The Ringer NFL Show - Week 9 Recap: Bills, Rams, Cowboys Get Upset. Plus: The Browns Blow Out the Bengals and the Falcons Win a Thriller.

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by Benjamin Solak to go through the upset victories for the Jaguars, Titans, and Broncos (1:54). They also discuss Jordan Love’s tough first start, the Chargers' tight victory on the road, and more (41:25). Then Kevin and Nora are joined by Steven Ruiz to discuss the Atlanta Falcons' victory over rival New Orleans Saints (1:30:45). Kevin and Nora then wrap up by answering a listener question about Lamar Jackson’s MVP candidacy. 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

Yo, I'm Shea Serrano. And I'm Brandon Jinks Jenkins. We have a new show called No Skips with Jinks and Shea. In it, we discuss the most unskippable albums in hip-hop history. New episodes drop on Thursdays, only on Spotify. It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. It gets dark at 5 p.m.

And we have no idea what we're watching here in the NFL. Nor Princillati's joining me. Nor was going on. Yeah, it got dark at about 105 p.m. Eastern. Yep. A lot of teams. The national football league. A lot of teams.

Ben Zolak. I love weeks like this. Sometimes I'm like, I know football. And then there's a week nine where football is like, you don't know football. I'm like, you're right in football. I don't know football. It's a very humbling experience. We got a listener question asking, if you're a regular gambler on football, was this an intervention?

Was this week just an intervention? I had a good week. See? So no. It's not a problem unless you're losing. And Benzolak is not losing. Well, yeah. Actually, doesn't this stink for, um,

Vegas, proverbial Vegas. I don't really know what their handles were, but it can. Like, it kind of depends. Okay. Still, it's the most gambling talk I'm ever going to engage in this podcast. Vegas loves being like, wow, we really took a bath this weekend. Come on down next weekend. Yeah, right.

Right. Well, I'll just take a bath again. All right. So there are a bunch of upsets in the NFL this week. And instead of trying to group them all together and being sloppy and trying to have some overarching narrative on all of them, we're going to go game by game. We know what that is. Jaguar's bills.

Like Broncos Cowboys, obviously is another one. The Chiefs beating Jordan Love is now a surprise. The Chargers and the Eagles were going to talk about it as well. Even though it wasn't an upset, Cardinals 49ers, depending on how you view Kyle Shanahan, was a surprise. But we will start with Josh Allen versus Josh Allen. Jaguars 9, Bill 6. Wow. So this is the kind of thing, Ben, you alluded to it a second ago.

every year seems weird when it's happening, right? And that's the kind of thing. If you look back at the last four or five, six years or 20 years, but especially with increased parity over the past few years, how many weeks there are where we say, wow, this is just a wacky or we don't know what's going on. And that's just kind of how football works. Every game is close. I saw a stat today actually that this is the most close games,

basically in the history of football. There's been more fourth quarter lead changes than ever in history in the modern NFL. Like this is what happens when it's a one score league. Weird things happen. But when there's a result like the bills, so we were kind of ready to crown as midseason AFC favorites, losing to the Jaguars. So we were ready to get their coach fired and say,

let's save Trevor Lawrence. We have to talk about that. The bills were averaging 32 points coming into this. They didn't score a touchdown. The last time that a team didn't score a touchdown when averaging that many points was 2018. but it's only happened four times in history. It's a rare thing.

Nora, are you worried about the bills? Am I worried about the bills? I do not think that the bills are the dominant crown them AFC team that I thought that they were a little bit before. I'm not that worried about them because I just don't think that really anybody is. I think my takeaway is that this week, and I don't want to overact too much just to this week, but it's really interesting to see what the AFC looks like right now because it took a bad Mahomes year to kind of get the experience of, oh, this is post-Manning and Brady AFC playing out before our eyes, right?

Like, we don't know who's in control. It switches every week. I think that's the more honest state of playing the AFC as opposed to, like, there's these very clean sort of. of here are your rankings, here's in control. You could say tears if you were so inclined. You could. You could definitely say tears.

Sure. One could. A sharp thinker that I know might be so inclined to use that phrase. So I'm not that worried about them just because I do think that this is a little bit fluky. And I don't really see that many teams who I think are just going to grab that mantle and run away with it. but I do think less of the bills because of this result. I mean, it's the Jags. Come on. Yeah, I think that this is, I think less of them in the grand scheme of things.

I don't know how much does it matter. This happened sometimes. The Patriots went down to Miami lost to one of the worst office teams ever seen, I think, in 2003, and then they went ahead and won the Super Bowl. And by the way, you talk about the Manning Brady and sort of the end of that era coming and how it's a little more random with quarterbacks. Even that era was pretty random. You know, I was looking at some of the Brady stretches.

I mean, he had a four-game stretch in 2013. We remember it. Two touchdowns, four, and receptions, 52% completion percentage. He had stretches where it was under 50%. Three-game stretch in 2006, where it was under 50%. You know, Mahomes is having a weird couple of games. He had over 130 rating in three of his first four games. So this is just the ebbs and flows of a bunch of elite quarterbacks careers.

And so Josh Allen playing bad today, yeah, it was weird, but it's not fatal by any means. Ben, what did you think? Yeah, I, uh, I, uh, I, underestimated how important Dawson Knox was to the Buffalo Bills, right? They lose Dawson Knox and all of a sudden, the same issues that cropped up in week one when they face the Steelers are there against the Jaguars, a decisively worse defense across the board than the Steelers, but the problem remains, right? So Dawson Knox was injured in week seven. He hasn't played for the last couple of weeks. And when the bills don't have Dawson Knox, they just don't

have anybody who they were also missing two linemen, by the way. I know you want to make this Dawson Knox take, but they were missing Spencer Brown and John Feliciano. I was going to get there. They don't have anybody who can help in pass protection, right? Devin Singletary, Zach Mosty's back's not been helpful. Tommy Sweeney, like, can, you know what I mean? But you don't really love having Tommy Sweeney on the field because he really doesn't offer much as a receiver.

And this Bill's team obviously wants to throw the football. Throw in the fact, Kevin, that Spencer Brown and John Feliciano are out of this game, and you have Cody Ford playing right guard. And Cody Ford got done up by Tave and Brian on multiple occasions. in 2021, if you're getting done up by Taven and Brian, we've got to have a conversation. Taven has not been playing good football for a while. Alan took four sacks on the day.

A couple of them were blitzes that were on him. He's being irresponsible with the football back there. He threw two interceptions. One of them was just, I have no idea what he was looking at, Diburdy 4, but the other was the direct result of pressure. The Jags blitzed the right side of that line where both Brown and Feliciano were absent, and they got a free rusher. Quarterback has to be able to account for that.

But the bill's only answer to dealing with these easy pressure packages was, getting Knox in there, putting him at sniffer, putting him on a tight end, and getting that extra chip block, that extra chip help, condensing those sets a little bit. They didn't have that. And then you got a really bad Josh Allen game on top of it. So the bills, they still can't really run it very well in early downs. They're playing in a lot of third and longs.

And Allen still, you know, is kind of like, has that Carson Went syndrome where he's trying to make a hero play every single down. And then throwing the fact that they can't really like, like, dull those edges with Dawson Knox, like give themselves a little bit more wiggle room. And you get games like this, where it's just six points against the Jaguars. You're watching them in there.

They're running the same stuff they always do. They got, you know, all the targets with Manuel Sanders doing the ball of Cole Beasley a bunch. Like it's all the stuff that usually works. And all of a sudden, it's just four of the last five drives of turnovers. They just couldn't execute on the critical downs,

bad situational football. And that's how you have a sloppy, sloppy loss to a team that's much, much worse than you. Yep, going to the fourth quarter, Allen had been pressured 37% of the time. He said after the game, he played like shit. It started with him.

It was interesting because, first of all, the bills had five personal fouls. It was a sloppy game. They made mistakes in every level of the game. But what was interesting to me is I was reading Tim Graham tonight, actually, the athletic columnist from Buffalo. And he made the point that, okay, yeah, Alan was playing hero ball, but don't mistake that for 2019 Hero Ball.

He was playing Hero Ball because he didn't have much of a choice. Like, he wasn't getting a lot of help. He had to make plays. He had to press. So this isn't old Josh Allen necessarily. That's why I wanted to throw back to you, Ben. We talked so much about like what regression would look like for Josh Allen this year. And whether or not that's, it's more subtle.

He's not going to go back to old Josh Allen making those crazy mistakes, but he would maybe play a little less. I mean, he was almost perfect last year. Compare 2021 Josh Allen to 2020 Josh Allen and a little bit of 2019 Josh Allen. The peak plays remain. The bad plays are, there's a big uptick, right? and that's what we usually see. We usually see at the expense, at the exchange,

of making all of these tremendous, incredible, downfield improvisation plays, you're going to have some real knucklehead plays. And there were knucklehead plays and big losses, bad sacks on Allen's 2020 film, but they were pretty few and far between. And when you would put on the tape and watch it, you'd find a couple of game where you're like,

that should have gone poorly. That's cheating. Like, that could have been really, really bad, and he's very lucky that it wasn't. So you expected some of this to come back. And I think that was always the talk about, you know, regression. We got to remember, regression means things go back to the mean. So it means places we got really lucky, we lose, and places we got really unlucky get better. And so it's not Allen regression in the sense that he

in 2020 was like very accurate and then that went away. We kind of expected that to stay. It was very amazing that he got so much more accurate over time. We don't often see that, but we don't see accuracy just vanished. That doesn't really happen. He's a little bit less accurate, but in general, he's quite quite accurate quarterback. The regression was he was very lucky with some of the really negative plays he was able to avoid in 2020, and that's regressing up to the mean,

and those are showing back up. In general, worth the cost. I'm very fine with that. I'm willing to swallow a couple more of those plays per game if I continue to get these third and 26 conversions to Emmanuel Sanders of the sticks. You know what I mean? Like that's a fair exchange for me.

It's also worth noting that if you're going to have a quarterback like that, get yourself a defense that can be given four short fields, which was the case for the Bill's defense today, and only give up a total in nine points. They lost to the Jaguars, but it should not go without saying the Bill's Devens played a really good game. The Jags are like a good enough offense that being held a single digit as an impressive performance, especially with the turnovers considered.

So the Bill's defense accounts for some of that Allen craziness as well. You're generally fine with that being the situation for your team. Nora, as someone who deeply appreciated, and I did too, but you were above the and beyond deeply appreciated the Cooper Rush to Amari Cooper reception last week. You must have been in heaven with the Josh Allen sacking and intercepting Josh Allen thing. Yeah, I really wanted them to swap jerseys. Did they, did they not? I didn't, I don't think, I bet they did do in the locker room or something.

I think there was a little bit of like, yikes, we just lost to the Jags. Let's not go make a joke out of this. But yes, Josh Allen sacked Josh Allen at the end of the first half. then he intercepted Josh Allen and recovered a Josh Allen fumble. He swucked with Ed Oliver. Boo, swap with Ed Oliver. Well, that's lame. Also, there are an awful lot of players on these teams with two first names.

