The Ringer NFL Show - Week 9 Recap: The Saints Blow Out the Bucs, Tua Outduels Kyler, and Winners and Losers | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Kevin and Nora discuss the New Orleans Saints' dominating performance over the Tampa Buccaneers (1:02). Then they talk about their winners and losers (19:32), starting with Tua Tagovailoa and the Miami Dolphins defeating Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals. After that they answer a couple listener questions and present their clickbait headlines of the week (1:02:13).  Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the ringer NFL show, part of the ringer podcast network. I'm Kevin Clark, great show. Tom Brady gets wrecked by the New Orleans Saints. Josh Allen topples the Seattle Seahawks. And the dolphins look so good. Might be time to float a reckless theory that Brian Flores was responsible for the Patriots run. I'm joined with my friend Nora Princeati. Today's episode of the Ringar NFL show and the Ringar Podcast Network is brought to you by State Farm.

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Nor the headline is obvious. Saints 38. bucks three this was not tom brady this was tom brady total landscaping what what did you see you've covered tom brady day in and day out for a few years you know how he responds to these sort of things but this is when i say these sort of things i mean things that weren't didn't even approach this level this is one of the worst games in its career uh most turnovers since 2011 uh worst game since 2006. This was awful. He's playing on a team that we thought were Super Bowl contenders, and I don't know. I think after a game like that, you question everything. I don't think you can jump off the ledge too much because this Bucks team beat the Packers a couple weeks ago and looked

like a very complete team. And then the Saints lost to the Packers a month and a half ago. So if you want to do the transitive property of the NFL to drive you crazy, but tonight, you can't come out of this feeling good if you're a Bucks fan. or a Bucs player or a Bucs coach. Everything went wrong. What did you see? What happens next for Tom Brady? The Buccaneers are dead and the Drew Brees deep ball is alive.

Is that where we are now? Taseem Hill. The Bucs should go after Tase M Hill now. Those Tasem Hill efficiency numbers of when he's on the field, hysterical. I absolutely love it. This game is significant to me more so in what it means for the Bucs and how they respond to it. as opposed to are those players suddenly bad now?

That's not true. And I will say that I think one thing that we're seeing, we've had all these questions about how this year was going to be weird. We always knew it was going to be weird, but couldn't necessarily identify how so. Yeah. One of the ways I feel pretty confident saying is that there's just weird shit like this that's going to happen sometimes.

And that's, you see it with that Packers game. And they come back the next week. and it's okay. And I don't know if you can draw a straight line from the lost practice time in certain situations and not having guys and guys coming in and out and having meetings on Zoom and all this stuff that we've talked to death. I don't know if that's exactly it. But I do think that the collective toll of all of that is contributing to some weird lopsided

results. However, this has never happened to Tom Brady before. And so far more significant than can Mike Evans ever play against Marshawn Latimore again without getting totally shut down is what's that locker room like tomorrow? What's that meeting room like? Because Brady is a guy who in moments when he hasn't been happy with how people around him are playing and happy with the infrastructure has shut down and has shut people out. I don't think that he'll do it here. I think he just went through this whole process where they were willing to bring in a player, Antonio Brown, who he's incredibly close with and very invested in that was going to bring a lot of

attention, a lot of it negative. And Bruce Ariens said, okay, I'm willing to do it. Now I know Bruce Ariens says that he wasn't doing it for Tom Brady. And I know that a little bit of it is just because he wants to win. And they felt like they needed some receivers. but that was a move made for Tom Brady because he wanted it. So I think that enough is going his way and he's involved there in a way that he probably knows he doesn't have a leg to stand on in saying, you guys don't listen to me.

You're not giving me enough help. What's around me isn't good enough because all of that is pretty nonsensical. If you look at that offense and you look at the degree to which they've been willing to do what he seems to want. but he hates losing more than pretty much any other person on the planet. And there's going to be a reaction. I think we will know by midweek kind of what the tenor of it is. The thing that I would say is that he still has so much more muscle memory of overcoming

weird, bad, negative, not losing by 38 point, not trailing by 38. but being way behind and coming back and winning the Super Bowl and Julian Edelman yelling, you got to believe. Like that's all part of the Tom Brady experience. So I don't think that he will think we can't do it anymore and it's all over. But how he responds in terms of his relationships there that are still so young relative to what he had before. And I know it's the Tom versus Bill narrative will never die and we can never be rid of it.

And of course, it's all a little bit conjecture and it's, it's two degrees away from just what they have to do when they get up in the morning and try to figure out how to write the ship here. But that's part of it too. So the mixing of pride and ego and the need to just like get a little bit better on the football field, that's going to be an interesting mix for the bucks, I think over the course of this next week. And I would bet that by Wednesday we kind of have a good sense of what the, what the vibes are. This was a total defeat. This was, you can't lose 38 to 3 and resounding 38 to 3. There are probably a couple different types of 38 to 3. This was on the worst end. If you didn't watch

it, it was worse than it than it looks. Okay. And I want to get back to Tom Brady and how he rebounds from this stuff in a second. I want to talk about what the Saints did right. The Saints generated a four-man pass rush. And I joked about this last week where the whole narrative is, oh, if you can get after Brady with four guys. Oh, you know, it's a, you know, it's a lot. You're in heaven. You know, the Giants do that. Well, everybody wants to do that with every quarterback. That's the point of pass rush.

Is that, yes, if you can get after him with four people, that's great. But everybody's tried to do that and failed, right? And the Saints got there. And they had a 50% pressure rate on 26 dropbacks. Trey Henderson on the Foreman Rush had seven pressures and two sacks on 25 pass rushes. By the way, the Saints clipped Bruce Ariens press conference. story inexplicably said that Trey Hendrickson was the easiest guy to block, which is kind of strange bulletin board material.

I'm not really sure what happened. Don't know. Bruce Ariens, some weird press conferences this year. I don't know. Something to monitor. Bree's just picking the bucks underneath apart. The Saints did everything well. They had a Tassam Hill breakout game.

If you're the team that allowed a Tassam Hill breakout game, you need to be asking yourself a lot of questions. A lot of questions. Really long. You need to look in the mirror and say, why did we allow the Taysam Hill game? Everybody else does the Taysam Hill. We allowed, you know, a nine-yard run and like a nice 14-yard pass. Okay.

The goal to go situation with the bucks where they'd been perfect all season on touchdowns, a goal to go. And then they just totally flop at the one that grunk, weird drop. I mean, that was, they were getting whipped at the line of scrimmage. Nothing went right. they kept throwing there and it just told so clearly that they were getting blown off the line. They could not run the ball to the point. They thought they couldn't to the point they had the lowest amount of rush attempts in history.

