andy Dalton. I have pride, but like,

Andy, would you rather have Dalton or Joe Flacco? Dalton. Uh, okay. Mostly for the positive vibes. Uh, maybe I call the Jets, not for Flacco, just they might have a, uh, an ex first rounders, kind of falling out of favor. there. Zach Wilson? Tray to conditional seven for Zach Wilson. You know, it just feels like the ties are turning there in New York a little bit. Guys, speaking of Jets quarterbacks, can I name you some quarterbacks?

Tom Brady has lost games too? Please. Thank you. Thank you. So famously, Eli Manning, I don't know if you guys are familiar. Nick Foles. Kyle Orton. Colt McCoy.

I remember that one. Joe Flacko. Mark Sanchez, Trevor Simeon. It just tickles me a little bit, you know? What about AJ Philly in 2004, remember that? Oh, yeah. That was kind of an idea of sorts. Listen, QB wins is not a stat,

but when it's convenient for me, QB wins is a stat, and I feel like QB wins here, really, really indicative of a black mark on Tom Brady's Hall of Fame career. Just losing to, like, random quarterbacks. Tom Brady against Peyton Manning is, like, incredible. John Brady against Kyle

Orton. You tell Joe Flacco's bank account, the quarterback wins aren't real, buddy. All right? That's Philadelphia Eagle that's the stat. That's the stat is Joe Flacco's bank account and all of the tremendous tips he gives in the Baltimore area according to sources.

According to sources. All right, let's move on to our first superlative. Nora, you have the floor. Yeah, so I'm awarding the Mike White award for Ryan Fitzpatrick and Zach Wilson to Mike White. Yes. New York Jets quarterback Mike White,

second quarterback in NFL history to throw for over 400 yards in his first start, Mike White, first Jets quarterback this season to pass for more than. Cam Newton. Cam Newton when he was just like, when NFL linebackers were looking over to the sideline saying, please help. It was Cam Newton and now Mike White. I'm going to tell you some things about Mike White that I didn't remember

until I looked them up this afternoon. Mike White was drafted in 2018 in the fifth round by the Cowboys, Ben. Curious if you had a Mike White scouting report at the time. He is from Pembroke Pines, Florida, attended Western Kentucky. And he signed with the Jets practice squad in 2019. And today, the crowd was chanting his name as he led the Jets to their second win. So they kept saying they were chanting Mike White. What was the cadence of the Mike White chant?

Was it just Mike White? Yeah. Two syllables is tough. This is an important question. Mike White. Mike White. That's what you got to do. You could have some clapping.

You got some clapping. I don't know. Mike White. Hey, guys, I have to watch the tape. I have to watch the tape. I couldn't get it off the TV copy. I watched the tape. I watched you all 22 this week.

It's good. It's good. Listen, Mike White coming out of Western Kentucky. He was one of those quarterbacks that in the summer, everybody. Dear God, Ben, The last. Everybody, no, no.

No, this is a legit thing. Like, if this is for any other quarterback, it wouldn't be a thing. Everybody who, like, knew somebody who knew an agent who knew somebody was like, yo, watch out for potential first round take Mike White. Like, he had played Alabama the year previous and had like six good throws. It's like the Ryan Nassab thing? Yes, everybody was like big sleeper quarterback this year, Mike White. And then he was Bupkus.

His whole final season. Still went to like the senior ball or whatever. Oh, so it was the year before. It was the year before his last year. It wasn't like the Ryan Nassab thing where we all decided a month before. It was everybody wanted to be first on him. So like one or two guys was like Mike White might be good. And by August it was like, listen, like Mike White's probably the next like, you know, Dan Marino.

And then he was just the Western Kentucky quarterback for his season. Turns out he was the next Dan Marino. So it's very. So there's a lesson in that. This is very emotional for me because I have a lot of like unnecessary and untoward resentment built up for Mike White for having this unbelievable buildup of hype that he did not live up to. And then subsequently, he gets his first start, which, by the way, on Wednesday, he was asked how he felt. And he was like, that's pretty freaking cool.

Like, that was his answer. And this is his first start. He finally lived up to the height. He's also here because he lost a quarterback battle with Cooper Rush in Dallas. Right. So there you go. If he'd won that, he would have been playing, you'd been playing on Sunday night, not Sunday afternoon.

So there you go. Wow. Do you think he would have won? Do you think Mike White was just destined to win a game? You can't hold Mike White down. Halloween is Mike White's time to shine. If you run Mike White's life 100 times, he does this 100 times out of 100 times.

Okay. So let's actually talk about if Mike White is going to do this two times out of two times. Because after this game, Robert Salas says, quote, anything is possible. Yeah. And quote, Mike has the whole world in front of him. Beautiful. He does not commit.

to going back to Zach Wilson. He also said it goes back to the whole theory the difference between Player A and Player Z is Opportunity and Reps, which I don't believe. And I bet you don't either, Benz-O-Wack. No, I feel like talents are things. Like height, weight, speed. Yeah. I'll be honest.

You give me as much opportunity as reps as you want. I can't throw the ball more than 30 yards down the field. I can't get my hand around in NFL football. That's just a reality I've got to accept. And I accepted it when I was a freshman in high school trying to get on the football team. But the thing with White is that when a backup quarterback goes in, optimally, he targets the guys that he knows and he doesn't make mistakes.

And then the rest of your team is able to elevate that general get out of your way sort of play. Well, White was very heavy targets on running backs, right? Michael Carter, who they drafted it, I want to see in the third round out of UNC to be a running back for them. He's a good pass catcher. Nine catches for 95 yards. Ty Johnson, who is another back for their stable, 5%. 71 and a touchdown. Jameson Crowder, with whom he's been working presumably in the second team,

eight per 84 on nine targets. He worked with a slot and is underneath running backs, and he let them do the work for him. Then that Jets defensive line, which has been the saving grace of this defense at any time this season. It's the only bright spot. Took a bad Bengals offensive line and beat him up for four quarters. I mean, it was constant interior pressure.

The Bengals had six plays inside the five-yard line to start this game and got, I want to say, seven points out of it on a third and goal. Like, they were dominating up front. This is what the Jets' defense was kind of supposed to look like with this front getting it done. So the rest of the pieces of the Jets rallied. And that's not to say that, like,

Mike White has some magical magnetism in the locker room that mustered this performance from his teammates. But it is the case that a rookie has to take time to kind of win over the locker room and muster the guys, usually. I don't think we've seen as impassioned of a performance from the Jets. You know, we saw that they got up to a much faster start,

and that probably gave them a lot of hope throughout the course of the game. But there's no doubting, given how the players were responding to Mike White, you saw the clip of Mike White in the locker room, getting the game ball from Robert Sala. Like, this guy is beloved. And he goes out there, he doesn't make mistakes. Like, he had two picks, but one was a pass off the hands of his running back.

Like, he went out there, played mistake-free football, and got everybody really jacked up to be in a tight game with a beatable Bengals team. And then it came down to a final few plays. And heck, the Jets scored 17 points in the fourth quarter. That's a one ball game. He had a positive 12% completion percentage above expectation. Did not have a single pass that traveled more than 15 yards in the air.

Right. But they still asked him to pass the ball 45 times. And he didn't make backbreaking mistakes. Speaking of backbreaking mistakes. Where does Zach Wilson play football next year? He plays in New York. Okay, there's a couple of things I need to break down here, okay? because we opened it up to listener questions.

And everyone was like, Zach Wilson out, Zach Wilson to Carolina, Zach Wilson in New Orleans. Like, let's all calm down here. So first I want to praise Mike White. So as you said, average it up to the target, four and a half yards,

excuse me, 4.1 yards on Sunday. Sub two second average time to throw, according to PFF, average nine yards per attempt because of the yards after catch. But this was short stuff. And it was interesting because

a couple of the Jets riders made at this point afterwards is that all Sala had wanted for weeks, for months, was boring football. Don't turn the ball over. Don't try to do off platform stuff. That was what Robert Sala was begging for. And then he got it. And the Jets actually looked pretty good. Like part of this is the Bengals energy.

And we're going to get to the Bengals side of this a little in a second here. But this is what they were asking for. And so Wilson's got to improve a lot. And maybe this is good for Wilson. Maybe this is good for everybody. It's good for the whole franchise. guys. I don't think that there's this, I think Wilson will play again when he's healthy. I don't know if he'll play the full game. I don't know if he's, you know, be guaranteed

to start him. I mean, Sal isn't kind of a tough position. But I was reading this morning, Rich Semeny had a good piece about Lefleur, the Mike Lafleur and that offense. In the first half of games, guys, they were averaging 85 yards and a half and three points. Like, that's high school stuff, guys. Like, that's not, that's not anything. So if you go from that to this and I'm sure there were other changes and stuff like that, but I, there's no way that you can't be asking yourself extremely tough questions right now if you're Zach Wilson, quite frankly, if you're Michael Flore. I mean, what's going on here?

And I think that there's just, I'm stunned to what happened and I can't say enough good things about how Mike White handled that offense. Mike White did follow me on Twitter over the summer and I noticed he unfollowed me today. I don't know when he unfollowed me. I will just say that it happened at some point. There's nothing more fun than when you get like a new player emerging on the national scope because then we get to all decide what his name is. And his name is Mike White.

He'll never be white. He'll never be Mike. Like he's not Peyton. He's not Brady. He's Mike White. So that you will always say both. People were tweeting that it should be the White Lotus. And I didn't understand that until I found out that the creator of White Lotus is named Mike White.