Ed Oliver, Josh Allen, Dan Arnold, Trevor Lawrence. God. Josh Allen had five, the linebacker, Urban Myers also. Levi Wallace. Sorry. There's a lot. There's a lot. Oh, great work.

But Josh Allen, the defender, had five pressures, 15% pressure rate, obviously, and then the turnover is the sack. Josh Allen had the best game of his life. Yeah, no, for sure. Did this Nora change you how you feel about this Jaguars experiment at all? Not really. Well, actually, yes. It makes me feel like they have not fully gone off.

rails. There must be some degree of players in that locker room and truly this could be as low of a bar as they are motivated by advancing their careers, earning their salaries, being able to, you know, garner some interest from other teams. But for a team like the Jaguars that has been through what they have been through so far this season to upset a good team, I think shows to some degree that the players have not just given up on the season, right? Because you can tell when a team does that. One thing that I thought was kind of interesting, and I don't want to totally write this off for the bills as, it's not really so much a football issue. It's that they look past the Jags because the Jags aren't a good team, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you look at stuff like Buffalo

having, they had 12 penalties. And then Shaquille Griffin said that he told the rest of the Jags that the bills sort of weren't locked in. Here's a quote. He said, so that was one thing I kept preaching. I said to everybody, look, look at their sidelines, just watching them walk around like they don't care. I said they don't deserve this. Let's show them why.

Now, I'm going to say there's a likelihood that that's just football players being amped up when they win and wanting to say some stuff. But I do wonder if to a degree this just was not not a good day for the bills. I would be remiss if we talked about this and did not mention the Manningcast curse, which I feel must be discussed. Yes, producer Arjuna is very happy with you. Please mention this.

All right. So active football players who have gone on the Manning cast are 0 and 6 in their following games. So that's Travis Kelsey and Russell Wilson who were on in week one, both of their teams lost in week two, Gronk was on in week two,

Buck's lost in week three, Stafford was on in week three, then the Rams lost, Brady was on in week seven and then lost to Trevor Simeon in week eight. Josh Allen was on last week and then the bill's obviously lost. Also, Nick Saban,

not an active NFL player, but just further proof. Nick Saban goes on in week three. Now, Alabama did not lose to Texas A&M until week five. But do you know who they beat in week four? Anybody know? No.

Do you guess, Kevin? it was indeed Ole Miss. Yeah, okay. Do you know who famously went to Mississippi? Oh, wow. Eli, Manning. Elon Manning. Manning cast curse is undefeated.

Can we check in on the personal lives of the other of the non-active football players to find out if, like, if John Stewart had a really bad show or like Michael Irvin, his stocks aren't doing that well since he went on. I don't know. Patrick Willis. If anybody has inside info about the personal lives of anybody else who has been on the Manning past. Although if anything bad happened to Sue Bird, I will be very upset. So don't let that happen.

Hey, I do want to talk about the fact that the, I want to get out of this game pretty quickly. But the Jaguars kicker missed three fuel goals in a row, all left, all strung together by penalties. I don't mean three in a row is in like over the course of the game. I mean, there were three straight snaps. He kicked the ball three times and he missed three times. This is who the team we were trying to crown in the AFC lost to today. By the way, when he made one in a separate incident later in the game, it was the first time the Jaguars had made a field goal in America this year.

So I love this, I love this mode that we're in with Jaguars accomplishments now, where things can be the first time it's happened on U.S. soil. Yeah, that's great. That's a good qualifier. It's the first win, American win. The good people of Jacksonville needed to see something. I empathize with missing the field goals consecutively left because that's some stuff I would do

where I'd miss it left and I'd get another opportunity. I'd beg, all right, you think you need to pull it more rights because you just miss it left, but you don't want to pull it two rights and you're going to miss it right, so just make sure you hit it regular.

And then I would continue to miss it left over and over again. It's like myself out. You're not an ambit kicker. My move would have been on the third one to go way right. Like way right. Just way over confidence. Just kick it behind you. But that's a thing.

In golf, if you miss the same every time, you have a good shot. So maybe Matthew Wright is a golfer. All right. Time for our first superlative, and it's to give the Tennessee Titan third flowers, 28 to 16 over the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday football, Nora, it's your superlator the other floor.

Yeah, well, I was thinking back to a few weeks ago, and it must have been after the Chiefs game, right? When we were talking about this Titans defense, and there were a lot of qualifiers, right? we were talking about, well, they've gotten pressure, but are we really trusting Autry Simmons this group to keep it up over time? Well, time has passed and they have kept it up. I am moving the Titans in my book from a team that...

In your book? In my book? Is there a different word? Can you not... When you said moving the Titans, All right, let's do it. Let's do it. I'm getting there. I am moving the Titans from a team that I praise with qualification to one that I, from here on out,

I will endorse the Tennessee Titans with full, full-throated enthusiasm. Sure. Now, Kevin. Yeah. Hi, Nora. I want to open the floor to you. Yeah. To answer one question.

A question I've wanted to ask you for some. time. If you had to create some tears of teams atop the AFC, where would you place these Tennessee Titans? I'd put them at the top because they've beaten the bills, chiefs, Colts, and Rams in a row. And they've done it with a way that to me makes sense. So Jeffrey Simmons, according to next gen stats, had a first half tonight of over six

pressures and three sacks. that is the second time that's ever happened in the next gen stats era. Clayas Campbell did it in 2017. Stafford in that time period was under pressure for 40% of his dropbacks in the first half. It's a lot.

For the game, Simmons had nine pressures, Autry had four pressures, Landry had three. On the other side, I think Aaron Donald finished with four. Leonard Floyd actually had more than him. The thing that's interesting to me is so first of all like very quick references here to the cowardly mcvay field goal um the rams

play like trash tonight but with stafford i mean he was just getting the crap knocked out of him it's it's weird game sloppy game i understand why it happened ben solac i'd like to open it up to you because before we started recording you had some titans takes i'd like you to get them out there so then we can embrace debate i don't know if i like being sat on a tea like this. It wasn't a good offensive game for the Titans, right? It was not. Okay, no, that was not your take.

Okay. I will, I will break down the take to allow it to nationally flourish. I've laying the roots of the tape. It's a weird now in take arbitration. And the flower will come later. The Titans, offensively, first game without Derek Henry,

struggled mightily. They overall were a total EPA of negative 0.0.0, excuse me. Ryan Tanyhill had an A dot of 3.7, which as good friend of the pod, Nicker, I would say, a dot is everything. Just terrified of pushing the ball down the field. They scored 14 points on the pick six, and then on the, on the, the, uh, the Wents interception that Stafford through, which there was a one play, two-yard drive that the score of thatchance, so there's 14 points there.

Then their other touchdown drive in, in a meaningful time was with, multiple fourth down conversions. They generally did not move the ball well. AJ Brown struggled to get down the field. He had 11 targets. I want to say, and he only had a title of four receptions. They are very screen heavy against the off coverage of the Rams. And they still ran the ball quite heavily as well, which is also something that you're concerned to see. They had upwards of 20 carries, only 70 yards, onto Foreman, Jeremy McNichols, and Adrian Peterson. They were missing Nate Davis, right? So the offensive line was a little banged up as well, but the Titans tried to be a balanced running, passing game, and throw their in-breakers

off play action, and largely weren't able to do that with the success that they've enjoyed with Eric Henry back there. Nobody thought that they were going to immediately replace him in one game, and we're going to give them time to grow and figure this out. But this was, it was an impressive win. It was not an impressive offensive performance. Defensively, I'm trying to figure out what the Titans are doing really well, and it's difficult. We know for a fact, the team is generating pressure with four. We, everybody watched

the game. Jeffrey Simmons, and as you brought up his excellent stats in the first half, he has led the league and pressures over the last four weeks since week six from next gen stats with 27. The next closest is 20. That's DeNico Autry. He also plays on the Titans. And critically, they both play defensive tackle. The next three are Yannick and Gawke and Miles Garrett and Leonard Floyd. This isn't they're leading the league and pressures from defensive tackle. They're leading the league in pressures, period. You don't do that from the interior.

That's not how it works. That's Aaron Donald nonsense. And the funny thing is, is that in the first five weeks of the season, you know who was leading the league in pressures? Harold Landry, the edge for the Titans. None of these guys, by the way, are the $18 million free agent. That's Bud Dubree. He just doesn't do anything, which is absurd.

That's not how it's supposed to work. It's good work if you can get it. Right. I don't. And I've got nothing. nothing schematic for you here. But Bud, shout out Bud.

Guess he loves this arrangement. Fourth best edge on the Titans defensive line. Making a cool $1.2 million a game. It was so obvious. It wasn't it like his huge percentage

of his sacks last year were just unblocked pressures? And the thing is, right, he's a very like a high effort player and a good athlete, which is a nice player to have. You generally don't want that

dude making 18 mil. But if the other three guys in the line, just going to lead the league in pressures. They're just going to change who does it on a week-to-week basis. That works. This defensive line is causing unbelievable, damaging havoc. And it feels like it's protecting a back end that shouldn't be playing as well as it is. But I mean, Chris, the young man out of Marshall, Chris Jackson, I want to say, played a very nice game. Ammonie Hooker is their second year's safety out of Iowa playing tremendous ball.

They've got enough. They've got enough. So the Titans defense, I'm willing to buy in on a little bit just because of the amount of of, of talent they have up front, disruption they have up front. That still feels shaky just because I don't trust the back end too much. They're obviously dealing with a lot of injury. Christian Fulton, Caleb Farley, both Auberts, Norse Jenkins, yada, yada, yada, yada. I'm kind of getting there on the defense. I'm warming up to it. Offensively, they're not going to be able to get away with this performance on a week-to-week

basis. Defense won't be able to dominate this much, such as the offense plays like this and they continue to win games. Is this a good team or not? Yeah, it's a good team. I would I, they are not a, a, to me, clear tier one head above everybody else, the AFC team. But I think we're getting into.

Kevin's shaking his head. I as the take arbitrator feel like Kevin thinks that was not your take. No, no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm, I'm letting him, I'm letting him own his take into the microphone. But I just want to talk about what the AFC even is. Because I don't think they're a tier one team in like the best version of the AFC that it doesn't exist. I think they're a tier one team in the AFC where the Bills just lost to

a Jaguars team that just nobody there wants to be there. But hadn't won in America. Hadn't won in America. Hadn't won in America. Hadn't made a field goal in America. He's just trying to, I mean, Urban does not want to be there. The Patriots have their floss, even though they're a half game back of the Bills. God, could you imagine a nightmareish? That would be for Bill's fans. I got a, I got a text from our boss today.

that was just P-A-T-S-1, 2, 3, 4, all the way in order. That was it, no context. He's feeling great. Chargers and, which boss was that? Bill. That was a joke. Well, I don't know. We have like four people above us, and nobody else would send that text.

That's fair. It's Sean Fennacy trying to ghost the Jets. Right. Chargers are up and down. The Raiders are up and down. the chiefs will get to that in a second. Well documented flaws. Broncos, not where they need to be.

