The Ringer NFL Show - What Are the Patriots Doing? Grift or No Grift? Plus, Cooper Kupp and Jonathan Taylor Returning | Dual Threat

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz open by doing a deep dive on the Patriots, why their rebuilding is failing, and Bill Belichick’s decision-making. They continue by discussing the NFL’s top scams. To conclude the episode, they talk about the return of players coming off the IL, like Jonathan Taylor and Cooper Kupp. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Steven Ruiz Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. This is Craig Horlebeck from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Join me, Danny Hifetz and Danny Kelly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you win your draft, win your league, and most importantly, avoid that last place punishment. Follow the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify. Hello and welcome to Dual Threat. I'm Nora Pizioti. And I'm Stephen Ruiz. Show today. We're going to talk a little bit about the Patriots. We're going to play a new game we've come up with called Grift or No Grift. We felt like we needed to call out some scammers.

week. That's what it was feeling like, you know. It's been more than enough time. We're a month into the season. It's time to name some frauds. That's the center of the show. And then we'll go through just a few little news items this week. A couple meaningful activations off the Pupplist, Jonathan Taylor, Cooper Cup, J.C. Jackson traded back to New England from the L.A. Chargers.

So we'll get to all of that in a little bit. but we are actually going to start in New England. Because the Patriot stinks, Stephen. They're one and three. They have a terrible offense. They had one job coming into the season, which was to look respectable on that side of the ball, try to erase the memories of the two-headed Joe Judge Matt Patricia

coordinated monster at offense from last year. And it hasn't happened. Shockingly, with the caveat that they have had, very good strength of competition through the first month of the season. They look even worse. They lead the league in the percentage of their drives that end in a punt or a turnover. 71%. Pretty bad.

What is your sort of big picture assessment of the Patriots right now? I think it's like warped because they, have played a tough schedule and they're playing against teams that should beat them. So I do think like it's probably better than it was a year ago. It's just like hard to recognize that now. But I think the assessment is the same. It's the assessment we've had for this team since Mack Jones was drafted. There's not enough talent on the on the offense. Like my my comparison is it's like playing chess with all pawns. Like you don't have those special pieces that can move in different ways

and force your opponent to take up different strategies. They just don't have that. It's easy to defend this offense because it's constricted to a small space on the field. They're really boxed in when you think about it. You don't really have to worry about outside the numbers. You don't really have to

worry about deep. When they pass the ball, you don't have to worry about Mack Jones scrambling too much. I know he's done it. He's probably better at it than people give them credit for it, but it's not something like you're worried about. If he scrambles, he might get like five yards. It's not like he's going to get 15. So it's just the lack of constraints they can put on teams. And I think during that rookie season, they did that through scheme. Like there was a lot

of like end around, a lot of screen passes, a lot of double passes. And that's kind of how they worked around the lack of talent. Then Josh McDaniels leaves, they replace him with a defensive coordinator and a special teams coordinator. It doesn't work. Now they have Bill O'Brien out there. And I think Bill O'Brien's doing better stuff, but there's just no way to make up for the fact that they don't have stud receivers on the outside. They don't have a quarterback who can create plays on his own. And I think there's just an expiration date

when you run the offense like they did in 2021. Like, you can't continue to do that. As we saw during Max Rookie Year, at the end, when teams kind of forced him to be the guy, that's when he fell off a little bit. And we haven't seen him recover really, since then. There are some areas to me where they're leaving meat on the boat. And this is the part that really confuses me because if we go back to last season, there was a whole bucket of things

that went wrong that I would put in the general, the general incompetence bucket. Let's put that, like, the wackiness of it all aside. There were also some basic schematic things where it was really confusing why they weren't doing them. Chief among them was running play action, running more play action than they were using. Mac was a lot better with it. He was sort of constantly talking about how he liked using it, and then they just didn't.

They're still not doing it. They've run 26 plays with play action so far this season. They've run 247 without it. They are a much better offense using play action than not using it, and they're just not doing it. I don't have a good explanation for why they're not doing it. Do you think it's the offensive line? No, I think that's part of it. But I think the problem is, well, one, the offensive line, like, you have to get into certain formations to run it effectively.

And, like, those formations are, like, undercenter, heavy formations where the offensive line really plays a role in the success of a run play. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is, like, game scripts. They've fallen behind in every game, and you don't run play action when the defense doesn't expect you to run. So, like, I think, like, it's hard to say that it's, oh, they're not running enough play action, because I don't think they've been in situations where they're able to run play action

or where they're able to run it and it's going to be effective. Like, they could have ran play action when they were down double digits to Philadelphia or Dallas, and maybe the rate would have been, like, 35% and they're at the top of the league. I just don't think those plays would have worked. worked. So I think it's like a combination of personnel and then game script. But like against Dallas, their first play. They went under center. They ran play action. There was a wide open guy over the middle and Mac hit him. I think like, I do think it's situation dependent. But I also I think it's just like how you have to run the offense to get the most out of Mac Jones.

Well, the most out of them where you can you can convince yourself that he's like a franchise level player. Like, if he's just running the Jimmy G offense, that's not what you want out of a first round pick. So I kind of see why they haven't run it

as much as they did with like even Bailey Zappy last year. I do agree they should run it a little bit more, but like they haven't been able to so far this year. Here's where I'm coming from is that when you watch Mack Jones,

like he looks, his confidence looks completely shot. And there is, and we should get into this, there is a chicken or the egg thing where we might just be finding out and maybe you would say that you found this out a long time ago, that this just wasn't the pick.

He's not the guy and there's a ceiling that's pretty low as long as Mac Jones is your quarterback. We should have that conversation, but this team also went into this year with an owner who like every second sentence out of his mouth when there's a microphone around is, I'm really upset that we haven't had a playoff win in a long time. and there's this sort of effective mandate of,

and to me it's like we don't even need to be a Super Bowl team. It's just sort of like make the playoffs. It's realistic. It's a realistic goal. It's like be good in that way. And the fact that they are failing to do that right now and that the quarterback looks like, I mean, when he got benched in that Cowboys game,

the second interception, He just didn't want to be out there anymore. And to me, that's when you do have a responsibility to run a little bit more of the stuff that he's comfortable with. I don't really care what the game script is. I mean, they should stop, like, turning the ball over twice in a row at the beginning of games so that they fall behind by two scores, like two minutes into every game, which is what it feels like. but they're getting into this situation where there's sort of like a dual responsibility to get Mack feeling a little bit more comfortable than he's feeling,

which is not to absolve him of his particular shortcomings. It's not that I have a problem with that being, like if we diagnose what's the issue here, it's not that if you're saying, well, the issue is that you don't have the right quarterback. It's not necessarily that I disagree. It's just that he's who they have right now. And if you're Bill Belichick, like, I think he's got about a year, like the full year and maybe next year

or part of next year to figure it out. They have to make a decision on the fifth year option at the end of this season on Mac. I don't really know how you could do that, how you could give it to him right now. but you've got to make something of this team or you're in danger of losing your job. And I don't know, like in the next 18 months,

are the Patriots going to have a better quarterback than Mack Jones? Maybe. I don't think that's too hard to find. Like, I think you get like Ryan Tannahill and he's a better version of what you want Mac Jones to be. I agree with you. I think Mac, I've heard people point out the turnover.