That could be the Lotus. The Lotus perhaps. He sounds like a like a Zen master of the Lotus. Well, maybe he is. Maybe that's the command in the locker. It's on the table. Nora, what would you do if you're Woody Johnson, Joe Douglas, Robert Sala,

Michael, for one of those? I would call Mike White and say, I'm really happy for you. This is fantastic. You are suddenly the subject of a lot of online attention. Maybe if there's anything,

like let's just make sure we don't get a milkshake duck on our hands. I always get nervous when we have a new. Okay. I meant more, like less cancel culture and more. I bet Mike White is a really nice guy. It doesn't have to be anything. I mean, look, we had a Mitch Trubisky situation at one point.

We did. It was not harmful. It was not inappropriate. Well, maybe it was inappropriate. But it was not offensive, at least in a deep way. But I just, you know, I saw Danny Kelly put Mike White on milkshake to watch and oh boy

let's just be careful out there. Ben, what would you do? Not for the cancel stuff, but the football stuff. Right. Or the cancel stuff.

I would say from a general football perspective, like both for the room in New York and for the fans wondering like why haven't we looked like this at all with Zach Wilson. Play style is play style. Quarterbacks have habits,

quarterbacks have tendencies, tigers don't change their stripes. Wilson was always going to walk in the league, look for big plays, hunt explosives, neglect his checkdowns, linger on his first read. That's what he did at BYU.

He had an amazing offensive line. He didn't get punished for it. He was going to walk in a league. He was going to try to do it. Sometimes it was going to go well. Sometimes he was going to get punished for it. And that punishment was going to hopefully help him sharpen his game and learn where to pick his spots and not. That's what the growth process has been for Wilson.

Wilson was never going to come out and target his running backs 18 times. It was not going to happen. So it's okay that the offense didn't look like this because White and Wilson played different styles of ball. White got a Bengals defense that likes to play too high. They like to play zones. They like to acquiesce that underneath completion. He made him pay for it. On Thursday night, they get the Colts.

That's exactly what the Colts do. So this could happen again. It's just the reality of when a defense decides, we're going to mug up, play man, play one robber. We're going to send five at you, and we're not going to give you free access to that underneath stuff because that's how the defense plays. Probably ain't going to look as good for young Mike White.

And that's where Zach Wilson's better. And then obviously there is a talent disparity, no matter what Robert Saylor wants to say. since the time Pennbroke Pines. I'm not going to break it down. I'm just going to let you know. I've been there.

That was there last year. So, congrats to Pembroke Pines' finest. Let's play hockey there a little bit. Anything else in this game, guys? Bengals. Oh, Jesus. I have a lot of Bengals takes.

I can't believe I forgot about this. Thank you, Ben. I feel like Bengals process was a big, you know, victory lap for Kevin last week. All of a sudden, we're trying to steam roll right by it. Do Winston Churchill ever lose to my white? Normally. All right, so normally a fan base,

if we don't talk about them, like somebody who's playing earlier about the Titans, and they're like, you guys always skip over the Titans, you always talk with the other team. Normally fans would be upset that we skip a team like the Bengals,

and I think that there were Bengals fans who were fist pumping there and saying, yes, they forgot to talk about the actual Bengals side of this. Boy, did we not forget about the actual bangles side of this? Well, I did. Ben didn't.

Wow, this game shouldn't have been close. I mean, just if you look at how good the Bengals are. So I understand that there was a really bad call that would have given the ball back. It was a lowering the helmet call. They would have given the Bengals the ballback for potential game winning drive. It should not have been that close. They blew an 11 point lead in the fourth quarter.

I think the Jets scored two touchdowns in 45 seconds, something like that. This was just unforgivable. And you should not be in games like this. Ben, what did you say? Yeah. The reality with the Bengals that's always been concerning is that this defense, was punching above their weight and that the reliance on the deep ball was eventually going to catch a cold streak, right? And those are two things that for talented teams, for Super Bowl winning

teams, for terrible teams, for middling teams, for everybody, that's something that you get concerned about. And you saw in this game, Joe Burrow generally played fine. He had the one kind of critical pick there at the end, you know, a lookaway screen. He had a free rush or shack lost, made a good play. But it wasn't like it was like a high pick game, like the game they lost against the bears. It was just they really weren't finding their deep balls. He only attempted five passes more than 20 yards down the field, which is a few for the way this, this offense has been playing, only attempted seven passes more than 15 yards down the field, completed three beyond 20, had a touchdown, but in general, we remained a very, very short passer, and they struggled to

get yards after the catch. You know, we've seen that both Tyler Boyd and Joe Bar Chase have been very high yards after the catch over expectation players. That wasn't the case in this game. they really, really struggled red zone-wise to put out quick outputs when they got down there. And then the running game wasn't as effective as it was. Joe Mixing was largely bottled up in this game. So lost the deep ball and this offense looked a little bit more like it did last year. Good volume stats, good shooting percentage, but not the explosives that you wanted, not the scoring output that you wanted. Obviously, 31 by the end of the game, but this felt like, all right, they should be able to boat race the Jets.

The Jets have been struggling to stop everybody. No reason for panic. It's just the natural expected regression. This Bengals team is 5 and 3, has to like what they see in general, but this was a game that was inevitably coming for them. It bears nothing for their AFC North hopes or their playoff hopes. Certainly, you'd rather not drop this game and have a little bit more of a cushion, but you beat the Ravens. You prove to yourself into your locker room that you can. You are a team punching in this division.

You are a team that's going to punch in the playoffs. Letting down a stupid game against a bad opponent is part of that hazing process, right? It's part of that initiation process. that's what good teams do sometimes. This is a young team that I think is going to learn from it, young coaching staff I think is going to learn from. I guess, I understand what you're saying

and just sort of the self-scouting, self-evaluation. This is a necessary step and say, hey, we're actually not as good as we thought we were. We got some breaks or whatever. As you said, they did beat the Ravens. I took a victory lap for saying that the Bengals are good last week, and I still think they're good. I also think that for that fan base,

that fan base is uniquely tortured in a way that I don't, I think that there's a psychic energy here where I don't think that they should have to go through this. And I was, I was looking around and some Bengals fans I knew. And boy, do they not, they're just like, oh, wow, like this is it. This is every other year. We got lucky the first seven weeks of the season, whatever. I think that there's a culture there.

Joe Burrow is a culture changer. Jamar Chase is a culture changer. Some of the guys on defense are culture changer. I don't frankly know of Zach Taylor as much of a culture changer. But sometimes the players can sort of change a culture without the coach, you know, doing much about it or kind of not standing in the way. And that's fine. But this is, this is brutal.

for them and their building process. Nora, Bengals. I'm mostly right there with Ben that they probably weren't quite as good as the record showed. Initially, I don't think

that this is that big of a deal. I think stuff like this happens. I do think that they'd probably even getting away with it a little bit of linebacker in particular. And then you get a game like this where it's just like all quick short underneath. It exposes that.

a little bit, I'll be curious to see if that's replicated down the line a little bit. Because, you know, when you see someone like Mike White take it to a team, it becomes a blueprint of sorts. Yeah. How about this schedule? Brown's next week. Two weeks after that the Raiders, Steelers, Chargers, Niners. So they don't have, they don't have a get right game until, I mean, the Broncos are pretty good.

Like they've, they've just, this was their, this was their gaming and they screwed it up. That's why I think that there's, there's just a problem with it. I don't think this is, this is in the not a big deal category. Are we sure the Browns aren't like, I thought the Browns might be a nice, nice little, nice little get right game. Maybe a little bit. Maybe. I mean, I'm talking about, Miles Garrett will probably cause some issues.

Yeah. I'd rather play, if I could play a team, I'd rather play the Jets and the Browns. True. Yeah, yeah. But I can understand why this was a letdown spot looking back on it now. Big win off the Ravens. Looking forward to that slate with a divisional game at the top of it. And you're facing the jets.

Like, yeah, we'll just do our stuff and beat the Jets. And all of a sudden, this quarterback, you have no film on comes out and actually starts taking the underneath stuff. And you're like, oh, whoops. Tough one. All right. Let's get to the next game. It's mine.

Patriots 27 Chargers 24. Bill Belichick has now faced Justin Herbert twice in those games. is a vianesson in those games he's posted the worst and second worst pass the rating of his career and the worst and second worst completion percentage of his career hell yeah bill bellichick is back uh matthew chudan was awesome um he had nine pressures uh the offensive line for the patriots pretty much kept everybody out of mac jones's face joey bose i think only had according to pff one pressure on 30 pass rush snaps um this is uh this is good stuff and from the Patriots side.

We'll talk about the Chargers thing in a second. But I thought this is, you know, we talked Nora so much about last year. And one of the things with the Patriots was they just didn't get their built-in advantage every single week, which is they have Bill Belichick game planning against every single quarterback.

And there were some weeks, we just couldn't do that. Herbert was one of those cases last week, last year, excuse me, but you get to see week in a week out how good Belichick can be when it comes to game planning. Now, from the Chargers end,

they're four and three. And that, to me, is a little bit of disappointment when you think about how well they played in their early part of the season. Last two games for Herbert, both under 60% completion percentage by far as two worst games, worst average yards per completion, worst rating by far, and two straight losses, obviously. You know, they're not, they're behind the Raiders in the division right now. They're one game up of the Chiefs, nor a big picture impressions of this game.