So the Ravens are six and two and they struggle with the Vikings today and the Titans went to L.A. And by the way, the Titans have wins over most of the impressive teams in the NFC. I'm just saying like if we're doing resume, if we're doing the playoff committee here, who's been more impressive this year

than the Tennessee Titans? And at some point, I just say, yeah, you're a tier one team. I don't, I think that this is an incredibly flawed conference that anybody can win in. That was where I was going to is I have the same sources of trepidation that you have been. I think it's just that they have done it for a month against really good teams. So I think it's for me time to buy in.

And the secondary, you would love more depth there, right? But like you were explaining, they have been consistently capable against good teams of getting pressure with four. They had 15 pressures with four fewer rushers against Stafford today. It's a 30.6% pressure rate on those plays. All five of their sacks came with a four-man rush.

Those are the types of performances. And I'm not saying that you're going to get this performance every single game. But they are stringing similar results together here. And if you can get that, then you're putting a lot less pressure on the guys on the back end. And then, you know, Kevin Byers playing really well. Eventually, you see a team play really well against good teams. Yeah. When a lot of other teams aren't doing it. It's just, I just think it's sort of

time to say that this is real. Tier one, baby. I've got, I was going to say it without the tears. We've got, uh, Saints next week. then Texans, Patriots, then Jaguars, then Steelers. So I got three, I got Saints and Steelers, two really good defense, and then the Patriots are pretty good defense

the next five weeks. I'm worried that, like, this Titans team is good at rock fights. They got to get unbelievably good at rock fights if they're going to win some of those games. Because I just think, for as legitimate as I,

as I think some of those wins are, like Bill's obviously kind of, you know, fourth down, or, yeah, fourth down Cubey sneak. I'm not sure, like, beating the Colts really, registers for me too much, regardless about all of that. To me, that was the pre, that was the Derek Henry era. And losing Henry is just identity changing for the team. And so I want to heat check

the offense here. Is it, I know this is going to sound very strange. I know actually speaking of our boss, it might sound similar to a theory that he has. Are we sure it's not a good thing that the Titans are going to have to change their identity and have to pass more? We got to assume that they do. They ran the ball 25 times. They threw 32 times. But is that a good thing? Because I think it might be. I am very much a proponent of the idea that because Henry is out, they need to pass more.

And they can pass more because Tannhill has that talent. I'm worried off of what we saw here that they're not going to do that. That they're going to be oriented on finding a balance. I agree. I agree. But I think they'll figure it out. And I think that, listen, this Titans team has done. a lot with in circumstances they shouldn't have i mean i was thinking earlier today when i was watching

this game like they went into arrowhead i was at that game they were up two scores on patrick mohams and then mohomes started running down the sideline doing his crazy shit and and you know there wasn't anything you could do but this is a team that's won some really really really really big games in january i think henry is a huge part of that but i also think that they just they understand uh how to win and i think that that's a skill in football there's a lot of coaches and a lot of gms and a lot of rosters we sit around and make excuses for and they don't win and this is a team that wins. So I know this sounds reductive and I'm not going to, you know, the Neil Hornsby over PFF is ripping up my resume somewhere. I'm never going to be PFF Kevin for this, but this team

knows how to win. Yeah. I think I think I very much agree with that. And I think one thing that you saw in this game that was retained from Derek Henry era Titans, which I hope continues to be retained is fourth down aggressiveness and really, really good situational working shortyard. this team is really good at getting a bucket when they need a bucket on offense. And that, to me, translates. Like, it is jarring to see Matt Brable go for it on two fourth downs and go, score a touchdown fourth and goal with a pure naked to Ryan Tannhill. And then on fourth and four, Sean McVeigh's got every tool he could ever dream of on offense.

He's kicking a fuel goal. The Titans know they got to get those tough yardage looks, those short yardage looks, and they got a lot of packages to get it done. that's important to this team. But yeah, win some rock fights here without Derek Henry and I'll buy.

All right, Broncos 30, Cowboys, 16. This is another game sort of similar where I was ready to crown at least maybe a top two or three team in the NFC,

and now I don't know what I'm looking at. At one point, Dallas trailed 30 to nothing. Doc Prescott was 19 and 39 for 232 yards. And I think

153 of those yards came in the fourth quarter when the game was already a blowout. Both touchdowns obviously also came in the fourth quarter. Per PFF, 75% of his yards in the fourth quarter came before the catch. That means he was throwing the ball down the field. In the first three quarters, 24% of his yards came before the catch. He was not going down the field. He was not connecting down the field. Taran Smith was out.

Terran Steel was in. There's some really interesting kind of almost Lane Johnson, splits as far as what happens. Oh, wow. Ben's head snapped around when I said Lane Johnson. I forgot about those splits, but it really is, it's marked how when a top tackle is out.

Trent Williams in San Francisco and Washington and Washington, is the same thing. Like the whole offense changes. So Prescott was pressured on 31% of his dropbacks, but this was bad. Ben, what you think? Yeah, I very simply think that DAC was missing today.

Dak just couldn't hit open receivers. That's all I've got for you, right? I watch it back and I'm like, all right, what's happening? And it's just C.D. Lambs open and downfield and a critical fourth down and we're just going to overshoot him. And I don't see anything that's like, he's favoring the calf. I don't, I got nothing in terms of, I guess like that's the best explanation is the injury, but I don't really see him favoring anything when you watch the film.

He's under a decent amount of pressure, but Prescott's always been really good under pressure and I don't think many of it was like super surprising. It's not like the Broncos were particularly getting there with four. Like they were sending Blitz packages too. So usually stuff's going to open up behind that. Steel wasn't good. But I didn't think he was so detrimental such as to explain the massive drop off in Prescott's play. Because you know, you say he's 19 for 39. At one point he was like eight for 25. You know what I mean? Like it was just truly truly difficult. It was a lot of stat bad. It wasn't his fault, but the stats could have been much of it. Right. now they had, I want to say,

three failed fourth down conversions while the game was kind of like still meaningful. Usually, like there were multiple fourth in shorts. They had trouble moving the Broncos line off the ball and you lose Tyrant Smith there that obviously hurts you as well. That's a big, like a lot swings on those fourth down plays just in terms of like our counting stats and our box score, you know what I mean?

Like from a yards per play perspective, this was not a 30 to nothing game, which is what it basically was in the middle of the fourth quarter, just because the Cowboys were struggling so much in their situational football notes. And they were kind of, you know, stale. They weren't really like pulling out all the fun stuff. There's no like Cedric Wilson double pass, like your speed option. I guess maybe they aren't comfortable running press scott because of the calf right now.

In general, to me, it feels like very much so an off day for DAC that's going to be a blip on the radar down the road, much more interested in the fact that the Cowboys defense couldn't buy a stop against a passing attack that looked like it would have been falling apart, you know, Javante Williams and Melvin Gordon, I think totaled, I want to say 150, 160 rushing yards on a combined like 35 carries, just tremendous performance

by the Broncos offense did not see that coming from a Dallas team that is generally impressed on the defense side of the ball. But when I said it wasn't as fault, I meant the stat padding. Like he's not going to give the yards back.

Okay. Noropensiati, here's a stat. Dallas was a double-digit favorite. And this is, I think, VESPN, I wrote this down. They were double-digit favorite, and they were down by 30. First time that's happened since 2001. Did you see the stat? I did not.

No. Okay. The last time that this happened was a New England-Indianapolis game, 2001, that was also Tom Brady's first start. So the last time, there was an upset like this, where a team that was a double-digit favorite got trounced this thoroughly. It was because the greatest quarterback of all time was starting, and we didn't know he was yet the greatest quarterback of all time.

That's why this is very interesting. What are you saying about Teddy Bridgewater right now? Don't do this to you with Teddy, man. It begins right now. No, I'm just saying that's how unique a situation this was. And like the, you know, you mentioned the staff padding. Like this was ugly the first three quarters. And Dak played really, really poorly and missed a lot of his throws.

Nora, what jumped out of you about this game? I'm totally with Ben that Dak was just off. You're actually allowed to be off once in a while. It's okay. It happens. He was asked a bunch of stuff after the game. which I thought was interesting about, you know, did the Broncos figure out the blueprint?

Were they doing something in particular? And it's a lot of, like Ben said, they were blitzing a decent amount. I mean, they've got depth in the secondary so they can kind of afford to do that. That's not normally going to have much of a problem with that, right? Like, he's so good with his mind. And he actually went as far as to say,

he said, I hope teams play us like this for the rest of the season, to be honest. And I thought that was sort of telling in this. sense that he just had a rough day. And maybe there's some not so much favoring because of the injury, but just knock a little bit of rust off. Now, that doesn't totally make sense just because, look, he's had to knock a lot more rust off than that in recent memory, and it was just fine.

But who knows, everybody has an off day sometimes. I think the defensive stuff is probably a little bit more meaningful just because it was always going to happen where digs was not going to continue on a record setting interception pace forever and they were not going to be getting turnover's big defensive plays

at quite the same rate. Some of like Ben said, those high impact, either fourth down conversions or it's the turnovers, those really, really high impact plays go the other way and against a quarterback like Teddy

who Tom Brady, he is not, but he's, He played a pretty classic, there's still time. Pretty classic, mistake-free Teddy Bridgewater-esque game. And it is a team

like Denver that has a lot of talent if they're clicking on the right day. There's a lot of good players on that team. It can just get more out of hand than it seems like it has any right to. So I'm not super, super worried about the Cowboys. Now it's the opposite of the bill situation,

right, where the top of the NFC does feel like it's sort of legitimately. stacked, it's got some real players in there. So they've got to do a little bit more. I don't think you can afford the same type of slip-up that you can in the AFC, but their division is not an issue. So Cowboys are fine. I think Doc will shut off.

Ben, you mentioned the defense. I just want to harp on this for one second. Listen, the NFC is, who knows, right? Like the Rams who I thought were maybe the NFC favorite are getting their lunch eating by Jeffrey Simmons. Like, it's really hard to decipher anything and say, what's going to matter in January right now. But when you see a game like this,

give you any pause when you see this defense right now on just their long-term prospects in Dallas? Yeah, the thing that the thing that freaks me out about the Cowboys defense is there is, in my opinion, an internal understanding that they're never going to be, but the personnel they have now, they're not going to be like what we call a complete defense. They're not going to be able to play a bunch of different stuff, right?

They play man in cover three. Sit. they know up front they're not just going to hold in the running game right and I think that like you see this is a solid Broncos interior line they can move people off the ball when they want to they got 285 pounds of OSA digazua

just sitting at 3 tech and they're like listen we're going to Michael Bennett this thing sometimes we're going to lose in the running game but this boy can get up feel quick right and he had multiple TFLs right like that that kind of rocks a little bit in terms of generating havoc and I like that and I like the self-awareness there

but because I think you see reflecting the play calling, internally we know we can't run 10 different things. Internally, we know that we can't be like sound everywhere. We just don't have the personnel. We don't have the talent. We don't have the bodies. That's a little bit worrisome. Because for everything Teddy is,

and I'm not going to get soccered in by Teddy Bridgewater again, but he's like seventh and ePA play in case anyone wants to know. But for everything Teddy Bridgewater is, if you give him something to exploit, he'll take it. You know what I mean? go back to that 2019 era of Teddy. Whatever you give me, I'm going to take, and we're going to walk our way down the field.

