Week 2 Preview

Welcome to the athletic football show brought to you by the US bank smartly visa signature card. I'm Robert Mays week two is here. We dove into our week two preview our first one of the year. Talked about two games of the week. Jags Broncos and Texans Bengals hit one thing from a few more games. Steelers Patriots chiefs Colts and Vikings bears spent a little time on sicko street with Brown's Bucks. I talked through my just existential dread at this point about the state of the Cowboys defense after one week in a new segment we're calling take therapy. And then we hit what we want to know coming out of week two in the NFL with me Dave and Derek. Let's get to it right now. Week two is upon us. We will be sitting here watching bills lions in a few that recap should be available wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube if you're listening to this right now. Got plenty of other good games on the week two slate and we're going to kick things off by digging into a couple of them. I assume some of you here are new with each one of these week preview weekly previews. We start with our games of the week and Dave let's kick it off with the Bengals and the Texans coming into last week. If you look at the four units and these two teams, Bengals offense and defense, the Texans offense and defense. I think we had some curiosities and lingering questions about three of them. The Bengals were undergoing a change offensively. We're going to see more under center. What was that ultimately going to look like? Obviously a huge influx of new talent for the Bengals defense. And then the Texans offense new offensive lineman is this unit that's going to be able to take enough of a jump to justify the quality of the defense. So 75% of those units, they we had an ion and the early returns on all three of them were pretty good. And then the unit that everyone agreed was the best in football and just the most rock solid feel the best about in the entire league had a tough day against Josh Allen. I say that with my tongue planted pretty firmly in my cheek, but I mean the stats are the stats. It was not the start I expected for the Texans defense, even knowing they were going against the bills. If I had given you some odds going into week one Derek that among these four units, the Texans defense would have the worst performance. I'm not sure what I would have had to give you for you to buy into that. It would have been pretty low and it would have been the only world would have been Josh Allen does something completely superhuman. And that is exactly how we arrived here, which is honestly why like, I don't feel any worse about saying the Texans still might be the best defense in the NFL. Like what it required of the bills to get this game. You had Josh Allen, like you mentioned, how many other quarterbacks run in that 20 yard touchdown the way that Josh Allen does were like his ability to take off there and stride is one thing. The fact that he risks like cracking a rib at the goal line to get that over the line, that's unique to him for the most part. So you have that you have the whole shot to DJ Moore. I don't know how many other quarterbacks make that throw. Even try to even try to exactly like there, but that's the other thing. There might be eight guys who try it and four who can do it. And I think that like half of them get picked off by rebunking ship there. Then you have the obviously the game winner to Josh Palmer, which Josh Allen admitted, we didn't rep that throw. That was just he saw the safety cheating and he let it go, which is that's that's just one of those things that like as a quarterback to have the amount of confidence in yourself and your guys and your ability to kind of go off script a little bit like that is kind of rare to him. And then it's also just an incredible throw. He puts that 100 miles an hour, and then that doesn't even get to like Dalton King Cade making an unbelievable catch over Derek Stingley, which again, how many times does that happen? So it was like all of these that it took like five truly game breaking plays that if any other team gets one of those in a game, you feel good about it. And Josh Allen in the bills had five. I just don't think that's going to happen again. We covered it substantially on the recap show. And it's not as if we swept it under the rug, but what an incredible performance by Josh Allen. And it wasn't like this stop the presses moment. It was just like, well, yeah, like you got a great Josh Allen game because he's capable of doing that. I like the odds that the Texans aren't going to go up against too many guys who can do that to them. Derek, I think based on what you're saying, you are not the least bit worried about what we saw from the Texans defense in week one. And what it's going to look like moving forward. Not even a little bit like I still think that this defense is going to be just as good as we thought there were going to be. I think it's just, you know, week one, there's always a little bit of like what is this team going to do? What are they going to try to do to us again? And then the bills hit on five or six like top two percent tile plays that I just I just don't think that that's going to happen very often. And then honestly, a lot of what happened, they got beat up in the first half pretty bad. The Texans defense for the most part, actually, I thought played pretty well in the second half. And you even saw them make some adjustments like they were getting got a little bit in the run game early on because, you know, like I mentioned on the recap show, all the bills run game is either weak zone into the open side or duo into the three tied inside. And in the second half of this game, you actually saw the Texans defense adjust with how they were answering some of their weak side zone runs like they were spiking the one tech. It was freeing up the linebackers. So like, the fact that it took so many insane plays and we still saw the Texans defense finding answers over the course of the game. I was like, yeah, they're going to end the season one of the best. And we're going to forget that this game even happened. Let's talk a little bit about the Bengals offense and what we saw from them in week one against the box. Going