Five. And one of them was a kneel down. One of them was a kneel down. And I just don't know. Daner Olavski said it was the worst offensive game plan he'd seen this year. and he put an exclamation point on that by saying he'd watched every jet snap. So this was a coaching failure. This was a player failure.

This was a vibes failure. I don't know who played well. This was just awful. And what I think is interesting is there was this whole narrative. I bought into it. A lot of smart people bought into it. Okay, the bucks are going to get better and better and better because this is a weird year to try new stuff, all that stuff. So they're going to lose week one, which they did.

And then this is the one where we find out how they've closed the gap or exceeded the Saints and taking control of that division, whatever. And that just didn't happen. That just did not happen. And this is the first time Tom Brady's been swept by a divisional opponent. Welcome to life outside the AFC East. And this is just, I don't know where you go from here. I wouldn't freak out too much. I think the people overreact.

You know, last week, I mean, last week, everyone said Greg Roman, you know, everybody figured out Greg Roman. And then, you know, five minutes ago was watching Brian Baldinger do a breakdown of a Nick Boyle clearout that he said was great, right? So, I mean, things change week to week in this league, but I don't know what's, I don't have a whole lot of faith in this being reversed by January. I want to ask you, having been around him, can you give me a specific example of a Tom Brady rebound, just being around him that sort of impressed you where you said, okay. He really changed from one week to the next. So this is a little bit of a bigger picture one. But one of the really interesting things to me about the difference between the 2018 Patriots and the 2019 Patriots was that they both lost some games that people thought they were going to win.

But the difference was that the 2019 Patriots lost to good teams and the 2018 Patriots lost to bad teams. and the 2018 Patriots were a lot better than the 2019 Patriots. So what that meant is that you had these fluky games. Like they lost to the Titans when everybody had the flu. Stefan Gilmore was like snot rolling out of his nose. I know that's gross. But they were in a bad place. That was the year with the Miami Miracle game.

Yep. And Brady had this poise, if you want to call it. he had this way of, that was that everybody thinks we suck year. And I remember being at that Super Bowl and having a conversation with Kyle Van Nuoy. And he was talking about them as underdogs in this way that I just thought was ridiculous, but I also could tell that he completely believed it. And I found it really interesting because athletes all do that to a certain extent. They internalize adversity and feeling like everybody thinks they suck and nobody believes

in them and all of that. But some of it's put on and sometimes you can see through it and go, okay, this is, you don't even really want to talk to me right now and this is a canned answer and whatever. They really, really, really felt that way. And they somehow knew that they had a chance and a good enough chance to bet on it that they were going to be able to back it up and that they were going to be able to transform themselves. And that year was a really, really, really special, interesting year because they completely changed their offense in the second part of the season. And then they go into the Super Bowl and they win the Super Bowl against the Rams by completely changing the way that they play defense. And Brady was really at the center of the willingness to adapt even more than we're used to seeing Belichick teams adapt.

And there was a real selflessness and there was a real make it work thing that was really interesting about that team. And then the year after, it just kind of went away. And some of that I would hypothesize, had a little bit to do with the dissatisfaction with the team contract stuff. They didn't have the players that he wanted them to have. But you watched them go through that season and they're losing to the Texans and the Chiefs and the Ravens. And some of those were close-ish games. But by the end of it, even though the record was similar, you were just getting the sense that, oh, when they play good teams, they lose.

They're just not very good. Whereas they'd, the year before, lost these weird games. And the takes would just be firing on all cylinders because there were these weird situations and why is Gronk playing safety and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he had this calm eye of the storm thing that year. That was really, really, really remarkable. And I think it let everybody else there kind of coalesce around him and not get sidetracked by it. And so they're, you know, on to Cincinnati, there are specific games. They have these big early season blowout losses to the Chiefs.

There was another one in 2017 that you can say he's rebounded from on a game to game basis. And that's as likely as as not to happen. He totally angry Brady is good Brady. but they're not playing for next week. And it's a really interesting thing, I think, to me, to be able to watch going forward if he can do that in a place where I think he's really excited about the relationships that he has.

And I think that was one of the things that he was most interested in going there was, okay, Bruce Ariens is, you're my buddy. I love you. I'm going to talk to you and let you have input in these meetings and tell you I care about you and we're going to have conversations about kids and family and all that stuff. I think he was really excited about that going to Tampa.

And it's been energizing and exciting for him in a way to feel that. But it's still really new. And he's going to have to kind of test the benefits of that against the institutional knowledge of playing somewhere 20 years. And I think that background was what he'd leaned on a lot. in, okay, Josh McDaniels, you and I know everything there is to know about each other. We know what we did 10 years ago in the snow and week 15 and Buffalo. And we can draw from that playbook and tweak it and talk about it in this way where you can't manufacture that in a year.

You just can't. You can have different things. You can have some things that are better. But you can't get to that. So there's a lot about what he's going to have to do. I think that's new. and it's going to kind of test the theory of why Brady wanted to go to the Bucks in the first place, which is interesting.

But that eye of the storm calmness, I think, will be a clue. So that's what's interesting. And when I'm around players, whether that's Patrick Mahomes after this last Super Bowl or Brady after the Falcons won, there is a sense of calm that you'd be surprised by. I remember asking a couple of the chiefs player, hey, what did, uh, what did Mahom say in the huddle when you're down X, Y, Z? And the answer is nothing,

because at some point you're so good and you're so determined and you're so focused that this isn't a miracle. It's just common sense. And just one point at a time, all that stuff. And so I think Brady probably has the right demeanor. It's probably going to scream in people. Um,

it's probably going to free some guys out, like you said. Uh, he's going to stop trusting certain guys. and sort of realign what his offense looks like. But I think that he's probably not going to lose his head. By the way, Antonio Brown, five targets, three receptions, 31 yards in this game.

I want to look at the upcoming schedule because I think it's important. So they have the Panthers next week, a loseable game. The Panthers are interesting. I like what Joe Brady's doing. We're talking about that a little bit later. Christian McAfree's back. Interesting game. The Rams are the following week.

