The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Wild-Card Weekend Recap With Chris Long | The Ryen Russillo Podcast

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

Russillo is joined by two-time Super Bowl champion Chris Long to discuss Round 1 of the NFL playoffs, including the Seahawks' win in Philadelphia and Carson Wentz's exiting the game with a head injury, another painful Saints playoff loss, Titans-Patriots, and Bills-Texans. They also discuss Kyle Long’s retirement, possible shifts in the Patriots organization, Mike McCarthy as the new Cowboys coach, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

playoff weekend phase one complete chris long ryan rusillo from the ringer the ryan rusillo podcast today's episode of the show on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by state farm just like basketball the game of life is unpredictable. Talk to a State Farm agent and get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected. What is unpredictable about maybe the Utah Jazz playing better without Mike Conley? Is that fair? I don't think it's fair, although the numbers would prove that out. Kyrie Irving's not coming back.

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Talk to a State Farm agent today. To be expected, Chris Long joins us here from Chalk Media. What do you guys have in the hopper this week? Oh man, we did a live watch yesterday so for anybody uh crossing over on the venn diagram between the ringer and our live watch thank you for watching uh we did the birds game yesterday and we'll do another one next week and i had a lot of fun with it it's pretty easy you were a content factory this weekend i mean small factory yeah just we had we had jeff fisher we had jeff fisher uh ahead of the titans game um and i talked to

him for about 45 minutes was really cool because he was my you know old coach and we still talk but i never interviewed him obviously and then we had brian westbrook as well going to the eagles game we'll get some more interviews like that this week. I'm not a big planner, so I don't know who it's going to be yet, but we'll do that and some live watches and two pods this week, so check us out. Did you – see, I had heard a rumor, even though you said you didn't interview Fisher,

that at the Combine you went stepbrother's approach and said, I'm going to interview you guys. Did I really? You didn't do that. I don't think so, but I also don't really remember the contents of the combine. You don't remember anything? Is it you cheated? I mean, I cheated.

I tried to put tissue paper in my glove to get a higher vertical, but they caught me. And then I remember Herm Edwards sitting in the bathroom during the entire interview which i was like i don't know if this guy likes me or is he just like uh he just likes me enough that he doesn't need to hear anything or is this like a mental tactic uh wait a minute he sat on the like did he sit on the toilet no i didn't sit in the toilet but the way it is in in in indy it's a it's a number of indoor hotel rooms in this giant convention center, or it was when I was there. And like, interestingly enough, some guys stay in like train cars. Yeah. Because in Indianapolis, you got to theme shit out, right? It's not enough to like just visit Indy and

there's nothing wrong with Indy. Indy is probably a lovely city, but you know, it's, they had to like train station theme this hotel and you could stay in one of the cars and all that stuff. And they had hotels inside, but you go in each room and you'd sit at like on the door side of the room and look towards the back of the room at a number of executives and coaches. And then there'd be like a projector and behind the projector and everything in the back right of the room. I remember this vividly. There's a door and, uh, and it's the door to the bathroom, the shitters around the corner, but the vanity you can see straight through, and Herm Edwards was in a chair

right in front of the vanity with the door open to the bathroom. I think there was ample space in the hotel room, so I wasn't sure what to make of that. I'm really glad, because I did feel like I needed a follow-up, but that would have really surprised me about Herm. If Herm were going to do some sort of Tom Cable,

I'm going to do the combine. Well, hey, whenever you're ready, coach. No, I'm ready now, like while he's on the toilet. Yeah, you know what? That's not a Herm thing. I don't think that's a Herm thing. Maybe Herm was busy doing something else, and they knew maybe I wouldn't follow them.

No, because they were pretty early. They had Glenn Dorsey right uh, right after Matt Ryan at four, I think. But, um, I just remember, I just remember the interview process. It was like, they were like, tell us why you're the best player in the country. You know what I'm like? I can't, I got, I, I'm the best player I can be, you know, like that sort of thing. I don't know if it's, I know there's a lot of psychological components to that. I don't know what they make of somebody who's not going to sell themselves as like the best thing since sliced bread. I'm going to do the best I can. It's really on you guys to make the pick, right? It's not on me to be any better than I've tried to be my entire life.

Yeah. So it went Jake Long, you two brothers, top of the pit, top of the draft. I don't know that it ever happened before you go second matt ryan third darren mcfadden fourth who you know that actually is like a scary bust and i loved mcfadden at arkansas i mean love now he wasn't like a total trent richardson bust but it ended up not being as good as i thought it was gonna be and then as you said dorsey i knew he went to the chiefs five but i was trying to figure out if this was the Jets earning Golston draft. Yeah, go with six. That's the Golston draft.

Then Derrick – no, Gerard Mayo was maybe seven. No, Cedric Ellis. That's when USC had this stretch of guys that didn't really do a ton. Yeah. And then, look, I love Derrick Harvey who went to Jacksonville. That didn't really work out. But he didn't do anything. Yeah, and then Keith Rivers. Surprise the hell really work out. But he didn't do anything. Yep. And then Keith Rivers.

Surprised the hell out of me. Yeah. Harvey not doing anything. Like that's what's nuts. It's like, I'll see some guys, edge guys. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like this guy's going to play.

And then sometimes you're right about it. Like Dante Fowler's another Florida Gator who I went like, are you kidding me with this dude? When I watched him on Saturday. Yeah. The three edge guys that year. The three edge guys that year like obviously i'm not gonna sell myself but the guys who statistically were the top three sack

getters of that class were calais me and cliff abril um cliff had to retire because his neck injury i think he could have kept going and calais has continued to uh to play well i think he was a pro bowler this year. His sack numbers were down. But yeah, that draft class in general was kind of down. You know, there wasn't a ton of like, like I was no slam dunk second pick. I mean, I think if you had to repick, I'm probably a middle of the first round guy.

And, you know, a lot of those guys that went in the top 10 made me feel a lot less pressure. You know what I'm saying? those guys that went in the top 10 made me feel a lot less pressure. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's actually a really interesting way of putting it. It's a weird – like I'm scrolling through it now because, I mean, even Glenn Dorsey, Glenn Dorsey was thought to be like one of the safest picks you could have.

He's going to play 10 years at a high level, you know, D tackle, but not just a – I don't want to start getting the gap assignments here, all this kind of stuff, but like traditional three, four D tackles, they didn't even make them anymore. Forget, you know, but again, this is, this is a while ago, but you always thought like with Glenn, you could line them up in different ways yet. He could still kind of anchor a D line. And I'm not saying he was terrible, but he just, he certainly wasn't this guy that was unbelievable. Um, and he bounced around a little bit and, you know, Vernon Goldston. i mean glenn

had a really long career yeah like you want to like right my thing i respect all like and this is the thing we do we make like we make being either you know there's a range of of how successful a pick is there's like hey that was a slam dunk or that was safe and that was good or that was bad and that was terrible and like guys are on Or that was bad and that was terrible. And, like, guys are on ranges. But at the end of the day, people get so mad at the players. Why don't you get mad at the people that picked them? You think any kid, like, it's their fault they played really good?

Like, you're going to get mad at Vernon Golston? I mean, unless there was a real effort issue there, and I don't know. No, that's on the Jets. Because I'll give McShay some love here. I'm not 100% sure I'm on your side of this, but I think it's a really interesting suggestion to it. Of course not. I remember McShay going, I can't believe, and he would talk to me off the air. He goes, this guy is not the dude he is not a top 10 pick like he has good film against jake long at michigan and it's it's nice and all he like made two plays on him he goes but if you watch him down to down like it is not there and then he said it when they took him and you know whatever i mean guys get stuff right guys get stuff wrong i know todd's got plenty

wrong too but that was one where he was like so adamant off the air he's like it's just one of those things where i know he's gonna go top 10 and i'm like just convinced he's never gonna be a guy um let's not waste too much time on this because we've already gone too far yeah memory lane hey by the way my brother i think he retired last night jake or did you my real actual brother did you actually see that we haven't even talked about it that's how hectic things have been i did a live stream so kyle retired this is official i think i think he retired and i just want to note that as translated by me because the tweet was kind of nebulous yeah it was like yeah i'm kind of stepping away but he he kind of seems like he he might it seems like a retirement and uh and i everybody's

congratulating him on retirement and he's retweeting the tweet so i think he's retiring i talked to him last night i was doing a live stream and i get a text from my buddy in the in the other room who works for chalk and he's like hey uh he sent me a screenshot of kyle's tweet he's like kyle long retires from the nfl I'm like, that's how you phrase that? Yeah, okay. I'm doing a live stream. My brother just decided to retire, which I had a feeling he might. This has been a long couple years. He's a little older than you're the guy who's been hurt lately. It's going to be a tough road uphill, uphill battle. And he's in Costa Rica right now. And, uh, I think he's pretty happy with his decision. I'm excited for him, man. Like I'm so proud of him. I know he doesn't listen to this thing. I, you know, my tweet last night, it's weird to tweet like, uh, uh, an emotional thing to somebody who could just text, but he wasn't answering his FaceTime. So I just said, I mean, my tweet was like, I could go on and on about how proud I am about him as a player, you know, the highs of his career,

uh, the way he, the way his style of play, how much fun I enjoyed watching him, but I, he's my brother and like, I I'm, I'm just proud of him anyway. So I love the dude, and it's weird to watch your little brother go to battle every Sunday and deal with injuries. I remember being in London and watching him getting carted off. I had this awesome day. I was on top of the world. We beat the Jags. Not that that's anything to get excited about, but I played well. We're at some steakhouse enjoying the dinner, and all of a sudden my mom starts crying, or she looks like she's about to cry.