Well, I think one of the things with the Chargers is they have the issue. that a lot of the sort of quote unquote most like modern teams have, which is just anybody can run all over them. And the Patriots are not as well equipped to do that as they've been in certain years past. But they still, you know, Damien Harris can still do some damage if there's just no resistance there. Right. So I think I think you're right. And I think there's a reasonable tendency to say,

say, oh, wow, like, look what Bill Belichick has done when facing Justin Herbert. I do think that there are some sort of situational things where this is actually not a bad matchup for them, just in terms of what they can do, what the Patriots can do, controlling the ball and taking advantage of the Chargers run defense, which is, I think, a problem. I mean, look, if you want to be soft against the run in the NFL in 2021, I'm, like, basically okay with that if that's going to be the weakness of your team. There has to be a tipping point, though. I do feel like they're a little bit over the tipping point where it's just like,

okay, there's a clear weakness here and a good NFL team is going to try to exploit that. As far as the Patriots defense, yeah, it was interesting to see what they tried to do. I mean, they blitzed him a little bit early and then just stopped doing that. Adrian Phillips, quite the revenge game, was just fantastic. Revenge game. Picks six. Love a revenge game. But it was fantastic overall.

So there was some schematic stuff with the Judon as well. There were some really, really strong just individual performances here going on, I think, too. Yeah. And I want to make clear, when I say Belichick is back and all this stuff, I'm mostly just joking because I've been shorting Justin Herbert on this podcast and offline for many weeks. And this is a slight victory lap, even though Justin Herbert's going to own me. I thought it was because you canceled Bill Belichick.

I mean, listen, if we're going to start getting into everything, everybody has canceled and unc canceled. I'm just kidding, guys. Kevin's like, listen, we're going to talk about things I've said on the podcast. Yeah. What? What? Excuse me?

All right, Ben. Don't quote me to me. Most of my takes have actually been quite good this year. I want to take hot streak. Take streak. Ben, what do you think about this? Isaiah, can we clip that? Yeah, well, knock on wood.

Clip it. Here's what I think. I've never been owned online. This is what I think. We got to, we got to, just, you got to let Justin Herbert start throwing it, man.

Here's, here, the charges want to be this. I want to come out first in 10. We're going to be in condensed sets. We want to have multiple tight ends on the field. We want to have receivers close to the formation. We love Herbert's arm strength.

So we're going to be able to throw all these outbreaking routes, right? We're going to be able to throw these outbreak from these condensed sets. We can run RPO's with these flat routes, with these quick outs, these speed outs, which is very like Eagles, 2017-ish.

And we can throw these deep outs. against man coverage and like all that's going to be sick. But in general, it keeps his A dot way down. Like his A dot for this game was nine, which is solid, but it was really inflated by the last drive on which he had multiple a pass attempts deep down the field. Only had four passing attempts of 39 go more than 20 yards down the field. There's just no, this guy's has one of the best armed in the league

and is one of the best deep passers in the league. This isn't necessary. Mac Jones should not have a higher depth of target than her. Yes. I like that. So you had 9.6. Yeah. The other thing.

that these condensed sets do is it lets defenses like the Ravens, who had a really good time against the Chargers and the Patriots, who had a solid time against the Chargers, bring extra bodies into the box, into the core of the formation. And both the Ravens and the Patriots like to send blitzes with what we call like creepers or simulated pressures, or basically they're putting a lot of guys near the line of scrimmage and saying, four of these seven dudes are coming. You don't know which. Means we can get seven into coverage. It's blitzing without blitzing. But the idea is that we're able to get all these guys up here and we're going to make you think about it. And Herbert's always been really good under pressure and he's not been as good against

the blitz. Those are two important things to distinguish. So you run these condensed sets and it's a lot harder to figure out, okay, who's potentially blitzing when there are all these bodies mucking it up. If you go spread like the bangles do against the Ravens, you can see, all right, it's definitely these guys. It has some of these dudes are coming because the other dudes have to be way over there covering those guys. You get this muddied, muddy look that makes it harder to distinguish who's coming and who isn't. There is no reason for this team with Michael Williams and Keenan Allen, two very good wide receivers, with a third round drafted receiver and Josh Palmer, with a good deep threat and Jalen Guy in, to not be spreading the formation out and letting Herbert push

the ball downfield, especially because teams that play man coverage now are expecting this outbreaking stuff. They know that you're just trying to work to the sidelines. You are not coordinating for Drew Breeze anymore, Joel Lombardi. You have to acknowledge what you have and what his strengths are. The charges need to become more pass-heavy on early downs and deeper past targets altogether, especially on early downs. For as long as they don't do that, they have a Lamborghini sitting in the garage, and Justin Herbert, in my opinion.

And the running game in the offensive line is solid, but it is not enough to bolster that untaken edge. So it is disappointing, especially out of the by week when Brandon and Staley said they were going to take a long, hard luck at what they're doing, especially on early downs. It is very disappointing. and they came out and were the same way. I'm sad to see that. I'm worried it's going to persist for the rest of the season.

Hey, Ben, what was longer? The amount of time they actually spent self-scouting or the amount of time Brandon Staley talked about self-scouting? Listen, Staley, like, do you remember what? In the off-season, everybody was like, wow, Staley's going to be an amazing head coach, because he just says all the right things. Remember when we, like, just didn't check our work

and let him, like, coach a game? And we were like, yeah, he's an amazing head coach. That was a big take. Like, Staley's the dude. How to let him get through a season first. There's lumps you guys. to take. And I think that where we're seeing that develop here. This is a pro-stately podcast. I just think it's funny that everyone was like, this is an

amazing answer on self-scouting. And it's like, oh, well, I don't know. Maybe the answer is better than the actual self-scouting. In this particular case, we love Brandon Staley. He's very smart. This Chargers team is still really good. Nor, you were nodding vigorously during Ben's answer. Well, I just think Ben's fantastic. That's it. That was a random appreciation. I just, it was a vigorous nod. It is. It is a very nice. It is. uncharacteristically heavy not.

I just get really, like the Patriots doing all that sort of like amoeba front, who's rushing, who's not nonsense is like, it's always just fun. That's something I get a kick out of. It is interesting to see them continue to play around with a lot of that stuff

when they do have a lot of new guys playing big roles defensively. I do think, I can't. get around a little bit about at least at this point, you know, I think we need a sober assessment of the coaching job that's going on there right now. But it is interesting to see guys like Judon just kind of seamlessly get in there and seem like they're figuring out what they need to do. That's obviously a complicated defense. And they ask a lot of those guys. And I think the fact that it's

not entirely just sort of like the same old, same old people doing it. Sure. Sure. means something is going in the right direction. Justin Herbert, by the way, after the game, said that he did not anticipate as much cover two as he got. The quote was,

we saw a lot of cover two. That was just one of those things that did not show all year. He should probably get used to it. I got to assume he's talking about two men, right? Because like when they're talking in the press,

they obviously going to go about that. But that's really interesting because the, never mind. I'll watch the film and then we'll figure it out. I was going to go along. On what? on what could have happened,

when I don't even know if it happened or not, which would have been a waste of time. Okay. Just, we have that to look forward to on Wednesday show. What a teaser. Log on Wednesday show. Friday,

NFL show, probably Friday, unless Warren asks it on Wednesday, which Warren hates what the Chargers are doing offensively, so he probably will. Oh, boy. Warren versus the Chargers

is kind of a longstanding thing. Yeah, Anthony Lynn was not an optimal decision maker. He, like, obviously, like, the fourth down stuff is good, but it's the early down past stuff that's got his, got his nerd nerd sirens

going off as it were. All right. Ben, you have the floor for Nainers Bears. All right. Niners be the Bears, 33 to 22. This is my bad superlative. A few weeks ago,

I gave a good superlative to the Bears. I said it was the Matt Nagy Extension Award because Matt Nagy was going to coach his way into an extension by giving up control of things. Then Matt Nagy missed the entire week with COVID-19 unavailability.

So he was not there for preparation throughout the week and he obviously was not there to coach. So my Bazip relative goes to Matt Nagy's door code because brother, that ain't going to work on Monday. That's not good anymore. Yeah, a little Jamal Adams gift. Justin Fields goes 19 for 27, 175 yards, a touchdown and a pick. He also had 10 carries for 103 yards and a touchdown, including an incredible fourth and one

scramble, which 100,000 percent encapsulates why ever starting annual and was just a bad idea because it is nothing to do with scheme. It has nothing to do with what passing concepts you can get into is nothing to do with timelines and rookie development. It is very simply, it's a fourth and one. The game is still within reach. The Bears elect to go under center play action boot, right? Get a little bit sneaky with it. Fier Fields can be a checkdown with his legs. Fields comes out of the boot. The Niners have read it perfectly. They have a unblocked edge rusher barreling right towards him, did not buy the run fake at all. Fields slams on the brakes. kids nearly falls in and takes himself down, but it's able to keep his balance, makes the edge

miss, flips the field, makes three more defenders miss behind line of scrimmage, and then scrambles for a 30-yard touchdown run to put the bears, I believe back up at that stage in the game. You just don't, you can't teach, you can't, there's, there are quarterbacks in the league we would describe as running quarterbacks who can't do that. You know what I mean? Like, that is true body control and strength and explosiveness. Like, that is awesome and you just don't have anything near that in terms of creative playmaking with Andy Dalton back there. Justin Fields was four for four on rollouts, something that they did very heavily this game, only four passing attempts, but for 40 yards and a touchdown, beautiful throw to Jesse

James up against the sideline in the end zone. And then on scrambles, he had 89 of 103 rushing yards were on scrambles. It was plus 11.3 expected points added on scrambles per next-gen stats. they were an under center boot play action team. And it is what they always should be with Justin Fields. It was what Madaggy was trying to keep them out of for whatever reason. When Justin Fields was in and he was calling plays, it is exactly how it was supposed to look.