Lusable game. then the Chiefs, then the Vikings. Okay. Vikings probably win, even though they're trending in the right direction. But that's an interesting three weeks. And this team's going to make the playoffs because they're six and three and there's seven playoffs teams and they're just mathematically going to figure this out. But we're going to learn a lot, I think, you know, even if I sit here and say, oh, they're

going to be so good in December or whatever, at some point you have to try to win a division. you have to start getting seating, all that stuff, and, you know, losing to the Saints twice, not going to help you there. And beyond that, I did some point you should start rattling off games. And the next three weeks are going to be fascinating to me. And I think that there is a path forward.

I just, this whole thing needs to be reimagined, I guess you could say. You know, Chris Collins, we're at the end of the game, I was talking about, you know, Mike Evans, working in the middle of the field,

maybe playing a little more slot, whatever it is. It's everything. It's everything. Everything needs to change after a game like this. And I, you know, it's on Bruce Ariens and it's on Tom Brady. But this game is not disqualifying for me for the Bucks and, and, and their, their Super Bowl chances because this is just a very flawed conference. But this made me rethink a lot of the things I thought I knew about the champ by Buccaneers. All right. Winners and losers. Our first winner, Miami Dolphins.

They win 34, 31 over the Arizona Cardinals. We all won. We're all winners, except I guess the Cardinals. Dave Damashek made the joke that essentially anytime a game like this happens, there's the cliche like, well, the league is in good hands up next 10 years, next 15 years.

And that's just going to happen every week when there's a bunch of good, good young quarterbacks in this league. But it's actually hard to not watch this game and not feel like we're going to see Tua and Kaler-Mori play each other. And it'll be this exciting for the next decade. A lot to unpack here. Nora, what did you learn?

I'm proud of them. I just felt so happy for them. exciting and our friends, our friends, Tua and Kyler. Our football friends. I'm not fully backing off my Tua take from last week, but I got to admit that this was a blow. This was a blow for my start Ryan Fitzpatrick again campaign. I'd say the fits, if you wanted to buy stock in Fits right now, you could probably get it pretty low.

Yeah. I'm not sure if that's what you're into right now, but it is, the bandwagon is kind of empty right now. Yeah, it's a tough look for me, but I'm holding strong. I'll tell you what makes it a tougher look for my argument that they might have been shooting themselves in the foot in terms of playoff potential. They are now the seventh seed currently. So the dolphins are in the playoff picture. The seven seed is a double-edged sword for me because I think there's going to be a lot of bad teams we can compete for that spot and we're going to go, oh, why did we expand the playoffs? But then on the other hand, if Tua gets to seventh seat, well, thank God for the seventh seat.

There's a lot here. I would say that if you're a coach who's going to use COVID this year as an excuse and there's a lot of them, a lot of good coaches are actually doing that. The dolphins didn't have five coaches today. They were down five coaches on the sideline. And that to me speaks to their ability to, I guess you could say improvise and come up with stuff on the field. two, it was unbelievable. 20 of 28, 248 yards, two touchdowns. Downfield throwing was awesome.

He was eight for 11 for 140 yards with froze 10 or more yards down the field. Last week, he was just one of three. I just got a text from Van Lathan that just said Taseam. That's all you need to know. That's all you need to know. Van Lathan has now called me to talk about Taysam Hill.

It's good. Um, all right. So back call. Take it on air. You want to patch it in? That'd be incredible. Um, you know, when Bucking Brooks is on this podcast a couple of weeks ago, he, he said Tua was a little bit Drew breezish, but more of a gunslinger. And when you see him play, I mean, there's just so much he can do.

That dime to Matt Collins, I mean, Mac Collins, Matt Collins. He's throwing dimes to Matt Collins. Like, there's just so much you see with both these quarterbacks. both these quarterbacks. And you just start to learn the confidence he has, you know, was pointed out on Twitter. He did not trail as an NFL quarterback until late in this game. And that was the drive.

He went five for five, 53 yards passing in a touchdown. Two rushes for 23 yards. I mean, this is one thing that I think is fascinating when you start to see him kind of get these tests. And I listened to a podcast last week or a couple weeks ago with Tony Romo. It's actually a golf podcast. But they said, Tony, why were you good? in the NFL.

And he said, because I could process things really quickly. And he said that he felt that if you talk to a young quarterback and they don't say, oh, the game is too fast or, hey, I need to adjust to this. Those are the quarterbacks who we need to watch as elite quarterbacks, because if they can process the game and start learning when they're really young, they're going to be elite at some point. And with Tua, I saw this from Cameron Wolf and I was fascinated by it, that he started out the game really struggling against the blitz.

So against four or less pass rushers, he was 11 of 11 for 153 yards. Against five plus pass rushers, he was one of five. He got progressively better. He was good the whole game against four pass rushers or less. But in the second half, he went six of eight against five or more pass rushes, and just started to torch the Cardinals. And if you can make adjustments to that quickly in your second NFL game, when all you've seen before is college defenses are not nearly as complex or fast

or anything like that, that's what you want to see. this is not when you're watching these young quarterbacks every time we have a scout or whomever on this show we always say what are you looking for when you're scouting justin herbert or joe joe burrow or tua and the answer is just incremental growth and we're seeing growth at a rapid pace right now from tua and i know it's been two games i don't want to overreact but this was amazing well and the difference between game one and game two is massive yes huge that that's what i'm saying i'm not tooa in and of himself is not some amazing quarterback who i'm ready to throw in the MVP conversation right okay game one was back

But the difference between game one and game two was special to me. And I think that's what we know. Our priors with Tua are confirmed in the processing ability being that good in a way that makes that a little bit more believable. I, as a skeptic, of course, I'm waiting to see more. But it seemed like he, even when he would decide to run, it just seemed like he understood what he was seeing in a way that looked really different. I also think it's very cool to watch a lefty. I'm now realizing that I'm looking forward to that long term. It's a little bit jarring every time.

I wonder if it's jarring for some of the defenders. I bet it is. I think it almost has to be because think of how much muscle memory and reaction timing you're just used to seeing someone on the other side of the line moving in a certain way. and then it just goes, it's like looking in a mirror. And I, sometimes I joke that, uh, one of the reasons I respect Sean McVay is because I lose the ball watching the Rams more than any other team.

Absolutely. I'm absolutely positive. Cameraman are like, what? Totally. Whenever I'm watching a Rams game, I'm like, where's the football? And it makes me feel, feel for these, these defenders a little bit more. And I felt like that watching Tua. and I wonder, I'm curious to see if we get quotes about that because there's got to be a ton of guys in the NFL who have never faced one.