And my brother gets carted off. And anybody who's got, and it's any parent watching their kids or any brother who's got a brother in the NFL, it's a weird dynamic. It's one thing to go out there and put yourself in those car accidents, but to watch a family member do it, I don't think I'm ready to be a parent. And I'm really proud of Kyle, the way he got off the mat the last couple years love him congratulations on a great career uh he's a hell of a player I mean a lot of people would love to have the career he just had do you regret having your own two kids based on what you just said then oh no they're just gonna play a sport where it's not that

fucking tense to watch I mean I mean like watching your brother, everybody else sees this six foot, seven, 330 pound kid. I see a toddler. Like when I, when I, when he came to St. Louis and we play each other for the first time, you know, he's very competitive and every little brother wants to compete with their older brother. And this was his opportunity to beat the Rams. And he's tired of hearing about me and I don't blame him and you know he's got a short fuse and we get in this there's this big brawl and i'm not fighting with my brother but him and my best friend on the team william hayes are getting into it he's dragging william hayes down the field you know like whaling dragging his uh his stuffed animals down the hall and i'm like oh god he's gonna he's gonna kill my friend and he's gonna get ejected and there's 30 people here

and they're i'm gonna be stuck at dinner because his ass is gonna get back on a plane to chicago He's going to kill my friend, and he's going to get ejected, and there's 30 people here. And I'm going to be stuck at dinner because his ass is going to get back on a plane to Chicago. And selfishly, this is as much about the dinner as it is him not getting a fine. So I roll over there, and I'm trying to pull his big ass out of that pile, and he's got me by the arm, and I ripped his jersey. He's so immovable, right? The jersey's moving. He's not moving. And, uh, and I just remember that that was like one of those situations where I'm seeing my little brother, I'm not seeing like another pro athlete or even my brother competing. Like I'm seeing the kid that I grew up with. And even in retirement, he's a, he's a man. He,

he said in his tweet, he became a man in Chicago. I think Chicago is going to be a special part of his life the rest of his life. I think that's why it's so valuable to plant your roots somewhere, and he's doing that. But I see a kid retiring, and that's what's cool. That's also what's scary as shit about watching your brother play football and get carted off and deal with the injuries and stuff. I am relieved that it's over for both of us yeah that's pretty that's pretty funny that's that's funny the the

relief there okay let's get to the games because i actually think this is going to be you at your most heated um because i think all the games that we can get to minnesota going in and being new orleans is an incredible story buffalo and hou Houston feels like it was a week ago. And then, of course, you have Tennessee, as you called it, going into New England and beating the Pats. But I want to start with the game that was the worst of the four. I actually fell asleep for about five minutes during Seattle-Philadelphia. More public money on Seattle than I think 20 years of playoff games,

and it ended up being right. Philadelphia, with all of their injuries going into this, and then Jadavia and Clowney, where I don't know how you could describe it as anything but a dirty hit because I really think these guys, especially a guy like Clowney, like whenever Indomitian Sioux would get into all his bullshit and he'd be like, oh, well, he doesn't know what he's doing. He's one of the best athletes out there.

He knows what he's doing with his legs every time. And when Wentz is going down, you can say he's a runner, so it's a different set of circumstances. When you go down to kind of spear a guy and you hit him in the back of the helmet, then his helmet hits the ground, I just think it's a dirty play. I'm not saying Clowney's a dirty player like Sue's a dirty player. People make dirty plays sometimes. Right, right.

I'm not excusing it. And there's a difference between sitting here and spending the entire segment railing on Clowney. Listen. i'm not excusing it and there's a difference between like sitting here and spending the entire segment railing on clowny listen i'm not i'm gonna hold i'm gonna hold his athleticism against him here exactly because he is wildly athletic to fall without your arms stretched out to brace yourself on the ground leading with your head and to accurately nail a dude in the back of the head he i don't know if it's a lapse of judgment or or it was malicious uh i understand it's a playoff game you are out there and all bets are off and i played in some really heated ones i was talking to a seattle fan the other day who was like that wasn't a dirty hit that was just

a football play blah blah blah blah i'm like well you would know you would know how hard it is right go seahawks 424 at twitter.com yeah i mean that's that's to me is like the biggest waste of time you could have going no i know i'm gonna argue with a seahawks fan who i don't know about no but he wasn't being he wasn't being he wasn't being a dick but but it is really difficult to to to have that athletic action and be very accurate with what you're trying to do. And we called it burping. That was like you land on somebody, you're burping them. And I've done that before. I never led with my helmet like that.

And I've done things where they were borderline dirty. I'll admit that. When you're out there in the heat of the moment, almost anything goes. But we talk about helmet-to-helmet stuff. We talk about player safety. Clowney made a mistake. JP, Jason Peters, talked about it after the game. He said that, you know, when they talked the next play,

he was like, it was a bang-bang play, my bad, like, whatever. Whatever. You want to believe that? You don't. Whatever. The issue to me is the dudes who should know better with blue check marks or girls or people covering the NFL who profit off our game or played the game and sit there making light of head injuries or blaming a head injury on somebody

who has an injury history, which I'll concede. Carson has an injury history, but a concussion in that situation has nothing to do with an injury history. And if you can't see that, I don't think you're very bright. And I learned that a lot of people online that I might follow are not very bright. weeks because I just look at this and Seattle gets the win here. You know, I actually leave that game thinking less of Seattle, a Seattle team that had all weird trends this year where you go, OK, they're trailing all these games. They were behind in like 11 to 16. They had a halftime lead all season long, like five times. That doesn't make any sense. And then they go into the link.

And granted, as you've said, anything can happen in the link. And as much as we both love Josh McCown and love the fact that he gets another chance to go back out there, you just know it's really not much of a threat. And it's a Seahawks team that has only three guys that are left from that championship run. It's Bobby, it's KJ, and it's obviously Russell Wilson. And Wilson and the Metcalf thing, Metcalf has a huge day, the third and ten, the one-on-one. And so all of those things, good for Seattle. I may think less of them as the football team. So this is really as much about the game as your disappointment. third and 10, the one-on-one. And so like all of those things like good for Seattle, I think may

think less of them as the football team. So this is really as much about the game as your disappointment. So like, I know Justina Anderson, Torrey Holt, Danny Cannell, Brandon Stokely, Deion Sanders basically blamed him as well. Like people seeming to think that Deion Sanders does his, I don't think Deion Sanders does his homework, and I respect him greatly as a player, but when you get up there, I don't even think he thought that through. I mean, like, and I'm sure Deion, if he heard this, he'd be like, well, you were never me on the field, like, because that's the typical thing. But I don't need to be a fucking Hall of Famer to realize that's a shitty take.

And, you know, Torrey Holt, who I respect greatly, I think he deleted the tweet pretty quickly after because in real time, and I was doing the live stream when I saw Carson walking off the field I didn't know he got dinged on that play so I think in real time it is plausible that you were just like hey Carson's hurt again but as soon as you know it's a head injury and then the context of how the head injury occurred and I think that's why Torrey deleted the tweet and Torrey's a good dude man but Josina Anderson had plenty of time. And Josina Anderson, I know what I know about Josina Anderson, okay? Let's just leave it at that.

And, you know, she wants to backpedal on that thing. I tweeted her. I just said, listen, guys should know what time it is when you come in the locker room. Because if you're going to profit off the game and we give you access to our space and we're out there getting

hit in the head and risking our livelihood for this game, that's out of bounds to me. And then Danny Cannell. Danny Cannell has a lot of shitty takes. And I said this to him last night. We've respectfully disagreed before, me and him, but this is not a respectful disagreement. You either get it or you don't. You played football. I don't care if you believe in concussions or you don't, but a guy's injury history of more baseline mechanical injury, I know that a concussion is technically a mechanical injury, but like broken ribs, pulled hamstring, guys with soft tissue injuries, ankles, joints. It's different than getting drilled in the back of the head by a 280-pound guy. And I don't care if it's subjective

as hell, if he gave himself up or not. His knee is down. His face is down. He got hit in the head by a 280-pound missile. It's going to happen to you too. So as tough as any of you guys think you are, your ass is probably getting carted off after that play. And so it's not the time to do it. And this is the thing that drives me crazy. Oh, NFL players, we're a brotherhood. No, we're not. No, we're not. We do whatever we have to do to get by. And that's what I see when guys get in the media. They do whatever they have to do to get by. And I'm not going to, it might be Carson, but I would have done it for Dak. I promise you.

And you know me. Absolutely. I didn't bet... There's no... There's zero doubt in my mind that this is not about your Carson defense through the season. Yeah. I mean, it's not football. It's not a football defense.

Right. This is a principal defense. And my thing is, if we're going to talk all this shit about player safety or benefits or this this that and the third then don't blame a guy for getting a concussion even if he has a very valid injury history after he gets drilled in the back of the head i just i don't get it and uh even andrew hawkins sent me like a study on oh well this it loosely correlates because you know it says in the study that guys that put themselves in positions to get

concussed are more likely in sports in general. It's not a football study are more likely to get concussions. Well, I don't, you think, but question number one is do you think the play was dirty? And question number two, and your study is predicated upon the answer to question number one. And if you don't think the first play was out of bounds and I'm not saying clowny's a bad guy i can't even have the conversation with you yeah see i i think i think it's really important to kind of separate all the things everybody

thinks it was a it was a bad hit i most people think it's a bad hit no not everybody well all right um you're right i should phrase it differently people with a brain you know like i don't understand how you could not realize that like he he was going in there to do some extra shit and he did it okay i've done it before i've done extra shit so i'm not throwing a stone here and i'm not right and i'm also not an amateur neurologist in my spare time on the weekends where you know i was a guy in the media complaining i'm just lumping a bunch of people here and again like whenever i had a colleague that would say i feel complicit in watching this violence and you're like what and then yes and then you're mad there isn't a flag but then you're mad that there's a flag on something else it's like all right man calls are

going to get missed okay calls are going to get missed i accept that i accept that that's part of saturday sunday i'm not sure that there's this amazing automated version of officiating this game that's just foolproof compared to what we've seen right now I just think actually people kind of pile on and that's that's the world that we live in right now but even if I didn't like Carson first of all if you're going to say he can't complete a full season after he just completed a full season like Cannell did it's the way it's the weirdest thing you just killed yourself um it's a bit like if I don't like a quarterback like I'm not a big Kirk Cousins fan okay so we're gonna get ready for this one right but if Kirk Cousins if Kirk Cousins lost a breeze say in a in a shootout where he threw for 400 yards you know a lot of guys would do the thing that they're doing Carson

now like if you don't like Carson somehow you're putting this on him to strengthen your position, which just seems ridiculous to me. But like, again, if Cousins lost in some shootout, Breeze had the football last, and I'd be like, oh, see, Cousins sucks again. When you're like, no, no, he did not. 41-37, yeah. He did not suck in this one,

but you're using the L to fortify your argument, but it's actually like that's not even pressure treated man that's rotted post work yeah it is rotted post work and you would know bro because you used to do that shit in martha's vineyard and i respect that about you and i used to do masonry so there's a lot of construction uh knowledge in here a matter of fact i just moved into a neighborhood that i did a pool on 20 years ago. Nice. Yeah, so it's a little nostalgic for me.