When the Broncos running game is working, and when they're getting those backs down on the concept, they got Jerry Judy back from injury, Tim Patrick's play well, Sutton's playing well. When they've got enough guys, and you just don't have the personnel to hang with them, they've shut, like, Ridgewater is smart enough quarterback to go after that.

Well, so is Tom Brady. So is Aaron Rogers. So is Matt Stafford. You know what I mean? And if he's got some good quarterbacks in it. So if Teddy can take apart this defense, even when it's like Michael Parsons is, rushing really well and Osadi Gizu is rushing really well.

Like this is not, their top personnel, like did some good stuff in this game. Then you're worried about a slate of top NFC quarterbacks come playoff time. Broncos played, I mean, this was a solid game from them. Devante Williams 111 yards. Tim Patrick led receivers with 85 yards. We mentioned Teddy 249 yards, one touchdown.

A shocking amount of Broncos fans in Jerry World. Maybe we shouldn't be shocked by that. They have a huge fan base in Jerry World's destination, but there was a lot of people. guys didn't anybody with the Broncos? We're not going to talk about block pun? We're not going to talk about we're going to block a punt, but then the punt's going to go forward beyond the line of scrimmage

and then the cowboy's going to touch it. So it's going to be a lot of ball. Okay, okay. So I knew this rule, and I felt like most people didn't know the rule. So the rule is if the ball, if after a block pun, it goes beyond the line of scrimmage, it becomes essentially a live ball if you touch. Right? I knew this rule

and I feel like maybe this happened more in like the 90s. This was one of those things that seemed to happen more a long time ago. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I play a lot of video games growing up.

Maybe he's still a lot of puns. What'd you think, Ben? Okay. I understand the rule. The rule makes sense to me. Also, Codswallop. Let the Cowboys have the ball. Thank you.

That's my time. It's their ball. They're blocked the pun. It's their football. I second the pun. You get the football. But how is that different with what happens if it's a tip punt? But if you get a little finger on it?

Then you get the football. I don't know. To me, you block the punt. To me, a tip punt looks like a punt that's slightly different. Whereas a blocked punt looks like a blocked punt. And in the case, the block fund, you get the football. It's a gray area.

All right, Packers Chiefs, Ben, you have the floor. Uh, yeah. So the beginning of the Jordan Love era here in Green Bay, it went great. 19 for 34, uh, 190 yards, one touchdown and one interception is the box score for Jordan Love. Uh, you look at the heat map and they called the chiefs aren't defending the flats offense. And they just tried to hammer it for as long as possible. Um, I don't think they call it a straight drop back for Jordan Love. the third quarter, man. It's funny because I was watching his preseason tape a couple of days ago

and I was like, well, they probably just tried to open it up a little bit more. And no, they just didn't understand what they did. Houston and August. Yeah, but I say, it turns out Houston's third stringers

rely into us, man. We should have done something. Actually, that's false because Houston was like playing their ones and their twos in the preseason. I forgot about that. But anyway. Do they have ones in two?

Right. There you go. They were very oriented on letting the offense do the work for Jordan Love, which is intuitive because when this offense is at its best, Aaron Rogers is getting it into a good spot,

and then it kind of self-perpetuates. This offense is very good at taking what the defense gives you just structurally. It's so based on box counts, based on RPO's. It's based off of leverage. And it's easy for us, I think, to see that and see how well Rogers facilitates that and mistake just how much skill it takes.

There was a third and eight, the Packers were driving early. Aaron Jones is out, split out wide, and they're going to run a little wide receiver screen to Aaron Jones. Edge is going to be unblocked. The quarterback's got to take the snap out of the gun and get the ball out to Jones, knowing that edge is coming off between him and Jones unblocked.

And Rogers will take that snap. He'll flick that thing with a, you know, barely even sidearm. It's just the wrist motion. He's barely moving his feet. Ball will curve right around that, that edge or get right over his hands. It'll land in the bucket on Jones. Love goes to do that, and Frank Clark just takes up so much room. I mean, it's just you can tell that the speed and the size felt different, right?

It was very much so like this is how rookies look. Obviously, Jordan Love's been in the program for a year and a half, and that's a little bit of a worry there. But that's just how it looks for rookies. Everything is just bigger and fast than they thought it would be. The ball is inaccurate. Jones can't bring it in. And it's third and eight,

and you're trying to, you know, manufacture an offense because you don't want the quarterback dropping back. We knew coming in that it's not a good circumstance to be in that they're missing their center and they're missing their center and they're going up against Steve's Fagnolo defense. So it's going to be, you don't have your usual signal caller at center to set your protections. You don't have a quarterback who has any experience center protections. You have Steve Spagnola, who's as blitz happy as they come. Spag's had this young man in the Thunderdome.

I mean, it was just not. It was unhealthy. There was a third and 12. He put seven on the line of scrimmage. Four of them are coming, right? No, seven are coming. He sent everybody. He sent the whole house.

He's playing cover zero behind. If one dude can't cover Devante Adams, the touchdown, no, I don't care. I'm just sending him after. sending him after Jordan Love, he blitzed like crazy. And the Packers were trying to run so many screens, to try to take the wind out of it, and just simply Love could not execute them enough, right? He just couldn't be consistent enough, quick enough, right enough.

And it puts back into clarity how much Rogers means for this offense. Long term, I don't think this makes you super, like, discouraged about Jordan Love. Like, I've kind of, like, seen that that floated around. I think that, though the biggest concern for me is the degree to which the offensive designers, Nate Hackett and Matt LaFleaur felt comfortable putting Jordan Love in the driver's seat. Is this, they kind of just gave him a one-off game plan to try to beat the Chiefs and, okay, we didn't work, whatever. Or is this, this is all he can handle. If this is all he can handle after a year and a half in an NFL program, then we've got legit problems.

So if we get Jordan Love again next week against the Seahawks, it's going to be a good litmus test for just to what degree they're willing to open up the offense for him. Yeah, that's it to me. You said that you weren't long-term worried about it. I am a little bit long-term worried about it if this is it. If this is it. You know, I'm like, not to go back to... I will also go on the record as medium-worry. Yeah, I'm not not worried.

I mean, it was interesting because not to go to the college thing again, but, like, I was in North Carolina when Tawa Van Dyke, who was going to be the first overall pick in the years. He played against North Carolina and he couldn't hit anything. He was terrible. And I remember watching him, but like, oh, I can't wait for, you know, Jake Garcia to get healthy so Tyler Van Dyck can go to the bench. Everybody felt that way.

Like, the coaching staff felt that way. If you kind of read the tea leaves of what was happening. happening. And then they had a meeting and he was like, I want to open this up and I want to throw deep. And they're like, sure, try it. And now he's one of the best quarterbacks in football, right? Um, college football. And I kind of feel like, um, getting stuff put on your plate is, I think it's a function of how you've looked in practice over the past year and a half if you're Jordan Love right now. And, you know, I, the results in that have been mixed. Um, and just kind of the trust the coaching staff has in you. And I don't think that they, there were a lot of paths for Green Bay.

win this game, a lot of paths. But one of them is they were probably being at the trust Jordan Love a little bit. And the fact that they didn't, um, shows me that there's either they just didn't want to risk, you know, a complete disaster or they made a determination that they just weren't going to give them too much or he can't do it. I, I don't know. I have two counterpoints. The first is I can understand why this coaching staff coming off like the game they had against the cardinals where they just had nobody on offense and then still generated 24 points was tempted in a believing that they could scheme all the way around taking the game out of Jordan Love's hands. You know what I mean?

Like this, this offensive coach staff has been one of the best in the league over the past couple of years and saying, oh, we're missing X. We can get around that, right? So I understand why they got tempted into that. The second thing is I would just stay as a blanket. I would understand if the leadership in Green Bay, the brass, was just a little bit distracted this week in terms of like planning out for Jordan Love. I think maybe they also have like other things going on that maybe detracted a little bit from their ability to like get the team ready.

Right. That hurts. No, I, listen, I, there are a ton of caveats. And that's why Nora and I are only medium worried about this. Okay. He got a handful of practices. He got thrown into the fire. But you're also the backup in an NFL team.

You've been running it. It's not like you were signed. It was some Bortles who was signed off the golf course on Tuesday, right? Or Wednesday, whatever it was. So you kind of have to be ready. You played in the preseason, all that stuff. And so, listen, I am extremely willing to have an open mind about Jordan Love looking better than this. But this, I don't think this was, not only was it not encouraging, it was a little bit dispiriting, I think, if you're a Packer fan.

Nora, what did you think? Well, also, by the way, QB1 was not a minicamp. That's correct. Got a few extra reps in there. He's done it before. Yeah, I just, look, I don't think that one game can disqualify someone like Jordan Love, certainly. But there's an opportunity to make people feel encouraged, right? And that certainly did not happen.

I think, right. I mean, Ben, I hear your counterpoint, but on the other hand, you do think of this coaching staff that's so good at taking that situation of, well, we don't have X, let's find a way to work around that. I just wonder why it didn't seem like that happened with the player who a lot could be riding on pretty soon. You've got to imagine that they're thinking forward towards that. That's an amazing point. Well, just to your other point, I do think that it's a very fair thing to introduce to the conversation that this was just not a fun week in Green Bay. So this is something I wanted to talk about here, and I'm glad you brought that up. because there was a three, four-month span where Jordan Love was maybe the presumed

starter when Aaron Rogers is like, I'm just not going to play anymore. So it's not what they weren't thinking about what Jordan Love was going to look like in its offense. It's not like they didn't sit around, I'm sure, with Matt Lafleur and Nathaniel Hackett and those guys and say, what are we going to do if Jordan Love is our starter? Those conversations were happening. Jordan Love at some point was preparing for that because we didn't know until July 29th or 28th or whatever it was if Aaron Rogers were going to show up.

And so that to me is the biggest thing is that there was so much right. There is, there is, and this is going forward. I'm not saying you can just extrapolate everything from today. What I'm saying is there's so much organizationally riding on Jordan Love. The quarterback doesn't want to be there after this year. The Lord knows what's going to happen with Devante Adams. They posted the last dance meme, all that stuff.

So much is on Jordan Love's shoulders. You at least have to process that and think like, okay, people are really going to read into this first game, right? And so, like, that's why there had to have been a plan in early July, late June about what this offense was going to look like. And I'm wondering if this was it, Ben. Yeah. The Devante Adams point is actually also a really, really good one because he, I think, was visibly frustrated. And I think that- Yeah, he just learned what happens, how 28 other top receivers live.

Yeah, right. It's, it really was very much so. You know how Robbie Anderson felt today? Yeah. Just big Alan Robinson. advice. He's going to, next time he sees Alan Robinson, he's going to go, buddy, I had no idea. Blake Bortles was on the sideline going, yeah, I remember when my guy looked like that,

that's rough one. No, I think, right, I think the clarity like Devante gets right in terms of just how beneficial quarterback like Rogers is the way that he gets to play, right? That's, that's good point as well because he was getting really frustrated. I think in general, my, my operating, my standard operating procedures are first career start, your center is out and you're up against the Spaggs defense, I'm going to give you a long leash because that's just, that's nightmare fuel. I mean, it took them so long to even find Daniel Sorensen.