And then, and this is the real kicker. Fields was not effective passing the ball down field in this game. The whole time we've been talking about this Justin Fields passing concept, we've been like, listen, take him out a quick game, push the ball down the field is what he has to be. He's an unbelievable intermediate throw. He's unbelievable deep thrower. he didn't complete a pass further than 50 yards,

15, excuse me, yards down the field in this game. He wasn't even getting the downfield stuff. And yet they were effective enough quick passing game. Like 19 for 27, 175 yards is not great. Like, that's not amazing. I'm not saying, you know, that's awesome. But they were trying to get quick game out of fields by going spread and working from the gun

and whatever and it wasn't working. And this idea that you couldn't just make him under center boot and go quick game from there, the idea that if you got him comfortable in that, it would make him better in the shotgun spread stuff. Like this was all, it's rarely this easy. In this case, it was this easy. And we've seen that happen over the last few weeks.

And so it is, at this point, the argument for retaining Nagy for even another week falls flat. Get him. Get him, Ben. And it's not even because, like, it was so simple or whatever. It's simply, if you keep him, you're just taking more time away from fields working with other coaches who you might be retaining. who might be doing good work and who might be, you know, uncovering things about him and helping develop him. And so if you retain him, you're firing him at the end of the year. You have to be doing that. So there's no value there. You fire him right now. You get fuels out with those other

coaches. You can also start the coaching search. You can make it clear to the rest of the league and good coordinators. We're open for business. See this guy. See the very, very good football player. Come coach him. It's going to be great. So I just don't understand. To me, I am completely out of ideas and justifications for Matt Nagy. The Bears retaining Matt Nagy. I want to put a pin in the coaching thing here for a second because I want to get around to this game and then talk about who should be coaching Justin Fields next year. Justin Fields, by the way, reached 20 miles per hour on this game, according to next gen staff. 230 pounds. He's done that three times this year, reaching 20 miles per hour.

That's the most in the NFL. Only four quarterbacks have done it. I believe Lamar Jackson is not one of them, strangely enough. Nora, a big picture takeaway from this game. Well, so I have to be honest, I watched much more. of the first half of this game than the second half, Jimmy Garoppolo was terrible, and then apparently kind of rebounded there at the end.

Craig, if I'm wrong, you follow this more than I do, Ben. I think he's just running freelance plays now. So there was a third and goal play in which the cadence was off from the jet motion, and arguably it could have been like a jet touch to Debo, but it ended up being like a very quarterback run, like Groplo took it and just followed Debo and Rad. And it's like, wow, Shanhan is so pissed.

that he can't call plays for Traylands because he's hurt, that he's just calling the Lance plays for Groplo. Just caution to the wind, which it should be noted. No key mix, no Kalil Mack, that's the bones of this Bears defense, but the Niners did not punt today. Missed field goal, field goal, field goal, field goal, touchdown, touchdown, field goal, end of game. They didn't punt.

Shanahan back up against the wall here a little bit. Two and four, bad series of weeks. That Bears' defense was undermanned. I understand that, but they ran the ball really well. Elijah Mitchell's a doggone good ball player. Debo Samuel's freaking nuts. I cannot explain Debo Samuel he was a player.

He is absurd. They got no kiddle. They got offensive line injuries and they didn't punt. So Shanahan, again, with his back up against the wall a little bit,

I thought it was a very impressive performance by him. Ben, this is not a 49ers. This is the bear's thing. Are you seeing anything between Fields and Alan Robinson

that's notable because there's been very little connection there. I think today was three catches for 21 yards. cards. Right. The football answer there is like sometimes dudes don't gel and that's just the long and the short of it. You know what I mean? Like we got into the pseudo psych of figuring

it out. I imagine that for Alan Robinson, it's just he's very just sick and tired of where he is dealing with what he's dealing with. You know what I mean? Robinson probably styles himself as somebody who deserves to go somewhere else where they already established quarterback who's not making mistakes, you know, because field's still making plenty of rookie mistakes as a passer and go in and be productive. He's earned that at this point. He tried to get that last year and he didn't. And so his emotional investment in being the guy for Justin Fields probably isn't as high as you'd like it to be. Again, that's just pure conjecture. But he's not separating as easily and he's not winning contested balls as easily. His predecessor in Chicago, Alshon Jeffrey, was a guy who was

winning contested balls and winning downfield at exorbitant rates. And then he just got a little banged up, got a little bit older, and it just goes away. Falls off a cliff pretty quick, that skill. So I'm not saying by no means that like the end for Alan Robinson. But I just think Robinson's not the same player we've seen. And I think that his patience for dealing with the Bears' offensive snafu plus the rookie quarterback development is probably wearing Finn. That, that to you is maybe a little bit of,

a little bit of age, a little bit of, on wee more than anything particularly schematic. Or if you did this, it may be better if you did X, Y. And sometimes two good players to see the game differently. You know, like Fields wants Robinson look like this and he wants to look like that. Sometimes it's just tough to get online.

Ben, who should coach the Bears in 2022? brother. I mean, Kell and Moore be a hoot and a holler, especially with the backfield they might have. Khalil Herbert can doggone play. You get him, David Montgomery,

and Taree Cohen still in the building. You can do some really fun multiple backfield stuff. You can do multiple tight-end stuff. Jimmy Graham's going to be gone. But Cole Komet is a good building block there. And then you're going to get that play-action game. I think that,

I mean, Kellyn Moore is obviously a fun one. Brian Dabble applies in all instances. College? Those are the offensive hits. Well, college is tricky because, you can throw out 15 names that work, but it's who would actually want to.

You know what I mean? I don't think you'd like want to see Ryan Day. To me, that's not something I'm super interested in. Matt Campbell makes no sense. I will. Can we do 10 seconds on this? Ryan Day wasn't an NFL coach and knows it and was well thought of in the NFL community.

That's sort of why he got the urban job to begin with. You don't think there's any translation back to the NFL if he wanted it? There is like, Okay, potentially, sure. But I think if you're bringing Ryan Day in to do what he did in Ohio State with Justin Fields, which was like a lot of like wide zone deep play action stuff, you're better off just hiring from the Shanahan tree and not dealing with the rookie, with the lumps of a college coach stepping into an NFL head coaching shoes.

Like even with his NFL background, I'm not sold that that's the easy transition. And right now, if I'm bringing in for fields, I want stability. I want a guy who knows NFL free agents. I want a guy who knows NFL free agents. how to deal with NFL ownership and NFL general managers, which I'm not, like, maybe Day has that, but I can't say that from the outside. For sure.

Yeah. It is the wildest thing that Ryan Day went from Eagles quarterback coach to Niners quarterback coach to Ohio State co-offensive coordinator to head coach in three years. He wrote the Chip Kelly Wave. And, I mean, shout out to him for doing that. I get it. The more I'm thinking about this,

the more I'm wondering if Alex Van Pelt would be fun to get in as his office coordinator. I would dig that. I got respect to all of Van Pell. I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Sunday night football, Cowboys 20, Viking 16, Cooper Rush, who was in a quarterback room in training camp in 2019,

as I mentioned earlier, with Dak Prescott and Mike White. I had no idea that was the Montana, Steve Young, duel of its time of 2019. This was an amazingly stupid game. I was entertained. It's kind of why the NFL is the most popular sport in the world, because there was a backup quarterback playing a mediocre Vikings team, and it was still unbelievably enthralling

and we'll get way more viewers in the World Series. There's a lot of things to digest here. Number one is that roughing the passer and roughness penalties in general have hit a ridiculous, hopefully it's a Nadeer, but I don't think it will be since we've been experienced in this for a number of years.

There was a weird play that extended a drive. There were three roughing penalties on one drive that basically got the Vikings a crucial score. One of them was just a hit, on a forward progress that was stopped, which I think you can draw the line there pretty quickly. You know, there was a very bad roughing the passer penalty earlier.

Like, I just think the NFL needs to get there and figure this out. I'm all for health and safety and all that stuff and protecting the quarterback, which is the most important thing from a viewership standpoint, the NFL wants to do. But this to me is just a, it's a bridge too far.

We can get into all that maybe midweek. But the Cowboys played well. Zeke Elliott made an incredible play on the last drive of the game. Cooper Rush made any throw he needed to make, you know, like as far as the last drive of the game, Cedric Wilson had the best throw of the night to C.D. Lamb. But this was the kind of win at the Cowboys. They're going to be a Super Bowl contender you want to see without, without Doc Prescott, who was rolled out before the game started. Bentelac, what would we think? I think that here's, the Vikings. You ready for the Vikings? Sure. Open to the season. No. Open to the season,

lost by three to the Bengals. Remember that game, had a game-winning field goal potential. Missed it. week two lost to the Cardinals by one also potential game winning field goal that I didn't get it so that's the 5 and 3 bangles and the 7 and 1 Cardinals then they beat the Cawks by 13 that was nice lost to the Browns by 7 only scored 7 offensive points in that game Browns are like 4 and 4 or something right now beat the Lions by 2 actually hit the game winning field goal this time they were down last minute of the fourth quarter on that one lions are 0 and 8 beat the Panthers by 6 Panthers also like 4 and 4 and then just beat the Cooper Rush

or lost the Cooper Rush Cowboys, excuse me, 5, 4. Has any team ever played more directly to their competition than the 2021 Minnesota Vikings? I think there's some Mike Tomlin Steelers teams that would have a word for you. That's true. But either way, this team is going to unbelievably test the close game regression model

of like year over year like, oh, close games are coin flips. Vikings are only going to play in close games this year. They're going to be 8 and 8. close games. So who knows what they're going to be next season? Who else is going to even be there next season? But they are impossible to predict. Kirk Cousins continues to be one of the most baffling players in the league, let alone quarterbacks.

