The Ringer NFL Show - Wild-Card Weekend Reaction Part 1

Episode Date: January 10, 2021

Kevin Clark and Ryen Russillo provide their immediate reactions and analysis to the Buffalo Bills' first playoff win in 25 years (0:43), the Rams' upset win on the road against the Seahawks (11:24), and the Tampa Bay Bucs defeating the Washington Football Team (21:30). 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, joined for a special live playoff edition by Ryan Rissaule. Here it is. Welcome. It is the Ringer NFL show. We are live post game at the three wildcard games. So it's our super wildcard weekend breakdown. I am Ryan Rissillo with Kevin Clark.

This is part one. Part two will be tomorrow where Kevin and Nora are going to wrap up all of those games as well. So we have about 30 minutes or so. We're going to run through all these games. We just saw Washington come back against Tampa. but lose. Obviously, it wasn't a comeback to win, but try a comeback against them. We'll get to that game a little bit later, as you know, you just finish up watching that one. So, Kevin, I want to start with the Bills win against the Colts, the final 27-24. The Colts looked like they were the better

team for the first half, time of possession, they doubled them up. They had more yards, but everything really changed once their fourth down didn't work out, and the bills go 90-plus yards for a touchdown. The start of four straight scoring possessions for them, so we're left here looking at the Bills who we thought were the better team advancing, but also realizing the Colts have to be sick to their stomachs thinking they threw one away. The Colts blew this game, but oddly, oddly, there's some stuff to like about it from the bill's perspective. So I was spent this week wondering whether or not we were going to look back at the last

couple of weeks and maybe we were underrating the bills a little bit. Maybe they were going to be a buzzsaw. No one had scored as many points against number one defense as the Bills did last week against Miami. They had won double-digit games for the past six weeks. No, no team has done that in the last six years coming into the playoffs. And I was wondering, hey, we're they just going to wreck dudes? And the answer is no, they were not the perfect team. Indianapolis really probably, again, should have won this game. But when I think about how Josh Allen performed today and going 96 yards, just swing that right at the end of the half in one minute and a half at the end of the half, that was an amazing swing.

And they can score points quickly. And I think what's happening now and what they've approved is they can kind of do a low grade version of what the chiefs do, which is they can, A, pounce on mistakes, which obviously the chiefs have done for two years now, three years now, but they can also just make it so the only thing that matters is the kill shot. And you saw that with the digs play. You saw that with Josh Allen being, I think, four or five, for 129 yards on deep shots. And when you think about just how much he's improved from this round last year, where, I mean, everything that was good he undid with an unbelievably wild play that, you know, we'd never seen before.

And, you know, my thing on Allen is that if you freeze any play at any point, you have no idea how the play would end, right? Like, you just took a screen grab of an Allen play and said, how is this end? You would never know. But that used to be good and bad. Now it's only good. Like that touchdown, a three-yard touchdown, the first one of the game was just the least visually appealing, you know, Tibo jump pass I've ever seen. the pump fake on the corner blitz where he basically just ran around a blitz

and found a guy. I mean, what he does now is he plays mistake-free football, and he has these kill shots that overcome any negative plays that the bills have. Josh Allen's one of the best developmental products at the position we've ever seen. I'm serious because the first two years, I mean, look, we go back to Wyoming. Somebody was shown his high school stats the other day. You know, the consistent about Josh Allen,

he didn't complete enough passes. We're talking low 50s. Now, granted, we should have to be. probably look back and realize the rest of that Wyoming team. There were times where they had no chance against, I think they played Oregon, they played Iowa in some of those games. And I remember, like, he had awful stats against Iowa. And he was making plays that didn't work out where I was like, man, this is really

impressive. But the first two years in Buffalo, I really felt like at the end, especially with the playoff loss, even though he had that great Cowboys game, he had a close game against a wing or I felt like the reaction after the fact was, hey, Buffalo's right there. And I'm going to like, what are you guys watching? Like, this guy looks like he might be a backup in the league in a couple of years. And then we have the start to this season. that's MVP caliber.