That's how you know they were really down bad. I was on this thing the other day. I was on TV the other day. And they were, they asked me about this. And I said that I just kind of, I just sort of had run out of things to make fun of Daniel Sorensen about. And I said that playing the chiefs is now an IQ test. Okay. It's not anything else. It's not about what you're going to do with the game plan. It's not about, Are you going to put them in quick game stuff?

You're going to do bootlegs. Nope, it's an IQ test. Find Daniel Sorensen and throw there. That's it. That is it. And it took him 52 minutes to actually, you know, extract, make a game plan out of that.

So there we go. I think that must have been fun for Spags. I think Spags probably had a good time. Yes. Very much so. I think Spags has had some unfun Sundays recently. Spaggs got to be in his bag. Spagg.

Spag bag. I'm telling you, man. He was in the Spag bag. he was like, I'm going to blitz the living daylights out of this terrified quarterback who is in the middle of a public relations disaster and his first NFL start coinciding at the exact same moment. Exactly. And I'm going to have a good time doing it.

Belichick got darnold and Spag got Jordan Love. It was just really a great day for defensive minds everywhere. That's right. Hey, real quick on Mahomes. still pretty weird. Last two games, averaging 2.6 air yards per completion.

Average in his career is over six. I'm starting to believe, Ben, that it was interesting to me because they completed that third and seven, and I thought that was usually impressive. But I remember thinking the Wiley Fall Starters was to be a third and two,

but it was the game sealer. But I remember thinking like, oh man, it's like a real toss up whether or not they complete this third down. And I've never felt like, that with Mahomes. Like, remember when they clinched a game with Sprint, right option with Chad Hennie in the

playoffs? Like, that's what the Chiefs used to be. Now it's like, man, can they hit Tyree Kill on one pass? And to end this game? Anyway, I'm starting to believe. The Chiefs in like third and 25 used to be genuinely scary. Buckle up. Buckle up. Buckle your shin strap up. Ben, I'm starting to believe Mahomes must be hurt.

Okay. Is that it? I mean, he's running. Do you care to explain? Yeah. I mean, he's running more now than he was in years best. I'm aware of that.

He was running when he had the toe last year, too. And then, you know, Brad Veach told me after the season that, that, you know, when the doctors patched up the toe, they said,

I wrote about this in August in that piece, and I quoted Beach, and I said, you know, he, doctors said, uh, they were surprised he played.

And I think that this is a guy who is really, really tough. And I, you see him, limping a lot. Like remember last week, Romo thought he had tripped on the chains, but he was really just kind of ginger on the foot.

I don't know. To me, it's the only explanation for this. And I'm not making excuses from Holmes at all, at all. But the amount of throws he's just missing, I just haven't seen this. And at some point, I just think there's an alternative explanation.

Nick Wright was on Snow News day the other day. He said, maybe it has something to do legitimately. And this is not something to do. into this count with fatherhood. You know, so everybody's got a, got a reason, right? There are literally hundreds of reasons why a player's performance might dip. And I'm, I just think at some point it becomes an external factor and I'm leaning towards he's just not right physically right now.

Am I wrong, Ben? No, I don't think you're wrong. I think he's definitely not right. And it's a matter of, yeah, if there's a lingering toe issue, right, where it's just for whatever reason is affecting how he's. he plans, how he drives, so on and so forth, then that's your, that's the chain you get to follow, right?

That's the cause and effect. He's certainly not right. Like, that's just inarguable. The, like, we talked about Dak and the Broncos earlier. Dax's been right all year, even dealing with injury. And then in this Broncos game, he looked horrible. Well, okay, we think that's a one-off because we've seen one of them. With Mahomes, we've seen him miss enough deep balls, right?

We've seen him miss enough throws behind when he's, like, you know, moving across his body stuff that he usually does. It was absurd that he was usually doing it, but it's of the, he usually does, and he's missing it now. So he certainly isn't right. All my theories suck. You know what I mean? All my theories of like, it's the this and the blitzing and like that and everything.

It doesn't explain why his accuracy is tailed off. No, that's what I'm saying. The problem is it's like, oh, they put two safeties back there. Mahomes is flummoxed. No, he's not. Look at the numbers over his career. Okay, oh, you know, teams are blitzing him less. That might work in sports, and it has worked in sports, but it's not explaining, like,

the bad throws. That, to me, is why there's something extra here. Right. That's a structural thing. We were to play too deep. We're going to play zones, whatever. Take away the explosive pass. Mahomes should still be completing underneath passes easily. He's not doing that as easily as he has done in years past. And you, like, you know, you could call it a frustration thing.

That's a decent explanation. Being banged up is like another potential explanation that, you know, I'm fine with. But the reality is right. Mahomes is off. Mahomes is not playing with. There's something off with Mahomes. His and the chief's responsibility to figure it out and fix it. For us, it's just, you know, throw in theories.

to the wall and seeing what sticks. 100%. People are going to say, oh, you're making excuses from homes. Yeah, if you start out better than any quarterback in history of football and then you just don't make good throws anymore, I will make excuses for you.

How about that? That's my baseline for you next time, quarterback. If you want me to make excuses for you, play better than anybody else in history and then I'll make excuses for you. Nora? I think there's solid logic there.

It would make, look, the toe would make some sense in terms of, it seems like what's thrown off is some degree of timing and rhythm, right? Because we're seeing there are misses in the deep throws, but there's also just the timing on shorter stuff over the middle. That's iffy too.

Right? So something within process feels a little bit out of whack. Is it an injury? I have no idea. It's weird enough where I feel like we can just say it's weird. Hopefully someday we will understand this. 13 to 7 win, but I don't think Chiefs fans are feeling all that good about it. I mean, look, by the way, you know, outside issues aside,

the Aaron Rogers Packers win this game by like three touchdowns. Oh, God. It wouldn't even have been close. Packers' defense is settling in there a little bit. Packers and Chiefs defense alike, both just like to start the season, it was like, we're all going to die. They're both settling in pretty nicely. That's how I feel when I watch a bad unit, Nora.

Oh, Ben. We're all going to die. Chargers 27, Eagles 24, Nora. Okay, yeah. I'm really excited to talk about this. So if the Chargers had lost this game, I think we would have to yell a little bit. They won the game, so I think we're fine.

Justin Herbert had a very efficient game, and he looked good. I think if you are part of the Chargers offense is, criminally holding Justin Herbert back brigade, you're probably still feeling that way. But he becomes the fifth quarterback to complete at least 80% of his passes against the Philadelphia Eagles. Go birds, baby.

Our guy Benjamin Solex fired up about it. Love to see it. And so Herbert looked great. He's still really mostly working just short intermediate stuff. I know many are frustrated about this. I share some of those frustrations. I mean, he makes, like, the most beautiful throw across his body to Mike Williams. And it's just like, hello, he can do that.

But, again, they won the game. So I'm not going to yell about it too much. I want to talk about something very strange that happened at the end of this game, which is that when Nick Siriani is leaving the field, we were talking about this in our pre-production call. And it seemed like a little bit of a mystery. It has now been solved to some degree. A fan threw a bouquet of flowers at Siriani, and he got very upset, needed to be held back by Eagles security.

It turns out that this is because a couple weeks ago, Nick Sirani compared the Eagles, young Eagles team, developing team to a flower that hadn't bloomed yet but was growing beneath the soil. He said, it's coming through the ground. and the roots are growing out. And the roots are continuing to grow out. And the only way they continue to grow is if we water, we all fertilize, we all do our part. Yeah, baby.

So then the Eagles lost and a fan through a bouquet of flowers at Nick Siriani. Ben, I'll ask you this because you are an Eagles fan. Is Nick Sirianney okay? Somebody sent me like an unfortunate screenshot of him during the game and just sent, does he have scurvy? Because his eyes were so deep set. And he was, like, looking a little bit pale. I was like, is he good?

He's getting vitamins. Let's get this guy some vitamin C. I will say a lot of NFL coaches look like they might have scurvy. Just because there's not a lot of sleep, there's not a lot of nutrition. It's not, it's not exactly like a Siriani specific problem. Right.

And also a lot of NFL coaches are really big on metaphors. Some of the more veteran ones have figured, out what's good in context and what's not good in context and what will be taken by the media and reported without the tone that it was set in and without the context of which it was said and then subsequently will become a meme. Siriani kind of doesn't have that betteranship yet. And so probably should have saved the flower root metaphor for the team because that stuff will play. Like that stuff works. You know what I mean?

When you're all like as a group working together and you feel like you're making progress because the Eagles have been like getting better and figuring stuff out, like the defense is more aggressively, the run past balance is better. they just haven't really shown that in the win-loss column. That metaphor like works. Just keep it in the building. Because otherwise you kind of put it out there, you're just going to get a city like Philadelphia,

which don't really take much junk. And they're going to throw flower at you as you leave the field. After a game in which he coached like decently well. He didn't make. They almost won that game. What was the flower guy going to do if they won? Throw them up like pedals? Throw them to Siriani, but like in a celebratory way.

Like you did this. Congrats. Like, he's a bridesmaid? I mean, this is the only other time I could think of where you throw a bouquet of flowers. So it's a difficult comparison to avoid. Ben, you've been asked, is Siriani okay? Is Philadelphia okay? Never, and we're proud of that.

Thank you very much. Is Justin Herbert okay? I think Justin Herbert's okay. I think Herbert's okay. I think Herbert's quite good. He had, like, you know, the Ravens game, the Patriots game, there were inaccuracies. He was on point, and his Eagles seem very accurate contestable. balls, open balls, whatever, downfield,

short, all that's great. They just run the ball a lot on second and long, on first and long and second and long. They had 21 early down rushes per RBSDM.com, and 31 early down passes of a total of 52 total early downs. On their early down rushes, they had an e-paper play of negative 0.25. Early-down passes was positive 0.64.

The thing that I think is so strange about that is, okay so we think of Staley as a fairly forward thinking guy I mean they made all the right fourth down calls in this game fourth and two fourth and one fourth and one

I saw that next gen stats said that he made the right fourth down call every single time every single time PFF Brandon I just got that from next gen stats but the thing that I mean although I'm sure

that is not to impeach PFF Brandon I'm sure spot on there as well. Wait, no, no, I'm saying PFF Brandon Staley. Is there a PFF Brandon? Oh. No, it's Brandon Staley. Yeah. Okay, let's cut this part.

Nora. No, keep it. Hey, if you play Brandon Staley's life. There's probably a PFF Brandon. If you, if you play Brandon Staley's life a thousand times, how many times is he right now

on November 7th, 2021? How many times is he PFF Brandon? 962. A solid amount. Also, I'm willing to bet you guys that there is a PFF, Brandon. That's a lot of PFS. I don't think there is. Come on.

They must have an intern. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. All right. Well, anyway. What a niche topic for. Here's the central point. I'm looking it up while you riff.