But yeah, I think in general, I'm just getting tired of acting like when I see a blue checkmark, and I think we all do it. We're like, man, I don't really feel like doing this right now on Twitter. Like, I don't feel like doing it. I don't give a fuck anymore. I really don't. Is that what we decided? Cause I look, I think McAfee asking for boogers job on Twitter was bullshit and he did it. Yeah. But, and so I did sort of an innocuous, just awesome. Cause I just, it's, I don't care what anybody says is listening to this and trust me, plenty of you out there

think it's cool that he did it. I don't know, Pat. He's really successful. Good for him. But that's an absolute bullshit move. And his defense of it proves that it was bullshit. So maybe this is what we're going to do in 2020. Just roll. 2020, just be more honest about just. Yeah, because you're right. Look, Chris, seriously, there are moments where I go,

am I the jerk that goes, hey, what are you doing? Am I the jerk? Cause I normally wouldn't do it. And I think you're right. It's kind of like this blue check, but like, we'll talk, we'll talk away from it amongst our group of friends being like, I can't believe this guy's doing this or what the hell is she doing or what? And like, nobody ever wants to call anybody out. So people that keep doing stuff, you know, there's, there's really no checks and balances. You also don't want to be the dude all week going on social media yeah i don't want everybody in check the problem is my resolutions were like to argue less online but now that i saw some of those takes yesterday i just felt very

compelled as a player and i always get i did this thing with the kawaii thing and the injury and it's not the same situation but i get irritated when people that are in the arena are getting picked apart by people online or in the stadium cheering an injury or making fun of a guy for being made of glass because his fucking brain hit his skull when he got piledrove in the back of the head by a giant dude. Like, just think it through and don't clout chase. I'm not accusing everybody of clout chasing. There's different reasons you do it. And I'm sure some people are sitting here listening like, well, I'm going to start critiquing Chris on his bullshit. Good. I tweet a lot of bad tweets. I'm not good. I'm no better than you. But what I am better at is I'm not going to turn on players on that. I'm not, I will never as a member of the media. And you can tell me if I am, I'm not going to make

light of people's injuries. I'm like, especially a head injury. You want to talk about some other injuries, like whatever, but that's the thing is like, we're trying to get that out of the game. And we also act up in arms and like victims all the time as players and then we sit on twitter to cloud chase and we talk shit about a guy because he had a concussion so anyways on the game real quick because it was a terrible game and by the way for people that think i'm some philly homer here are the bets i had yesterday because that's your wallet is is is follow the money i had i had the under and i had Philly in a teaser with the under,

plus eight and a half. I bought the half point just in case. So I won the bet. But it's not like I dumped a bunch of money on Philly. I really wanted to see them win. We all knew what time it was with this team. All that matters with Philly is that that city respects this team.

Every guy on that team can walk out of that stadium last night and you saw Ertz and McCown hugging and crying and it was very emotional. Those guys gave a fuck the entire season. And listen, nobody, they don't deserve a medal, but I'm going to give them 30 seconds on this show. Like, they probably wouldn't have gone

to San Francisco and won. Even with Carson, it would have been tough. But what they've done this year, even if you hate Carson, you hate the Eagles, if you don't think Carson's a top 10 quarterback, I don't care. We could argue that. But you can't argue the heart of this team. And that's what it's about in Philly is respect, at least in my two years there. And this team will be respected. Too many third and long conversions, all that stuff. But it was going to be hard to win with Josh. And they blitzed him. They blitzed Russ on that last third and long.

You remember that? The first game, they blitzed him like 60% of the time. They could have lost by three touchdowns the first game if they connected on those passes that they missed. So I don't think you look at the 17-9 game the first time and look at it this way. Two completely different games, same score. Yeah, and you're watching McCown on that fourth down.

You're like, you've got to get rid of it. You've got to get rid of it. And I'd have to imagine at that point it's hey do you want to be on ice all season long okay now go in there in a playoff game you know i don't tough you've got it but you got to get the ball out in that spot and i still think philadelphia did a good job because there's all sorts of clock management stuff all weekend long um but i i kind of understood like you could you could kind of see peterson's whole plan like okay this is what we're doing and this is what we're hoping to doing and if they stop that metcalf 40 yarder they're getting the ball back again and metcalf just but it's the one play

and russ always burns and that's what i love about russ oh my god because you know i think there are other good quarterbacks that would still go all right you know we have to punt here we're fine I think there are other good quarterbacks that would still go, all right, you know, we have to punt here. We're fine. Nope. I'm going for the jugular. For the guy that gives those post-game interviews that everybody hates.

The fact that those two guys are the same guys. And so branded. But he will kill you. He will go for the jugular. Yeah. And he is, I mean, that's why he's even a guy that I played against for years and couldn't stand playing against him. I always respected and loved his game because he is literally fearless. And yeah, the Hawks are like 5-0 or 6-0 now against the Eagles in Carroll's tenure. And Russ seems to make a big throw every

time. I remember two years ago, the Super Bowl year, we were up there in Seattle in a big game, potentially. Luckily, we got the Rams game next week week we were in a situation where we showed pressure called a timeout it's a big third down um and then ran the like ran pressure again out of the timeout and he killed us so like my thing is like don't pressure russ in a big city i just he's and he's one of the most blitz guys in the league when they played tampa this year tampa blitzed like some record amount and it just doesn't work. You'll get them. Like his sack numbers are actually high or higher than you would think. Although, you know, if I want to be in a big moment, no, no, in a big moment, like I've, I've said this now for a while. And you know, this is where I think I deserve a ton of credit because I cannot stand the interview, Russell Wilson Wilson and I've argued for him to be MVP

I think twice um you know I was going through some of the old videos last night because I got caught in a wormhole of it and it was funny because he was like you know I'm not really much to this team when he was younger he's like I'm not really much of this team I just there's 10 other guys out there that are better than me I'm just trying to you know give everybody a chance and you're like so why are you asking for so much money then like you know well you know there's nothing wrong with not saying that out loud there's plenty of things i wouldn't say out loud that i would negotiate hard for honestly though i like their chances up in green bay as a little aside because we all know go ahead no i just wanted to double check and make sure yeah he was tied with ryan this year and uh murray for

most sack like he gets sacked a lot and that's something that you've talked about when you played I just wanted to double check and make sure. Yeah, he was tied with Ryan this year and Murray for most sacks. Like, he gets sacked a lot. And that's something that you've talked about when you played against him. It's like, look, we're going to get our chances against him. And then there's even, you know, criticisms. Is it the old line or is it that Russ keeps playing? Whatever it is, whatever the net negative is of his sack yards losses and sack totals over the seasons, the positives far outweigh it. The positive outweighs it.

Because you just know on that big third down, he's going to figure something out. But I think a really good team that has a chance of winning their next one, and who knows, maybe it's just the depth of this NFC and how good we all thought it was going into it. I like them less after that win. I do.

I like them less. I like them less, but they're playing the right team. They are. The other team, nobody likes. Hey, listen, I love A-Rod. Yes, A-Rod. The football A-Rod. People get bothered by that.

But I don't love the Packers. And I'm just telling you, these teams were made for each other this weekend. They're two teams that the Seahawks more out in the open are not as good as we thought they were. The Packers, just watch out. The line was like six or something. I'm all on it. All right, let's get to the real game,

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for 20% off your first box. Okay, let's do the game that probably should have been the lead of this just because it was the most exciting. It gets to the Kirk Cousins-Drew Brees thing, fact the Vikings are eight, seven and a half point dogs in this one, but they go into New Orleans, they win in overtime. And this is about the Kirk Cousins part of this. This is about what happened to Drew Brees. I think it has really more to do with Minnesota's defense, which statistically was good in some categories, not great on third down.

And they were awesome on third down in this one. And if you really look at the total performance, the first three points the Saints get are off the turnover. They get that touchdown at Taysom Hill. And then the late field goal where Minnesota felt like they wanted, you know, obviously they didn't want New Orleans to tie it, but it just felt a little too easy where really there was about one good Breeze drive this whole time where you know remember the arguments for rest hey Breeze is going to be ready to go because he's missed a bunch of time he's going to be healthier you know last year he fell off well big reason he fell off last year is because he was off the charts like the first 11 games like historic levels so it wasn't that he was actually bad after the fact and then you have a classic Saints thing as much as I love Louisiana and I actually think more Saints fans this isn't as bad as the Rams

thing this isn't as bad as some of the other things that have happened the offensive pass interference I have no problem with that not being called on Kyle Rudolph whatsoever but I think this is really the floor for you on your pro cousins defense because I think something's been going on in the way we evaluate quarterbacks and happen it happened in one of the other games too. Well, again, I can't take all the credit on this Cousins thing because I thought the Saints would win that game yesterday. If there's anybody I liked in the NFC,

it was the Saints, so I was wrong about that. Now, I have been on the Cousins thing. I do think this was the year if they got healthy towards the end. I said this at the beginning of the year. If Dalvin Cook's healthy and that offensive line can do enough and Thielen's healthy now, forget what you know about Kirk Cousins, man. I was trying to think of a metaphor and it might not be the best. There were some that I don't think play as well because they're more inappropriate, but a guy that you make fun of because he never has a car and one day he just rolls up

with a Ferrari. Like, that's him this morning. Like, that was the Ferrari of big wins. I know it wasn't just wildcard weekend, but it is super hard to win down there.

And he made some big throws. Now, granted, the way their thing's set up, they have to have a run game. They have to have play action getting going. But that 43-yard throw to Thielen was obviously huge. The fade was underrated good with people in his face.

I mean, this guy has played his way into being, I think if you don't tell me he's a top-10 quarterback right now, I think you're just sticking to an old take. Yeah, I guess I am then because I wouldn't put him in top. The big thing about some of the big throws is the pressure that he was facing. He got cleaned out on the big throw to Thielen. Was it the second one or was it the first one? I don't remember.

But, Rye, was he a top 10 quarterback this year? That's all I'm talking about. I'm not talking historically. His stats were awesome this year. They really were because I went through it all again this morning. And, I mean, look, I'll pull them up because I wrote them all down in my notes here. But the raw stuff of what you'd want, it was really impressive. I mean, he was fourth in QB rating, which can be a little weird.

But he was fourth in completion percentage, you know, almost like 70%, not like 66. He was 26-6 on his touchdown pick split. But then I looked at some of the next-gen stuff, and then it's like next-gen, you can go in there and find whatever you want. So I'm admitting it ahead of time. Yeah, you can do what you want. Right. And we've all done it.