And then they take it to another level. And the second half of the seat, this was the best scoring offense in the NFL from the midpoint on. And he has done two things that are incredible this year. His jump in completion percentage in two years is over 16%. It's the best in NFL history. And he was the number one pocket passer in the NFL

from a completion standpoint, which seems impossible. Because what do we know about the big athletic guys that actually trust themselves to make plays, especially when they're younger? They're not reading the defense. They're just not used to it. it's freaking him out, I'm going to get out there and go ahead and run.

I thought he had a few, like, Elway playoff runs today where it was he was making a point that I'm not going to start sliding on you guys. There's actually that great collision he with Darius Leonard to make a great tackle on him. But I can't believe that after, usually we don't see this. We don't see someone play like he did for two years and now be someone where I go, he's going to challenge you be a top five player at this position for the next decade. So you're right. They can screw up.

They're not even as good this year defensively as they were last year. They're up at the half and it doesn't even make any sense. But that drive, that 96-yard drive after the failed fourth down by the Colts was really just a sign of who he is. And then he had another 12th Street completion stretch in the second half. So I think you're right about that. That even if there are things about the bills that you don't like, we can get into some of those stats, he's that good. He can actually carry you. And that's what you need more than anything.

And I'd also say his efficiency in the red zone is unbelievable. No one is as efficient this year and mistake free in the red zone as Josh Allen. And I think that puts pressure on a team like the Colts. There's a reason, listen, analytically, all that stuff, the things I subscribe to, there were reasons you want to score a touchdown from the one or go for two or whatever. But the pressure he puts on defenses by scoring touchdowns, that cannot be understated. And I think coaches understand that part. You know, Graham Barfield had the stat earlier today that he's the first quarterback ever

to run for 50 yards, throw for 300, and complete 70% of a sense. passes in a playoff game. No one's ever done that before. And so I think we are seeing a special development. I agree with you. He's going to be in the conversation for top five quarterback. He's probably in it currently. But again, we had this discussion in the summer. And one of the things I said was just from a improvement curve standpoint, no one gets that much better from year two to year three, except Josh Allen. And I think that it's a humbling experience for all of us, for certainly me, and for most of the NFL, because guys in the NFL did not see this coming, and now they do. Okay, let's go back to that fourth down, because it was third and goal at the Buffalo one.

Yes. The Colts try to run it to the left. It gets blown up immediately. So we were talking about it. I mean, you want to try to set the edge. There was no edge. The edge was already gone. It was blown up.

They lose a couple yards, which then maybe factors into what they're trying to do on fourth down. At that point, and I have it here, when they went for it on fourth, if they got the touchdown or if they failed as they did, Buffalo is going to get the ball back with 146. I know everybody loves going forward and fourth down. I know everybody loves two-point conversions. If you spend any time on NFL social media, you understand these things. But my biggest issue with going in four and fourth down on that spot is that normally, okay, if I'm going for it here and I get stuffed, at least I know you're starting at the one or the two, in this case, the three-yard line. And I'm guaranteed to get, well, not guaranteed, but I'm very likely to get terrific field position after this, which is actually

the Coltside great field position. The bills didn't. And then the bills do the absurd 96-yard TD drive. So did you, because I did, I did an imagine, I make sure I do this. I'll say out loud to myself, do you like this? And I go, I don't, right now, I don't like this. And, you know, I don't have to tweet it out to have the receipts for it. I didn't like it at the time. It's not necessarily why they lost because Alan just turned into Superman out there.