Absolutely. Chris Sims is the last guy who won a game. I mean, you're talking about Jarvis Landry throws one pass every three months and he's the only guy he's throwing touchdowns as a lefty. And I doubt there's that many in college. Yes. No, there's not. And in high school, certainly not. I want to get to the Dolphins defense, but let's quickly get to Kyler here because,

he was equally amazing. Tua said he's probably the fastest quarterback in the NFL. I think it's hard to disagree. So statistically, he had one of the best games of all time, according to your football reference, for a player who lost a game and threw that much over 25 times. He now has one pass touchdown and one rush touchdown

and seven of his eight games this season, which is the most through nine weeks in history. He's a really good football player. He can throw unbelievable passes. you know, we had talked a couple months ago about his numbers last year with the passing and how he's connecting on passes over 30 yards, I think, at 80% last year. And I thought, well, there's either something just uniquely unbelievable about him or that was a fluke. And you see these throws and you understand that it's not a fluke. He can, he can throw these just unbelievable.

I don't want to do the moonball thing. I don't know to the Collins with a moonball thing, but this is very real with him. And I think the sky's limit with either of these guys. Now, I worry a little bit. I'm starting to worry a little bit. I'm soft launching this take. I'm starting to worry about Cliff Kingsbury. Okay. I'm not going to brand him as the Brian Schottenheimer or something of Arizona. But the conservative play calling concerns me. You got to go for it. Don't I know that the Gonzalez kick is what separated these guys. But go for it on fourth down. Trust your quarterback. I didn't put the ball in his hands on a number of short, fourth and short, third and short. or whatever. Tua, by the way, sealed the game with the quarterback sneak. I just, I want more aggressive play going. If you have Kyler Murray use him. Cliff Kingsbury, he's done a really nice job growing as a coach. He's done a really nice job, obviously developing Kyler.

I just want to see the in-game decisions being better. Now, when you have a great quarterback like that, in-game decision-making, this is franchise one, in-game decision-making is so important. Situational awareness is so important. One of the things that impressed me, I saw Jeff Darlanton say this, that Brian Flores, who comes from the Belichick tree, which obviously they get a PhD in situational football, they're practicing scoop and scores now. Okay. And that's one of the reasons they have two straight weeks of scoop and scores is because they understand situational football. And so I'm

looking at Cliff Kingsbury and I'm saying, let's get better in-game decisions. If you're young, let's be young, aggressive analytics coach. You've got great passing concepts, all that stuff. I just want to see the last 5% bridged there and to get to the point. point where you're 100% a good coach. Come on, Cliff. Let's do this. First of all, is soft launching a take? Like, we have a bunch of magazine writers at a cocktail bar for canapes and we talk to them about it, but we just keep it all in background and don't really get into it. Is that how you soft launch a take? Nick Wright, Nick Wright was on Slender's Day last week and he said he soft launched the idea that the Raven should trade Lamar Jackson to the Jets

for the Trevor Lawrence number one overall pick. He said he was soft. launching in that. He can open the term on my show. Obviously, soft launch is a long term, long term phrase, but no one's ever said that with specifics to just launching NFL takes. I think he introduced that into the world. So I'm, I'm now stealing that. We're going to, we're going to soft launch some stuff here. I'm just curious about the process. But so the interesting thing about what you were saying beyond the mechanics of a soft take launch, those guys, the Kingsbury's and the McVeys, they're not, they have these reputations for being aggressive that are not deserved. They're schematic innovators. Yeah, they're passing game innovators. So everyone confuses that for being

innovators in every other field. And they're not fundamentally aggressive. I don't think that Cliff saw that fourth and one and panicked. No. I think there's something in him that says, okay, yeah, we should kick here. And he's wrong. Ben, Ben, Baldwin has a new go for it model and it estimated that not doing that. If it had gone for it, it would have added 15.9 percentage points of win probability. All those different models are going to give you something slightly different and I'm not good enough at math to know the varying degrees to which they're right. But that seems like a pretty strong answer and clear cut answer that it's not the right call.

But I don't think that he does that because he was in the moment getting. spooked by the situation. I think he believed in doing that. And it's a little weird to think that the Cardinals might be adding two more quarterback sneaks to their playbook away from just being able to handle that situation in a totally different way. It's also not like 49-yard field goals don't get converted at a pretty high rate. It was short.

It's short, which I don't think in the NFL should be happening. Yeah. It was very strange. So the way in which it didn't work out was also very bizarre in a way that is not ascribable to Cliff Kingsbury's decision making. But in the karmic universe, it did seem a little bit like the natural result. But he can probably grow from there. I mean, when you were talking about some of the decision making, I was thinking back to how many years we spent having a very high opinion.

we, the collective football universe of Andy Reid, but thinking of him as this guy who had this fatal flaw of clock management, and he was just never going to get over the hump. And wow, he's done so much to improve offenses and work with offenses. And he's given so many things that other teams steal left and right. But can this guy overcome this weakness? And then he's at it for long enough and he does. And now we're like, Andy Reid is Andy Reid.

Cliff. Soft launching Cliff Kingsbury's new Andy Reed is what I wanted from this conversation. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. It's all in background. All in background. So let's quickly talk about the Dolphins defense here, which obviously gave up 31 points, but I think did enough there now. So Byron Jones got victimized on two touchdowns.

He said, thank God for the offense for picking it up. I tend to think Byron Jones and Xavier and Howard, when they've been healthy, coming in this game had a 61 pass or running against. I think this is part of this. It's just Kyler is really special. I also think, you know, if Byron Jones is the guy who's giving up your touchdowns, you're probably in pretty good shape.

This was, you know, Agba had had another sack. The defense did fine. Again, you're not going to have against Cala Murray, you're not going to have a perfect weekend. So I think from a organizational standpoint, missing coaches, Brian Flores, situational football,

defense being pretty good. I enjoyed this dollar. This dolphins experience this week. Look, the reason that I felt strongly about the two of things is that there are very few collective organizations and infrastructures in the NFL right now that I actually believe in more than those guys. And the idea that if it didn't work out to switch starters that quickly, it would set them back and it would make us wait a little bit longer to actually see what they can do in

real competitive situations. that felt like a bummer. So if I'm completely wrong about that, which it seems very possible that I am, that's great because the sooner we can see what these guys can really do, it's going to be fun. And they have their timeline.

When you're rebuilding that way, you don't have to rush it. If you can get there and stay on schedule, that's fine. But from our perspective, having them be competitive for the playoffs and getting to watch them navigate that, even if it's the seven seed, even if their competition is some teams that we actually might not like to see sneak into the playoffs.