He's 24th in intended air yards, which is like air throws in the air. So you're like, wait a minute, are you dinking this whole time? But then his yards per attempt is higher. He's the bottom third, like average yards of sticks. So there's like a differential you can look to there and be like, how many times, not in third down, but every throw, are you throwing behind or ahead of the sticks? He's the sixth least aggressive quarterback on coverage throws.

But then it's like, well, wait a minute, if our system allows more open throws. He had a year this year okay and just a side note you just said did you just tell me i was right and in a bunch of stats yeah no because i'm i'm admitting like i'm admitting that when i watch him and i think he even had moments yesterday where i'm going oh come on you know and i thought maybe if new orleans had gotten up on that last drive, I go, what's Cousins going to look like in this spot down 24, 20 against these guys. And, um, like I still have a hard time getting past the, he was Owen 15 against any team 700 or above. So 70% winning percentage, he was seven and 20 against teams over 500, uh, last year, you know, whether it was the Packers game in week 16, where I didn't say a damn thing about it. Cause I just let it go. Uh, or last year, whether it was the Packers game in week 16, where I didn't say a damn thing about

it because I just let it go, or last year to close the season where he lost three of five, where they scored in those three losses 10, seven, and 10 points. He had that bad Seattle game. And then it turns into this thing. This is what my whole point is, and it happened with Josh Allen, but we're treating this quarterback evaluation like it's being a born-again Christian. But we're treating this quarterback evaluation like it's being a born-again Christian. Okay? Like, you can be full-on crackhead, just, like, can't get enough of the ladies of the night. And then you go, hey, found Jesus.

None of that stuff matters. And that's what I would resist on the Cousins thing, where if you're pro-Cousins, you're like, oh, we're all you guys. You're like, well, we're looking at all the stuff over the course of his career that has been a general disappointment but the fact is that who cares how good the stats were he won a game that i didn't think he was going to win either but what if he loses the next one of the niners it doesn't play well does that mean everybody has to delete their tweets like that's my point about how this happens with all of these guys but you're you're but i think you're overthinking it i agree with you on the thing we talked about this like we overreact to quarterback performances but it's not like he has a small sample size this year. He's played well this year. So if we're talking about this year, he's played well. And that's the whole

point. Like, you know, it's nobody's sitting here calling Tom Brady a top 10 quarterback right now, because that would be going back into history and pulling out things that we all believe to be perpetually true. Well, perpetually, Kirk Cousins was underwhelming most of his career, and this year he's answered a lot of questions. I'm not saying he's answered them all. He's got to go win more games. But all I've asserted is that he's at least a top-half quarterback. And right now, this year, with the numbers

and now this big win solidifying it, he is a top-ten quarterback. That is a really hard place to go win on the road and if you look at it this year he had he the eagles were healthy that he beat him 38 20 um you know he he hung in there in kansas city listen lost 26 23 i think matt moore was the quarterback that wasn't that wasn't great uh no the packers game was terrible you know the packers game was terrible but but who's not playing in that game um thielen wasn't in that game right and Cook yeah yeah so like your two best offensive players and the O-line is a band-aid that's that's predicated and it has to stay on with the run game I mean that's so if you yeah that's a one I will he does have the most time and I looked at

this too he he statistically had the most time of any quarterback to throw this year. So it didn't look like it. Are you next? Are you next gen statting me? There's also like some of his route concepts are longer developing. Is that including play action pass? I mean, I don't know. I haven't studied the stats the way you've studied the stats.

I'm just telling you that it feels like you've conceded it, but you're still arguing the old thing, which is that, yeah, he's kind of been erratic and kind of shitty at times to this point in his career. But if everything's right there, and I would never argue that he's A1 there, Dalvin Cook is A1. You talk about non-quarterback MVPs, he's at the top of that list. But you had the Seahawks game that he lost 37-30 in Seattle. That's his fault. At some point, the defense has to play, and they did yesterday. They were awesome yesterday. They were awesome. Right. I just wouldn't put him top 10. I think there's 10 guys I would take ahead of him. And the Tom thing, I would still trust Tom in a big playoff spot more so than I would Cousins.

But right now, I don't think that that's some massive leap. But one guy's still playing and the other isn't. So I'm conceding that he's been better this year. No, I know, but one guy just went on. I'm not saying he's better or worse than Tom. I know. But you brought Tom into it, and you know I love Tom. Tom's my goat the whole nine.

But just like with Kirk, the surroundings matter. The surroundings matter to Tom. Tom's my goat, the whole nine, but just like with Kirk, the surroundings matter. The surroundings matter to Tom. Tom's not the old Tom, but bottom third, past defense team, and they could only muster 13 points. Well, New England, and we'll get to this later, they could draft one or two guys offensively here and be right back in it.

But it matters who's on the field. Just like Kirk looked awful week 17, and if the goat doesn't look great because of context, imagine what it does to Kirk cousins. But no, I guess like, look, I just,

whenever the use, the use of the word narrative comes up. And one of my, my least favorite or best examples of it is when Iowa had that run in college football a couple of years ago. Right. And towards the end of the year, Iowa fans.

And the funny thing is people don't think I like Iowa. I love people from Iowa. Okay. Love people from Iowa yeah they're great they're like oh the narrative is that i wasn't played anybody no no no that's it's not it's it's the truth they haven't played anybody and then they actually played michigan state a little bit tougher than people expected and there's a second to last game and it was like oh you know i thought everybody doubted it's like no no so when when vikings fans or even kyle rudolph like oh i thought kirk couldn't win the big one you go well because he hadn't because his record is dog shit in these big games okay like that's that's a real like that we also have to decide if if the cowboys going down to dallas and winning is a big win because i don't think it necessarily is because as we've seen the cowboys were making a lot of

teams look better than they are but you, you know, going into that game, if Kirk lost that game, it was counted as a big game. I saw it, dude. Everybody was like, don't bet the Vikings, because it's a big game. And then after they win,

people are like, it's the Cowboys. Just fucking pick one. That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. But I do want to say this. No, no, because there's more on this game. Go ahead, yeah. That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. But I do, I do want to say this. No, no, because there's more on this game. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like we talk about

the offense. We talk about, you know, like on, on New Orleans side, Taysom Hill was awesome. I mean, he threw the ball further than Breeze did. You know, there was a stat, next-gen stat that said that he threw it more air yards than Drew has in the past two or three years. And he had, you know, reception, reception for a touchdown. He had, I mean, like I was kind of lukewarm on the Taysom Hill thing. This just continues to prove why Peyton's awesome. And Taysom Hill, I respect him as a football player. But Anthony Harris going into this game, UVA's own Anthony Harris, an interception machine. He has nine picks in 24 games, second in a league in that span. And I know I'm being a homer here, but I went to the game and I said,

what's the weakness for the Vikings? It's the corners. So who's got to play big? Anthony Harris. It's not like he picked off five balls or anything. The one pick before the half was huge. That's a huge swing. They get a touchdown.

They go up 13 to six because of that. The return on the pick puts them in the high red or maybe the 40 or whatever. Saints are going in to get a two-for-one. That's going to be a different ballgame. By the way, he's picked off Breeze, Rogers, Wilson, and Mahomes this year. And I was reading an athletic article that makes this point. It cites that he accounts for 16.7% of all the interceptions

that those four have thrown this year. And you know what those four have in common? They have the lowest interception rates in the league. So Anthony Harris, big shout out to him. Also, the D-line was pretty dominant, whether it was Barr walking dudes back to create the Griffin sack, or, you know, Joseph and Hunter

working together on that kind of huge forced fumble at the end of the game. Joseph was telling him to come... I don't want to say that. To stunt... I can't say the word come inside on this pot. To come inside all game long. Linville Joseph was telling him all game long, take the inside move. How's that? And he finally did it. And Ramchak, who's a good player,

all pro. I've always thought the O-line was a little bit overrated down there in New Orleans. I really respect them, but people made them out to be like this number one unbeatable group. Well, Breeze knows where to go with the football. So they mix man and zone. Zimmer had a great game plan and it affected the timing and the D line was awesome. So really good defensive performance for them. No love for Daniel Hunter down there. I like Hunter. Yeah. What do you mean? I do like Hunter. I just... I'm just waiting for you to get to him. He's so damn athletic. I want him to do it all the time. I know.

I know. No, you're right about that. And that was, you know, some of the knock on him. But when it shows up, it's like, good. Who? I'm trying to think. Who's Dallas? No, no.

I know he had like 15 sacks. So if people are listening, what do you mean he does it all the time? The guy's good enough to have 25 in a year. He looks like it at times.'s uh oh my god who am i who am i thinking of on the cowboys d line who's no longer with the team that it was recently and garrett was like hey you know what you're not you're not really built for this professional lifestyle because Because when he was right. Oh, David Irving, number 95. Nice player. Okay, when he was right, when it was awesome,

I remember having, you know, just games at home where I'm like, wait, is that guy the best defensive lineman in the NFL? And then you'd be like, well, no, he isn't. Well, no, I mean, but for a lot of guys, it's just about consistency and opportunity. And Hunter, if I could just like pinky in the brain, just get in there and drive that machine. He is just so, and Hunter, if I could just like pinky in the brain, just get in there and drive that, that, that machine, he is just so dying. He plays hard. He plays hard, but I just,

it's, you just look at him and you're like, man, I want to be that athletic. I mean, it's so cool. And, and that, and that was a huge play. I mean, it didn't, it didn't seal the game because they had the ball back, but you know, they were going to score there and um yeah the opi thing it could go either way but the league did the smart thing and not calling down to review it because all that would do would be create more chatter i don't think it was offensive pass interference in the in the way that it is called um traditionally and that's always been my concern with the review of the pi stuff. And I actually, instead of everything being coming PI, I think Albert Breer had a note that said that the officials are so mad about another thing that that's why they're not overturning any of this stuff.