It's like Mac's not protecting the football and that's not a way for this team to win. But like, you're not playing that ball control, protect the football style of offense when you rank at the bottom of the league and rushing anyway. So I agree with you to that point. They don't have the running game anyway

to run the type of offense that Mac might need. And that's a failure of Bill Belichick building this roster, the offensive line isn't good enough, the pieces on the outside, do nothing to deter the defense from loading up the box. There are so many issues. And then you look at the start of the season.

And even at the beginning of the segment, I gave them credit because they are playing against a tough schedule. But I think this run has proven how far off they are from getting to the point where they're contending for Super Bowl again. Like I know Robert Kraft has lowered the bar to just make the playoffs, please. But that's not the bar for Bill Belichick. I'm assuming Bill Belichick still wants to contend for rings. And they're not close to it.

I don't know what you do. I don't know what the answer is for the rest of the year. I think it's just like stop turning the ball over, run the football better, figure out a way to run the football better, and try to make it work for this year. But I think so far through four weeks, we could probably call it. Like, there's no way you give Mack Jones the fifth-year option, unless he turns it on from here on out.

is one of the better quarterbacks in the league. But as things stand right now, given everything we've seen over the last year and a half, I think you just have to start looking to the future. And if that means, like, playing younger guys at the end of the year and not tanking, because I don't think Bill Belichick will ever tank, but maybe not trying your best to win every week,

is probably the best path moving forward, given the quarterback class that's coming up. So the thing that that would require, though, is organizational leadership and specifically the crafts giving up on this thing that they keep saying, which is that the goal here is the playoffs

and they really want to get back to the playoffs and that's the only thing that they care about. I agree with you. I think the most rational course of action for them is to accept that they're not a playoff team and they're not particularly, I don't want to say they're not particularly close to being a playoff team

because you can be a pretty mediocre team in the league of playoffs. But that they are not a good roster right now. And I don't think, I really don't think the idea that Bill Belichick woke up one morning and forgot how to coach a football team makes any sense. Like, that guy still understands how to run an organization and how to coach situations and the details of football. better than anyone. Like, there's, that's just not something that you forget.

But I do think that there's this thing going on where it's like a Bill Belichick team can't be bad. And they can be. Like, this is a bad team. And the way that I think it affects them the most is in roster construction, there was a story last week that Joe Judge put, like, came into the locker room and put sweatshirts on everybody's locker that said, no one is coming, it's up to us, which is, first of all, it's dark, man. Like, chill out. But that's like, where is the self-awareness to me? Because if you look at all of the, like, if you look at the contenders around the AFC in particular, you have a lot of teams and you have the good teams who've done quite a bit to support. their quarterbacks and who when they think they're in a contending window, when they want to be

a consistent playoff team, there's a certain amount of aggression that goes into roster building where, you know, you put Jamar Chase and T. Higgins with Joe Burrow. You do what the dolphins have done offensively to build this like crazy athletic super team. You surround Josh Allen with talent. I am not saying that Mack is any of those guys. but he is in this situation where he might not have it himself. And then you look at what they've been doing around him and they go into this offseason where like Wright tackles a big concern. And it's like, oh, well, let's give Riley Reef $5 million and cross her fingers that he's going to be healthy.

That's like the only quarterback that you might be able to build that way around is Patrick Mahomes. Or Tom Brady 10 years ago. Or Tom Brady, right. And that's the more operative example because they have all of that. I just think they have all of that muscle memory and they think that they can get away with it. And they cannot get away with it. I mean, there's not a good downfield receiver in this bunch. Mack Jones is facing a ton, a ton of cover one.

He's first in attempts against cover one on third downs. So when they need to pick something up and they're in a passing situation, that's what defenses think that they can get away with against them, and they have not done a single thing to prove them wrong. The only receiver in this bunch right now who's shown some actual explosive separation ability is Pop Douglas, who's an undrafted rookie, who got benched in the first month of the year for fumbling,

which is another thing that they're just not good enough to do. They can't sacrifice the talent of their undrafted receiver who nobody'd ever heard of three months ago. And like, when all of those things are happening, you're just not a good team. And it's not that, like, there are plenty of bad teams, but it's just, to me, the problem with the Patriots

is that they're a bad team that thinks that they're a good team, which makes me concerned about how they're going to go about trying to fix it. Because if you're looking at this roster and maybe I'm making too much of a sweatshirt here, but if your message is, nobody's coming, it's,

to us, then like, yeah, bang the gavel. It's not getting any better because this group is not equipped to compete with the other contending teams in the conference. Who? But who is saying they're a good team? Like, who is operating as if they are a good team? I feel like that's the perception of Robert Kraft. But I feel like that's what I feel like Belichitt, and you brought up this point, it's kind

of muscle memory, but it's also like the things the Patriots are doing that we're criticizing them for now are things that we used to celebrate them for. Like, not, like, their restraint, like, not pushing all of their chips into the middle of the table when it doesn't make sense to. I think it makes total sense. Like, you can make the argument that it makes total sense not to sell out and give up a bunch of draft picks to trade for, like, T. Higgins and mortgage your future a little bit.

For a quarterback like Mack Jones, because what is that going to get you? Yes, it's going to get you to the playoffs. And maybe, like, that will save Bill. But I personally, I think he could probably survive not making the playoffs because he's Bill Belichick. And I don't think Robert Kraft wants to be the one to fire him. But like, let's say they did sell out and they got all these guys. Would we expect them to contend for a Super Bowl? Would they beat the Chiefs?