But take us through, because you've written about this, the understanding of not only what the math is, but I think sometimes the math can be a little dismissive of game situation. Sure. And I think there's just a psychic toll of going into the half being up and just saying, okay, we've done something. Let's build on this. And obviously, you don't know. You know, as I said, the efficiency that Josh Allen plays with, you know he's going to do something. You didn't know he's going to go 96 yards. So let's not pretend like they saw this coming. But I think that sometimes we do a bad job of separating the decision to go for it with the actual play call. And I think we saw some of that today where I didn't necessarily mind going for it. In fact, I think they should go for,

I think teams should go for two all the time, not all the time, but you know, relatively speaking. I think that teams at fourth and goal should, should from the one should try to go for it as much as possible. But I think that, you know, getting blown up with the line, you know, if you know that might happen, don't do it. I know that sounds like Monday morning quarterback, but you got to know your team. I think that, you know, one of the, one of the fourth downs, Philip Rivers just kind of, you know, threw it in the back of the end. end zone fingertips catched got dropped. So I think that the idea and sort of the goal behind going forward on fourth down,

I don't hate it. I do hate some of the execution, some of the play calls. And I think that there's so many ways the Colts could have won this game. I mean, Muhammad had the fumble go between his legs. Obviously, the missed field goal earlier in the second half, ended up playing a huge role in it. But I don't think you can necessarily kill the Colts for going for it. but there's just some nuance within that

that maybe you're a little more concerned by. Yeah, it's not a kill. It's not like, oh, my, I can't believe what you're doing. I remember, and again, I'm not sure to be in a fear, because it's not like I have everybody's fourth down resume in front of me. But Luffy Smith always felt like with the Bears, he would go for it on fourth and goal at the one with 12 seconds left and a half. And you go, okay, but if this doesn't work,

the other team is taking a knee and you're not getting it punted to you and you're catching it at midfield. Like, why are you, just take the three. Take the three is so uncool now that I'm going to admit, I'm zagging at times going, hey, are you good in a short yard situation? Do you have a matchup that you like? Or do you have a tight in that's going to get off the line of scrimmage with a free release? Do you actually like the matchup that's in front of you? You know, so the obsession that I'm not saying everyone is arguing the every fourth down

attempt, but that's not really what this is. It's about Allen, but it's also about a defense that are you concerned with? Because this bill's defense, depending on the weighted numbers, it definitely finished stronger than the year averages are. But I almost get a sense from you, Kevin, that you don't even care. Like you're approaching Chief's territory here with Buffalo. I'm approaching it. I still think that the Chiefs are going to.

win the AFC. And I think that everything that the bills do from what I'm describing as far as erasing mistakes and putting pressure on defense and nothing mattering except the quarterback delivering the kill shot, I think the chief still do everything in that department a little bit better. I was a little bit concerned by the bill's defense today. You know, having Jack Doyle have 70 yards and eating him, eating him up over the middle of the field, it concerned me a little bit. I looked up the numbers. The bills have surrendered the second most yards to tight ends in the NFL this year and the eighth most fantasy points, which is a snapshot of the production going against Travis Kelsey. That might be a problem if they meet in the AFC championship game.

But yeah, Jonathan Taylor having a nice game. I think we probably saw that coming from how we viewed the second half of the season. But again, I think that you, I think an imperfect game was maybe a necessary step towards a longer playoff run here for Buffalo because they were, they're not the buzzsaw that I thought maybe they could be, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you learn. about another identity of this Bill's team today. Okay, the second game, L.A. goes into Seattle, wins 30 to 20. The score, it wasn't that close. This is a bad loss for Seattle.

Any way you want to look at it, a lot of factors. First off, though, Seattle ends a 10-game playoff streak of wins at home, so that's over. And considering that Wolford was in the backup, because Goff has this thumb injury, post-surgery, a really great note by Troy and Joe. that when they had talked to the coaching staff, they said, you know, golf will be out there throwing. A few of them will look pretty good. Then every third or fourth throw, you're like, what happened? So they clearly weren't comfortable with him physically.