And if he's getting that from a coach, then I don't even know if it's true or not. That would be something a coach would absolutely say. Coaches love to complain. I was talking with some nba guys about their review thing some front office guys this weekend where i said the coach's challenge thing in the nba is so stupid because all it is is um and lebron had one i'm talking like a minute into the game he could call for reach foul and he went to vogel to be like challenge that and

vogel's like yeah you know what it's you know zero, zero right now. We got about 47 minutes to go. This might not be the biggest possession. We're like other coaches I've seen in the NBA be like, all right, I guess I'll challenge it because there's stars yelling at them to challenge it. And you'll see some of that in the NFL. I think actually Bill O'Brien did that with Hopkins on that PI. And you're like, there's no way that's going to get turned into a PI. And then as I was mentioning this to these NBA guys, they go, we agree, except for the

fact that if you didn't have it, the coaches complain about that too. Okay. That's just the way it is. The coach is going to find a way to complain about something. They're a lot like high school children in that regard. Coaches will be like, Hey, here's this thing. And you ask any college football coach about the signing period for recruiting. Every one of them thinks it's wrong.

And everybody thinks everyone else's solution is wrong except their own. So I don't have a huge problem with that because I actually think that fade route that we know what that route is. It's a contested route. It's two guys battling for a rebound. And Rudolph had the size. And it was actually really smart by Cousins, who apparently saw that zero pressure coming, knew he'd have Rudolph outside, and apparently, the story goes, they looked at each other.

They were practicing this before it. So this was not some outrageous non-call there. The Saints offense didn't show up. But it was the perfect decision right there. And, yeah. And Jeff Fisher said it about the officiating in that interview we did. He was like, he had an interesting point and some people have made it, but you know, all they're doing is getting shit on right now.

What does a youth official want to do? Do you think they want to get into this business? Do you think anybody's sitting at home being like, and rightfully so, they're missing a lot of calls, but do you think anybody is sitting at home, like reffing high school football? Like I want to ref in the pros. So my face can be on TV and, and just people just murder me on Twitter every Sunday.

There's going to be somebody that's going to want to do it though. I would never want to do it. Um, the NBA has, I think a bigger problem with it where it's every call at every level. It's part of my book, how Michael Jordan ruined the NBA where where there's one chapter on, because he sat and talked with officials.

Um, it's coming out next winter. Get ready for that. Christmas, Christmas list. But because Jordan would pull everybody aside to talk with the officials and intimidate him the whole time. Like you'll have a guy like Mo Wagner will come in and be like,

Hey, we need to talk. And be like, no, we don't. You're Mo Wagner. Like, I don't, I don't need to talk to you.

I think every team should be assigned one guy in the NBA that's allowed to argue with the officials. That's a cool idea. Speaking of ideas, because I'm not a change everything guy. I don't resist change. I resist other people's change because everybody's out there to fix it. And to be honest with you, whenever anybody talks about overtime or they talk about the college football playoff for the most part i'm like you didn't come up with this you're just stealing somebody else's idea what would be wrong with playoff overtime where just both teams get the football and i'm not doing that as like i'm

sad about this i don't give it you know what would be wrong i'll take just playoff games i'll tell you what it would have if they just went to college overtime rules. Oh, so I thought everybody hated that. I actually don't mind it because it has the potential to go for like eight OTs. And I love that. You're a big over guy. Yeah. No, I mean, I just love, I love, it's just neat and clean.

It just makes sense. And you would spend, here's what would happen. The fallout would be this. The game would change just a little bit in the way it's prepped. You would spend an entire day and a half on red zone rather than an entire half of a day. Coaches would be so scared shitless of overtime. You would be in there for red zone for like eight hours in a week. It would.

You would. I actually, I just don't think, as it played out yesterday, I go, a real simple fix, I think, in just playoff games. I have a problem with the rest of it. Not that many games go to overtime. I thought more people hated the college way than the NFL way. Or maybe that's just a classic example of you just, we just hear the complaints of both sides.

I think in the playoffs, the other team should get a chance of getting the football. That's it. Even if the other team scores a touchdown. Just the play and do you think and do you think it should be something other than a coin toss that decides just i mean that that could be an easy thing you could incentivize some action by a team throughout the season add a layer of incentive so that they win whatever it is not a coin toss but like hey you had x more of this or what about make it take it where they roll out a hoop and then each guy picks one out of their 53 and then but you get a chance to match too so if like maybe that means joe joe burrow

absolutely goes number one now so burrow goes minus one He's going before the draft. Did you see that stroke from the hardest three-pointer to make, evidently? And I'm a big basketball guy here, too. It's the top of the key, as they call it. You're a big analytics guy when it comes to shot selection. Big analytics. Win shares. Warp. Yeah, whatever.

I watch Woj a lot. I'm going to tell him he said hello. All right, we still have more games we want to get to, including the Brady-Belichick thing, what's happened with the Pats before we do that. Here, do you have enough life insurance? It's this thing we all know we need, but we keep putting off because it sounds like a pain to deal with.

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What do you want to do, Pats? Titans? Let's do Titans. Let's do Titans because you called it. Yeah, I did. But it was kind of people were on it, but I will say I got a lot of of chuckles when I said they were third best team in the AFC about five weeks ago. I'm really glad I was right. I also was, I was bummed for some of my Pats buddies. But this just wasn't, like, it's okay. Some years is not the year. And I talked about it all year long, like the run game defensively for great defense. You got to be able to stop the run when it matters. And you'd think that was like a staple up there. As soon as they just, there was a little hiccup in the game that Vrabel forgot to hand the ball to Derrick Henry.

There was a lull. And then they're like, oh yeah, let's give it back to this guy. And I know that Tannehill didn't play great. And not a lot of quarterbacks played great against the Pats all year. But he made one big throw at the end. He not a lot of quarterbacks played great against the Pats all year. But he made one big throw at the end. He made a couple throws he needed to.

And the defense, who early on, I looked at it and was like, they're going to have problems keeping the points down because the first 15 for the Pats and then, you know, like the stretch after where the Pats stall was in the red zone. I mean, the Pats red zone was one of the biggest deficiencies compared to the Titans, especially since Tannehill came back because Tannehill offensively,

their red zone percentage was like 87 since Tannehill was in it, which is insane. And the Pats were closer to 50. And in years past, you could bank on a couple things with the Pats. I feel like you could bank on them

stopping the run. They didn't do that. I feel like you could bank on them making the most of their red zone appearances, which they didn't. That was the difference in the game. There was one stand in particular where 54 from the Titans single-handedly saved the season. He made two amazing plays on the goal line. And actually, I want to take two seconds to go back and shout out to Mario Davis, who's an all-pro but not a pro bowler. Oh, my God.

Who's an unbelievable player and played his ass off down by the goal line. That guy's a football machine. So, shout out to him. Did he shoot with the Jets twice? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I sent a text about him to somebody yesterday, and I was like, this guy's on him.

But nobody cares, you know what I mean? Like they lose the game. But I'm glad you did a shout out for him because he was that special. Nobody cares anyways because nobody knew who he was earlier in his career. So now it's like, well, we didn't know who you were. So sorry, you can play as good as you want right now. We're not going to make you marketable and awesome. He is. But Tennessee, Tennessee, man, I mean, Vrabel, he just seems like he's unafraid. And he's the New England thing, but he's like the black sheep type guy.

He's just like, he's a little rough around the edges, but he's got all the New England edge. And so he's fun. He's edgy. He talks shit. I saw him talking shit last week. You saw that viral video. He's talking shit to a player. I love that. The player's talking shit to him. He's still a player at a viral video he's talking shit to a player i love that the

player's talking shit to him he's still a player at heart and he's a competitor and that that bleeding the punt thing down i was just laughing although i didn't love the decision i was laughing why didn't you love it i just thought like uh i was afraid yeah i was just too early that felt too early i mean it works so everybody's like oh brilliant. And you're like, why would you be milking it? I think some of the criticisms, whether it's coaches or from the outside, people get really obsessed with winding down the clock. And I don't know if that's looking at the stupid win probability stuff that comes up on different websites.

Be like, oh, 20 seconds went away. Our win probability went up 7%. And we're like, well, you might need the ball back at some point. I don't know. And I felt like they would. Even with everything that New England was struggling with offensively, I tweeted out. And, of course, this is a guy who's, again, followed the pockets.

I got Tennessee. So I'm tweeting out that I feel like Tennessee's not going to get the ball back. And then everybody's like, well, that didn't last long. I'm like, yeah, I was wrong. I'm happy I'm wrong. But you just didn't feel like in that big situation that Josh McDaniels and Tom and the entire offense, because we blame it all. It's not Josh and Tom.

It's a team that they'd be able to come up and string together a few first downs. What I thought they'd do, they'd probably run the ball once, play action shot for like 30 yards, you know, like Jules wide open in a zone or something, finding a soft spot. And then they're in plus territory. And then what there's so many things that went wrong for new england i mean the fact that tannahill goes in for 80 yards he went 80 yards like derrick henry had a nice game and it was cool they got him going in the second half but yeah that's a great job ryan tannahill threw for 80 yards and actually new england was plus one in the turnover game until they threw the pick six and then the fumble at the end.

So it wasn't like it was this fluky Tannehill hasn't thrown for any yards, but they have their plus three in turnovers. No, there were no turnovers. You know, no, New England was up there. I think the Burkhead not getting in thing is huge. And then Sonny Michel, I don't know what happened to him. I thought he ran harder at Georgia than he does now. And you have the Jules drop on third

down which is huge you have the Watson big completion which is called back because of an eligible man downfield where it was really a lineman just trying to stay you know in the play it wasn't like he was down the field it was more of him being down the field only because there was a blocker that had a free shot at Brady behind him or would have or i don't know maybe the ball would have gotten out of there i think look if new england won that game to me all it would have done was you know delay the inevitable that they're going to get house the next week on the road a lot so a lot like philly on a on a different scale i mean like yeah just you just didn't feel like either team and they're you know like i know it sounds ridiculous to compare the two but the way the season was at one point, but there are two teams that were beat up, you know, ill-designed this

year from a personnel standpoint and probably not in it for the long haul. And they played their asses off. But Tennessee right now is one of those games where you were just like, do you believe what you see? Or do you, are you afraid to just believe what you see? And most people were afraid to believe what they saw. And that's not to say they're not going to be back. Like I said, New England could go get one receiver, a tight end, and like a tackle guard

type guy. And I'm pretty sure if they kept that band together, they're going to win a lot more games next year. Yeah, the defense though is interesting because as much as DVOA, I think you push back on it I just think it's better than just looking at straight you know offensive numbers sometimes but if you look at the weighted stuff for DVOA New England had fallen off the map compared to

where they were before and it is a lesson New England is a lesson in that you know whenever you're on TV or the radio and we're like hey you can't fault them for being eight you know or you can't fault this team for being whatever you know it's just the schedule that's in front of them. I think that's one of the dumbest things people say because they say it all the time. No, no, we can dig in. And the fact that people are giving New England the benefit of the doubt, that's fine. I mean, New England deserves that. You should.