back and rewatching that game today, I am, I'm really interested in how this is going to go over the course of the season, just in terms of the experimenting that's going on with what the Bengals are trying to do offensively. And we were wondering, okay, this idea of them committing to being under center more, what was it ultimately going to look like when the game started getting played? When you actually have to make decisions about who you want to be and how you want to play, how committed were they going to be to this shift that we had heard about and talked about all off season. So in week one, the Bengals were under center per next year and on 30, about 33% of their early down snaps. That is a below average rate, like a considerably below average rate when you look at the league overall, because there was such a huge shift to under center stuff on early downs, 48% of under center snaps in week one were under center in 40% of early down snaps were under center in week one. That's up from 39% about last year again per next year. The Bengals were under center about 30 20.7% last year on early down. So that's still a significant jump. And I think in the general range of what they were going to try to do during training camp, they were at about 60% of their plays during practice in order to make sure that they were working on it. They knew they were at 20% last year. The goal was to land somewhere around 40% when this was all said and done. And so one week into the season, they are on track, I think, generally with where they wanted to be and how they wanted to approach this. And for the most part, I thought it looked pretty good. Yeah, I mean, like we talked about it on Sunday, the turnovers on Tampa's part kind of skewed this game, but in general, I thought the Bengals offense looked pretty smooth. It didn't look like there was a lot of procedural or structural issues. And especially for an offense that didn't really get Jamar Chase involved in their game plan for various reasons, I came away mostly encouraged. I think it's going to be interesting to watch how cohesive they can make all of this feel because that world that they want to be living in on early downs that they talked about is a pretty big departure from them being in the gun and being more spread out the way that they've played before. And I think bridging those two worlds there, it can be difficult for teams at times. But the team that I kept coming back to when we were talking about the Bengals and the best version of what this could be was actually the 2025 Cowboys because the Cowboys were still a team that especially I'm like, get back on track situations on second down where like, all right, we're going to give our quarterback a ton of space in the gun. We're going to spread things out. We're going to let him go to work. But on early downs, we're going to be willing to live under center. We're going to have more play action. It's going to be part of who we are. And the Cowboys, I thought did a very good job of blending those two worlds last year. And that's to me what week one felt like for the Bengals where you have these very distinct identities situationally. But if there is a world and there is an outcome where you can blend them together and have it be a cohesive offense. And it's not perfect. I think the Jamar chase stuff is a really good example of this. So Chase was in the slot about 30% of the time in that game. It's not out of the norm. Like that's he's hit those slot rates consistently over the last couple of years and they started moving him around that game on Sunday against the bucks. He had a 9.1% target rate in the slot. The average that he's had over the past three years is 27%. And so literally they do it to access him on those plays. But last week, I think it's again, you're just trying to do so much that you're not going to be able to hit on everything that you want to do. And so the fact that we forgot about Jamar chase because of all the other things that we were doing to me is an example of all we have to make sure that we fold that in properly moving forward. Like they're trying to do so many things all at the same time that I think it's going to take a little bit of tweaking and a little bit of time to make it all hum together. Dan pitcher said after the game that like finding Chase was his one of his first priorities after we're in light. Hey, we got you. We're going to get you the ball. Don't worry. And they did try at times. I will say credit to the bucks DB's like Jacob Parrish made a really impressive play near the pylon against him. I'm a column had a really impressive breakup on a slant. I think I'll maybe the first third down to the game. So the bucks DB's did also do. I just thought chase was just like uncharacteristically not himself. I thought and then like you said, they're just trying to do so many things. I think I can believe that they are going to continue to try to make this a core part of the offense. I am interested to see how long it takes for them to stay in the flow because I think another thing of it too is like one you're trying to schematically bridge all these things together and find out what can work with what and when do we really want to call this stuff but I also think even if I didn't love that this was the way that they used to run the offense where it was all gone it was all spread all that stuff it at least allowed like the quarterback to stay in the same rhythm and I think getting him out of that I think in like changing that how the rhythm of a game goes I wonder how long that's going to take for him to start looking fully comfortable because I will say I thought he left a couple of throws on the field in this game. I keep late fine, but there were a couple of aggressive opportunities. I think he did not take. Well, not even aggressive. He missed chase as wide open as you can possibly be for a touchdown in the red zone. And I mean, that stuff happens, but yeah, I mean, there was definitely some stuff left out there. Derek, you brought this up when we were talking about the game earlier today, but what the bills were able to do pushing the ball down the field. That's some that's an area where if you're going to take advantage of the Texans, you can hurt them specifically