He comes in because Wolfer gets hit on an Adams play where he ends up being out of the game in the second series. So the fact that Seattle is playing hurt golf, who still didn't have great numbers, and it's not even a knock on him, but that L.A.'s defense dominated this game, that Seattle started 0 of 8 on third down. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that we can get into here. But if you're saying on paper, hey, here's the matchup, and this is the quarterback situation that you're going to be facing. And yes, I realize it's not the 12th man, but you're still going to be home. And you don't even look like you have a chance in this game.

And then Donald is out in the third quarter where there's still going to be a few possessions left. This is the worst loss easily of the first day. Congratulations to the Ciox for being so bad on offense. So when Aaron Donald went out, I briefly thought there may have been an Aaron Donald Ewing theory. Just because of how inefficient they were. They were losing yardage. I mean, it was unbelievable. This is an organizational failure for Seattle.

Jalen Ramsey played amazing today. You look at the Next Gen stats, all that stuff. He is as good as a cornerback can be. They traded two first round picks for him. Jamel Adams was also a two first round picks guy for Seattle. Jamal Adams played really badly today. At one point, the Rams had 79 passing yards.

78 of them were surrendered when Jamal Adams was the nearest defender, according to Next Gen stats. Was he hurt, though? I mean, he was definitely... Yes. He has a torn. He has a torn labrum in his. He probably need surgery at some point.

And that got worse as the game, the game went on. He was starting out there. I think you could see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It took 13 minutes in, Kev, that's very harsh. You're usually not that harsh. Your standards are, you're nicer normally.

You're like, I don't get torn Abram, like it out there. No, no, no. I know. I'm just saying that there's, he's not been the player that they thought he was going to be all season. And we saw a little bit of it in the second half, where we thought that maybe there'd be some, there was some improvement, but it just never got there.

He never got fully healthy, but it's just, it's just sort of emblematic of the fact that he never, he never turned that corner. And so Russell Wilson completed less than half of his passes against, he's 11 or 27. That's like, who is that? Against a standard rush, according to ESPN. Flip Wilson,

44% of his passes. This was just really, this was just, I was thinking about it. It was one of those games, Ryan, where I kept thinking in the second half, well, they need to get the ball back and they can do this, this, this. And then at some point in the fourth quarter, I was like, they can get the ball back a million times. This isn't going to work.

I mean, obviously there was some backbreaking plays. The false start was a huge problem. Obviously, the fumbled punt was basically the end of things. But for me, I was just looking at this often saying, it doesn't matter how many times you get the ball back. This is just not happening for them. On defense, Cam Acres was setting rookie records. I think that it was the best playoff debut since Billy Cannon.

Yeah, Billy Cannon. Billy Can, a little Billy Cannon talk. So, you know, they had the screen interception, which never happens. I was thinking about just the shortest interceptions. I was thinking about Marcel Darius's shovel pass pick six against, against Texas in the championship game. But there aren't that many short pick sixes. Wow.

That wasn't good. That was, yeah. I always thought Marcel was going to be a little better as an NFL player. Didn't quite. Wasn't consistent enough. I know you came here for breakdown. of draft picks for 10 years ago. Okay, so Seattle, I don't know that this is a huge surprise. Look, 11 or 27 for Russell Wilson in a playoff game is surprising.

Hey, Russell Wilson has a 17 QBR after playoff game. What do we do now? Sometimes things happen and then it actually isn't a thing. And for me, this is not a thing. But the offense declining is a thing. Because if you look at different metrics, you know, there's some overall ones or Seattle finishes better, we actually realized the defense shored up a little because it was so terrible in the beginning of the year. But if you go with the expected points added number, which I really like, it kind of neutralizes everything. This Seattle defense was two completely, excuse me, the Seattle offense, two completely different teams. Weeks one through nine, Seattle finishes fourth in that category, weeks 10 through 17, 16.

But they go 12 and 4. They win six of their last seven. They're going to be at home. You're thinking, okay, this is going to be good. But the biggest issue, even though they had that deep shot to Metcalfe was that Russell Wilson was one of the best deep shot guys to somebody that was at the bottom of the pack. So this offense completely lost the ability to challenge people down the field. And if you're the Rams and you're getting there with four all day long, which is a huge part of this. We know this.