It's interesting to me that a very smart defensive coach who has built his career on a defensive identity that is so focused on taking away big explosives is willing to let his offense be what it currently is. And now he's not managing their offense to the degree that he's managing their defense. Obviously, that's not his bread and butter. That's not why he got the job. But if you've spent so much time going explosives kill, if the team you're facing gets 40 yards in one single chunk,

you know what? They're probably getting points on that drive. And that's what we want to avoid. And then you've got a quarterback like Justin Herbert. And then you're content at least. And in a lot of times, I would say, pretty stubbornly committed to just having, to calling all of those first and second down runs and having a relatively, you know, short horizontal offense.

I don't understand it because you have the personnel. In theory, you really should have the personnel to be able to do the thing that scares you when you're coordinating a defense. Right. And they're not doing it. This is the thing I was going to try to not yell too much about because they won. And I actually think the Eagles were pretty decent. So it's not, it's really not.

Chargers had a good result. I don't mean to complain. It isn't. It isn't. Because the concern is always when bad process leads to good results. and then we learned from that. Right. Right.

Right. Like also from RBSDM.com, the Chargers had 30 series, right? So 30 first and tens. They started 10 of them with a rush and they converted 100% of those first and 10 rushes into a subsequent first and 10. So you look at that and you say,

all right, when we start the down with a run, we're going to pick up a first down. That worked this whole game. Okay. Well, the Eagles sit in too high on first and 10, and they give you that space. And our linebackers are bubkins. We can't learn from this

that we should be running the ball constantly on first and ten. The young man has a howitzer. Defenses have no answer to when Herbert gets out of the pocket and starts directing traffic. There's no solution. Do the thing defenses can't stop. It's going to go great.

Yep. Do the thing that scares the sideline. Do the thing that scared you when you were just coaching defense. Let's move on. to Cardinals 31, Niners, 17. Colt McCoy, guys. Colt McCoy, no Kyler Murray,

no DeAndre Hopkins. Colt McCoy, 22, 26, 249 yards, one touchdown. James Connor, 96 yards, two touchdowns, five reception, 77 yards. Um, boy,

boy, do we need to talk about Kyle Shanahan. This was an awful loss. This was an awful loss. And it's interesting to me because I think about the chiefs and I think about the Niners. And in case you missed it, they played in the Super Bowl two years ago. And I kind of think they suffer from slightly the same problem. It's a little bit different as far as their timelines going, all that stuff. But the Chief spent so much energy on the offensive lines.

It's all they talked about. It's all they thought about. They did so many things to allocate resources there, to think about it, and moved around to coach it. When I was at training camp, that was what all the media questions were about. Like, this was an offensive line off season. For the Niners, they had the quarterback,

and they allocated, they mortgaged their future to have what was reported as quote unquote control over the draft process because they thought they thought a lot of quarterbacks were going to go. They wanted to be in third in the pecking order, so they give up a lot of fix to do it. And I think in both cases, we got to week nine and we see how many other flaws there are.

and that with both teams, maybe the scope of the problem should have been a little, maybe we should have peeled back a little bit and kind of looked at the bigger picture because there were more problems than just the one they spent six months trying to solve, frankly. And the Niners probably if they had to do it over again, wouldn't have said, let's go all in on a rookie quarterback. Kyle Shanahan, via Marcus Thompson, ran out the final 27 seconds of the third quarter. while the offense was in a groove, defense was tired.

They punted at one point on fourth down in Arizona territory while down 17 points. Handoff after handoff, just uninspiring play calling. You know, you go up 437 yards to an Arizona team without Kyler Murray. Brandon Ayuk, by the way, looks good after spending the first half of the season in Kyle Shanahan's weird doghouse. I've defended Kyle Shanahan many, many, many times. I think the work he's done with quarterbacks, turning bad quarterbacks,

legitimately bad quarterbacks into good quarterbacks or statistically good quarterbacks has been magnificent. But you got to win some games, brother. That's what we're doing here. And I know you might want to the Super Bowl, but you can't lose games like this. This is bad. Nora, what do you do with a problem like the 49ers?

May I add a submission to the list that you just read? Sure. Please do. The 49ers defense got called for taunting while down by two touchdowns to Colt McCoy. Suboptimal. I love taunting. I'm pro taunt. I don't think you should taunt when you're losing by 14 to Colt McCoy.

It's worth naming to who taunted, by the way. Josh Norman, just contributing. a lot to the football team, baby. That's, that's, that's, yeah. Yeah. It's not great. It's not what you want. Josh Norman.

I like Josh Norman. By the way, if you're, if you're a player and I start off with that cadence and that inflection and that phrase, I like you. The guillotine is coming. Yeah, I would turn it off if I were you. Ben Solac, good writer. I like him.

I like Josh Norman as a person. The last two. times Josh Norman has reminded us. Let's go back to three times. Okay. The last three times Josh Norman has reminded us that he's still playing football. This, he got put in hell by D'Andra Hopkins a couple weeks ago. And then he got absolutely blown into another galaxy by Derek Henry on a run. I like that you're chasing your dreams, Josh, but I don't remember the last time you did anything other than be hugely embarrassed on a football field. So I don't I don't know, man. I don't know.

Nora? It's a tough break. I'm just letting everybody, it's just every time we've talked about Josh Norman on this show the last couple of years, it's been Josh Norman screwing up. Tim Calacami says first thing the Nander should do is cut is cut Josh Norman. So I wouldn't go that far. It's not a top tier effort. It's not a top tier effort. All right.

Anyway, the Shanahan thing is bad. The Shanahan thing is bad because they mortgage their future because I, listen, I drank the Treylands Kool-Aid. I would have drank the Mack Jones Kool-Aid. I would have drank the Justin Fields' coolade. It doesn't matter. I thought Kyle Shanahan makes every quarterback better. And if he gets a talented quarterback, that would be the thing.

The piece I read before the season was it wasn't a scheme fit. It was a scheme expansion. I loved that phrasing. I thought this was going to be it. Lance has been banged up. When he's been in there, he hasn't looked ready. But the expectations for him, he's almost, not almost, he is the Niners Jordan Love in the sense that, like,

just the organization's going to live and down everything he does because it is such bad news if he fails. Hey, Ben? I think there's three separate Kyle Shan. hands that have to get talked about. All wearing a flat-filled hat. All wearing a flat-filled hat. All just looking real, real good, windbreaker,

five o'clock shadow, looking great. Kyle Posey, we should say, have Niners Nation. As a good Niners-Bee guy called him Mark Trussman and Yeezys today, and I greatly appreciate it. Oh, my goodness. Shout out to Katie.

Now, hold on. Kyle Shanahan's never been on this podcast, and Trestman has, so. That we found the secret sauce. Now, so three Sabar Channans. I think the first is like Kyle Shanahan, the offensive play caller and designer. And this guy's really, really good.

There's no doubt in it. His offense has been integral to the 2010s. It is flown across the league. Multiple of his assistants, people who are associated with his offense. I've gone elsewhere, brought that offense and been successful. We've seen this offense do wonders

for a quarterback like Jimmy Garapolo, for quarterback like Kirk Cousins, for receivers like Devo Samuel, tied in like George Kittle, Kyle Ushik, like it's just good, right? They got a rookie fifth round running back in there, he looks awesome and Elijah Mitchell. That's good.

It's slightly distinct from Kyle Shanahan, the head coach, as he relates to his players in a non-XAs and O's way, right? Because we don't want to say that Shanahan doesn't maximize his players because he does. They've got Elijah Mitchell back there.

He doesn't have the best eyes. So they're running a lot more toss and a lot less true handoff on wide zone because it gives Mitchell better angles to hit that cutback. It's making the read simpler for him. Debo Sam, another great example. He helps that player be good

on the field from an X's and O's perspective. But there's something that Chanahan struggles with with players on Monday to Saturday. And we see this in Brandon Ayuk, who was in the dockhouse and now isn't, but also is and is still doing really well, but it's like, is the only out there because there's injuries, whatever. Trey Sermann, who was their third round pick,

at running back was not active for this game, has unfollowed the 49ers on socials, yada, yada, yada. Dante Pettis, second I picked a couple years ago. The list goes on and on. There's something that Shanahan struggles to do with these young offensive weapons that he himself brings into the building

where they clearly have some talent, but something is not working on Monday to Saturday, and he just kind of casts them aside very quickly. You see this all the time with younger, I would say, And by the way, I think this is kind of the Sean McVey hidden talent or at least not talked enough about talent is the fact that the players,

players seem to love him. A lot of younger head coaches actually struggle with, especially young players as you talked about. I mean, like, how many times, and listen, this is not, I'm not comparing these two guys. I'm not comparing these two guys.

But like, the first thing Adam Gase would do in a building is just alienate a young star. Did you just compare Kyle Shanahan to Adam? Sorry. To Adam Gase? No, no. But I'm just saying, like, it's a sign of a bad coach sometimes when you just seem to have a bad relationship with everybody, right?

Like, that's the whole thing about if you meet a jerk in the morning and you meet a jerk in the afternoon and you meet a jerk in the evening, maybe you're the jerk. Like, if you just keep having these problems with players, maybe you're not acclimating the player to where he needs to be. That's a general coaching point. That's not a Kyle Shanahan point necessarily. It just seems to be a pattern of Kyle Shanahan just really. hating his own players. Well, one of the, I think the, the blessing and maybe the curse of Kyle Shanahan is, he really knows what he wants.

He's such a clear idea of what they, he doesn't have any of it. Well, and he's stubborn. Right. Right. He has such a reputation of, I mean, this was talked about a ton when they got IUC, right? Kyle Shanahan, former receiver, he knows exactly what he wants. he knows exactly what he wants just from a receiver in general

and he knows specifically how he wants that guy to fit into his offense. Problem is, it seems like when he's not getting 100% of it, which is a lot to ask of a young player right away, right? Do everything

as I've assigned it to you just so exactly to my specifications in a complicated and physical game that involves massive dudes trying to stop you from doing the thing that you're supposed to do all the time. If you're not doing it perfectly,

well, here comes the doghouse. Now we have a problem. Now we're going to deviate from the plan. And that's the stuff that worries me. If this is drawing it up on paper, I don't know that there's anybody smarter. It seems like there's a little bit of a disconnect just in terms of, okay, well,

what happens when you've got the best plan and then realistically you're only going to be able to execute to 85% or something. I think to be a good coach, to be a really, really good coach, you have to figure out how to meet halfway with the reality of the situation, which is just not every player is going to execute to a T all the time. And sometimes you're going to have to adjust. I mean, we've talked about in-game adjusts. issues failing to see the direction that a big game was suddenly heading in with Kyle Shanhan

before, right? Like, I think there's a sort of a malleability issue. And for someone who's so, so, so smart and so capable in a lot of ways, I think that to me is the disconnect between the wins just not being there and the reputation and a lot of the results with offenses and with quarterbacks and with a lot of other players being so spectacular in the past. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen.

Ben, do you have any idea? The best thing for Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers right now is that Kyle Shanahan remains the head coach with the San Francisco 49ers. He's a very good offensive designer. Those don't grow on trees. He's got a young quarterback. Yeah, exactly.