Would they beat the Bills? Would they beat the Dolphins? Would they beat any of these teams? The Bengals, the Ravens? No, they wouldn't. They would probably lose in the first round. And then we would be saying, they did all this. And they traded all these draft picks and then use all this cast base on a team that's

quarterback by Matt Jones. Like, that's so dumb. That's so naive. So, like, I can see both sides. And I think the comments from Kraft saying, oh, we got to make the playoffs, kind of warp the perception of how the team is operating. If you never heard those comments,

I wouldn't be like, oh, Belichick is desperate to win. This is them trying to put the best team on the field possible. I feel like it's a guy biding his time to next year when they can blow this up and start over again. because the current edition of this team isn't good enough. Isn't anywhere near good enough. And I don't think it ever will be as long as they don't have a better quarterback. If that's the case, it remains, which it already does.

Absurd they didn't go after Lamar. Yes. Like, it's just absurd because there's no way that Bill Belichick doesn't want to win games and doesn't want to put a contending team on the field. I do think that, I don't know, I think I think it's a little harder than you do to find a good quarterback. Hey, it's not good quarterback.

Ryan Tannihill doesn't like fill me with excitement right now. And that says more about Mack Jones than Ryan Tannehill. If he's an upgrade and he doesn't get you excited, what does that say about Mac Jones? Also, you might have to fight Arthur Smith to make it happen. Mac has been the sort of the problem where it's like he was just good enough as a rookie that maybe you delude yourself into thinking that there's something there.

But they did like, and this is, there's a little bit of sunk cost, but those were choices that they made. And I think if you were ever going to try to go through this this rookie contract, maybe like maybe the appropriate thing would have to say, we've seen enough for Mac to think that, you know, we don't have a better option right now, even though there have been some, but we are putting our heads in the sand and we don't want to try to get a Lamar because we're very silly, but we don't want to. And so while this guy is on his rookie contract and while we have the extra cap room because of

that, we're going to try to field the best roster possible. I don't think that they have behaved in a way that maximizes that. They don't like, and it is responsible towards the future and it has them in a better salary cap space

position entering next year than it than it would if they tried to sell out and do this. But if you're not going to do that, then you're probably better off just tearing it down a little bit more. But then the defense is too good. So I do not think, I think it's complicated because Jones is a limited quarterback. But I do think that they've, and he's not playing well.

I do think that they have in some ways failed him because I think most teams would have put more around him. And I think they treat him on some level like he's just going to become Tom Brady and be able to be an elevator like that. And that's just ridiculous. Like, at a certain point, he can't help that he's Mack Jones. And it's a little silly to, to watch them sort of over and over again act like that's going to somehow change. Okay. This is my only request of everybody going for it. Like, we say that the fact that they haven't built around Mac Jones is like proof that Bill Belichick doesn't understand the modern game. You like look at other examples, Josh Allen getting Stefan Diggs, Jalen Hertz getting A.J. Brown, two of getting Tyreek and not helping a young

quarterback. I think the the proof that Belichick doesn't completely understand the modern game was the Mac Jones traffic. It happened before he decided not to build around it. So that's the only thing I'm saying. That's how I want people to start talking about this. That was the mistake. That was the proof that he doesn't understand modern offense. What should they have done there? Not drafted Mac Jones. So just take Justin Jefferson?

Oh, wait, no, he wasn't in that draft. I'm forgetting draft wide receiver, whichever wide receiver was available. I don't know. Anybody but the quarterback who is not a first round talent, I think. Trade back and draft him in the second round. I don't know. I just, I mean, I mean, Davis Mills could have done all this.

That's really the headline, isn't it? Davis Mills could have done all this. I'm... I just want to know what they... Like, what the road not taken was. Because it's not like... Look, we would be having a different conversation if they had traded up and sold out to get it.

They're sitting there at 15. half the league thinks Kyle Shanahan's going to take the guy at three. He ends up falling. So silly. It's just such a silly sport. How did that happen? How did we spend months being like,

Kyle Shanahan is going to take Mag Jones third overall? And it was maybe true. Anyway, he did fall into their lap in some ways. and yeah, sometimes a grenade falls in your lap that doesn't mean it's a good thing. There is one quarterback from that first round.

You wrote about this. There's one quarterback from that first round who's worked out. One, everybody else didn't have it. And some of those guys are pretty athletic. Justin Fields on the Patriots. I think it goes better.

I think it goes a little bit better. It went better with Cam Newton. Cam Newton was like 35 and had no body left. And they had a lot of, a better offense than they have now. And he was throwing it like Jacoby Myers and I don't even like, who was his top receiver? Demer Byrude was his top receiver that year.

Demir Byrude. And it was better. And it was better. Like all you have to have is a quarterback who can move a little. But now that you've brought it up, fine, don't surround Mac Jones with with plus talent. Don't go mortgage your future. Don't go like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How about you pay Jacobi Myers the same amount of money that you're paying Jujus Ms. Schuster

to just be a better receiver on your offense. What about that? Barely cost a cent. I mean, the one, like, the one, literally the one guy at that position that they've, they can have a genuine claim to having developed in the last, like, decade. And they're just like, oh, yeah, go have, you know, 19 million, too rich for our blood. Go have fun in Las Vegas. like it's ridiculous.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. There are no answers. Like it's, it's the quarterback. It's the front office. It's a team building.

Maybe as we're talking about it, the thing that, like, and this is sort of the, you know, the hindsight regret to me that we haven't gotten to sort of watch this other than the Cam Newton

here is like, maybe you're right. to say that in that situation, yes, Mac Jones falls to them and I think that's a justifiable decision, but you are Bill Belichick. Maybe in hindsight the choice should have been like, okay, let's do something really wacky, lean into the coaching ability. I agree with you. I think Justin Fields would be in a better situation if he'd gone to New England. Now, I think Justin Fields would be in a better situation if he'd gone to like,

I don't know, 25 other teams, maybe more than that. The XFL. But it does seem like, like, it seems like in some ways the offense has just been like,

has been a little bit of an afterthought and has been like, well, let's just be okay and let's just try to get by. And most of the creativity and the effort and the thought there seems to be going on the defensive side of the ball. And maybe it would have been better if more of the creativity and more of the brainpower got applied to.

Let's see if we can get a little bit more creative on the offensive side of the ball instead of just saying, well, let's get a sort of limited point guard and just have him distribute. And that'll keep us afloat so that our defense can win games. it's just that once you're like this is where it you know it starts becoming self-fulfilling and the snake just starts eating its tail because it's like once you're in that situation you sort of have to try to make it work and that's where I think that they've just shot themselves in the foot but I do think that look like this was the year where they had to make the decision on the fifth year option and I don't I don't know how you do it at this point so

one way or another, we are probably coming to the end of the road here. Yeah. It's bleak. It's getting bleak. But the good news is those, those, was it, five rings aren't going anywhere. Enjoy the last one years. It's over. Well, okay, sorry. I'm like going to stop ranting about this in a second because we've talked about this for half an hour. But like that, to me, like, that is part of the problem is that every time it gets brought up that they've been a bad team, but they haven't built a competitive roster. And like, Belichick has literally started doing this. Somebody will bring something up like you haven't had a, you know, horrible track record drafting second round picks. This happened a year ago or two.