If you can get there with four, you have a massive advantage. And then you have Jaylen on the back end. So I look at a Rams team scoring 30. I still can't believe it. But we knew they were the number one defense coming in by a lot of different standards. Is it enough of a defense despite this ridiculous quarterback situation? because I don't know if golf is going to look better in a week where you actually think this can carry a team out of the NFC.

I think their defense gives them the ability to beat anybody. I don't think they can beat the Packers, but if you think about what that matchup is, that's Devante Adams against Jalen Rams on the outside, which just from a football dork standpoint, I'd love to see. But then, you know, you have Aaron Donald, as long as he's healthy, and that's a huge question mark at this point after what we saw today.

But if he's healthy, he can blow up plays up the middle of the field. that D-line is nasty. Darius Williams can do something on the other side there. I think that there's enough pieces to make it very, very close. I think that the quarterback, you just have to score points against Green Bay. And I don't know if they're going to be able to just, this is going to be a 30-point team all the time. And I understand the pick six and all that stuff.

But I don't think that's going to happen against Rogers. I like Seattle's in a bad place, man. I mean, like Tyler Lockett after the game was basically saying we were passing too much. The Let Russ Cook thing has now cycled to the point that now Tyler Lockett's being like, we need to run the ball, we need to pound the rock. Like this could be a weird offseason for them. And I don't think the Packers are in that kind of place where they're ready to fold. Exactly.

Seattle ran 57 plays today. 57 plays. And think about this. Like they're passing too much. They only threw it 27 times. And I mean, Carson had a decent, you know, he was. He was efficient in his 16 carries, but a lot of their yardage totals, if you look at it and say, oh, they ran for 136, they need to run the football a little bit more. Where they're down.

When you're down, it doesn't work. The pick six was an incredible read. And I don't know if it was because Metcalf was upset on the sideline, and then they come right back out. And Aikman made a great point. He goes, you know, that's one of those throws. All right, never mind, where you start to think, hey, I'm just going to get it to my guy. And you never expect that ball to be picked off. But he read the inside block perfectly Williams did.

jumps it, nobody's going to catch him. So I don't look at this as a play calling thing. I look at it as a 12 and 14 that had all these aspirations. Adams is always going to talk. You always feel like you have a chance with Wilson. But even when Donald went out, I thought, oh, okay, wait, are they actually going to run the football and get back into this and win it this way? And it didn't even matter in the depth with the Rams D line is a part of that too.

And then watching the Donald thing play out, you're like, okay, he's down, he's back up. Oh, he's gone. All right, he's back. I'm like, oh, he's gone again. And you're right. because if he's not there, then, you know, I don't know. I would pick him next week anyway, but with no Donald, there's no way. I mean, the fact that Cooper Cup and Aaron Donald have injury questions going to next week is so massive.

And this might be a, hey, feel good about yourself going in the offseason, Sean McVeigh. You're a really good coach. Everybody kind of forgot about you. Congratulations. It might be that kind of consolation prize and they might get just absolutely run out of Lambeau next week. I mean golf was 9 of 19 155 like 155 seems high and he had a throw I put it down here in the third quarter it was first 15 after a penalty and he dropped back clean pocket good release it was a throw over the middle and it was just out of his hand and it was wrong so I can't imagine I didn't know specifically I thought he'd look bad at the end of the regular season and some of that wasn't the injury then it was the injury but that throw alone just watching that one specific throw like if he's not healthier I mean I can't believe they're going to to pull this game out. Yeah, I mean, I don't, this, this might be Sean McVeigh's kind of magnum opus.