It's fun. It's a good thing. Yes or no, no nuance allowed whatsoever. Do they make the playoffs? Yes. I think I agree. Buffalo is our next winner. They beat the Seattle Seahawks 44 to 34. We had a robust conversation whether or not the bills were a winner or the Seahawks were a loser. The answer is both. The Seahawks give up the most points since Jim Mora was their coach, Jim Mora Jr.

I have, I consider myself a lifelong and devoted football fan. I love the sport of football. I have zero memories. Now, I remember, it's not like I was surprised that Jim Mora was the coach. I obviously remember this. I don't actually have any memory of Jim Mora being the head coach of the Seahawks. That's how long ago. I just didn't care.

It was just not on anybody's radar. So that was the last time. They gave up 48 points to Green Bay in 2009. Under Pete Carroll, they have been competent. They have been at times dominant on defense. And it's been a long time since they've been like this. I want to give the bills their credit, and we will in a second. But what did you learn here?

I think we learned that this assumed defensive competency, right? They can have better years, worse years. It's not the Legion of Boom. that's long gone. But with Pete Carroll, I think you assume that the defense is always going to have a floor to it that doesn't seem to exist this year. And they're missing, they're missing some guys on the back end. I think they're struggling without Shaquille Griffin in particular. Quentin Dunbar is definitely not healthy and had to leave later. But Pete Carroll said after the game that he thought they were going to run the ball a lot and he just assumed that they were not going to go past heavy.

That was so strange. I don't know what would lead him to believe that. I don't know what about Brian Dable would lead him to think that that wasn't, that was completely out of the question. You don't know what would lead Pete Carroll to project on another team that they're just going to keep running the ball? Art imitates art. That doesn't, that doesn't click for you. You're right. You're right.

You're right. I just, I just. So, okay. So Pete Carroll was projecting into his game play. He put himself on to Brian Dable. And that's what happened. And then the bills threw 28 times and ran it three times in the first half. And they just had absolutely no, nothing to do about it.

Our buddy Bill Barnwell said that ESPN's play-by-play says that they were the past happiest first half in history. Sorry, Pete. Since 2008, since 2008, which is when it goes back to. Maybe there was a past happier team before that. So this is. this is wild. I'm just going to read, I want to read the Pete Carroll quote

because it's just kind of spectacular. He said these guys didn't even try to run the football today. We didn't expect that to happen. We didn't think they would totally abandon the running game. We had a real nice plan for how they were going to run it. We have to be able to adapt better. That last part is true. But I'm just really laughing at the idea of Pete Carroll going into that game

and just being like, I really like our run defense plan. today. And the funny thing was, this was the first time that the Seahawks showed up and suddenly had a pass rush, but it just didn't matter because they had no past defense or secondary. It was just a mess. Yes. I remember years ago, I heard a story about a guy who was in a coaching meeting for Tottenham Hotspur, and there was a team that was doing really long throw-ins. And the manager's guy named Wandi Ramos, they were like, we have to guard against the long throw-ins. And the guy

I was like, we're not guarding against it because that is not the sport who play. And they're like, well, you have to do it. He's going to do it against you. They're like, that's not football. Sorry, I'm just not preparing for that. And then obviously, you know, bad things happen. When I think about this quote, Pete Carroll, they didn't even try to run the football. Well, that's not necessarily the point of the game here, Pete.

This is not the sport. Pete Carroll is an amazing coach. He signed an extension today. and he's one of the best coaches of our lifetimes. He is an incredible program builder, incredible motivator, incredible visionary. Some of the things he's done with both personnel and coaching has been unbelievable.

There are so many things about Pete Carroll that are consistent with being a bad coach that it's amazing how good he is. It's amazing. And again, he's an amazing coach. He just does things that seem like he might be a bad coach. Okay. All right.

So anyway, let's not get off track. here. Okay. So life keeps throwing obstacles at Russell Wilson. Russell Wilson had a bad game today. He got beaten up. I'll get to the Bill's defense here in a second. Four turnovers. And if you build a system where the quarterback has to be perfect, you're going to lose. And you're going to lose sometimes. And, you know, listen, Wilson was an MVP candidate at the beginning of the year. I don't that's going to happen. Unfortunately, guys, for the narrative, Russell Wilson probably not going to get his MVP boat this year barring a great second half. But, But this defense, this Seahawks defense, has got to figure some stuff out and quickly.

Dunbar was awful today. I was reading Joe Fan, one of the beat writers, talking about how at one point in the first half, the bills were averaging 9.3 yards per play. And Dunbar, the cushion, Dunbar was giving the bill's offense was unbelievable. It was like me playing like, I'm not good at rec league basketball. I'm not good at any basketball. So when I'm, when someone's coming at me, I'm going to give them a lot of cushion because I am not a lot of lateral quickness here, okay?

I'm not Dunbar, okay? I shouldn't be doing that. He shouldn't be doing that. And I was surprised, even the low bar with the Seahawks defense, I was surprised at just how they're playing. Now, the Bills. They not only got to Wilson, they had a lot of contributions from guys that I think was encouraging.

I think this was not just a Josh Allen win, not just an offense win, not just Brian Day Bowl win, whatever. This was, you know, Tremaine Edmonds made plays. There were a lot of doubts the last couple weeks and months about Tremaine Edmonds. A.J. Klein had a couple guys who had the game of his life. Matt Milano went out a couple weeks ago, and now A.J. Klein's coming in. And that's, that is what you like to see. It's almost like with the Steelers, right? Where, okay, they lose a guy, but then they got a guy who can come in right now.

And if it's, if it's Blaine in Pittsburgh, it's AJ Klein here where he's able to play at a high level two sacks. One of them causes a fumble. Jerry Hughes now, I think it's fourth straight game with the sack. So I think this was a depth win for Buffalo. I think that their ability to get to Wilson, they knocked him down 16 times was really impressive. And, you know, Josh Allen did what he needed to do. I came away from this game. I already knew that the bills are capable of beating almost anybody.

I came away from this game learning more about the C-Ox because I'm more disappointed in the C-Ox than I am happy with the Bills because I just thought the C-Ox could be a better team than this. I knew what the Bills were, if that makes sense. That makes sense. Although I do think that their defense, we've pretty much figured out at this point that there's obvious regression from last year, year before.

I do think that when they, at the times, when they haven't had Matt Milano, that's a really underrated guy for them to view without just because of what he does, setting them up, signal calling, and just keeping everybody in the right place at the right time. And I think they've looked kind of sneaky, really different in the games when they haven't had him.