He also signed through 2025. Right. Yeah. He's not going to get fired this year. Yeah. I don't think John Lynch can get fired either. I don't think John Lynch should get fired. No. What has to happen is the balance between head coach

general managers out of whack in San Francisco, in my opinion. The players are not being developed. The young talent is not being invested in. The second best cornerback on the San Francisco 49ers is a young man named Diomador Lenore. He's a fifth round pick at Oregon. He had a great preseason and played really well early in the season. He gave up a bad touchdown against the Eagles. Shanahan benched him. He's been a healthy scratch. They're playing Josh Norman and Dre Kirkpatrick Patrick over him. Josh Norman had a taunting penalty. Drake Kirkpatrick got his lunch eight by Eno Benjamin. Enob is a third string

running back for the Arizona Cardinals on a 27-yard touchdown run. This fifth round rookie showed promise at outside corner a position that you have woefully neglected over the last few years of ball. And he's a healthy scratch

because he gave up one bad play to the Eagles in a game that you still won and no need for this. So the young talent is not being developed. It is not being invested in. It is not being developed. Head coach and the general manager need to get in alignment there.

And really, the general manager has to have enough power in the building to say, we got to get Trey Lance in there. We got to get Diomino-Lannor in there. We need our young talent to work. Otherwise, this thing's going to come down like a house of cards. I don't think John Lynch has a powerful enough voice

in that room right now to say that. I don't think Kyle Shanahan would listen if he did. That's a power imbalance. They're going to continue to put most anew and Trent Sherfield and Drake Kirkpatrick and Josh Norman out in the football field trying to get this thing done,

trying to hold it together with duct tape and a prayer. And that's just going to prolong and eventual collapse. So, Shanahan should stay, but somebody in that building has to be able to say

to Shanahan, we got to put out the young guy and live with the lumps for a little bit because it's going to be better for us long term. I agree. I mean, they're just,

Kyle Shanahan, Kyle Shannon should not change as a coach from a scheme standpoint, from a plan standpoint, from all that stuff, but he just needs, needs to grow some empathy.

That's my take. Nor is written about that. She knows. That's true. Empathy. We're trading our next three first round picks for empathy in San Francisco. All right. I want to go on record as saying I wouldn't do that.

Do not go sign. I think the league office might have. The Texans. Jack Easterby is an empathy. Empathy Maven. They handed their entire franchise over to that guy. I'm just going to let that be. All right.

Now it's time for Browns, Bengals. It is also our state farm, surprisingly great performance of the week. Football wouldn't be the game we know in love without a few surprises. That's why we're going to talk about the Browns defense who are surprisingly great on Sunday and their win against Cincinnati Bengals, Ben Solac. Yeah, held the Bengals to 16 points, which this Bengals' offense has been rolling in the last couple of weeks, even with the recent loss that they had against the Jets, put up 31 points. This outside receiver room, right, Jamar Chase, Tyler Boy, T. Higgins, they really hadn't met.

a defensive backfield that could match him. And then Denzel Ward, Greg Newsom, and Troy Hill came to town. The Browns made a concerted effort to invest in the secondary. Brought in Troy Hill from the Rams play slot corner, brought John Johnson in from the Rams to play. Their safety spot drafted Greg Newsom in the first round. And boy, Newsom's really delivering for them too. He had, by my count, three pass breakups in this game.

Their defensive secondary right now has the bodies to pretty much match up with any receiver room. That's a very, very big deal come playoff time. Nor are we surprised how good this Brown team were just coming off of the Odell release, coming off of, you know, it's just been a generally weird season, surprised by being able to blow out a Bengals team that's been pretty good this year? I was surprised by the offensive performance in particular. Look, Baker just looked a little upset out there.

He looked like he wanted to air it out to Donovan People's Jones in a way that I thought was really, really, really encouraging, just given how much difficulty they've had pushing the ball downfield. Defensively, I felt actually more like this had kind of been building in Cleveland for a little bit. I was sort of waiting for them

to have this performance. I was there. I was there. I didn't think we'd get it this strong, but once Denzel Ward had that pick six, 100 yards, it was like, uh-oh, horses are out. Like, we're moving now.

We're cooking now. Yeah, yeah. Since we're talking about all things surprisingly great, we've got a shout out, the good neighbors at State Farm for offering surprisingly great rates. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there, get a quote today.

All right, so let's talk about the Browns and the Bengals and just sort of what this means for the AFC norm because this was this was not the game, but you wanted to see if you were the Bengals. Coming off of a very, very, very strange game last week again, they should not have lost.

They definitely should have lost this game. Ben, AFC North. Who's finishing higher? All right. So here's how, this is, here we go. the Ravens are the best team, but also they make the worst plays.

Like when they are bad on defense, it's so bad, right? Big Justin Jefferson touchdown, big Devlin Cook run. Like the Ravens explosive play problem right now is really bad on defense and then they cannot actually run the football on offense. Lamar Jackson is literally carrying the entire offense

and it's incredible to see. So they're the best team, but they're also like not trustworthy. The Steelers are the most trustworthy team because you know what they're going to be every single week. It's just they're also the worst team because they cannot do anything on offense. They have to just like find new creative ways to run the football 25 times in Najee Harris.

What just happened? What did you just call the worst team in the division the most trustworthy? Isn't that just called the most consistently mediocre? Yeah, there you go. Right. Consistently mediocre. Listen, I'm just trying to contextualize by far the most difficult division in the league right now. This is worse than my tears.

At least you don't have to put them in tears. Yeah, and I was going to say, this is we're going to start doing tears of the AFC North. top tier. No, I think the Ravens are the best team. But the thing for me is that they are liable. We saw this against the Bengals. So the Bengals just busted this thing wide open. I think they're the most talented,

but that defense has holes that are impossible to ignore. The Steelers have their offensive issues. The Browns, I still have the question market quarterback. The Bengals, I still have the concern on the offensive line. And also, I think the defense is taking a step back. There is not a complete team in the division. and they all have the ability to, I think, hit on each other's weaknesses

decently well. I think the Bengals are nicely built to beat the Ravens. I think the Steelers are nicely built to beat the Brown, so on and so forth. So at the end of the day, I default to there's one elite quarterback in this division. It's Lamar Jackson, and I'm probably going to trust him, elite head coach and John Harbaugh,

over the other three. But it's really hard the full send on one team in the AFC North because they're all so incomplete. I agree, but what about the Bengals and the Browns? For this game, to me, getting Nick Chubb kind of back moving, being able to run the ball, be physically dominant against the Bengals.

That's how we've seen the Browns play them in seasons past. That's really nice, especially because Chub had a little bit of a quieter day last week. He seems to be fully back and fully healthy. And as Nora said, we kind of got like pissed off Baker. Always a fun baker to get a lot of fun. I think the Browns are a better team than the Bengals,

and I think this week proved that. But even after the two losses for Cincinnati, you still see a lot of stuff that you like about this team. team. I think that Cleveland was playing really hot this week, especially with that pick six, kind of you felt that trigger something in the way this defensive backfield was playing. They were really aggressive, tremendous work for the entire game. I think Cincinnati play this game a hundred times. I don't think it gets this out of hand most of the time. You know what I mean?

So I trust Cleveland more than Cincinnati, but again, the incompleteness of these teams makes it very hard to just say these ones are the best, these ones aren't, because they're all going to beat each It's going to be very like cannibalize yourself sort of a division. You know what I mean? I agree. Nora, my viewpoint on this is the Bengals had one path to AFC North contention and finishing higher than the Browns.

And it was winning the gimmies and hoping the division isn't as good as we thought it was going to be. And that would include beating the Jets. And that would include beating a Browns team that was still trying to figure out their identity. They haven't done that right now. I'm going Browns. Where are you?

I'm sorry, I'm going Ravens to win the division, but then Brown's right behind them. Yeah, I stick. Ravens are number one. And to Ben's point, it's just, it's simply because of the quarterback. I think, I do, I had some trouble believing in the Browns just because they were in such a mathematical hole. It felt like a couple games ago. Well, and Baker, Baker's hurt. Well, and Baker was hurt and everything was, well, everything was, well,

was sort of fallen off the rails. The, the, AFC being as wide open as it is, I do think changes that just because it does feel like if this is a little bit of a, are you, no, I don't,

I don't know. I was saying, I was just thinking because I actually think that there's no path for the Browns, as much as they can be the seven seed, the sixth seed, but congratulations and all that. I actually don't think like a banged up big, with this roster can win three playoff games.

I think that's not possible. So I don't think of the wide open AFC has anything to do with it for me. For me, it's just like they're going to win enough games to make the wild card. Okay, three playoff games. Yeah, no, that I don't see. That's the thing that I'm trying to play around with and feel out how realistic it is. Because so Baker today, he's 14 for 21, 218, two touchdowns. liked that on a couple instances,

he threw the deep ball. I think they need a little bit more of that. That said, that overall stat line for Baker, that's nice. Just because he doesn't always play within himself, and that's actually kind of a massive understatement. A non-radiculous Baker-Mayfield game

is a really nice thing for this team because the rest of the team is really, really good. And then you've got the quarterback who's very accurate, who can have these moments, but then can also just, you know, the freak the fuck out button is ever present in this one as well. I'm willing to say that I think the Browns could win three playoff games. I don't think it's very likely. They're at the bottom of that AFC list for me. But I have enough talent on the offensive line plus the running game where I think that they can be physically dominant against some of the lighter defenses in the AFC.

And then to me, as Norris said earlier, I think this defense, is coming home. They're eighth right now in EPA per dropback over the last three weeks. They had the Chargers game. They got ran up on. They had the Cardinals game. Ton of short fields got ran up on. Since then, they settled down.

It's a very fast, very disruptive defense. Holy Moses, Miles Garrett is good. Thank you. I was about to say, I cannot believe we have not said Miles Garrett yet in this conversation. To me, again, it's a narrow road to walk. But I see the vision so long as the quarterback can get out of their way. I disagree. That's fair.

Ben, it's time for Ruiz's rips. You got to get out of here, bud. Man, I'll never forget this week of NFL football. Stay with me forever. What is like camp? Yeah, man. The friends we made today will always be with us.

Bye, buddy. Bye, friends. All right, it's time for Ruiz's rips, ruminations. what else you got i got riffs i got uh ruizans uh i i'm depending on you to come up with the r words we haven't looked at we haven't looked at really the the source in a long time for more our words we're really kind of you know i mean it's late it's late when we record these things all right one of my favorite segments of the week one of my favorite conversations of the week this week we had you watch the falcons and the saints we're so sorry about that no problem i actually

actually enjoyed myself. I didn't watch a lot. Sure. Total sicko. Are you didn't watch the game we assigned you? No, I watched the condensed version on a game pass. It was only 35 minutes. So very, it was easy, in and out. All right. Let's start here. So the reason that we wanted to do this was we thought the Saints were going to win. That was a mistake. And we wanted to figure out what the kind of post-Jamus Sean Payton offense looks like. And the reason is because I've made this point. But, you know, I think that we all talked about Bill Belichick after Brady, but nobody really talked about Sean Payton after Breeze

and what that was going to look like and how inventive he could be. And let's start here. What is the Saints offense right now? I don't think it's much different from when James was in there. And I'm going to say this, Trevor Simeon today was pretty damn good. He was good. He was better. Isaiah, drop the sound.