there. I think back to even like Kishon booty against Derek Stingley last year, like that you have to be able to push the ball down the field against them because if not, that they're really going to squeeze you. And that is the area where this under center play action stuff is that's what it's designed to do, right? I mean, the first real shot they took in this game against the bucks was that I was T Higgins on just like a straight go ball. And I think it might even be like the alert on the play. And burrow does take a shot to try to get there. And so that the vertical element that comes from this, I think that's what was part of the rationale for why they want to lean into it against the Texans specifically. That is the version and that is the benefit that you're going to try to have to access you absolutely have to and again, I think why it's going to be difficult. All the throws that I mentioned, you know, five minutes ago, those are extremely high difficulty either throws or just incredible plays by like a guy like arcade and that part you can sell me on like Chase can make incredible catches Higgins can obviously do that. I think another element of it was the bills have so obviously committed to a big chunk of the passing offense being we're in 13 personnel, we're getting under center, we have all these ways to make sure the quarterback is insulated for three seconds and he can chuck this thing. And the Bengals are trying to do that. I think that this is another mode where I'm like, I'm not as confident that they are there in the same way that the bills are there. And so like how much of that they can actually get away with because I thought the bills in this game did a fantastic job for the most part of keeping Will Anderson quiet and Daniel Hunter quiet and keeping those edges in check. I'm not sure the Bengals have quite as many answers for that. And so can they keep her protected on some of this play action shot play stuff they want to do and does he have like the vertical juice to really get it to those guys without it just being a 50 50 every time. That is one thing I think is worth highlighting is just how good I thought the Bengals offensive line was. Absolutely. They have a they have a bad reputation. Actually, I saw Texans GM Nick Cacerio was talking about this on some media he was doing this week where he was like that that's that's an outdated perception. Correct. The Bengals offensive line. And I mean, they malled the Buccaneers. The Bucks had a 15% pressure rate when they didn't bring the Blitz. Obviously Todd Bulls is going to blitz a lot. But even when he did, it was their pressure rate was 29 and a half, which was like 26th in the week. Like nothing was really doing for them. And even, you know, my guy Josiah Trotter had a sack. It was not like he didn't beat anybody. It was like a coverage sack. And so they played fantastic. How do you do against Houston? And also I just think the bills were really good at varying things and switching up the pace to keep them off balance with the degree to which Joe stands in the gun and how much he prefers to do that. You you can live that way. And Joe Burrows good enough to do it. But I don't think you're doing yourself any favors against the past rush like Houston, the way the Bengals prefer to play. A Mary Smith was somebody that we were we talked about coming into this season as a potential breakout player and really him taking another step forward. And it was about as good a start as you could hope for in that specific area. He looked incredible. And poor Ruben Bayne like for the guy with short arms to get his first NFL game against the six eight tree. I call them an end on social media. Just so I think I think it'll be easier for Ruben Bayne moving forward. But Memes looked incredible. The 13th person else stuff we saw from the bills last week at theoretically, the Bengals could do some of that. We saw a lot of Eric all in week one, which we knew we were going to. He's going to be a part of them unlocking some of this under center stuff. But even if King Cade is only sort of a tight end, Micah Sikki is just the more advanced version of how we would talk about the all in King Cade. Mike, I don't know if Micah Sikki is played in line at any point in the last like two years. And so it could be 13 personnel if they line up with all three of those guys at the same time. But it's not really. And I doubt that they'll actually try that. It's just when we get to 12 with all and Drew sample. That's about as heavy as we're getting if you're the Cincinnati Bengals. You can pretend with Dalton King Cade. You can't even pretend with Micah Sikki. We all know the game here. And he was really good in that game, but he's good at what he's going to say big slot receiver when it's second and 10 that that's the role that he is supposed to play. Let's get to the other side of the ball in this game. By the way, just mentioned Joe Barrow dealing with some back tightness. He said the idea of him not playing as ridiculous on the other side of the ball. It is not ridiculous to think that Nico Collins might miss this game, Derek. And that is when you combine it with Jayden Higgins already being out for the season, we're potentially looking at a Texans receiving core in this game of K. Sean Booty, Jalen Knowles, Xavier Hutchinson and Jared Wayne, which not the place you want to be if you're CJ Stroud two weeks into the year. No, definitely not a week too. And it's it's just so funny that like it's almost like a monkey's pause situation where it's like the Houston Texas run game is exactly as good as we wanted it to be week one. And now they don't have Nico Collins or Jayden Higgins. And it's like, man, and I do think that there is still a world that, you know, I thought CJ Stroud just the way that he was operating on Sunday was like really impressive. I thought he was seeing the game well. I thought he was throwing things pretty accurately for the most part. I thought the offensive line looked better, but I do think these bangles DBs are good enough that if if we don't get Nico Collins out there like K. Sean Booty can do some stuff and I did think he looked good against the bills as well. Like hit an in breaker where I thought he looked really smooth, but that's just not