So I think it's possible that they could pick it up a little bit. I mean, I don't have it in front of me, but statistically, they've been pretty bad through this first half of the season. So if they can do it. get to just middling, then I do think that it's a slightly different Phil's team than the one that maybe we've seen the last few weeks when they hit

a little bit of a slump, but before the Patriots game. But in general, I'm with you that the Seahawks defense we never thought was good, but I think we're realizing is bad in a way that it's not just that it's going to change their game scripts and force them to be aggressive with Russell Wilson, it might be something that they just are not going to be able to overcome. We'll see. Again, they have injuries that could change things a little bit, but I would have assumed that Carol would kind of find a way to patch it up that is just not happening. Well, listen, Wilson had 30 90 yards, three total touchdowns. Obviously, he was giving the ball way too much. So this wasn't a disaster for him, even though

was, I think was the worst performance in 2016. It was just, this Bill's team is pretty good. And the Seahawks, I still didn't their, you know, a top tier NFC team. Everybody in the NFC is really flawed, really flawed. And whether that's their injury, whether that's just because they're missing a unit where they're not perfect, whether that's because of the quarterback, whatever it is. And so I think that unless your flaw is fatal and the Seahawks defense might be, be. I don't know. We have to see a little bit more of this.

I still think that they're in the hunt. So I would not be surprised to see the Cogs who were in a Super Bowl. That's only because just the NFC is just a flawed conference. Is there an NFC team that's not flawed in your opinion before we get before we get to the Ravens? No. Maybe a couple of weeks ago we would have said the bucks, but no. And then before that, we would have said the Packers. I mean, the Packers defense obviously is what it is. But it's just this is a, this is a weird. season, we're learning a lot about teams every single week.

And I don't think there should be general amnesty for takes retroactive in like September or whatever because this is just all so strange and the practices are wonky and all that stuff. Teams can't turn the roster. I'm not going to do this whole spiel again. But teams are learning about themselves. Okay. And when I talk to people in facilities, they're surprising themselves every single week with what they're doing. and what they're developing into and all that stuff. All right, the Ravens, I was surprised at, so they beat the Indianapolis Colts,

and I was not necessarily surprised by that. What I was surprised by was the post-game press conferences and what it means. So obviously the Ravens have a rough week, and it felt like, and this is kind of emblematic of how big things can feel in the NFL and how, you know, one or two race can change things. Lamar Jackson said

The devil was busy for us, but we overcame it. John Harbaugh basically said Lamar's our guy, we had him back. We had his back. And it just felt to me like the Ravens felt like they were in a bigger slump than they actually were. And they got out of it in the second half.

They used tempo against the Colts. I thought it was really impressive performance. Lamar Jackson completed all 10 of his past in the second half. Greg Roman is back after a week of criticism. But I was, surprised at the at the mood there. More triumphant than I thought because I just didn't know, I guess, how hard they had taken the last week where they lose Ronnie Stanley.

They lose a weird game with the Steelers. What do we learn about the Ravens here and then the Colts? I think what maybe they're responding to and sounding so sort of glum or we overcame all this stuff has a lot to do with the injuries. That would at least be my hypothesis just because you have. a guy like Ronnie Stanley who's so important to them go out. Marlon Humphrey. Marlon Humphrey not playing.

Yeah. Those are their friends. Those are people that they know and they see every day. And I think that plus the fact that the game that they lost was the Steelers. Like that's a lot of emotion. So I don't know that they were necessarily reacting to like, oh, people said mean things about Greg Roman online. I think it was more bad news, bad news, bad news.

bad news. Sure. Physical game loss. One of their best players gone. Just a tough thing coupled with the Ravens have a big game problem narrative. I'm sure that's a little bit of it. But I think it's more, I bet it has more to do with the injuries and stuff like that. I think we talked about this a little bit last week, but the Colts I felt a little bit skeptical

of just because of some of the matchups that they'd had early. this season. I'm curious to see what you think, Kevin, because I think you've been a little bit higher on the Colts than I have. I just think that they've matched up pretty well with some of the defenses that they've played. And it didn't think that they matched up as well with the Ravens, just because the Ravens have very good defense. And I worry about their ability to just compete with better teams. I think if you're playing the Matt Patricia Lyons, that's all fine and dandy. And that's going to be true for a lot of teams, but I think there's a competency level with the Colts that is going to obscure some of their weaknesses in particular, just the fact that they don't have a

very good vertical passing game and they don't have a lot of ways to stress defenses in multiple ways. So I worry that this is maybe a more true representation of where they are than we might have have otherwise thought. So let's remove sort of Tempice and the teapot narrative from the past week of Ravens football. I think I would have expected exactly this if I hadn't seen,

even if I had, you know, last week and this whole, the whole week and the narrative, all that stuff, I'm not surprised the Colts couldn't reach the Ravens level. Mike Wells, M.S. PM said that the Colts have no room for error. And I think that's probably a good,

a good way to put that. Is that they, Philip Burvers has to play really well. And he had against Cincinnati and Detroit. And he was, you know, what, 59% completion percentage this week. This was just, I think they're going to need a little more from Phillip Rivers. I think the defense still has a lot of talent and can be elite in certain situations. But this is 2020.

And defenses are not going to be consistent from week to week. Nothing is consistent from week to week, but quarterback play can be. and right now Philip Rivers is not there. So from a talent perspective, I still believe in this team. Hell, from a record perspective, I still believe in this team. They're going to make the playoffs. I just don't think, I think that they are who we thought they were in Dennis Green's immortal words, which is that they're on the second tier of AFC teams.

And I think the worrying thing was some people started to believe that the Ravens might have been on that tier. And I don't think they were. And the Ravens are six and two in the Colts and five or three. And if that had been flipped today, and the culture six and two and the Ravens are five and three, we have a totally different conversation. But the Ravens have bounced back ability. I think this is going to be good for the Ravens.

I think this lull is going to be good for the Ravens. They broke a streak. This is one of the big narratives. So Lamar can't play from behind. So they broke a streak of 20 consecutive losses when trailing a halftime, okay, per ESPN. I think that's important to get out of the way. I think there's probably a lot of teams that have similar streaks. Like teams are losing a halftime just tend to lose the game.