The defense, again, continues to be situationally strong, but generally very poor. And there's just no way of knowing what you're going to get from this absolute grab bag of a team on any given Sunday. And I resent them and also am impressed by them a little bit for that. Do you know what I think is going to be there? Kirk Cousins is going to be there. What's the, what's, what's the money? I always forget what the money.

So he signed through 2022. His head cap mixture is $45 million in 76 this year. He's an understretched free agent after 2022. But by the way, he's going to be 34 and he's still going to be an upper half of the NFL quarterback. And he's going to be on the open market. So he's going to make so much money going forward. I actually looked it up earlier today.

And by the end of, so he's the among active players, he's the ninth, richest player in history right now. That will be, he'll be ninth, I believe, all time and earnings at the end of next year. So he's going to just, he's going to climb on up there. He's going to be incredibly rich. He's going to be able to buy all the plexiglass meeting rooms that he wants to. Nora, what do you think about this game? I want, I have a real answer to that that I will give you in a second. There are two things that I must discuss.

All right up top here. First of all, NFL research doing the Lord's work. Yep, I saw this. I was going to leave this one to you. Aari Cooper touchdown is the first in NFL history where the passers' first name and receiver's last name are an exact match. Kind of a funky little fun fact there for you. But wait, there is more. The Cowboys also have the only passing touchdown where the passers' last and receiver's first names were also an exact match.

Andy Dalton to Dalton Shultz in week 11 of 2020 at Minnesota. This podcast was made for this moment. We live in an age of wonder. Well, what else is there to say? Point number two. No, we still got number two. I'm kidding. Should Cedric Wilson have started this game at quarterback or at least gotten one wildcat series?

I had the best throw of the night. I mean, I guess that the game winning touchdown was nice and more important. But man, said Wilson. Listen, the Cowboys made us watch Ben Danucci on a Sunday night football game last year. That was the game, Sedge Wilson should have started. And then Jared Jones went on the radio and was like, the moment was too big for him. That's the only time, literally the easiest cliche in the world to say is like, well, you know what? The moment wasn't too big for him.

He went out there. Like, I saw, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to get, there was a player in preseason I saw. and I went to the press conference afterwards and they said, what are you, and there was a veteran quarterback and they said,

what did you think about the rookie? And he said, well, he did a great job just as far as things like getting the play call in. And I was like, oh, no.

We loved his ability to recite words. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the baseline I have. Like, Ben Danucci was the worst possible. Like, Jerry Jones couldn't even say a nice word about him on the radio last year.

So this, Cooper Rush is a huge, huge, huge upgrade over that. Belichick does that sometimes where he'll just sort of start like reading a player's Wikipedia page. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it's like, oh, great, great receiver. Catches some passes. Yeah. You know, was that Ohio State there for a little bit?

And then it's just like he's giving you a little bit of enthusiasm with tone, but then you realize he's just stating facts. Ben, there's a, I have a friend who swears that half of draft analysts only, their only skill is knowing every. Everyone's height and weight. And then everyone is thinking and they're immediately like a genius. And the same. Six to two, two 30 played outside linebacker there.

Yeah. And the same three fact words about them. Oh, I had two picks in that game against Mississippi State. You didn't even watch that game, brother. What are we doing right now? My hot take on that is that I think, I think height and weight stats are underrated.

Like I think sometimes, you know the conversation that we had about the Titans the other day where it was just like, you know how sometimes they're just bigger? they're just like the big men theory of winning football games. I think we should talk more about that. Less about CJ Ham's three targets tonight. Chip Kelly said famously, I don't know if it's that famous.

He said in football, big people beat up little people. So wise. So wise. Yeah, maybe I had to leave the NFL because he was bad. Let's talk more about the Cowboys and the Baggays. I think it is interesting that the Cowboys, an actually good team, in a tough spot because of the backup quarterback situation, seemed to approach this game by saying,

hey, we're in a little bit of a situation because we don't have Dak Prescott. Let's do some creative stuff. Let's do the double pass. Let's try to run an offense that's designed to fit the players that we have and the situation that we are in and try to make the best of what we've got going here. then you have the Minnesota Vikings, not as good of a team who seem to play as though they have the benefit of the doubt

and like this insane margin for error where it's okay if like Cousins doesn't throw beyond the sticks like ever. And I just, I do not understand. I do not understand why their attitude is like, well, we're obviously going to win this game so there's no need to try anything. when you said Kirk Cousins was like, oh, an above average quarterback

and we just kind of like let that fly. That's why I was like, yes. I said, I think he is consistently above the 17th best quarterback in football. By like one slot. I said, I didn't say, I said he was a top half of the NFL. And that's the thing is, I could mean just above average, sure. Yeah. Or could mean average.

And I don't, I don't even take umbrage with above average. I think I agree with you there. It's the consistently because the thing is like, yeah, there are games. I mean consistent, you know, when I say consistency, I mean over a long period of time. Yes. I don't mean every week, certainly. But to Ben's point, there's very little Kirk Cousins does consistently. There's just, I.

Well, catch the check, I would say. Yeah. He does that, he does that pretty consistently. The salient point here, regardless of like, you know, getting persnickety and picking nits about where Cousins sits and the quarterback's scale altogether. I always forget because of Kirk Cousins and because of the, you know, this offense and yada, yeah, yeah, whatever. When you look at the, like, the Vikings' offensive roster,

this should be a good offense, especially without Christian Daryisaw's playing, because that was really one of the remaining weak points for this team. But like, Darrasaw, Bradbury, O'Neill, Ezra Cleveland, offensive line, one of the better offensive line in the league. Justin Jefferson was setting rookie records. Adam Thielen is a very, very good number two receiver.

Delvin Cook, one of the best pure five runners in the league. It's not like they've got major injuries on this offense, like Irv Smith is the biggest injury this season. this roster should sustain a very good, consistent offense. It does not. Some of that is on Clint Kubia. Certainly, I think there's a learning curve that's going on here for a first-time offensive coordinator.

I'm fine with that. Ideally, you'd like your mid-30s veteran quarterback to be also a steadying presence, and it does not feel like he is. I think that we've alluded to this across the course of the first half of the season. There's boiling frustration in Minnesota. and even if it's rather aimless, even if it's rather like, this should be better

and we're just not positive why and we don't really know how to fix it. That's just where they are right now. That's the reality. They should be frustrated because this offense should be better than it is. And even if it's a million little faults and not just like because Kirk is bad,

the frustration's still there. And that energy, that need to feel like you have to make a change is growing. It's boiling. You can sense it, just in the general vibe of the team that like, we've been doing this for a while.

It should be better than it is. we're all frustrated here. Okay. Next four games to the Vikings. Have you seen them? No, but they definitely have the Packers. Yeah. Ravens, Chargers,

Packers, 49ers. They're going to lose the first three games by combined eight points. Like, I don't even freaking, what is this team? Nora, is it getting to be about that time in Minnesota? I think it's been about that time,

honestly like, this team, it just, they have been treading water for so long, I feel like. And the Kirk thing is the central issue.

There have been so many Kirk Cousins contract cycle, narrative cycles. We have crumbled under the weight of what this quarterback can and cannot do at the salary he is paid with the supporting cast

that is or is not around him. It's a time stand still. You get a Mike White type in there. All right. So this game, by the way, I don't, I don't pretend to know how hurt

Dak Prescott was. And I actually heard Collins with allude to this, because I thought this too. The teams are going to be more conservative with injuries going forward in the 17 week thing. And I remember Matt Ryan was on Solon Newsday. And I said, hey man,

are you thinking about like load management going forward? And he was like, no, you'll probably see it more with, you know, maybe teams are more likely to take it out and a blowout if it's, you know, a 20-point lead or maybe if it's a, you know, a position that, you know, is a little harder on the body than quarterback. That was Ryan's point. Maybe defensive tackle or something like that. Or center or whatever, there might be some breaks.

But I think in these situations where it's 50-50 if they're going to play, I think if you're a good team with the Cowboys with the leading division, you're going to take every precaution. I think you're going to see more of that. And it's not going to be pure load management, just going to be teams who are a little more conservative might take. I'm fine with it. All right, Nora, Titans Colts. All righty then.

This is the first tier award for the number one seed in the AFC. I have tears written down on my notes. It's happening here. Or it could happen next game. You just have, sorry, do you mean you have tears? You've created the tiers? No, no, no. I just have the word tears.

I have the word tears. We're going to unleash new tears. Make sure we get to the tiers section of the podcast. All right. Well, we have arrived at the tears section of the podcast. And the first tier award for the number one seed in the AFC goes to the Tennessee Titans, who are currently the number one seed in the AFC after beating the Colts 34 to 31 in overtime. And I actually want to talk about the cold side of this a little bit more and about the game

itself because it was sort of nuts. But this conference is off the rails. The Titans are six and two. In second place, we have the Raiders. everyone has lost at least two games. It would actually, it's funny. I was, I was very tempted to look at this game and say, the Colts are kind of out of it now.