If, if he gives, even if he gives Green Bay a run, even if it's a one position game in the fourth quarter, we have to talk about this as one of his best coaching performances, because we saw that the amazing thing about McVeigh is how often it becomes obvious how good of a coach he was. He takes over for Jeff Fisher and he immediately improves Jared Gough from one of the worst rookie passers in history to one of the most efficient second. year guys ever. And now we're seeing Jared Kauf with a with a bum thumb beating Seattle, putting up 30 points, even though some of that was the defense. And now he goes and plays Aaron Rogers. And if they play this tough, I'm not going to have a big enough vocabulary to describe

how good of a coach and job it is. Yeah. And you're right, though, as you said at the beginning, Cam Acres, he has clearly taken hold of this running game here. 20 carries 131 and a touchdown. But you know what? Do not, do not forget, though, even though the McVeigh thing help with golf's development. Fisher put a lot of those players, a lot of those pieces in place eventually once they got to the Super Bowl. He literally moved the team. He literally put them in place by moving them in St. Louis. Did I ever tell you that story? We had Adam Shepter on and I go, hey, why is he getting another $7 million for one year? And he goes, Ryan, they're moving the team across the country. I was like, is he driving the Mayflower trucks? Like, I don't, I don't quite get that.

They're like, this is a challenging time. You're like, man, that pays good. All right, last game here. Tampa Bay and Washington The goat versus the kid I learned this today Very insightful stuff from earlier on Fox Radio But did you know that a newborn goat is called a kid

I don't think I knew that I didn't know that either today Who was the newborn goat That they were referring to? Joel Chase Young was the kid Oh Yeah what game were you still in the bills game No I don't know I don't know why they were today

I didn't know why Fox Chase Young wanted it. The kids say they want all that smoke. That's what he was saying. He wanted all that. He was going up against the goat. One of the many goats that we have. The goat names get turned around a lot.

That's what I'm confused. I've lost track of who the goat is. That's why I was asking. It used to just be Muhammad Ali and now there's just tears of goats all over the place. They're spawning. So. Grady is a goat inflation, I think, has been a problem over the last decade is what I'll say about that. Yeah.

We're thin. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So we've established that part of it. Okay, this game, I'm going to admit something here. In the beginning, Taylor Hineke's out there.

We know his story, Old Dominion. We actually had him on. I think he threw for like 700 yards in a game. Like, what's going on? I think Van Pelt was using him on the college video game. He's like, I just want another title with Heineke. I'm like, that's awesome, man. Old Dominion football is back?

The start of this game, we knew that Tampa and Bowls were going to send everybody. And that's exactly what was happening. It actually didn't look great, but I'm giving Dungee credit. Dunjee's like, I really like him. And I'm like, is he just saying this? Is he just being really positive? But Heineke actually gave him a shot.

I did leave the game in the third quarter, but Brady goes for 381. He didn't complete a lot of his passes, but he made the most of it. So even though there was a late threat there with Washington scoring 13 points in the fourth quarter, it was all Tampa, kind of, but I don't know that anybody's starting their show on Monday going,

Tampa's clearly the favorite now. That's not the vibe that anybody's getting from this game. So that was the funny thing to me from this takeaway. And there were a couple people who were tweeting, I mean, this game was boring or whatever. Tom Brady over the season has 1,233 deep passing yards. It's most he's ever had. Over the second half of the season, he's throwing deep.

I think he has the best deep grade in or highest air yards down the field in the NFL. He's throwing it really quickly, too, he's getting it out. That's one of the things PFF's been talking about the last couple weeks. He's playing exciting football, and it seems extremely boring and routine. And that's what's funny to me. Like I'm watching him and he's hitting whoever down the field, whether that's, Mike Evans had that over the top catch.

Yeah, Brate. How about Godwin? Godwin dropping four passes. Yeah. While both Torrico and Dunjure are like, yeah, look, it, it, we raised our eyebrows a bit when Brady goes, he's got the best hands of anyone I've ever played with. Drop.