You should look up the stats. Remember, Joe Banner once told me the former Eagles president and Brown's president told me to Andy Reid, one of his big things because the Eagles front office and their analytics push early had put an emphasis on the fact that trailing, leading early was important. He really wanted to be aggressive early in the game because the best way to win a game is to lead a halftime. Okay, that's really important. I know it sounds obvious, but you should talk to 32 coaches around the NFL because I bet they don't figure it out all the time. Okay. So the Ravens have this. They have a nice second half.

that. I think that Lamar was taking shots in the first half and that that that isn't great. But I think that there's a toughness with this team, with this Ravens team. And I think it's, it's important that they learn a little bit about themselves. You know, Brandon Marshall came out and said, this week I saw it on Fox. He said, you know, the league hasn't caught up to Lamar Jackson. They caught up to Greg Roman and all this stuff. And so for Greg Roman to kind of have a nice little bounce back second half, I thought that was really good. I don't, I could do without Gus Edwards carries. I think we can phase out.

Gus Edwards. Not on the Gus bus. Uh, not on the Gus bus. Listen, like a nice little self-scouting introspection a couple weeks. I remember last October, you know, Mahomes was banged up. And in November, they kind of had that little lull there. I remember going on on TV and radio in December. And, and even though I, no one talked about Lamar more than me last January.

But I remember saying, guys, we got to talk about Patrick Mahomes. He's still really good. good. Greg Bishop went to Kansas City, right a whole piece about how Patrick Holmes is still here. And I kind of feel like something similar has happened. I've been talking about this all year. Something similar has been happening with Lamar, where we're going to,

because this is sort of how the new cycle works and because you've seen Lamar in some low points, we're going to forget how good Lamar Jackson can be. And I think that we might be reminded of it in January. That's all. All right. Our first loser is the Chicago Bears who seem to solve every team's problem.

Nora. Tennessee Titans. The Tennessee Titans get out the Schneid. Yes. Or the reverse Belichick. Belichick solves all of his team's problems, right? And then if you just go, so you either get coached by Belichick or you play the Bears and solve all your problems.

It's the same effect. What did we think about the Chicago Bears and Sinstein's time? Well, so the problem that they solved for the Titans was that the Titans could not get off the field on third down. The Bears went two for 15 on third down. Two for 15. Worst third down conversion rate in history, the Bears went two for 15. It's not great.

It's not what you want. They were, now this is not out of character for the bears. The bears were converting third downs only 31% of the time, which is 31% of the NFL entering the game. So it's not as if you're matching up a strength on a weakness here. This is a weakness on a weakness. but I think we know whose weakness is worse. We do, and we've learned that a couple of times. Now, I will expand on that.

That's not the only problem that the Bears solve for the old Tennessee Titans because, and these things are all linked. But for the first time this year, the Titans generated pass rush. They finally hit the three sack mark. Congratulations to the Tennessee Titans. The Vanted three sack mark. Very important. The Bears obviously have a patchwork offense blind at this point, but that's still significant.

And then Tennessee can't stop the run. And they stopped the run. They stopped the run. They stopped the Bears run. Matt Nagy is, you know, this, this, this right here is the flip side of the 2-0 making it in the playoffs argument for the seventh. The Bears make it into the playoffs. The Bears.

And then is their season of success? Does Matt Nagy keep his job? is Ryan Pacekeep his job. You know, they're 5 and 4 right now. They've lost three straight games. They can't score early in the game. Nick Foles is not good. By the way, Nick Foles caught an incredible stray from Steve Spurrier.

I did not see these quotes at the time. Illinois Sentinel recirculated them because Derek Gilbert played in Orlando. Steve Spurrier said the only difference between Nick Foles and Garrett Gilbert is that one makes $22 million a year. And the other makes $70,000. This is when Gary Gilbert was in the A.F. So Foles catches astray from Spurrier.

They've got the Vikings next Monday night in a game that I'm not totally sure that they're better than the Vikings right now. Jeff Dickerson, great B-writer, has basically called for someone else to call plays in Chicago for that game, whether that's Bill Laser or John D. Filippo or Dave Ragon, somebody. But he's basically saying that something's got to be shaken up right now because the plays, just aren't working. AJ Brown, this is kind of a nature's healing thing. AJ Brown is in the open field,

eating souls. Desmond King was a great pickup. I don't want to, listen, I don't want to besmirch the Titans here. They did a nice job. Ron Tanna did not have the most efficient day, 10 of 21, 451 yards.

Derek Henry had 68 rushing yards. But there were enough guys here to where I was, I was impressed with the totality of the Titans. but make no mistake about it. This was more about the Bears struggling than the Titans having some juggernaut game. It is how the Titans want to win games, though. I mean, in some ways, it's nice for them to have

not a Ryan-Tanahill Red Zone God super-efficiency game and be able to pull it out elsewhere because that's what they're going to need to have a few of those. All right, let's get to the Chargers. I don't want to get to the Chargers. We have to get to the Chargers. The Chargers forced our hand. they lost 35, 31 to 26 to the Las Vegas Raiders.

Donald Parham Jr., who went to Stetson in suburban Orlando. My dad went to graduate school there. So that's two. Do they know each other? Two legends. They did not overlap. They did not overlap from what I understand. Maybe strong alumni community.

He drops a Donald, not my dad, drops a goal line fade at the end. it was initially ruled a touchdown upon review, and it was one of those that was so obvious that the raiders started celebrating as soon as they showed them on the board upon review. It was not called a touchdown. The charges threw two straight goal line fades, which, you know, if only they had time to run a third goal line fade, I'm sure that would have been figured out. Anthony Lynn after the game says at some point something good has to happen, which if you've seen Chargers football, I'm not so sure about that, Anthony Lynn.

At what point, Nora, do the Chargers call an exorcist? now literally I want to call an exorcist and just hear what they have to say about the Chargers. I think it's time. I just, I found myself watching this and sort of trying to justify it. And it's like you're going through the, the stages of Chargers grief or whatever. And I'm going, well, they shouldn't have, that's such a dink and dunk last drive.

There should have been more urgency. Why do you throw the fade? Why do you do that? Like, try to make it a play calling thing. Try to make it a decision making thing. and then there's this little thing in the back of my head that's just like, that's not it. Come on.

No. It's the Chargers. It's not it. I'm not going to solve this by just being like, oh, Anthony Lynn, like, get a little more pep in your step with the calls. Why don't you get up to the line of scrimmage a little bit faster, Justin Herbert, like, let's get some tempo up in here. And I'm not saying that those things don't matter.

I think that that was a poorly executed end of game situation. But when every end of game situation is a poorly executed end of game situation, we're just talking about something like in the cosmos. So I think they should they should consult like a seer or some kind of astrology guru. Like I want someone who deals in crystals and tarot cards and something to come in and give those guys a talking to. Could you imagine just coming up with anything in the Jarters facility? like anything, just been like, hey, I think we could solve it with that.