Somebody asked him the question. And he's like, well, Matt Light was a second round pick. It's like, my dude, that was 20 years ago. Like, we got to move on. He's, he just like, they're becoming. me like a tribute band. It's like they have the Tom Brady ceremony at the beginning of the season

and that's the best thing that's happened all year. And I do think that like, I do think that their history is complicating things right now because the idea that the Bill Belichick New England Patriots would like tear it all down and rebuild is just not something that

anybody has it in their bones to accept. So then he gets asked questions about why things aren't going well. and or like what he would say to the fans who are watching a bad season and you know he had another quote last year that got a lot of attention where he was like well I don't think that there's been a lot of

thin years around here and it's just like that's true that's 100% true but it doesn't like he used to always be the guy who would talk about last year doesn't mean anything yeah yeah

And it's like somebody's got to tell them that that actually applies to the last 20 years as well. And you can't just keep like saying, you know, scoreboard when you're actually talking about stuff that happened a decade ago. No, they won the Super Bowl in 2018. And like, it's like Belichick has just been doing bits since then. Like they had the three past game. They had the one game where they won with like the, I don't even remember where they like accepted the delay of game penalty. or they purposefully got one or something. He's just been doing that stuff since that.

And those, like, he's like, he's like, oh, checked off another box. And he's, maybe he's content with that. But it's not going to get better anytime soon. I agree with you. I think this is the beginning of the, or this is the middle of the end. The beginning of the end was probably the end of the 2019 season.

What would you do if I gave you a sweatshirt that said no one is coming? I would not wear it. It would not come out of the closet. Right. Like, you can go to the grocery store and that. like this fatalistic. It creates more questions than answers. A good slogan like...

You don't need follow-up questions for a good slogan. Sure. Like the Rams covered all their bases with that one shirt that was like a paragraph. It was like three sentences. That would have been better than whatever the Patriots came up with. Okay, but jokes on us because they kind of... Like the Rams kind of play like that is the thing.

That's a good point. Like dedicated players who work hard and play mistake-free football or something. That's the illusion of complexity or whatever Shaman's Bay called it. The illusion of complexity is the four-claws sentence on the bag of the center. That really just means we play, we try. All right, let's take a quick break and then we'll talk about some frauds. Get ready to start the NFL week off right, because right now all customers can get a No Sweat Same Game Parlay for Thursday night football.

Just place a three-leg same-game parlay on this week's game between the commanders and the Bears, and you'll get bonus bets back if you don't win. I like a Brian Robinson anytime touchdown. Justin Fields over 46 and a half yards rushing and the commanders minus six. You can build your own or choose from one of the popular same game parley's pre-built for you in Fandwell's top-rated sportsbook app. And Fandwell is now live in Kentucky. Download the app now and take advantage of their great special offers. boosts and more.

Visit fanduel.com slash ringer NFL so you don't miss out on your chance to get a no-swet same-game parlay on America's number one sportsbook. Fandwell, an official sports betting partner of the NFL, must be 21 plus and present in select states. Refund issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt, max refund $5 and less otherwise specified. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandwell.com.

All right, this is dual threat. We are back and we're going to play a game. that we have lovingly named grift or no grift. So, Stephen, I'm going to name some potential grifters. Scammers are, you know, scammers are all the rage. We've had a lot of scammers in our culture lately. And the NFL is not exempt. So I'm going to name some grifters.

And you're going to tell me if they are indeed running a scam or if it's legit. Okay. Sounds like my kind of game. let's start with the quarterback with the highest passer rating in NFL history through 10 starts. Brock Purdy, grift or no grift? It's a grift. And honestly, I'm going to have to censor myself here. Because if I start on this topic, this is going to be a four-hour podcast.

You thought the Patriots discussion was long. I could go like seven hours on Brock Purdy. I'm sorry. I watched the film. and like he's not doing anything. Like he's running the offense well. And I get the argument that, oh, yeah, he's a good quarterback for this system.

And he's the right quarterback for this system. And then I get yelled at when I rank him 25th. Here's my thing. I'm ranking these quarterbacks not based on their suitability for the Kyle Shanahan system. I'm ranking them based on what they would do in like a normal offense, like a league average offense.

And if we put Brock Purdy in the league average offense, this game isn't going to lead to top of the league results. And like when you, the play that made me lose my mind this week was he threw a pass downfield to Brandon IU over the middle of the field is probably like 30 yards downfield. It was into double coverage. He under threw the ball by about 10 yards. The safety, the Cardinal safety, number 34, like overran the ball. He couldn't find it in the air. And then IU tracked it down and caught it.

And like 49ers Twitter is like celebrating this throw. Like Mac saw the, or Mac, that's a Freud. and click. Brock saw the future. Like, when he went to throw the pass, he knew the Cardinal safety was going to overrun it. He knew it, and he knew Brandon Ayuk was going to realize

and track the ball and cut off his route short and get it. And that's why he threw it short. He did it on purpose, which is ridiculous. Like, now you're trying to tell me that Brock Purdy can see the future. I don't even think he can run a normal offense, and you're telling me you can see the future. I posted a chart on Twitter the other day,

and it was basically a passing map, and the field was divided into like 10-yard buckets down the field. So it was like behind the line of scrimmage, zero to 10 yards, 10 to 20 yards and up, and it had EPA on it. And if you look at Brock Purdy's, which is similar to the next guy we're going to talk about, to a tag of Iloas,

he was averaging like a full point of EPA. A full point of EPA on throws behind the line of scrimmage. The league average is like minus 0.25 or something. The league average is basically Zach Wilson. This guy is putting up like Patrick Mahomes times four. On passes just behind the line of scrimmages, on passes from 1 to 10 yards, it's like the same thing compared to the NFL average,

which is in the negatives. So like he's throwing the ball barely downfield. His skill players are clearly doing all the work and he's enjoying this environment that no other quarterback in the league enjoys except for the guy that just happens to play for Kyle Shadahan's old offensive coordinator. What a coincidence.

And then when you look at Jimmy G's passing map from last year, it looks exactly alike. It looks like Brock Purdy's. And guess what it looks like this year with Josh McDaniels? Nothing alike. It looks more like the league average. So I feel like I'm being gaslit. You guys are telling me that throws into double coverage are good.