It was unbelievable. I'm not saying that Brady was lying or that those guys were telling it. It was great insight. It was a good story. Drop. Anyway, they won. But he had, but what I'm saying is, I don't understand why everything he's doing statistically seems so interesting.

And when I watch it, I'm just like, oh, okay, they're fine. He has the best deep grade? In the last, it's from weeks 9 to 17, according to PFF, he has the highest air yards per attempt. And he's the third quickest to throw. This is from George over at PFF via Phil Perry. So he's throwing down the field and he's getting it done. most deep yardage he's ever had in his career. And listen, he struggled with it for large parts of the career.

I don't think he actually has the best deep grade. But he has some of the deep metrics say that he's going deep effectively, I guess you could say. And I think that there's something interesting. I heard on one of the midweek shows, I think it was Sam Monson. He said that there's always been a huge adjustment to Bruce Ariens' offense because they're throwing downfield and because of the pressure that gets put on there. And there's always usually a lot of turnovers. Andrew Luck had a ton of turnovers the first year he was in there.

I think that Tom Brady's actually adjusted better than most people to Brouss area in his offense. And I think there's something to be said for that. And I think that he's getting better every week, I think. And it's funny because I think the second Saints game threw me off the scent a little bit because I was ready to do the whole narrative of, oh, the bucks they've clicked, here we go. And they didn't at that point. It might at some point be clicking. It might in the next two weeks at some point.

But again, everything he does seems like it should be exciting from the statistical standpoint. And it just seems very routine to me. They should have, for me, this was strength on strength. I thought it was going to be a really good matchup for the protection scheme of Tampa Bay to go against that front seven. And I think they did a pretty good job for keeping Brady up right. He took some big hits, but it wasn't like he was under pressure all day. And the fact that the football team could compete without insane pressure on Brady is actually a little bit discouraging for Tampa Bay. I thought they were getting to him there a little bit.

But with Brady, even when you get there, I mean, the clinching throw in this game was the second and eight down the left sideline to Evans. It was an incredible throw. It's one of those stories you're like, oh, wait, that looked like good quarterbacks make that throw. And he was getting tackled as he was getting rid of the football. And he hits Evans, who ended up having a monster game,

even though we thought we were going to lose him to injury. He goes six for 119. Some of the other numbers here, Fournette, 93 yards on the ground, second most productive rushing game of the season for Fernette. that, which adds an entirely different element to them with no Jones. And then Kronkowski, actually, only one target was that throw to the back of the end zone where he didn't come down.

He caught it, but he didn't catch it in bounds. No argument on that one. That was the only target. Brate was much more of a part of the passing game here. But yeah, the overall numbers, you'd look at it and say, hey, was Brady great? Like, I think he had great throws in moments, but you're right. Like, we always were expecting Tampa to have this run. The primetime game theory is one of my favorites.

When you are terrible, as they have been multiple times in those big, spots. You're like, wait, I was supposed to like this team. And I think one of my favorite things that I came up with from the pro football focus guys is the variant stuff. It's like, okay, you might be a really good team, but what's the variance between your best defensive performance, your worst defensive performance? Tampa is 23rd variance on defense, which makes sense. Sometimes it just doesn't look like it's working. It looked like it was working in the first half. Then Heineke got settled, it got settled against the pressure. They started moving the football in this game, which isn't a great sign considering the Washington quarterback situation. But then on the other side,

the offensive variance for Tampa is, you know, it's just as bad. They're in the bottom third of the league in some of this stuff. They can be all over the place. So, you know, you could sit here and go, hey, when it's in the playoffs, it was on the road, we'll figure this out. You still have Brady and all this stuff. But I guess we probably are a little too difficult where we want these teams that are supposed Super Bowl contenders to look clean for 60 minutes.