And then just realizing that because of the chargers, it's just not going to work out. Well, I think they have to have one of those meetings where everybody sits down and somebody stands up the front and says, like, okay, no bad ideas. Let's just start brainstorming. And then somebody says something ridiculous,

like let's have everybody play out of position. Let's have all the defensive players play offense. And then they just come up with something. They just need to try some stuff. anything. It's like a really truly anything. Bob Dylan used to make

his band members change instruments and record. Yes, exactly. Rainy Day women like that. That's, that's what, just one week,

just one week where we do that. I did wonder when you said that it, perhaps if they'd had time to run a third straight goal line fade, things would be different. What if that's how you break the curse?

What if we just don't know that the way to, just keep running fades? Three goal line fades. That's the clock striking midnight on this. And we don't know, because they've never been in a situation

to attempt such a fruitless endeavor. I'll end on this. Have you seen the movie Palm Springs? Yes, I have. Well. Yeah. All right, time for the hurry up. Let's get to it. North Steelers Cowboys.

All right. So I'm putting the Steelers on notice for something I was worried about at the beginning of the season, which is that Ben Rothesberger hurt his knee, came back, they win. I'm not too concerned about them having a dud of a game. Rathlisberger said after the game that he doesn't think his knee's going to be an issue. But let's just remember that their backup quarterbacks are still Mason Rudolph and

Josh Dobbs. And that's not good. It is hard for me to believe any Rothsburger injury because he was like he's permanently injured now. He's permanently like limping around and I just, I can't, I can't differentiate between significant and unsignificant Rathusberger injuries. Chiefs Panthers. So I have a question for you because I believe when Dan Quinn got fired after playing the Panthers. You said that losing to the Panthers was a fireable offense. The Chiefs pulled out a little bit of a nail bit of a nail biter against the Panthers if they had lost.

Andy Reid, hot seat. Replaced by Cliff Kingsbury. Wow. Full circle. The Panthers are much better than anticipated. All credit goes to Matt Rule and Joe Brady. I am disappointed. I will say this because Joe Brady is absolutely going to become the first head coach who

is younger than me hired by an NFL team and it sucks. Falcons Broncos. That's tough. They didn't Falcon. They didn't Falcon. That's all you need to know. I thought they almost did. They almost did.

We were nearly. Lions Vikings. Vikings crawling up into that seventh seed. Would you rather see the Vikings in the playoffs or the Bears? The Vikings. Without a doubt. I kind of think I would do. The Vikings have a little bit of talent and I think Dalvin Cook is really fun.

I got a couple reader questions about whether or not Dalvin Cook should be the MVP. He should not be the MVP. but he is very good and very fun to watch. Well, their defense is really young, so they will get a little bit better. Well, we have to talk about Giants Washington. I just have a rule proposal. If no one can jump on a fumble,

every single time they miss, it should be another statistical fumble. We did it. We did it. You didn't get to make your Vikings' point, which will now never make. All right, fan questions. Lost to the ether.

These are quick ones. First one is from Ben Smith is Justin Herbert this generation's Matt Stafford. That's just because they have like floppy, doughy faces. Well, they also play for franchises

that seem incapable of competing at a high level despite their own talent and success. It's a tough break. It's a really tough break. I think it's not the world's worst comparison, although right now

the ceiling seems so high on Justin Herbert that I know that people get mad at him at that comparison. But I think I love Matthew Stafford. I also love Justin Herbert. So just an interesting theory. Alex Potish says, when the Falcons and Chargers play each other week 14,

does every win probability model collapse upon itself? Now, I will say this. We all circle Josh Allen versus the Seahawks as some wacky wild game because they obviously have a lot of variance and in and of themselves, both of those things. And it was actually a pretty normal game, except the, you know, Pete Carroll being totally blindsided

by the passing game thing. Pete Carroll in the year 2020 being shocked that an offense throws. So I'm thinking maybe these two things cancel each other out. And when the Falcons and Charters play each other, that they just have a just a dignified 2420 game where the lead never changes. That would be hysterical. So they lose what's like the most boring, just normal way to just the clock, Clock runs out.

They're like a midfield and the... Just an early 14-0-0 lead for the Chargers that is never relinquished and that ends at 20 to 13. A couple field goals there. Just don't know fireworks whatsoever. No, you know, no plays above 10 yards. I would actually love if that happened, but I don't think it will. I think something, I think that's too much chaotic energy.

Tomorrow's quick bait. Nora, go ahead. Feud between Bruce Ariens and Tom Brady. Question mark. Report. Big question mark. Report. Report says Brady displeased with play calling.

Why don't you just tweet that? Just put it out into the world. That's so. Don't go to me into a self-cancel. Creating, creating. That's called a self-cancellation. I think Jim Harbaugh rumors start quite soon. Ooh.

I love a Jim Harbaugh. Quite soon. Quite soon. things are not going in the right direction in Michigan. He was awesome in the NFL. There are a lot of places where I think, listen, Harbaugh's M.O. is he comes in.

He makes you better, and then he kind of burns out, right? And I'm looking at this and I'm saying, there's a lot of teams that would sign up for good for four years, good for three years, and then burn out. Now, by the way, if you burn out in the NFL,

it's like a two, three, four year rebuild at most. it's not like college where there's just wreckage everywhere. And I think that Jimbo Fisher left Florida State a mess. And I think that it's, it's, there are teams that would sign up for Jim Harbaugh right now. And I'm intrigued to see how that develops. Could Jim Harba fix the Falcons or the Chargers? Or the Chargers or the Jets. Or perhaps he goes down the road to the Detroit Lions.

I'm already like full on fixing the Chargers is harder. than fixing the jets, which is hysterical because the jets are so much worse than the chargers. But I'm just convinced that to fix the chargers, you're going to have to, like,

battle a centaur mummy. Nora, the jets don't get the lead to blow. That's the difference. There's a simplicity to it. Okay, later this week, a bunch of great shows on their NFL feed.

Tuesday, Ryan Shazier, Cole Wright, are back to give you the player's perspective. On Wednesday, Chris Vernon and Warren Sharp, on Thursday, a bunch of ringer NFL writers Nora will be back

I'll be doing something else on Thursday and then Friday it is Warren again with Joe House so keep it here, great lineup and thank you for listening It's been the ringer NFL show on the ringer podcast network

network.