You guys are telling me that it's the quarterback when we see this system around the league producing similar results, they just don't have Christian McCaffrey. Enough. He's a grifter. The reason we're doing this segment, if you can't already tell, for everyone listening,

is basically because we had a meeting earlier this week and Stephen just like, ranted for several minutes straight about this topic, and we were sort of like, all right, I think you might need to, you might need to vent a little bit. You might need to, to let it all out.

Yeah. I think my Slack message was Brock Purdy is ruining my life. And honestly, I don't think that's dramatic. That's true. It's the worst thing happening in my life right now. So I'm going not a grift. He is in the song. I quit.

He is in the Zappa. Not you, too. The game is not how good of a quarterback would Brock Purdy be if he were on the Bears? The game is, can the 49ers win the Super Bowl like this? They can't. You think they can't? No.

I think they can. If they do, I'm not covering the sport again. If they win it with Brock Purdy. Sam Darnold, sure. I can get on board with Sam Darnold. Not Brock Purdy. Brock Pardy had one in completion last week. He actually had two, but the other one was negated by a bad,

it wasn't a bad call but it was a call that had no effect on the play. It didn't count but he did complete another pass. I'm a hater. I'm hating so hard right now. I have to push back against this. You don't think that they can win the Super Bowl

with Brock Party because here's how I feel is that we've gone through, we went through years of this Jimmy where it always felt like it was on the razor's edge, right? He's going to be just mistake prone enough that I'm not sure that they can really do it. And they got as far as being up by multiple scores in an actual Super Bowl.

And then that came true. So in some ways, this is not exactly the hottest of takes because they don't have that far to go. Brock gives them just enough extra in a better intermediate to deep ball. and the ability to move around that he has that Jimmy didn't have, that I'm sold. I think it mitigates some of the concerns they have on the offensive line.

My argument here is not that he's being asked to do all of that much, but I think he can get him there. I am sold on if we're looking for the line of how good of a quarterback do you have to be for me to have not to eliminate the concerns about the ceiling of this offense once they're trying to make a deep playoff run

once they're playing really good teams. I mean, I'm so excited to see this game against the Cowboys this weekend because I guess we'll get a test of one of their main opponents in the conference but I think he's got it. No grift.

All right. Agree to disagree. I will. Let's revisit the question on Sunday night. Let's revisit. on Sunday night after the Cowboys game because I do think that's the proving ground. All right. Tua.

Our league leader in yards after the catch per completion. 6.3. Purdy, by the way, is 6th at 5.6. No grift. I'm going to be, I'm going to shock some Dolphins fans. No grift.

I think the grift is him being like an MVP candidate and apparently by the numbers, one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. I don't think that's true. But I think there's merit to the notion that he allows this offense to run the way it does. I don't think there's merit to Brock Purdy doing that. Brod-Perti isn't doing the things Tua is doing.

He's not getting rid of the ball as quickly as Tua is doing, as uniquely as Tua is doing. He's not doing like the eye manipulation stuff nearly as much as Tua. I think like his Tua has a unique skill set. I don't think Brock has a unique skill set. I think you can find Brock's skill set. Sam Howell has Brock skillset. The game is not unique skill set or no unique skill set. No, but the griff's part.

Like the role they play in their offense, I don't think Tua is grifting. I think Tua, I think he's gaming the system a little bit, thanks to Tyreek Hill and Mike McDaniel, but I think he does allow this doffin's offense, this doffin's offense to run the way that it runs. I think you could throw any old quarterback,

any moderately talented quarterback into the Shanan system, and it will look exactly the same. So no grift or two. I am a little bit more on the, on the grift side here, just because I have more House of Cards concerns with the Dolphins than I do with the 49ers. Only because I don't think it's a grift. I don't think either one is a grip.

Because the way that I'm defining this is, is there something about the way that they're playing in these offenses that I think is fake, that I think is going to, by the end of the season, the rug gets pulled out, and it's like, oh, well, you know,

the stats were inflated because XYZ, or they weren't actually that good because XYZ. I really have bought the 49ers on that. I don't think, I don't think it's coming. I have a question.

Okay. Which offense do you think would suffer more? Actually, I have two questions. What offense do you think would suffer more? more if you replace the quarterbacks with their backups. And then the second part of that question is, I'll let you answer that first, and then I'll ask

the second part. Definitely the dolphins. Okay. And then the second part of that question, which offense do you think would be affected more if you took the best skill player off of the roster? Let's say they got hurt and they're out for the rest of the season. And I would say Tyreech is the best for the dolphins. I would say McCaffrey is probably the best, or at least the one that touches the ball the most for San Francisco, which offense you think would be impacted the most? I think, I guess I think Miami would be impacted the most.

I think it's at least close. But I, and I think the answer is... It's close, but I think my, I just, I think the, I think the way that, like, I think he's creating space for them in a way that is not quite apples to oranges with San Francisco, just because as amazing as Mike McDaniel is, I think, I think Kyle would figure it out. Part of what makes it close is that in both situations

there are other really good playmakers available, but I think it would hurt Miami more. Yeah. The only reason I think it's close is because they do have Jalen Waddle. And when they lost Jalen Waddle didn't play in the 70-point game and it didn't matter. And I think Jailin Waddle, while not as good as Tyree Kill,

can give you 90% of that. Whereas I think, like, Christian McCaffrey, what he's done for that offense is He's become like the easy button. Like you could just run a call the option route out of the back bill. He's going to score a touchdown. He just flip a flare screen out to him and he takes it for a touchdown. So I think I would lean towards the 49ers being more impacted.

So that's why I'm saying like I think two is more important to this, to this build and to this setup. I do agree with you that it's more fragile. But I do think he's more important. Like he's serving as the foundation for it. Because that's just two different ways of defining, defining grif. But that's my point is that I think it's more fragile. And part of that is just like, okay, yes, I do think that the, I mean, look, the dolphins have already shown that you can take a waddle out of the equation and they're totally fine.

And that run game is developing in a way where they have more buttons to press than they did last season, certainly. With the 49ers, it's sort of like, okay, if they're without McCaffrey, they still, like, not a grift the season that Brandon Ayuk is having, for instance. And they've still got deba.