Like, it was nice knowing you Carson Wentz Colts. They're three and five. They're three games back in the division. This playoff race, though, will be fairly nuts. So I think the Colts stuff is different just because they went into this game with Wentz actually having been pretty good, he was on pace for the fewest interceptions of his career and second most

touchdowns, but he'd had some very high profile visible struggles that were maybe overshadowing that a little bit. Then Carson Wentz was terrible. He was actually bad in this game. I think he tried to throw a shovel pass

interception in this game when they were tied at 24, less than two minutes to go, fakes the handoff, Bud Dupre is in his face. And then instead of just taking, he's in the end zone, instead of taking the safety, he sort of just like launches the ball

into the air. Elijah Mulden catches it. It's a pick six. Frank Reich says he shouldn't have called a screen pass. Again, I maintain that something within Carson Wentz just like rose up in him and said, let us throw an interception on a shovel pass

and it didn't quite turn into that, but the spirit of the play existed. The end zone interception, the pick six, was unbelievable because he... It is the most Carson Wentz. He pumped faked... So I want to kind of...

I want to kind of break this down. And I almost said Zapruder film it, but that's different. But I want to just go frame by frame here because it looked like he would pump faked it, but the ball was going... directly to someone's feet, right? So he pump faked, like spiking it, I guess.

I'm not really sure what that was. And then... But first, it seemed like he was sort of, like, it really seemed like he wanted to let go of the fake handoff. Yes. Yeah, listen. So then it looked like he was going to fumble because he had bad ball security

and everybody was coming at him. So a strip sack in the end zone. Then it looked like he secured the ball and I was like, okay, he'll just take a safety here. And then he got really, rid of the ball and threw a pick six. And they didn't even lose the game off of this because on the next drive, he underthrew a ball to get them a pass interference.

Right. Ties the game, goes to overtime. And then he threw another backbreaking interception. His backbreaking pick six led to a touchdown drive, which then led to another opportunity to throw a backbreaking interception. This man is on another level right now. Okay, but so here's here's the distinction I'm trying to draw. I think Carson Wentz had there was kind of, look, I don't want to assign myself as the defender

of Carson Wentz here, but the ridiculous play is where it seems like he wants nothing else in this world more than he wants to just let go of the ball. I think those were, they were in such high profile situations and people saw them and they were just absurd that I think they, they just seemed like they were happening a little bit more often than they were actually happening. Then in this game, they actually happened a bunch of times.

Which to me is a bigger issue for the Colts than just, okay, you lose a game in the division, your record is bad. Because the AFC is wide open. In theory, that's something that you can overcome. You cannot overcome it. I do not believe if Wenz is moving in the wrong

direction. Carson Wins is what meme lords think Josh Allen is. Hey. Oh, my God. Yeah. How about that? Just a lower ceiling and never going to stop making mistakes. That's the thing, right?

Is that the, like, I have participated in the Carson Wentz, you know, redemption to our discourse because he is certainly like, like, he threw a touchdown on mesh. And, like, in Philly, they just try to run mesh a lot and he just wouldn't throw it. because he would just like stare down the middle read, the sit, and he would throw it right into a lineback and you're like, brother, like, if you cannot throw this, you cannot hang. Frank Reich hasn't, like, throwing mesh correctly. And it's like, we're going to be fine forever.

Isn't that the whole thing with mesh? Isn't mesh? Aren't you're supposed to throw mesh correctly? But that was the thing. Giving up gold medals now? He threw eight shallow crosses the entire 2020 season in Philadelphia, which you have to, like, physically try not to throw a shallow cross in order to only throw eight across the course of a season in that offense.

So, like, Reich had him doing that. they were thrown to backs. And it's like, all right. Like, he's, he's, like, taking the easy stuff. That unfortunately did not mean that some of the silly stuff

was going away. And that's the thing is, like, even if you get Wentz, you know, checking it down on, like, third and eight and giving his,

his receiver a chance to go get it for him instead of, like, hang on to the ball and taking a sack. Even if you get that, once we get to fourth quarter, five minutes left,

one possession game, divisional game, the switch just got, like, right away. Like, the pick six was spectacular. It was flawless.

It was a play beyond my wildest dreams. But then they come out and they drive down the field. And as you said, like, he was trying to throw interceptions on that drive. And they got DPI's. He couldn't be denied. And they got the pitman catch on the third and long scramble into quadruple coverage. And they score that touchdown. And then they get the ball back in overtime.

And he's just trying to throw picks again. Like it, yeah. The idea of if you could get the bad plays out of whence, it would work, sounds delightful. I do not think it has a reality. I do not think it has a realization. No, it doesn't. There are shades of Daniel Jones here. Right.

And if you- I can fix them. And even if you get a playoff run, like even if you get good wins against bad teams and you're there record-wise, how can you feel good going into a game-winning drive with him at quarterback? You can't. You're calling play is scared because you just feel like he's going to give it all up. And that is a legitimate feeling backed by a lot of evidence.

So even if you got there with him, you wouldn't like how you felt once he got there. So to me, that's a little bit of a loss cause. Ben, say something nice for the Titans. Titans fans are going to get so mad at us. A.J. Brown back? Tannahill. Extremely back. Tannahill, man.

Tanyhill might have the shortest memory of any quarterback in the league. Tanyl threw some gnarly picks. Tanyl took some dumb sacks. Then he comes right back out and slings it. I greatly respect the way Tannhill plays the game. It very much so follows how he came into this position in Tennessee. This was like a second life. This was like a second chance.

Like it felt like he shouldn't have got this. You know what? He's just flipping on the edge. Like I shouldn't even have really gotten this second life anyway. So let's sling it. So I appreciate that. And then Tennessee is for a team that gets built. as being a run-heavy team that relies on Derek Henry,

and this was a generally quiet game for Derek Henry, something to be said for their willingness to just hang around in games they should lose. Seahawks game this year, Bill's game this year, Colts game this year, three important wins for a six-and-two team at the top of the AFC. They had multiple score holes in each of those three games. And they just are like, nope, they are very, very plucky in that way. And when you continue to win that and win that and win that, makes you believe.

And like I've said, like the Titans, the thing about them is they are a tough freaking out in January, man. They are not a fun team to see in the playoffs, even with their roster holes, notwithstanding. So shout out to the Titans for just being as they are. Tannhill's tough as nails and they're plucky. And you know what? They're six and two and that's kind of fun. I really like this team. And we've seen them when they're worse than this be a tough out in January.

So the fact that they're coming into January probably a little better is, is intriguing to me. I heard of John Robinson a couple of weeks ago, their GM. And we were talking about Tana Hill and the second life thing. And he said that the most impressive thing when Tannale got there was just the fact that he he completely straddled the line between establishing himself and not trying to be the starter right away and just ingratiating himself with the building and being the backup and being Marcus Mariotas backup and just taking it one step at a time.

And that kind of has shaded the entire reign for him. He just was just very good at doing whatever his role is. And I just kind of think there's something to be said for that. And that's kind of how you should operate as a back quarterback who wants to be the starter. I like the Titans team. Nora, anything else? Uh, Derek Henry was fussing with his foot and his cleat. Yeah.

Obviously, if Derek Henry is averaging 2.4 yards per carry, there's a little bit of a, hey, what's going on here? No. Bright side. If you're the Titans and you win a game against a decent team when Derek Henry is not doing normal Derek Henry things, that's great. Bounce back from some bad plays. Other hand, obviously, if, if he's hurt or if there's just.

just sort of like a wear and tear thing going on. That's not amazing. All right. Ben, Steelers Browns. I really thought you were going to ask me to tier AFC teams. And I was like, nope. Okay. This is my bad award.

Would you refuse the assignment? Would you be like Scotty Pippen not going into that game? We're boycotting this. Yeah, absolutely. I put my foot down, man. Too much, too much. I was just going to ask you, Stoers Browns. No one's going to ask you to tier things.

I don't believe that. This is actually my good award. I misspoke. And it's my good award because Aaron Rogers' 22 landing spots looking great. And that applies to both of these football teams. I don't care which one you want to take it for. The Steelers do win this game, 15 to 10. Absolutely disgusting score.

Rathusberger had a quarterback draw, two-point conversion. That was one of the funniest plays I've seen in my entire life. He looked like he was falling starting at the four-yard line. Still somehow made it in. Penalty called it back. They're going for two from the 12. and Rothsburger checks it down behind a line of scrimge. Elite two-play sequence.

I'll never forget it for the rest of my life. That was because their kicker, Chris Boswell, had been hurt on what should have been a roughing the passer penalty on what was an attempted fake field goal. Again, this game was nuts. So they weren't really kicking it in the second half. Presley Harbin, who's their 260-pound punter, was doing kickoffs?

Chris Long had one of the best lines I've ever seen, which is that that Boswell play, if you ever wanted to see how a normal person, like ourselves would fare in an NFL game. Check out that Boswell play. Exactly. It just a very, very good example. I thought was that he runs like Ben Rathosberger.

Bad news for the Steelers. Meanwhile, the, you know, Baker's back, shoulders bad playing on the fractured labrum. This is once again a extremely quiet offensive performance for Cleveland altogether. They have scored in four of their last five games, seven, 14, 14, and 10 points.