Drop the sound, Isaiah. Wait, I got a better one. Wait for this. wait for this to drop the sound. Pause the sound, Isaiah. 2021 Trevor Simeon is better than 2020, Drew Brees. Play it. Play it.

I mean, I'm not even sure if Isaiah should turn it off. It should just be a background music for the whole thing. Now I feel pressured to just drop takes. No, you don't. I mean, yeah, you should. You should. Arthur Smith is better. As Pete Carroll would say, we're a competitive culdron here.

and the takes are part of that. All right. So explain Simeon versus Breeze last year. Obviously, Breeze was getting to the end. He was limited. But explain what you saw out of Simeon that. And actually, unpack this. Is this that you were impressed by Simeon?

Are you just absolutely hated Washington, Drew Breeze last year? It was both. A little bit of column A, little bit of column B. But no, like, I think there's a misconception of Simeon's game because people haven't watched them play in like three or four years. But I would describe him as James without the arm talent. Like, if you look up his stats, he puts the, he makes some throws.

He tries to make some throws. He doesn't have the arm to do it. And it leads to a lot of turnovers. But he's not like some game manager that's going to come in and just like take care of the offense. It's not like Teddy Bridgewater two years ago when the Saints had to rely on him. He's going to throw. And I think Sean Payton, what he does is, and we saw this with James earlier in the year, is he limits those chances that Simeon has to take

because the offense is so good. And we saw the best version of Trevor Simeon, who I think Simeon at his best is like a top 30 quarterback in the league. 25 to 30, I put him in maybe 20 to 30. I'm not going overboard and saying he's like good or anything. I'm just saying he's a competent starting quarterback. We will not play the sound for Trevor. Simman is the top 30 quarterback in the NFL.

Anybody on the Saints offense, aside from Simian impressed you today before we get to the Hopkins side of it? Kamara, and that's it. Like, when the game was happening, I wasn't watching it. I was watching the Bengals and Browns at 1 o'clock. But I saw the score, and I was like,

okay, my take is going to be that they should sign Cam Newton. Like, they need to make a change. But then I watched the game. I still think they need to make an acquisition, but it's not Cam Newton. It's O'Don Beckham. Because their wide receivers are terrible. The only reason they lost this game was the receivers.

They had a chance to make like 15 plays and they made zero of them. All right. Is this Saints team going to do anything this year? Yeah, I think they will. I think they're going to be a playoff team. I think they can win a playoff game. Their defense is very good. I thought the problem today was actually not just the receivers.

Champagne was way too conservative at the beginning of the game. These are the first two drives. Run, run, run, run. Screen pass. Throw on second and 11. Throw on third and 11. Second drive. Run, run, run, run, run.

He throws on third and four, another run, another screen pass, another run. Like, that's how he started the game. Once they started opening up the offense and letting Trevor Simian Cook, they started scoring points. Wow. I didn't expect to let Trevor Simian Cook take in this.

All right. Yeah, you got it. So going forward, you would want, them to actually be aggressive in this offensive simeon yeah just call like a regular dropback passing game i think simeon can handle it like his skill set i don't think that's the problem with him like i said the problem is turnovers he doesn't have the arm he thinks he has he has like case keenum if you can work around that and you can you can get 27 teen uh case keeneum that's trevor simian

how we're talking um all right let's flip this the falcons won this game and they probably shouldn't have or maybe they well listen end of game scenarios uh they the stanchard's with with one minute and one second to go i thought the game was over everybody was tweeting about another falcons lost and they come down cordelia paterson has a big play uh and they they stayed off a collapse um so in one universe they shouldn't have won the game one year of universe they shouldn't have ever blown it uh what did you see from the falcons they're good uh wait let me take that back the offense is good arthur smith is good arthur smith is good arthur smith is good arthur smith is a better play caller right now

than Kyle Shane Ann is. He kicked Dennis Allen's ass. And Dennis Allen, I think, is a top of... Drop it. Drop it. Drop it. Drop it, Isaiah. Maybe like a low...

It should be like on a low simmer as he continues on this take because you know it's only... Yeah, but you need to be able to turn it up when he says things like... We can CGI this in. We're like Marvel. Keep going with the take.

Okay. He's figuring out this person out. Like, I think it took him a month to figure out how to use... Kyle Pitts. But I'm saying right now, he used Kyle Pitts not only as a receiver, but as a decor on a couple of big plays. There was a big play to a receiver that I've never heard of on the, on the Falcons. And it was all Kyle Pitts, his gravity, so to speak. But I, and I'm willing to say Kyle Pitts is the second best tight end in in the NFL right now. I'd put kiddle there,

healthy kiddles better than him. But Kyle Pitts, he's basically like Mike Evans if Mike Evans could block. And I'm not saying Kyle Pitts, it's like some great blocker, but there was a couple run snaps day where he held his own against Cameron Jordan, which is no small feet. And you could split him out wide and he could like basically run routes like Julio Jones. Special player. That was a good draft pick by then.

Okay. So the Falcons are four and four. The Saints are five and three. Obviously the Saints have Trevor Simony a quarterback for the rest of the year. James is out. The Falcons kind of know who they are. Who's the better team? the Saints. The Saints.

It's not even close. I think in an alternate universe, like you said earlier, like the Saints win this game like seven times out of 10. Yeah, seven. So the Falcons are not a playoff team? No, but that's because of the defense. Like the offense is playoff caliber right now. It wasn't those first couple of weeks, but right now it is.

Also, Matt Ryan was genuinely really good today. He was 2016. Matt Ryan today. Like, not even just the throws, like the movement skills. He evaded, like, at least four or five sacks. 2016, Matt Ryan, uh, believe the MVP of the league. Yep, that's why I said it. Guys, can I give you some information here?

I'm going through the NFC. And somebody who's bad that's going to make the playoffs. That's right. Like, real bad. Because it's Cowboys. I'm just going through the divisions here. Cowboys will make the playoffs with the winning record, Cardinals and Rams,

the Packers, the Bucks, and the Saints. So that's six teams. So then you have the Falcons at four and four who would get it at this point, or the Vikings who are three and five, the bears are three and five, the Panthers are four and five, the Eagles and the Giants are three and six. Wait.

Seahawks and Niners are three and five. If the playoffs started today, the Falcons would be in? I believe so. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't do my research before coming in. Maybe the Falcons are a playoff team. Wasn't Nora weirdly on the Falcons in the offseason?

Well, I, I picked them to make the box. No, so a reader actually did send the question in, is this the Jags team? Nora always saw. Okay, but I also liked the Falcons. Let's be very clear. Yeah, but, okay.

But what I'm saying is that we both, I take them make the playoffs and I think they're good I take them to get the seven seed and that's what's going to happen See I was high on the Falcons in the off season two and the Jaguars so you guys were like making fun of Nora

for it and I was doing the Russell Westbrook eating in the crowd gift she took all the years You were just escaping escaping all accountability I love it so the eight seed right now is the Panthers no I don't care

I will say this I would much rather see Matt Ryan in the playoffs than Sam Darnold. I think that would be much more fun for the football watching public. This is the grimmest thing in the world. Eight, nine, and ten right now are Panthers, Vikings, Seahawks. The Niners are 11th. You want me to make it worse?

The NFC is supposed to be the good conference. Yeah, I know. Well, I was going to say, it's clearly top-heavy. Yes. Who's going to win? The seven seed is going to be the Nickelodeon game. It's got to be. You know what?

Let Mitch play in it again, especially if it's Panthers. That's an upgrade. Let's be honest. I think the Panthers would trade a second or first round pick for Mitch Rubisky. All right. Stephen Ruiz. We'll see you next week, buddy.

Thanks for having me. That was amazing. Listener question, Nora. Some version of this question was asked by about 10 people. and it's on the heels of Ravens 34, Vikings 31, is Lamar Jackson the MVP, Nora. So he should be. He really should be kind of in the driver seat right now.

Yeah. He's holding that offense together with, you know, as to quote one bed, Solac, duct tape and a prayer. I do have some bad news, though, which is, I think Tom Brady might win the MVP. So I agree. Listen, there's, this depends on a lot of things.

Number one is a lot of times with the, it's almost like the Heisman, right? It comes down to kind of big games on prime time. That's why Matthew Stafford more or less eliminated himself tonight by playing like garbage on Sunday night football against a team that we didn't really consider to be all that elite. right, coming into the game. So the Ravens have the dolphins on Thursday. Don't necessarily know unless you can embarrass the dolphins like he did two years ago. I don't know if you can necessarily make up a ton of ground there. Then they have the bears, the Browns, the Steelers, the Browns again.

They play the Packers in December. He's going to have some opportunities, Lamar. I think I actually do think it's going to come down to Brady. I'm trying to rack my brain if there's anybody else. to Brady and Jackson. I mean, Josh Allen was the favorite coming into this week. He was plus 350. Kyler was 550.

Obviously, he didn't play. Dak was 550. He struggled this weekend. Tom Brady is right there. Stafford right after that. Rogers plus 750. Lamar was plus 1,400 coming into this weekend. I think if you re-rack that, it goes Brady and then Lamar.

Right. Here's the thing. Lamar should win it because again, he is the thing that is single-handedly making that thing go right now. And it is impressive as heck. Brady doesn't have to do that. And I don't think that he's going to get dinged for that.

So I think that that circumstance around him, which will make him look better, is ultimately going to play in his favor. I just think Lamar is doing so, so, so much that there's more, it's probably more likely that there's a game left in there where he just has a bad day and he can't keep putting it all on his shoulders.

Bucks usually win the games that Brady has like that and he'll probably have another couple where he throws four touchdowns. That's what I'd guess. If I had to guess, I'd say Brady. They have Washington, the Giants, the Colts, the Falcons, the Bills, and then the Saints coming up the next couple of weeks. I think you circle that.

So they play the bills on December 12th, the Bucks. And then they have the Saints on Sunday night, as long as doesn't get flexed out a week later. So I think that that's, Buck Saints, that could be like an MVP kind of moment, and that could be kind of the determining factor here. So it'll probably come down to those two guys.

But, I mean, who knows, if Kyler returns to health, it's a different conversation. If Dak goes on a tear, it's a different conversation. If Stafford just, this was this was a blip i mean the MVP race is uh is a movable feast here so who knows all right nora thanks so much heaven we'll see you on thursday with mallory lovely next up on the ringer

nfl feed this tuesday is our players podcast with ryan chaiseer james jones and hosted the full go jason golf i'll be back on wednesday to talk about a big picture NFL topic norah will be back on thursday as i just mentioned friday show will have ben stephen and Kaylon Jones previewing week 10. This show will be back next Sunday and every Sunday breaking down all the action. Slow Newsday is coming out on Thursday this week. It says in the notes here, Isaiah, featuring someone you might have heard up. I don't know if that they even know who the guest is, but it is someone that you might

have heard up. We've booked them actually this weekend. It's going to be really fun. Thank you to Nora Ben and Stephen. Thank you to production assistant Isaiah Blakely for production on this episode with additional supervision by Arjuna Ramickable. He's been the Renroner NFL show on The Ringer podcast. network.