That's just not what the sport is. Absolutely. And that's also from the NFC perspective, that's also why I like that. the Packers more than these other teams is because they have the fewest amount of questions. And I keep saying, as I just said, oh, the Bucks, no offseason activities, limited training camp, all of this stuff, no in-season practice, no bonding. It's going to take Brady a while. Well, there's no evidence to me that in two weeks Brady will have bonded with his receivers enough

and this team will have jailed enough to beat a Packers team that's had two years of this and had had their, you know, a very productive season last year with Matt Ruffler. But if there was any learning curve, it happened last year. I think Aaron Rogers beats this team whenever they happen to play. And I just think that there's, I don't think this is the year for Tampa. I think this was a bad year to try something new.

I think they can be one of the NFC's best teams, but I don't think they can be the NFC's best team. We're not being too negative about this, right? Playoff win. Because Washington came in, I mean, they were massive dogs in this, the Heineckee part of it. I just want to make sure.

I don't know. I feel like we're going off a little negative. Let me ask you a question. So it's funny because Marcus Spears said this and Chris Long backed him up. A mobile quarterback without a lot of tape, according to those guys, is one of the hardest things in football to defend.

You don't know what's going on. And so I think maybe, maybe there's something there where there's an excuse built in, especially in the playoffs. You're not, there's not a whole lot of first-time quarterbacks who are mobile playing in the playoffs, essentially getting, where there's just not a paper trail at all. We also saw Montez play a couple of plays,

which would have been another quarterback without much of a paper trail. And so I think that there's maybe some wiggle room there, But I think the only way I was coming out of this game saying, hey, here comes Tampa, is if this was an absolute efficient blowout and it just wasn't that. Yeah, I think that's all fair. I think it's all fair. With some of these teams, I think all of us that talk about football for a living,

we can sound a little critical, but a lot of times it's just based on the expectation. There's no expectation for Washington ever, and there's always an expectation for Tampa because we've seen the defense look great at times. You see the offense absolutely light up teams. I agree with you, even depending on where Brady grades, out, I think he's throwing the football as well as he has in years. That throw to Evans to the right corner in front of the pylon. That's a, that's a sick throw. Other guys get picked off on that throwing. He's 43 throwing it over there and seeing it and torquing his body and making that play.

I'll finish on this last question. Did Heineke make himself millions tonight as a backup? So this is kind of the Matt Flynn thing, right? So Matt Flynn plays week 17 with Aaron Rogers out in 211, signs a big money deal, relatively speaking, for one game sample size with the Seahawks, gets beat up by Russell Wilson,

becomes kind of a vibes guy for the next few years, has a great life. Believe he's out of the NFL kind of cycle now, but one time we talked, and I got the vibe that he enjoyed playing in the NFL

for the role he carved out. Anyway, yes, I believe he at least carved, I don't think he's going to get, you know, some starter position money or anything like that, I think Washington might bring him back at a slightly elevated salary. He is a free agent.

You know, you're probably looking at two, three, four million dollars, depending on how Washington views. If Washington sees the starter, that could go up. I mean, the template I always use for bad starting contracts is that Jacksonville gave Nick Foles all that money bidding against no one else. And someone said to the powers that be in Jacksonville, they said, why did you give Nick Foles all that money when you're bidding against yourself? And said, well, it's a respect thing.

He's the starting quarterback. and you got to pay him or else guys in the locker room won't respect him and say, excuse me, what? So if Washington thinks he can be the starter, then all bets are off for how much money he can make. But I don't think that there's, I don't think there's going to be a massive market for him. I think you're looking at, you know, $5 million and under, but a hell of a lot more than he was supposed to make. For those that want to know, this will be made into a podcast that's going to be live on the Ringer NFL show podcast feed. and then a reminder that this again was part one, part two, Kevin and Nora are going to go live when normally host the podcast.

They're going to go live right after that Cleveland, Pittsburgh game. So that's going to be coming out about 11 o'clock or so Eastern time, 8 o'clock out here on the West Coast. So that is the plan. We're going to be live on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. So for Kevin Clark, I am Ryan Rusill, and that's part one of our NFL Ringer show, Wild Card Host Game Live.