I was petrified to make the point the Titans would win. I was scared to say it. Right, but New England's defense was a product of good personnel, good secondary, but to touch on some of the historic numbers that they had five or six weeks out wasn't because of who that unit was. It was because it was an abysmal schedule. And the last month or so, anybody that watched those games and the weighted stuff towards what that defense was, it wasn't even close to what they were the first eight weeks and it doesn't mean they got worse it meant that it was probably a little misleading because of how bad that schedule was so it goes to show you and i'm no like stat geek and like i know analytics twitter and i don't i don't mean the word geek like i i truly don't mean that to be disparaging

when you were younger yeah no i but no i don't mean it like professionally because there are grown-ups who do a really good job with numbers and I enjoy pairing the numbers with the film so I'm not like but they one they go together hand in hand but what it shows you is like be wary of even like DVOA that's supposed to account for how terrible the teams are they played it didn't get it done and you know I remember the Cleveland game in the rain in Foxborough. I forget what week that was. Nobody was, like, panicking, but they made Baker win.

Yeah, right. Week nine, maybe? They Chubb got going. Baker made some good throws. They broke off some chunks. And this was at a point when you were like with New England, like they're going to shut teams out every week. And you're just like, well, no, they're not.

Cleveland's not a good football team, and they moved the ball. And New England had never lost the game giving up less than 20 points this year. And they didn't give up more than 20 points this week, but they couldn't get enough going offensively. So while there were issues with the defense and stopping the run and whatnot, they just couldn't quite get enough done, And the red zone was a big deal. I think they're back. If you want to play the whole speculation game, we can have a lot of fun with, hey, where are they going? Bill and Tom or Tom alone, Bill alone. Like, I don't know. We could play that game. But I think if they want to, they can be competitive again next year. We could play that game, but I think if they want to, they can be competitive again next year.

The receiver thing has to get better. Belichick is the greatest. He is bad at drafting receivers. He's bad at it. And the fact that they went in this year saying, all right, well, we lost Gronk, and they already knew the retirement thing was coming because they were thinking about trading him, and Gronk was threatening to retire a year ago.

And they bring in Ben Watson. They bring in Lac Watson they bring in Lacoste they got rid of Hollister and tight end is something that Bill is really good with and he knows how important it is and he's done as good a job I think philosophically changing who they are all the time like New England has been so many different versions in this 20-year stretch it is commendable he is not good at drafting receivers and whether's Nikhil Harry, which felt more like a need thing because he knew, okay, I've got one guy that's in and out of rehab all the time, and then I've got another guy that got cut from the Raiders 12 hours ago.

So his one and twos and the other guy being Dorsett, who was kind of an afterthought, he loves doing it on the cheap. He loves the fixer-upper. And you can't say that it hasn't worked for Bill, but when it comes to those receivers, it's like he needs an assistant that specializes in receivers. Harry was need. I'm not going to go six- and seventh-round guys.

They don't really count because actually out of the shoot, he was great with Givens who was a seventh-rounder. He had Deion Branch who was a second-rounder. But from that point on, if I stick to just other than Jules being a seventh-rounder that was sort of a novelty thing here, Bethel Johnson, total PK Sam you know he's a fifth rounder Chad Jackson total bust Brandon Tate nothing Taylor Price nothing uh Josh Boyce couldn't have been out of there quick enough and Aaron Dobson like if you're if you're Tom and you're like you know you're drafting Dobson in the second round you're drafting Boyce in the fourth round.

Malcolm Mitchell was a fourth rounder who lasted a year. Granted, he got hurt and then he retired. Yeah, he would have been a good player. Okay, but what I'm telling you is that's 20 years of drafts. I'm not arguing with you, bro. He sucks at it. And if you're Tom, you know, and then you had to use a second rounder on Sanu, which is way too high of a price for a

guy like like sanu needs to be a game changer and what he is is kind of a possession guy that's maybe your third receiver on a good football team building a team over two decades with what they've done has been unbelievable he's the greatest coach of all time tom's the greatest quarterback of all time and also i like the dudes too for the record because i know i know you like bill and i know you like tom a lot and yeah i don't even like doing this segment sometimes this is like yeah you're you're making fun of selma hayek's accessories last night you know right like i'm not gonna make fun of her i miss the globes i miss the golden globes yeah you're not gonna yeah like we're we're we're we're talking about them this much because they've been that great historically.

And it goes back to like the Kirk conversation. It's like, are we talking about this year? Are we talking about history? Because this year we shouldn't be spending 10 minutes on a team that was pretty damn good, but not actually just pretty good. And no one should be shocked that with some of the deficiencies

and football, building a roster, keeping a team together, it's an incredible balancing act that they've done so well. And I think where it got thrown off was in 17 when we beat them in the Super Bowl. I think Bill went back and said,

I'm never losing another game because my defense gives up fucking 500 yards of offense. These fucking assholes. I can hear him say it now. I think there was an overcorrection possibly. I don't know what goes into this. It was a great secondary.

It was a great secondary. Oh, amazing. And Nikhil is his one first rounder. So yeah, he hasn't been great drafting receivers, but they never really took a stab at it the way they did this year. And to your point, it seemed like more of a desperation thing. And for Tom, he's probably sitting there like, and somebody that competitive doesn't care he's won six Super Bowls. He wants

the next thing. So he's worried about, and not in an insecure way, he's like his legacy, he wants it to be perfect because that's what he expects. He expects that out of himself. He expects that about out of his team. He wants his legacy to be as good as possible. And I think at this point, he would be wrong if he's worried about his legacy because of this year or another year like this. He's still the absolute where the kids are off to college and it's time to try new things for one or the other. And I'm sure there's an element if you look other for unknown reasons but I'm not going to like fuel a fire where we haven't heard anything but you know there was all the house stuff there was all the business stuff because there's one thing that jumps out and I don't know anything I don't even have bad rumors okay like I was checking in and Tom has done a really good job like LeBron over the years has been really close to the vest on this stuff. There are going to be plenty of people after the fact that say, oh, you know, like LeBron's thing was always he didn't want to come to L.A. by himself.

And then it was like, oh, I guess I'm coming to L.A. by myself. But then after the fact, everybody's like, no, no, he did this, he did this, he did this, he did this. He launched the school in Cleveland as kind of a soft exit out after he brought him a title. So Cleveland couldn't really be as mad about it. But then it's like if he had stayed one more year in Cleveland, it would have been he needs to wait on the next piece to go to L.A. And he wanted it. Like people are so good at playing the results on this.

Yeah, they apply thinking to actions. So Tom sells the house in the area and moves down to buy some other place in Fairfield County. Apparently his trainer, I thought this one was interesting, because I've even said it, where it's like, oh, Alex Guerrero, he sold his place too. But then if you dig into that, it's like, well, did he sell his place because Tom sold his place and they're moving on,

or did he move to Plymouth because he's a history buff and he read Philbrick's Mayflower? No, no, Philbrick. Did he read Mayflower? And he was like, you know, I want to be closer to where the first guys there that showed up made a huge mistake and didn't just hike north for a little while to get a much better setup. Because the guys that settled Plymouth 10 years later, guys are like, hey, have you seen this area of Boston? It's unbelievable how deep the harbor is. And then we have the Charles River. It's literally perfect to set up a settlement. they're like nope we like the mud and eels down here and the impossible uh topography and the fact that we can't grow anything but we we've already built huts we're staying here and they're like okay we're gonna be in boston so that's that's how that happened uh here's here's the one that like like we know that um bill no matter what is

going to be defiant even though he's super educated in what the media is saying about it. He just can't help but be just a miserable human being when he's up there. But when you're asked about the future of Tom Brady and you say, well, you know, there's a lot of people involved in that decision. more enthusiasm for talking about air pressure and the elements around how air pressure affects a football, when you have more passion for that than you do Tom Brady, perhaps the greatest player to ever play in this sport, I can't imagine that that sits well with Tom. And if Tom were to go, you know what? I'm miserable. This guy's a miserable human being. Thanks for everything. It's great. But I need just a little bit more love successful people and i don't know anybody personally as well everybody needs it i don't care what time as you said he doesn't care what he's already done and you're like bill is

acting like this is a guy who's a third or fourth receiver and like you know just gonna and i don't know i mean that part jumped out at me but i i'm willing to believe anything at this point that they come back and take another chance at it i mean there was one headline today chris where it says brady needs to come back and prove himself like what the fuck prove what he's a prove what prove that he could do something that nobody's ever done he's like he's already done that yeah 42 he's already proved or yeah well i'm always a year ahead right so i mean you know you had the somebody speculating he'd be in la with the chargers i think he if you're tom brady and i hate to do this thing because then people

are going to talk about it this is just a fun segment this is like it's almost like where could you imagine him in a jersey that 20 years from now, we're going to be like, wait, he was on the Chargers or the Rams, one of those Joe Montana things. But maybe better, because I think if he has a leg up on any vet who was a fixture one place and then spent a year or two somewhere else, it's that he's so intentional and intelligent, to your point. He's not going to just do something to do it. Everything he's going to do, whether it was the house and whether whether it was the house could have been financial i don't know and here we are like just you know maybe maybe they thought the house was too big you know like i i don't know

um but you talk i think he's intentional i think if he does something new i i would put the odds lower than 50 but if he does i think whatever he does is going to be for a reason. So you talk about Chicago. Yeah, do I think he could go there and win because the defense is so damn good? Just let me jump in here. They already named Mitch the starter for next year. Okay, they named him, but that was the room. I'm kidding.

I mean, they did, but I mean, come on. Yeah, okay, but that's been the rumor. You talk about Chicago. Sorry, I didn't get the joke. You talk about Chicago. You talk about the Chargers. I didn't want you to break it down seriously the charger the chargers for what if you're gonna go to la you think money matters to him he would make 150 mil off the field he would play for free for the

rams and you could eat jared goff's contract or do something i'm just saying like they just paid golf all that money though i don't i don't know so what so do that so what what what if what if tom brady was like i'll play for a million dollars this is crazy land brady's taking some haircuts i don't think he's gonna take that especially a hundred million he could make off the field i know i sound like some like uh yeah but have you seen the honeydew spots he's been doing in New England? The Nantucket Nectars?