Like, there are more plus playmakers on that offense that I think they're better equipped to lose one of the big ones. But it's close. All right. The Vic Fangio coaching tree. See, I was one of the people that was writing about Brandon Staley and hyping him up

and how this is like a different approach to defense. I still think that's true. I think the thing that I overlooked and people like me that were writing about this overlooked is that it wasn't like some radical change that was going to revolutionize the sport, although I do think it changed it a little bit. I think it was just like a short-term solution to a problem that defenses have. And I think we're starting to figure that out as defenses have gone. that they were getting beaten deep all the time?

Over the top, like in the passing game. And we've seen our offense is kind of counter that by going back to more heavy personnel, under center runs, pulling guards, downhill runs. And the Fangio Tree hasn't had an answer for that. And I think, like, the thing that decides the longevity of a scheme, like, for instance, Bill Belichick scheme,

is the ability to adapt. Like, Bill Belichick's scheme has never been one thing for too long. Like it was like, at the beginning of it, it was like three, four fire zone coverage by the, by like 2015. It was like a lot of man coverage. That's what we knew the Patriots for. And then now they're going back to more of a zone type system. Fangio, I don't think the Fangio tree has that in them.

They kind of do, they play soft against the run on purpose. And I think teams are trying, are starting to figure out how to still beat the passing coverages that they play while getting. that those gains on the ground and it's just falling apart across the league and I think the Fandio coaches that have done well are deviating away from the core foundations

and philosophies of the defense. So I'm going to say grift. It's a grift. I mean, so okay, the Packers and Joe Barry with like 800 first round picks on that roster. 21st in defensive DVOA, Staley and the Chargers are 22nd. Joe Woods and the Saints are nine.

a good defense, but it's really Dennis Allen. And I do think it's what you're talking about, where last year league-wide, there were the fewest number of passes that traveled 15 air yards or more since 2006. So, yes, it's not a grift that it kind of took the league by storm, but the idea that there weren't going to be adjustments, right? Like the smarts of it were that it was ahead of the, curve and it was a great

matchup against the way that teams wanted to play for a while and now that's changed. I think like here's the grift. Scheme. Scheme is the ultimate grift of the last like decade of the NFL is that we've convinced ourselves

that there is a way to like that there is something more important than just having good players and playing to their strengths and having multiple ways to win. And it's ridiculous. Like, and it's just going to be proven false over and over and over again.

The defenses that have succeeded this way had the benefit of being a little bit ahead of the curve and also having really good players. I think Brandon Staley is a really smart guy and I think he was perceptive about where the league was going in designing those Rams defenses. That also had Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. It doesn't mean that the scheme wasn't good,

but it's like all of these things have happened. We've become this like, the scheme is the most important thing about how you're building a defense or an offense or whatever it is. And it's a grift. It's a huge grift. I think what we do is like we look at the,

the play callers that do make a difference. Like Kyle Shanahan and Shaw McBay, clearly their play calling makes a difference. Of course. But that doesn't mean the other, 98% of play callers make a difference. And I think, like, we kind of confused the fact that there are a couple that that move the needle and then the rest of them don't.

You can say the same thing about, like, a linebacker. There's a lot of different, like, first of all, play calling is not pure scheme. Like, something that I, like, not agrift and probably really underrated in coaching is, like, play sequencing as a game is going on, is understanding how, how the scheme fits together with the players so that you can know how to layer your calls in a game or have a good relationship with a player to decide how you want to attack a certain situation

or blah blah blah blah or when to be aggressive. That is a skill set that some of these guys have in spades and is really, really valuable. And I'm not saying that having a well-designed offense is not valuable. But like, you can't look at the dolphin. right now, for instance, and tell me, Mike McDaniel is winning with scheme.

And mean by that, he has drawn up his little exes and O's, and they are foolproof before you assess who the people running the plays are. What is working is that he knows how to design a good offense for one of you have Jalen Waddle and Tyreek Hill and like the fastest running backs in the sport and understanding how it all fits together. But it seems like we're operating in this way where it's like, oh, well, just to turn it back to what we were actually talking about, oh, this team is going to import a Fangio defense. And that's the good defense.

so now they're going to be good. Gryft. You, you, like, indirectly called out, like, the analytics community who's like, oh, 12 personnel play action, it's good, it always works. Why don't teams run it more? It's because, like, it works because teams don't run it a lot. And I feel like, I agree. Like, play calling is the most overrated thing in the sport.

And it's, like, the one thing, like, fans kind of default to when their team is struggling. It's like, oh, the plays are terrible. The offensive coordinator is bad. Like, it's so hard to assess. to know what it's going on and why things are failing. Like, it's impossible to say that in the middle of a second, like the second quarter of a game on Sunday. Like it's impossible.

Like, my point is not that like play calling is not that like in-game play calling doesn't matter or is overrated. I actually think that like in-game play calling is probably underrated. It's these ideas of like, oh, wide zone is good. Yeah. Yeah, that's a... Grift. Like, when?

When is... With who? Like, what is it going to do for your specific team, with your specific set of challenges? And, like, there's probably not a better example of that than the idea that, like, if you import a defensive coordinator from the Fangio coaching tree, all of a sudden, your defense is going to be sound. So are you saying that?

Are you saying that the Patriots for any more play action wouldn't fix the offense? Wow. I was waiting for that one. Wow. You had that queued up. I'm hit. No, I still think it would help. Play action is like, play action doesn't count.

You're grifting. I'm calling it. You're grifting us right now. Play action, not a grift. Play action is not a grift. Okay. No, it actually is a grift. That's the concept.

It's a grift. That's why it works. No, a grift, like, it's a grift is not something that works. A grift is not like finding something that's relatively easy to do that's still beneficial. No, the grift is the fake run play. That's the grift. It's deceptive. What was the Jerry Rice tweet about RPO's?

Whatever, like the conservative trickery? What did he say? What did he say? What happened to lining up and just playing? Okay. I'm willing to play action is not a grift, but it is inherently dishonest and it is destroying the fabric of our communities.

How about that? Ben Johnson is a liar. Oh, wow. I'm seeing that, I actually don't think that I had added this to our rundown, but I'm seeing it there now. I'm seeing David Tepper on the list for Gryftor. No, that was me.

Where did this come from? He's a Gryfter. The Panthers owner is a Gryfter. When he first took over the team for Jerry Richardson, who was, by all accounts, terrible human being. When he took over, he talked about analytics

and how he studied the data and got everyone excited, like, oh, it's a new age. Jerry Richards and less a grifter than just like openly abhorrent. No, he's, yeah. He was open with it. But he got everyone excited.