Obviously, one of those games, The 14-point game with the Broncos comes with Case Keenum out there. They had 42 points against the Chargers, which was delightful. But what we know about the Chargers run defense and the way the Browns are built, it's beginning to feel like that's a, all right, the Chargers run defense is just that bad sort of a game. The Browns did have an opportunity to get the go-ahead score in this game. Jarvis Landrieu fumbled it inside of the Steelers 35 on their penultimate drive,

on their final drive. They got down to the Steelers 24 before they started missing. They had a drop from Austin Hooper. They had also an arguable drop from Jarvis Landry as well. So it could have been a win. But offensively, the Browns are mired right now. Meanwhile, defense is playing good ball. Hasn't playing good ball for a while.

Expect the running game to bounce back up. Jack Conk went out of this game. They've obviously had offensive line injuries for the last couple of weeks on the interior with J.C. Treter missing games, Derek Will's recently came back from injury. But in general, you're impressed with Cleveland's defense. You're worried about this offense. The biggest problem being the quarterback.

Baker took another four. It's clear that his shoulder impacts his accuracy in some way, or at least in the way he feels he can play because he missed multiple throws again. Pittsburgh, defense looks great. They're able to win these ugly games. Naji Harris looks like an excellent rookie. Had another touchdown in this game.

Prat Friday me is waking up. Both of these teams feel like they just need an improvement at quarterback. So for wherever Aaron Rogers ends up, one of these two teams are otherwise. But both of these two teams look like Aaron Rogers immediately catapults them into AFC contention. And I'd like to see it. Nora.

You can take this neither direction. You can either take it as a Brown's analysis piece, a Stewards analysis piece, or an Aaron Rogers analysis piece somehow. All right. Well, first of all, I should just acknowledge Aaron Rogers did not go as Jake Coomero for Halloween. I was incorrect on my prediction on that front. Yes.

It was a good costume. It was a good costume. Could we have not, I was a little disappointed? Could we have not just gotten a wig? did he have to live that bit for months? I mean, he didn't look good. I'm going to, I was a solid, I think it's a good looking job with costume.

I respect it. I appreciate commitment to it. The answer to your question, did he have to? No, but he did. Speaking of people who maybe don't have to do what they're doing right now, Baker Mayfield,

probably not very healthy. Right? Yes. Fair to say? But I think that he's financially in a pretty tricky situation. I think, this is exactly where I was going.

Right. I think the, if I were by Baker Mayfield's financial advisor, which I should not be. But if I were, I would say take three weeks off and then get back in there. Firstly, let them live a whole life with Case Keenum, not one week. Let them live a whole life with Case. And then go in, be healthier. And like, you know, let's, let's, let's, you know, time this thing as best we can. I'm not saying, like, you know, like leave the Browns out to dry.

But like, hey, we got the Lions in three weeks. Let's go back for the Lions game. And let's win that game and score some points there. and then kind of kick this thing off. Everybody's going to feel good. Got to get out right now in like a nasty divisional trench fight with the Steelers. I get why Baker's doing that is a very competitive duty. He wants to win for Cleveland.

I love that about him. But financially, to me, not a good decision. Yep. Yeah, I understand that. Okay. I just think that this is one of the, financially, one of the worst sort of timed injuries you could possibly have because I think that there are,

Baker is not a $30 million dollar quarterback or $35 million dollar quarterbacker. quarterback in any market except this one where if you're a starter on a good team and you've shown some progress, you get that much money, right? If there's any out, a team might try to take that out and say, okay, I want to test the free market, see how it goes. So that's why I think, I mean, if this is Lamar Jackson, it's a different conversation. If this is certainly before his injury, Josh Allen, before the contract was signed, Josh Allen, that's different conversation. This is the one guy where it could go in a hundred different directions, which is interesting to me. Ben, is this Steelers team good?

Yes, like the team is good. The quarterback is as big of a limiting factor as any quarterback is on any team in the league. But like, and this is, I can't remember if we talked about this. One week ago or two weeks ago, but whatever it was. Like, Kevin Colbert's done miss. So the team is talented. Like, just out the wazoo with talent, with depth and the defense.

Like, they've got guys who have departed. They're like going to trade Melvin Ingram because they just don't have room for him in the rotation. It's obnoxious how talented they are. Quarterback drastically limits what you can do on offense. You have to win these 15 to 10. We're running trick-field goal slug-fest, but they are. They do.

They've won their last three games after going to one and three. So they're four and three now. They're going to get the Bears, which is a slug-fest game. They're going to get the Lions, which, you know, they should win, given what we've seen. And then they get the Bengals after losing to them 24 to 10. And that's going to be a really, really interesting game because Bengals and then Ravens. Like the Steelers are squarely in the divisional conversation, which is just absurd to be saying about a Ben Rothensburg quarterback team in 2021, but it is what we're saying.

It's because the roster is really, really, really, really quite good. So they need to get a new quarterback. But there you go. But we knew that. They are, sorry to channel Jenny Green here. They are who we thought they were. This is exactly what it was supposed to be. A Mike Tomlin coach team that knows what it's doing that was built by Kevin Colbert

that has a lot of good players and a quarterback that doesn't let them reach their ceiling, but lets them compete. This is, if we were to write down everything that was going to happen in the season and stuff in an envelope, and we have, had to take it out of a hat now, it would probably say this, right? Yeah, but we probably wouldn't say they're four and three and they're able to beat the Browns and whatever because you expect that to just not hold up. And that's the thing is it can be true, but it can be more accurately, like, reflected in their

record, whereas they're sitting here at four and three and you're like, you know what, they just win. They just win football games. I don't know what you want for me. It's what they do. They just make you fight them with rocks and mud, and they've been fighting with rocks and mud a lot longer than you have. So they just know how to throw the rocks at the mud.

It's just ugly Pittsburgh Steelers football. And I'm sure like my dad loves it because it reminds him of the 80s or whatever. But like this is what it is. 26 carries for Nashi Harris, man. I mean, just nuts. Nora, you picked the Steelers who finished last. And they still might. Correct.

Are they better than they thought worse, the same? Uh, about the same. About the same. I mean, the thing we all discussed is they were never going to be like a four and 12 team. like I thought they'd be like 9, 10, 8, something like that. And I just thought this division was really tough. That's why I didn't pick the bankless to make the playoffs. That's wild card in this AFC too.

Like if you look at 538's odds for AFC, I'm quasi doing AFC tiers right now. I can't stand myself. But if you look at AIM-Nora already did the tiers, the Titans are number one. The Titans are alone on a tier. That is not what happened. If you look at AFC wildcard likelihoods right now,

Patriots 38, Bengals, 35, Ravens, 33, Raiders, 31, Steelers, 28, Chargers, 28, Chiefs, 26, Browns, 23. Like, they are in the wildcard conversation. I would not have said that at the halfway poll. So that, to me, is a surprise. All right, it's time for Ruizans. What do you guys talk about this week?

We're talking about Stephen Ruiz's Carolina Panthers. Oh, man. That's why you ranked offensive coordinators earlier today? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, right, right, because we were talking about Joe Brady. All right. Looking forward to hearing the PJ Walker propaganda on Monday morning.

See you, buddy. Bye, friends. All right, now it's time for the Ruizans report. Any more R words, Stephen? No, just rips. I got a lot of riffs. Rifts. Rifts. Rifts. All of it. Producer Isaiah just told us right before you got on that we are very close to getting

your hot take music. We have to send it to legal. Oh, I was ready. We're targeting next week for the. the hot tag of music. Damn. Because I was going to come out hot today. So now you're not going to?

No, I still am. You're going to put all your takes away for the week. Ah, man, I got to, you know, honestly, I have a full page of like Sam Darnold jokes. Sure. After watching the film for the last three weeks. And I feel bad because he got concussed. And now I feel like it's, it's kind of harsh. So, I mean, we can,

we can work around that we can still make fun of certain parts of of everything and uh and you know we leave no concussion jokes and and just move forward with some darnal jokes um all right so the carolina panthers are your favorite team and i we did not want to have you watch a game live because it's a traumatic experience for you um but there was a lot of talk about joe brady and his offense and whether or not he was kind of the golden child who's received to be. The hot start is now faded. Sam Darnold, who was getting the post-Adam Gase bump for the first couple of weeks is now not playing well.

And we wanted you to dive in. And that meant you had to watch the Panthers, but you could stomach it this time around. Panthers 19, Falcons 13. What did you say? I saw a coach, a play caller in Joe Brady, who did not trust his quarterback to do much of anything. Like, if you look at their first down run-pass splits, it's like 37 pass, 18 run, just like 66% run. I think they ended up running more than they pass. And it wasn't a game that they, like, dominated.