I mean, think about all the money he could make in LA. I think... I don't know. Is it Cleveland? You know, like people talk about McDaniels to Cleveland. And by the way, McDaniels to Cleveland? You think he might bring Casario with him? Nick, front office guy?

Yeah. They don't have, you know, GM situation. I don't know. Like, nothing's out of the question with... I don't know what's going on with DePodesta there, but well, no, like seriously, he's in the meeting. From what I read this morning, he's asking questions of potential candidates, the whole thing.

I just assume that's one big shit show. But the point I'm making with Tom is whatever we think our motivation or ideas are, like, he's not going to do anything that we've thought of. I could be wrong. He's just, he's a couple steps ahead. And honestly, I think the best thing for him and for Bill is to go try to win another one. Yeah, I think they just need to not try to be budget about the skill guys. You know, you're getting about a $10 million, $15 million a year savings with Brady. I can't imagine Kraft wants him going anywhere.

And as much as we can think that players or coaches or GMs are running these basketball teams and football teams, the owners are running them far more than I think we ever want to admit. And we need to remind ourselves of that. So I just think that no matter what happens in the decision, the playing the result thing is going to be very predictable. And that it's like, no, no.

Cause of this, this, and this, you know, like if he stays, of course he's staying craft loves him. It's Bill and Tom and whatever. And if he leaves,

it's like, you know, Tom never felt appreciated he's always wanted to leave you know he's once he sold that no but that that leads that leads you said the owner thing that that that's my biggest worry with mccarthy down in dallas is you realize the guy's never coached under an owner and well he might have all that talent down there now and the mccarthy thing what's the show McCarthy project? The thing that he had the coaches with him and they were in like a hotel drawn a white on a whiteboard learning analytics and stuff. Did you see this? I know that he went to like analytics camp or something for a couple days, right? It's like summer camp, but with a bunch of people that that say to run the ball less. that say to run the ball less.

Yeah, like, my biggest worry with McCarthy, and you can look at it one of two ways. Obviously, McCarthy was announced to be the Dallas football coach this morning if you were living under three boulders, is Jerry Jones. I know they had a sleepover and everything. By the way, weird dynamic there.

Jason Garrett just hanging out while... I mean, essentially, it's like the marriage is over you can stay in this room but the new guy's coming over yeah the thing was where he was out as of early last week he was already done and yeah what i'd heard from someone in dallas was that they loved garrett so much that they wanted to give you the idea that it was an agonizing thing so it wasn't they weren't going to lump him in on black monday with everybody else even though that they wanted to give you the idea that it was an agonizing thing. So it wasn't, they weren't going to lump him in on black Monday with everybody else, even though other guys had already been fired by then and that they dragged

it out. And that wouldn't word or had the story. It still wasn't technically official. And I'd be like, how is it not official? Like if, if I knew on Monday, why wouldn't Edward or no at the end of the week?

And they were like, well, apparently Garrett still wasn't told, but I don't know the whole thing was the whole thing was weird and I felt like it was sort of a dramatic act to act like it was this agonizing thing that Jerry had to go over and you're like just move on. Terrible analogy

and I would not I respect Garrett as a dude so I'm not calling him but it's like if you have a pet and it's time to go you don't drive him around the pet around the city for three days you have a pet and it's time to go you don't drive them around the pet around the city for three days you have a nice goodbye you go to the vet maybe one day at the park what if the pet's in pain and doesn't want to live in this house anymore it's chaotic

it's it's it's just not a great experience maybe you can't just get it neutered i mean i don't i don't like where this one's going but i guess my point would be that like do you think jason garrett wants to sit there and and like be just like a a pawn in this thing like jason garrett's a man who's even if you've if you don't like jason garrett and you don't think he's a great coach he's busted his ass for 10 years and taking a lot of shit let him go let him go and you think he wants to be in the front office you think he's going to be able to root for his successor but that's something that i know that people really missed the vote on the selfishness of i remember one time van pelt like

the ratings went up over a course of like two weeks when he was gone and i love van pelt for this he was like well that's not very good news it was it was so great because scott it's so true though everybody would have thought if i was on the show and i like missed a month in august because that was when like basically we had this six week stretch between football and basketball for me like i could really only take long times off during six if they had said hey the best month we had was when you were gone for four weeks i would have been fucking miserable on the inside miserable you wouldn't be like hey good for you guys thanks for playing well in my absence scott think guys when they get he looked at the whole room and went well that's that's not what i want to hear that's not good news that's

great it was great dying laughing and people that you know players that stand on the sideline after they get like benched or somebody takes their job like depending on the circumstance you can clap and smile all you want until your face hurts but i mean you don't you don't root for people that took your job you just you don't necessarily do that you can be happy for someone and not wish ill on them but you're not going to actively root for them. And I think if he'd end up in the front office, it would have been a really toxic situation. There's another coach. I want to get to the Ron Rivera thing,

but we still have to do the last game for Texas fans, for Bills fans here. The best game. That was the best game. That game was nuts. All right, so the second week of the playoffs is upon us. The bad news is that there's only a few more weeks left in the football season, but the good news is

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restrictions apply see draftkings.com for details so the first game and all the stuff which was just as exciting as maybe anything um and that's buffalo getting up to a 16 nothing lead on houston what's going on with deshaun i thought they did a really good job of showing that graphic because it's something we talked about a few weeks ago like what's going on with Deshaun? I thought they did a really good job of showing that graphic because it's something we talked about a few weeks ago. What's going on with Hopkins and how does he feel about the offense? How does he feel about Bill O'Brien? I don't hear that it's great. Hopkins, his productivity

is 44th out of the receivers in the NFL in the first half and he's in the top couple there in the second half. That just seems to be what happens. That's why I pick Watson against anybody for the most part maybe not Mahomes maybe not Lamar but you know Watson has these plays even though it was bad he was getting sacked a lot Chris in the beginning in that first half he had a bunch of sacks I think

some were on him it wasn't just the offensive line and then there's that second down play where he doesn't get tackled and you can't believe it and he keeps things going and they end up winning this game in overtime against a Bills team where Allen looked flawless in the first half, and then Allen played like your dad coming to you on spring break, where he's like, hey, guys, there's girls over there. Let's go talk to them. You're like, dad, there's a process here. Relax.

You're like, hey, cannonball. You're like, dad, just fucking chill out for like five minutes. You're like, hey, man, you only live once. Your dad would just have a completely different approach in cabo than you would with your crew and that's what alan looked like in the second half josh allen is my dad in cabo which my dad was never into like mixed drinks on the beach so that metaphor is well it's hilarious i can't picture how he doing that um by the by the way, not my father, not even close to that, but I've just, my metaphor for Josh Allen was that he's like a, he's like a potentially

thrilling and ambitious looking rollercoaster at a local carnival. And it's run by drunk carnies. You don't know what you're going to get get you could get the best ride of your life or you could get final destination launched into the parking lot um and that's where i felt like he kind of launched him into the parking lot late with he lateral and some of the other throws he made just the lateral is like glitchy it was like it was glitchy it i there's no other better way to describe it than just like i thought that something was broken and i don't think of him as like robotic but that was uh i get it that you're like wyoming cowboy son but this was uh the game was online and um i thought that buffalo would win this game and really they should have um I thought there were a couple instances and you mentioned Deshaun Deshaun early you were like why are his eyes down in the pocket

like I was sitting there watching with Macon and he's like his eyes he's just it's and it's true he's it's like the first half he was figuring things out I don't know um I don't know if sometimes they don't get enough guys out in routes and they have to protect more. So he doesn't have open dudes or, you know, the Will Fuller thing was a big, big deal. But to make the plays he made at the end and to look up at the, the stat line and you think he had this really inconsistent game,

but he played pretty damn well. That's what makes him so good is he can not only make those huge plays. He didn't kill him in any instance. And, uh, you know i've seen that movie at the end of an eagles game we we got out to a big big start on them we were up like two three touchdowns last year actually and it wasn't until he was down that he turned it on there was a play at the end of the game three of us missed the sack and he threw the ball for like

40 yards and he damn near beat us and it it was just like, I've seen this movie, dude, but how about Duke from Cleveland, Duke Johnson, right? Duke Johnson. Yeah. Gets,

you know, all that bullshit in Cleveland, probably thinking I'm going to be on America's team. Then realizing they don't want him. Then you just can't leave, you know, like, you know,

that whole thing. And he makes the second biggest play of the Houston season in that check down on third and 18 not that second play is not happening if that big conversion doesn't happen and it drives you crazy as a lot as a D lineman when you see whether it was the Philly game or that game the long conversions they're killers for Buffalo and Buffalo had a chance that blindside block I don't know what you thought of that I thought that might have cost him the game you know Singletary is great you've got something there but just not quite enough man you've got to be able to score more against that Houston defense you just do it's not going to get it done that's that's your opportunity

to to put up 27 points on the road. But it was a mini version of kind of the Cousins thing that we were talking about before where Greeny, who I really like, at halftime he goes, well, I need to apologize about Josh Allen. I had no idea. And you're like, he's last in the league in completion percentage. If you're in the 50s in today's offenses, that's a problem. It used to be if you were 60 or better that meant you were pretty good now everybody is above 60 so he sends out a tweet being like i you know i'm i can't believe i felt this way i ever doubted

him like why wouldn't you doubt him like he's he's hopefully going to be okay but yeah you know we know how big the arm is he had that awesome throw to his right where he was mirroring the receiver kind of on an out. It wasn't a flat, but they were both – it was like a 10-yard out, and he's right there with him. He leads him perfectly. When he gets tackled on the Philly special version of it from Buffalo and he pops right back up, like if you're 10 years in the league

and you got hit in the legs like that at the goal line, you wouldn't pop right back up like that. Not at all. You did. And the fact that he was running the football great, so some of the numbers, like I was digging through some of his next-gen stuff too. It's not all great. You can find stuff where he's not as good with other guys,

but I don't think it's by any means because of 30 minutes, he was competitive in the Bills defense, which is really good and has really good personnel. It looks like Buffalo's going to go down there and get get that win i don't think it turns into like hey that means you've been wrong about josh allen all season can i just jump in real quick on the next gen though this is unrelated to everything we've just talked about but every time i dig up like what does this quarterback really mean is he throwing it beyond the sticks what is he doing on third down how aggressive is he what's his average yards in the air versus intended yards all that stuff Derek Carr is like at the

bottom of all of them it's just something every time I would be like well who are the worst in this it's consistently Derek Carr so Derek Carr is one of those traditional stat guys where you can be thrown off the completion percent even the yards per attempt surprised me for Derek Carr but I'm just giving you a heads up that those next-gen stats for Carr are bad across the board. All right, continue. And again, the stats matter. I hate to come across like an asshole about the stats. They matter.