We were like, oh, the Panthers are going to make decisions based on evidence. They're going to be smart going forward. And it turns out that's not really the case. And I think the problem is analytics, like the definition of analytics for one person is different for another person. Like some people might consider analytics like when you run the ball 20 times, you win X percentage of the time. And I think that was the case with Tapper, as evidenced by him hiring Matt Ruhle, who is one of the champions of that idea, that if you run the ball this amount of times, you win the game usually.

Like Matt Ruhl has said that before. And somehow he got interviewed by David. Tepper, and that was enough. They hired them, gave him $60 million, didn't interview anybody else after they interviewed Matt Ruhl. And I say this as a grift because he did the same exact thing with the soccer team that he owns, the MLS team in Charlotte, where they had initial success, the coach was doing well, and for some reason, David Tepper decided, this isn't good enough, we need a new coach,

and the team has been terrible since then. So this is a pattern. I grew up around Washington, D.C., my family, they were all command. Sanders fans. I know a bad owner when I see one. I grew up with Daniel Snyder. This is early Daniel Snyder. He's too, he meddles too much. I think he meddled in the first pick. I don't think Frank Reich wanted to take a five, nine quarterback with the first overall pick. I think he saw that S2 score that Bryce Young put out. He believes in the data. I'm putting scare quotes around that and wanted them to pick Bryce Young because of it. And it's not working out

so far. I can confirm that he did put scare quotes around it. So that's why I'm calling him a grifter. Bad decision after bad decision after bad decision. And I think he thinks he's smarter than he is. And I think he is too involved in football decisions. And it's set this franchise back at least a couple years. We'll see what happens in the next few years. I do think the Frank Reich hire was a good one.

But I don't know if Frank Reich is going to be the one making the important decisions around there. All right. Next one. Matt Canada's burner Twitter account. at Danny Football 77. I should say this has been debunked.

It's not Matt Canada's burner. Which I do think begs the question who framed Matt Canada. That's a good question. Can you pick it? If anybody missed this story,

there was a Twitter account at Danny Football 77. I don't know if it's still up. Who people found tweeting things like responding to

tweets about the Steelers that were critical of Matt Canada's offense with things like when the next guy doesn't magically turn into Patrick Mahomes he'll be cast away too and is Canada the one turning the ball over? And these are things that no rational human would

say. So the conclusion that was fairly easily jumped to was that this could be Matt Canada's burner account. And so somebody, you know, goes through the traditional motion of trying to log in so that you can see

what the recovery email address is. And it was like, you know, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, dot com. So it looked like it was set up to seem like it was Matt Canada at Steelers.com. People pretty quickly pointed out

that Steelers email addresses are not form. matted this way. I forget what the specifics were. It's like it ends in Steelers. NFL.com and something else. But to me, I do, I think there is a grift here. Because look, I think there are a fair few people in Pittsburgh right now

who might be trying to get Matt Canada out of there. And, you know, Kenny Pickett, I'm watching you. I don't think Kenny Pickett has it in him to devise the scheme, although it would be very on brand for Matt Canada to go through all these motions for very little payoff. I don't know what he was benefiting from. That's Matt Canada's approach to offense.

He's like motion all the time and then he run for two yards. It's, what do we ask you? Like, what's the grift? Is Matt Canada the grifter in this case? Is Kenny Pickett the grifter? It's clearly a grift, but I also support the cause. Anybody willing to Like

Steve Ed You are the The originator Of the Idea that the way To get someone Away from your football team Who's hurting them

Is to frame them for a crime I mean this isn't a crime But I think somebody in Pittsburgh is listening I guess the grift would be That you're faking this To try to get the guy fired Or at least publicly embarrassed

That's not nice I mean we shouldn't do that But. Okay. Yeah. So the question really is good grift or bad grift. I'm going to say good grift. I think it's a good grift.

It was a good day on the internet, so I'll take it. The next one of the list is Travis Kelsey slash Donna Kelsey. I'm going to let you handle this one. Huge grift. Did you see that the NFL responded to like a request for comment about if they've gone too far with the social media posts because Travis and Jason on their podcast were like, I think

it's been a little much that they're showing Taylor in the box and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The NFL released a very like stern, serious comment to ESPN, I believe, being like the NFL frequently changes its

social media bios. I don't know if it's a grift, but just stop. Just everybody stopped. Yeah, everybody's so much fun. and you're making it annoying. That's my thing. The people complaining that it's too much, they're the ones making it annoying.

Right. I'm not like, I'm not active. Talk about a grift. Is anyone being like performatively upset that their bastion of masculinity that their bastion of masculinity has been invaded by Taylor Swift? Like, I'm sorry. You're trolling for retweets there. That's the grift.

We're on to you, dov. But I am not like actively avoiding the Taylor Swift stuff. Like I'm not seeking it out either. And like I barely see any of it. Who is checking the NFL social medias for their, their header photo and their bio? Right. This hasn't hurt you. Is there someone that checks every week to make sure it's on the up and up?

like what do they want there like Bill Walsh going back and it was like oh footballist family good stuff good stuff right I don't know you're getting mad about Taylor Swift when they they put like

end racism on the back of the end zones while like they're like blackballing Colin Kaepernick from the NFL that's more upsetting than them cutting to Taylor Swift after the chief score a touchdown who cares I agree it is more upsetting All right.

Any more grifters? They're all grifters. It's a league full of grifters. I wish I was in it, so I could grift. I'm just jealous. All right. One more break, and then we'll come back, do a little bit of news, get out of here.

Okay, we're back. So last couple of days, there were a couple of meaningful activations off IR or the Pupplist, Jonathan Taylor, in Indianapolis, Cooper Cup in LA, 21-day window open for both of them to return to play.

It seems like Taylor, who's been a full participant in practice this week, could actually play as soon as this weekend, although that's not totally clear. Cup, who's coming off that hamstring, it seems like that's, it might just be that we have less information. It might just be that that's going to be

a bit of a longer one. But let's start with Taylor. To me, he's a pretty clear upgrade over Zach Moss, who's played okay, but just Jonathan Taylor's a lot more explosive, and that is something that I think could make a difference in that offense. What do you think he would be able to do for Anthony Richardson for the Colts offense as a whole if he gets back in there? I think it just fills a gap that they currently have, and I don't blame it on the

quarterback or even the play calling. I just blame it on the personnel. They have a wide receiver. Alex Pierce just isn't. He was supposed to be the field stretcher, and he's just not very good at making contested catches downfield. And it's kind of hard when you don't create separation

to play like that. But they're 31st in EPA on the ground right now, EPA per play. So Jonathan Taylor is definitely going to improve that. They're not going to be 31st going forward. And I think what he does is he just adds another chess piece,

like another deterrent for defenses who might think about not loading the box up against this cold front game that is built around the quarterback now. And now you have two people to worry about. You have Johnson Taylor and Anthony Richardson.