So they weren't trying to run out the clock the whole time. But, like, the quarterback's main job is to complete passes. That's not a hot take, right? You guys would agree with that. We don't play the music for that. No music. Right. He had the worst completion percentage over expectation.

this week. Mine is 16%. He was expected to complete 70% of his passes. He was at around 55%. Mike White would never. He still, no, he wouldn't. He still managed to average

0.25 EPA per play. That's around what Kyler Murray is averaging this year. So, in spite of the fact that Sam Darnold couldn't complete a pass, Joe Brady still coaxed a Kyler Murray-esque performance out of see that's fascinating i'm stunned i'm stunned so because we talked before the spot and you said

brady wasn't the problem i just read so much i had not studied it like you have um you watched the previous three games plus this um is joe brady a good play caller an elite play caller and above average play caller um just because we heard so much about him at ls u uh his rank is an NFL play caller is what stephen i'm willing to say good i think he's like the kirk cousins of play callers like he's in that range. Thank you. Oh, no. Thank you. And he's going to get paid that much. Why, oh, no. Kirk Cousins is a perfect. We just had, we just had a robust discussion about Kirk Cousins. And I said he was, I see. I said, Kurt Cousins is always going to be above the 17th best quarterback in the NFL. Could be 13th. And I said by like two spots. Can I also tell you something

that Kirk Cousins apparently just said, uh, about the situation where at the end of the half where 20 seconds ran off the clock. He goes, I just. let Zim handle the timeouts because I never know quite what the coaches want to do with that. She's letting a rip. What a guy. He also said, he also said, Master Flex's sound effect. They asked him about the defense and he said, quote,

it was a, tonight was a combination of coverages and pressure. That's defense. That's defense, brother. You got that. You nailed that, Kirk. Quarterback's job is to complete passes. So,

so let's dig into the Panthers here for a second. So when you talk about the fact that you do think he's a good play caller, the Kirk Cousins of Playcalling, there's two things I want to discuss. Number one, what is a Joe Brady offense? And this is going back to LSU and all those things. People were saying, remember at the beginning of the year, Joe Brady is going to, week one, 2022, he's going to be the coach of Cincinnati. They had such good chemistry together down there in Baton Rouge.

What is a Joe Brady offense? I think if you get it at its peak, if you get a good quarterback in there, it's not unlike what we see in Green Bay. Like, under center is going to be play action, bootlegs. That's it. In the shotgun, it's going to be RPO or quick game. Like, quick dropbacks, get the ball out of your hands quick. I don't know if that's what the offense is this year because of Sam Darnold.

Like, you don't, you want to protect Sam Darnold from himself. He finds new and creative ways to turn over the ball every week. He's kind of like Carson Wentz in that way. So I think this is the type of offense they have to call this year to avoid those Sam Darnold mistakes and he's still throwing more interceptions than he does touchdowns. It's not working because of Darnold. I'm willing to say that we should give Adam Gase another chance. I'm willing to say.

Adam Gase ruined every quarterback except Sam Darnold who ruined Adam Gase. Right. And Adam Gase didn't even ruin every quarterback. Like before Ryan Tanna Hills breakout in Tennessee, his career year was under Adam Gase. Jay Culler's second best year in Chicago was under Adam Gase. Peyton Manning's the best year of his career was under Adam Gase. Gase. The only one that was, like, historically bad was Sam Darnel.

And guess what? He's still bad in all the same ways. Nora, this is why we had to get the song cleared with legal for this week. Because I didn't know when Adam Gase should be reconsidered take was happening. A full-throated defense of Adam Gase from Stephen Ruiz. That's the headline of the pod. Have you guys seen the Watchman movie? No.

The TV show? No, the movie. No. All right. So then this joke isn't going to work. Never mind. No, why don't you, we have many listeners. Why don't you just get it out there and the listener can decide?

Here, I'll play a listener who's seen the movie. Why, yes, Stephen, I have seen that film. Okay, there's a character named Roorshack. Absolutely. I've got the Wikipedia here. He gets put, it's a famous line from the movie. He goes into prison and like, he goes into prison. All the prisoners are like ganging up and on him, bullying him and all that.

And then he like fights back. He like beats the hell out of like a couple of them. And he says, I'm not stuck in here with you guys. You guys are stuck in here with me. I think that sums up the Adam Gase, Sam Darnold's situation. Like Sam Darnel is like,

you're not stuck with me. Or the other way around. I'm not stuck with you. Yeah. And I got you. Hey, I'm on the Watchman movie Wikipedia. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger are characters in this movie?

Yeah. It's about like Cold War era. And then Nick, I don't know. It's a weird. I can't. Annie Leavitts is apparently also a character in this and played by somebody else. It played by somebody else, not even like a cameo.

So Dick Cavett is also a character played by somebody else. So let's just move on from the Watchman movie. Okay. So what is, who's, is, I know this is going to, it's like a lazy, there's a lazy out here, but also might be the correct out. Who is a Joe Brady quarterback? Ooh, that's a good question. I would say, hmm.

I'm trying to think of like a quarterback that's like attainable. Like the ideal quarterback in my mind would be a draft Ryan type. Okay. A Matt Ryan type, a guy that can go from like one to two to three in his progression in the pocket and do it efficiently. If you don't have one of those guys, I don't know how this offense functions unless it functions like you saw today. But I only think that was possible because they were playing the Falcons.

I don't think this type of offense is going to work against a good defense. In general, is this coaching staff now that you've studied? them. Matt Rule, Joe Brady, Phil Snow, like, are they, is this the kind of coaching staff actually like has sustained success going forward? I mean, they have a million years on their contract left. Like there's going to be something built here, but like is it going to be something worthwhile? I have all the confidence in the world and the two coordinators. Matt Rule, I'm not sure what he does besides build the culture. Maybe the culture's great. I don't know. I can't speak to that, but he's not great at managing the clock. He's not great at using his timeouts,

using challenges. He had a bad challenge today. I don't have faith in him running the team, but the coordinators, he's done a great job picking them because they have both proven they can win games in different ways. Like, I think Phil Snow's defense last year at the end of the, at the end of the year was really good, but it looked totally different from the defense earlier this year when it was like number one in the league for the first month. And I'd say Joe Brady changed the offense for Sam Darnold. And it looks different from what it was for Teddy Bridgewater. And it works like he he crafted the best offense for those two quarterbacks,

the best offense possible. Hmm. Interesting. Last thing for me, what's up with the Falcons? They're the Falcons. Like this was like a typical Falcons game. I don't know.

No. You've watched the history of this franchise. They hired Arthur Smith. I thought it'd be a little better. I mean, you look at what's going on in Tennessee. see and you have to conclude that maybe Arthur Smith wasn't as good as we thought he was going to be. I mean, it took them a month. Three weeks ago, we're all making fun of Todd Downing.

Yeah. Now I, hey, I might rather have Todd Downing than Arthur Smith. Oh, no. It didn't take Todd Downing now. He didn't get a chance to prove it, but it didn't take Todd Downing a month to realize getting the ball to Kyle Pitts was a good idea. Nor anything. Every time the Falcons go to tackle, the tackle has to be rerouted through a central hub in Memphis, Tennessee before it gets to its ultimate destination. That's pretty good. That was a FedEx joke. I know it was.

Yeah. Stephen got it. It wasn't that much of a thinker. Man, I got to tell you, if I had billions of dollars, the last thing I would want to do is coach the Atlanta Falcons. Could you imagine? It's some kind of a sick joke. Could you imagine your billion, or you have billions of dollars just sitting around?

We probably have a PS5. because rich people can get PS5s. I can't. And you're sitting around and someone's like, yeah, you want to coach the Atlanta Falcons? You'd be like, no.

But look at Arthur Smith. A kind of billionaire. He doesn't have to do this. By PS5. Arthur Smith's the kind of guy you get a PS5 right now. So there you go. I have a PS5.

What? Yeah. Do you want to coach the Atlanta Falcons? No, I don't. Oh, I bought it. How about how? No, The problem is I said this and we're still like a week ago.

I was like, I don't know how to get a PS5. And then all these weirdos were like, let me sell you one. I'm like, that's not when I was after. Okay. It's not,

it was not after my, my, the weird folder, my DMs, wherever would send spam to. I wasn't after that being filled up. All right. I just got lucky.

I got lucky. I got one of the alerts and I, I managed to get it like a year ago. A year ago. Yeah, it was like a couple months after it came out. I was pretty lucky. All right. Well, you want to come over and play it?

We can play Matt. I think we'd end the podcast. You live four hours away from me, so the answer is yes. Stephen Buddy, thank you so much. We're going to have to music for you next week. I can't wait. All right. Nora, we're going to have to make the questions pretty quick tonight.

First one is from Paul Gov. Should Brandon Staley take over offensive play call duties? So this is a joke, obviously, because Brandon Staley is a defensive coordinator. But maybe. I'll say about that. But maybe. Nate Bond asks, Jets have a better record than Miami. Discuss.

Nora? The dolphins have a very poor record is what I think is going on there. Jets about on par, I would say. Dolphins below par. Man, the dolphins are bad. Or over par. How does golf work? If you're under par, it's good.

Okay. Over. Over. The bad one. Yeah. The dolphins are the bad one. I just can't believe how bad this gotten. They just don't have anything.

And they need to start winning games that they shouldn't be winning. Because for as much goodwill and momentum as they've built, I'm questioning the whole thing right now. the whole thing. All right. This has been the Ranganafellow show on the Ringer Podcast Network. Next up on this feed for the first time all season.

This is just a one-off. Because it's the trade deadline, myself, Nora Princiotti, and Stephen Ruiz will be on the Tuesday show reacting live for the trade deadline. Whether this moves, a lack of moves, we can spin it forward.

I believe that's also going to be on Green Room. We'll probably have some announcements Monday about that. And on Wednesday, the normal Tuesday show will be there. So Jason Goff, James Jones, and Ryan Jay's here. They're going to break down all the action from the players perspective. On Thursday is Mallory and Nora.

What is, are you still called the Normale show? That's what we call it. That's like the internal name. Informally. And then on Friday, Kaylon Jones, Kaylon Jones, Ben Solac, and Stephen Ruiz are back to preview the weekend. And a slow news day will happen at some point later in the week. Go watch the Ed to read episode if you haven't seen it from last week.

It was a joy. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely for production supervision. And with additional help from Arjuna Ramkopol. He's been the Runner NFL show on The Ringer Podcast Network.