Next-gen stuff, analytics, pair them with football. It's interesting. Right, it's interesting. It is. No, and it can back up observations. But you can't go the other way. You know, like, and there was a sequence,

worst sequence of the weekend. You know, we do best and worst plane rides. We're not going to do that this weekend. How about worst sequence of the millennium? Like, Buffalo, third and long, sack. Out of field goal range. Buffalo, fourth and 27. Not a punt. We're going to go for it. They're in fence. They're all just sitting there at 30 yards. Do your best. They go for it. They

get sacked again. It's a bad movie. And here's the worst part about it, only to be outdone by O'Brien who goes for it on fourth and one. I know some people are like, put the worst part about it, only to be outdone by O'Brien, who goes for it on fourth and one. I know some people are like, put the game away. Well, if you're going to do that, maybe a QB sneak on fourth in a long yard is not the play. So they get gifted the game back and just can't do it. And, yeah, I mean, I felt for Buffalo, folks, because that's very close to being a good football team.

I've asked this again and I don't know if I have an answer right now but I know I really like the kid in New York Darnold if you got Darnold on that team in division and I know they were right there do you think the Bills win a playoff game I think they probably do the personnel on defense is is serious. Between Edwards and White, you know, and I know I've always had a soft spot for Trent Murphy just because I always loved watching him in college, and then he just was like, no, he's not really going to be that good.

He was making a ton of plays in the first half. There's real personnel, and I don't love the receivers for Allen Hanger either, but Allen, to me, is a series-to-series quarterback, and that's okay. Maybe he's going to be really good and improve, or maybe a couple years from now we're gonna go hey he never really quite figured it out and got over that it's enticing yeah I like Donald better I like Donald better but I could point to all sorts of stuff that tells me that Donald you know and

that's some of the default stuff that I don't like as well one's in the playoffs I don't know I mean Allen played really well in the first half I have no idea what the hell he was doing in the second I will say this about Josh Allen um last year at least his completion percentage was down because they don't really run a ton of screens so i don't know i'd have to look at that this year the completion percentage can be i'm i'm not alleging it's misleading but food for thought last though yeah no last is last i'm just saying with a little bit of shot of context, and I'm not like some Alan Caper here. I mean, I like what I, I'm like, damn dude, if he could figure it out, it's not like a Jameis thing. I mean, because the highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low. In fact, he didn't throw picks for a big stretch of the season this year. So he's taking care of the ball, but the accuracy

and just some of the things like he threw a deep shot to like a guy with a 40s number who would be a fullback he threw like a 60 yard bomb to a fullback into double coverage double he laterals the ball like he's got he's a little bit in that that jamis no conscience um echelon but the highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low um do i do i love mcdermott yeah do i think this team is maybe the heir apparent in division? Probably at this point. But you got to score more than 17 points there. The pick thing is a really good call.

He had seven picks the first five weeks of the season. Two against the Jets. Clean against the Giants. One against Cincinnati. Three against New England back when New England was good. And then one against Tennessee. So we're looking at five weeks of games. They scored 19.

Sorry, Ry. What's that? Go ahead. Sorry. I fucked up. They scored 19, not 17. That doesn't really change much. Continue.

You're making a good point. You're fine. Yeah. Honestly, in the future, lay out when I continue to make the great point. Okay. My bad. I'm just messing with you, man. No, no. It's all good. He only had two picks the rest of the way so it's a good maybe it is something to build on there maybe it is um and you don't have to be awesome with that Buffalo

defense because all those guys are young and they're going to be bringing everybody back but uh really frustrating taste of it I'm telling you the other way around like a Bill O'Brien because I don't like the Deshaun thing on the fourth and one where he's trying to put the game away which leads to then ending up being an overtime field goal for this thing to go even the other way around, like a Bill O'Brien, because I don't like the Deshaun thing on the fourth and one where he's trying to put the game away, which leads to then ending up being an overtime field goal for this thing to go even further. But if Deshaun doesn't have the football in his hands on fourth and one and they hand it off to Carlos Hyde,

are people going, how do you not give Watson a chance with the football? So, you know, I just know that social media, I'm not telling you Bill O'Brien's some awesome coach. I think he's won more games than people realize. Maybe it's just the division. But I know everybody was out for blood when they were down 16-0, and he had punted twice. So with O'Brien, yeah, he may not be the best coach in the world,

but that division right now, you feel pretty decent about where you are because you have that quarterback. Tannehill, you don't know. Indy, they're going to be maybe... Ballard made some comment to the effect of the jury's out on Jacoby, which it is. As much as I love Jacoby, you're chasing now the Titans with that situation. And obviously the top dog is the Texans for the future because you can't bet on

Tannehill to be better than Deshaun down the line. So interesting division. I mean, you got quarterback thing in Jacksonville as well, but as bad as O'Brien has been in spots, they're still not bad because Deshaun bails you out. He does. That is – we had our text thread going, and I'm like, as bad as this is, and this is when I got right, but I'm just thinking, you know what? I just expect Deshaun, especially against Buffalo. Maybe not Kansas City.

Certainly Baltimore is a different challenge. But before we bounce, I know you have something to say. Just, yeah, before we go, I wanted to wish my pops a happy birthday. Howie's 60, and I would love to have his skincare products. He looks about 41. Also, I really butcher— Hey, love you, Dad. Happy birthday.

Yes, happy birthday to the legend. 6-0. To your friend that you watch West Wing with. What are you guys doing? Nothing. He's on the other end of the country. He had a surprise party with some of his colleagues at work. But I totally butchered that earlier when we said...

I called him Chernoff, so I hate to offend you. Also, I want to shout out the Ryan Russillo Book Club who comments on all of our stuff and has to list obligatory listing of every Cherno book that we mentioned. So I'm just going to mention a bunch. The War Bugs, Titan, The House of Morgan, Grant, Washington Alive, Alexander Hamilton.

You got to tweet about all those. Ryan Russillo Book Club. Look for that cat in our mentions. Also another one chaos monkeys i was i was recommending that because it puts you in the room with zuck and sandberg uh this guy that it's actually really because he just did this thing he was he was part of the startup companies and i enjoyed the book a lot and he was he was really cool about it he's like well this is what like he was just great describing zuckerberg he's like zuckerberg

had this thing and And then after that, they had a bunch of terrible ideas and Facebook used to sell likes. Like they just sold. So you think they, they caught lightning in a bottle and he had no followup. Yeah. I think Facebook has run a lot like a guy that was a nerd who wanted girls and then stole the cool guy's idea.

I mean, they consistently screw up stuff all the time and then he goes up there with a booster seat and talks about how they'll get it right. And you know what? The stock keeps going up,

so nobody seems to care. That sounds about right. I mean, bad products sell. No, I want to invent an app one day and Facebook's far more successful and functional than some of these other ones that I'm not going to name. But the number of apps that you're like, what do you want to do?

I'm like, I want to invent something that doesn't really work and then sell it to someone else or go public. I don't think... Have an app. Right. I've said this before, and the Bad Blood book is a perfect example of this. It's not that I want to create a product that anybody can use. I want to create a product that

I can sell to enter that lifestyle of being a VC type. It wouldn't even be VC. That would be the money, but like, I want to be startup guy. So I think once the startup thing became well-known, which has been going on for a while, but it's kind of like, well, do you want to do anything good? No, I just want to be a part of it. And I'm not saying that's what Zuckerberg did at all. Zuckerberg was trying to create a product. Let's go 50-50 on an app. Let's go 50-50 on an app.

And I'll get up there, and I'll have a pointer, and we'll have a light show, and I'll have an awesome vest on, and I'm going to be like, hey, your food's probably not going to show up half the time. And you've got to have a microphone that comes off your ear. You have to have the ear yep you got to and maybe like a steve steve jobs i guess i'm just describing steve jobs yeah i like facebook every month every month i'll be like oh this is another bad facebook story and then you go oh it doesn't matter like the idea i'd be like yeah you know what i also want in my house is a portal where you can watch me hey listen i was in an ad for portal oh that's right uh what i'd like to have back no you wouldn't i mean check cash how much you get for that yeah

just was that a long family experience or was that like a bundle or was everybody did howie get more than you guys probably shit i mean you got one guy with a gold jacket and everybody else is just you guys how he doesn't tell you how much you're getting no we all negotiate our own shit like you know but yeah i'm sure he's getting the biggest cut and you know what uh it yeah it helped around the holidays i'll put it that way and also a portal is a really nice way to stay in touch with your family on the holidays all right you're the man check out chalk media that is chris long that is our wild card weekend roundup i even had some ron rivera stuff but we're having some tech issues. I just love this. Real quick, I love that Ron Rivera said he met with Joe Gibbs

and it comforted him about Dan Snyder and that he watched Dwayne Haskins towards the end of the year and he moved the ball against Detroit. It feels really good. I think we're good. I think we're good. Let's just do it. Let's just go coach in Washington. If you want a job, you will talk to yourself.

I love the national broadcast zag, but the coach did it here in Ron Rivera. He was like, oh, a lot of this Snyder stuff. Like, no, the 20 years of evidence that it never works? No, I talked to Joe Gibbs. We hung out. Had a conversation. Yeah, we had a couple brewskies. I actually think he'll be able to – I think he's going to be the one to pull them out of absolute obscurity.

I'm not saying – at least mediocrity. I like that you said it because I'm not critical of the hire. Good for Ron Rivera. But when you're trying to get your job – The reasoning. Yeah. When you're trying to get your job, you go, like, why did Russillo move to Waterloo, Iowa? You're like, you know what? It wasn't really the money.

I love the studios. Have you been, have you seen the brewery scene in Waterloo? Yeah. And honestly, I get on a plane. I can be anywhere in two and a half hours. Right.

That's true. Heartland. All right. Have a good week. Talk to you soon. Take care. Before you leave, remember to check out ladder.

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Ryan Russillo. So keep subscribing to the podcast. Rate and review it as much as you possibly can. We appreciate that. And we will be here this week with some more stuff and a QB first round draft bus study video that I have dropped on the ringer site and everything else. I'll talk to you again this week. Thank you.