Anthony Richardson, they haven't taken off on the ground, but you could start to see them build that Philadelphia-style run game with him. They're doing a lot of cool stuff, especially in the Red Zone. So I think this run game could be like a top five unit going forward. And so far, it's been a bottom two unit through the first month. It's a little surprising that they've been that bad with how, because like Anthony Richardson himself has been good as a runner. he's responsible for, I think,

like a third of their total rushing yards. You would think that it wouldn't be so bad just with him, but it hasn't all come together. And I would imagine that Jonathan Taylor is a pretty easy missing piece to help that move towards the top of the league. The most surprising thing is their 11th in defensive EPA. So if they can get a run game,

and like Anthony Richardson is just fine for like a rookie quarterback. And like when they put the game on them at the end of that Rams game on Sunday, he answered the call. That was the best we've ever seen him in pure dropback situations. So I think he's capable of that. I don't think it's out of the question that this team can compete with the Jaguars who are very flawed right now

for that division. I mean, we saw, like, I think the game against the Jaguars was the first time when one of my takeaways and the Jaguars' offensive line has its own problems, certainly, which contributes

to that. But that game, one of the biggest takeaways for me was that the Colts defensive line had something. And I do think that they are a more well-rounded team than they seem like they could be. So I'm excited to see this

just because Anthony Richardson's been really fun to watch. It's a clear missing piece and adding some explosion to what they have going on offensively I think would matter a lot. And hopefully, obviously, we'll have to see.

how he looks. Also have to see if any of the trade request stuff, the compensation stuff, the relationship between the player and the team, if that's settled or if that's still an issue. But that's one that I'm, I think he will make a pretty immediate impact for them.

Cooper Cup, now joining forces with, with the receiver who's taken the league by Storm, Pook and Akua. the Cooper Cup, Pooka, skinny Matt Stafford offense. I think we talked about it a little bit on Sunday. I mean, what can't they do?

Yeah, that's the question. The interesting thing will be how they kind of mix these two receivers who do have somewhat similar skill sets, but I don't think that's going to be an issue. Like having too many guys that know how to run routes and get open, like clearly Nakuwa's production is going to go down. as a result. He's not a better player than Cooper Cup.

And he's going to get a lot of those targets on third down that Nakuu was getting. But I think this can work. And I think, like, we've seen when the Rams went to the Super Bowl and won the Super Bowl, they had two receivers that could get open. Like, we saw at the beginning of the year, they had Robert Woods

serving that role with Cooper Cup. Woods goes down. Stafford starts the struggle. Then they get Odell Beckham. Odell Beckham gets up to speed with the offense. And all of a sudden, he's that second guy, that protection for Cooper Cup. and the offense takes off in the playoffs and they win the Super Bowl, I think we're going to get a similar effect.

Now, the question is, like, what is the rest of the offense going to be? I think Matthew Stappard, as long as he's healthy, is going to be a top 10 type of quarterback. I think they're going to have, I would say top 10 receiving court with those two guys, especially if Nakua continues like this. The question is the offensive line, which has struggled in the losses, but has been good in the wins. And the Cincinnati loss was kind of came down to an injury.

No boom goes out and then everything falls apart. So I think if the office of line, can be good and the run game can be good. And they have this passing game that they had two years ago. Like, forget about the playoffs. The Rams might be able to win a game or two in the playoffs. I'm not counting them out. It comes down to Rahim Morris and the defense,

which I think is better than we all expect it to be because of that effort and because of the slogans that they're wearing on their shirts. I see a scenario where, like, the NFC West isn't as comfortable as we think it's going to be for the 49ers. And even the Seahawks. I still, like, San Francisco to me is, is a cut above anybody else in that. Yeah, of course. And I don't know in my heart of hearts if I think that there's a real challenger, even including Seattle, I thought that they would be

at the beginning of the year. I'm not quite so confident now. But I agree with you. I mean, on the most basic level, the Rams at the beginning of the season seemed like one of the teams we were most likely to be talking about heading into the trade deadline, which we will be soon as all right, who might they offload? Is it time to really be sellers? Let's tear this thing down. I think that's out the window. And

the funny thing is, I mean, it's the Rams we're talking about. If they think they have shot to go get better, now I think they're more likely to be buyers. What are they going to trade? They don't have any picks. They should just make up draft picks.

Like, just lie. Don't they have their first rounder next year for the first time in seven years. That's burning a hole in Les Needs pocket. You just know he's itching to get that thing out to trade it for something. Get this thing out of here. It's disgusting. You know how teams like shop players?

Like I'm sure Les Need is just like shopping that pick. Like nobody knows where the pick's going to be. He's just like anyone can have this. This old thing? Don't want it. Having too much fun hanging out on night one in the draft house. don't want to have to use it. Yeah, he doesn't want to have to work.

Like, that's a smart move on his part. He only has to work. It's honestly brilliant. Two out of the three nights. But I'm looking at the EPA rankings. Do you know the NFC West is the only division with four top ten offenses by EPA? No other division has four top 15 offenses.

And the NFC West is the only one with four top ten offenses. All of these divisions. Like, the NFC West is the only division that has held up anything resembling its bargain as being like a super division. A couple years ago it was supposed to be the AFC West. All of those teams are, except for the Chiefs, have not lived up to that. This year, the NFC East and the AFC East at the beginning of the season,

it was like, oh, the East. Who's going to win the East? Aaron Rogers is out. Aaron Rogers is like giving weird comments about how disappointed he is that the jets are leaking information about how disappointed he is and the jets leaking other information

the Patriots are bad the dolphins and the bills are good. The NFC East is really just the Cowboys. The Eagles are okay, but the Eagles aren't as good as they were. The NFC West has held up its end of the bargain. It's better than we thought it would be.

I don't really know what the point I'm making right now is. The AFC South has held up its end of the bargain because every team in the division is 500 and perfectly mediocre. Which is like, that's how I want my AFC South. That's how I want my AFC South. The NFC South is like, is being very NFC South too. Yeah. The South is always on brand, the Southern divisions.

I have to give them credit to that. Consistence. Not a grift. All right. This has been dual threat. I'm Nora Prentiotti. He's Stephen Ruiz. We will be back on Sunday, but in the meantime, Sheila Patti and Ben Solac will have you covered up next on this feed with extra point taken. Thank you, as always, to Stefan Anderson for production on this episode and to Arjuna Rao Paul

and Honn Evans for Additional Production Supervision.