going to be enough of a number one receiver to like comfortably win this game that way. Like they would also need the defense to have like an insane game, I think the Texans run game early returns very promising. We talked about it in the moment on Sunday when we did the recap and some of the gap scheme runs and some of the pole stuff that they were doing, they just didn't have that in their bag last year. When you think about what you saw in week one, going against this bangles front that is obviously much improved and really made their presence felt against the box last week. How much do you think we can see what the Texans did last week carry over into what they can do against the bangles? I mean, I kind of think most of it one thing I'll note with and I'll start with. This was a team that we joked about them last year putting six offensive linemen on the field because they couldn't move any people. They couldn't move anybody otherwise. They didn't have any tight ends. They couldn't play tight ends because they didn't have any last year. Well, that's the thing. So now they have the tight ends and they did run the ball really well out of, you know, 12 and whatever they were doing with that, but they still had nine runs with six offensive linemen on the field. They got two first downs in short yardage. In short yardage, you looked pretty good, but there were some other instances where they were trying it on first and tenths or second and fours or whatever and they were trying to hit the outside and there was nothing doing. If you remove all of their six offensive linemen runs, they had the highest Russian success rate in the league. And so I actually do think that that probably carries over fairly well into this game. I think you're going to get a little bit of a difference on the defensive interior. Like Dion Walker is big, but he's like a gap shooter, move around, get into the backfield player. Dexter Lawrence is more of both like he can do that, but he can also just sit there at you to double team and let his backers come down. And so I think that maybe straight up the middle stuff, they're not going to be able to move the interior quite as much, but I just thought that the way the Texans were climbing on their combo blocks or having whoever the puller was get there in time and really take people out like I thought they did such an excellent job against that. And so I think against the Bengals front where I still kind of want to see a little bit more from the edges and I still don't know if these linebackers are really good enough. I do think the Texans will be able to run the ball fairly well. This is such a great are you a liar matchup? Because this was the Bengals were one of the most woeful run defenses in the NFL last year. The Texans were one of the worst rush offenses. Texans fans had right now have to be like, yes, we have a run game. And Bengals fans equally are like, we stopped the run. They gave up one explosive rush last week. And it was ten yards, which is the threshold for what constitutes an explosive run. They gave up no rushes of 12 plus. Last year, they averaged four explosive rushes allowed a week. Three rushes of 12 plus allowed a week and one rush of 20 plus a week. I mean, they were just they were just abysmal. And so to take that out of the game entirely in week one, you have to be feeling good about the additions they made on defense and like Dexter Lawrence and Boyet Maffe looked the part. Cash is howl had a really fun play where you contributed to a sack. So I'm very everybody showed up every every every single member of the front last week had a moment. And again, going back to the how we started this conversation. We talked all off season about how those additions would impact the way the Bengals defense feels weekend and week out. And one week into the season, it felt so much different because every single one of those guys, big or small put an imprint on the game in a way you just that never happened with the Bengals defense last year. You would never come away from a game thinking you're saying that I will say four takeaways masks some issues. They missed 13 tackles per PFF, which would be I think that's tied for the third most in week one. So maybe some of those issues loom larger. If you don't force takeaways and have defensive scores, they did. So it's fine. But again, are is this an encouraging trend for the season or was week one? a little bit of a lie, and I'm excited to see what that looks like. I can't remember who I was talking to. It was a defensive coordinator over the course of my training camp trip, and we were talking about playing from two high alignments and what it does to your run defense and how, even if teams can be a little bit more effective and efficient against you, it's going to limit explosives just because of the way that you're lined up. And so the bangles last year, it seems counter-intuitive, right? You limit explosive runs by playing with lighter boxes, but in reality, that actually is something that you can do, because you're going to have two safeties to clean things up. They're giving up all these explosive runs last year in part, because they're playing out of all of these single high-loaded boxes, because they had to. Last week, Buck Irving, six of his eight carries last week, came into light boxes. And so even if those are efficient plays, they're not going to be explosive because of the way that you're aligned. And so I think that's just an interesting and telling difference between the way the bangles had to play last year and the way that they're choosing to play this year because the front talent is just so much better. Let's get to our next one here. The Jacksonville Jaguars, traveling to Denver, you look back at what happened in week one with these two teams. About as good a start for the Jags as you possibly could have imagined. And we'll talk about what fed into that. It's not only the result, it's not only the numbers for the quarterback. Every single question that I might have had about the Jags offense coming into this season, they answered emphatically in a positive way. The offensive line looked as good or better than it had at any point last year in large part because of the way that Pregnant played, the way that Anton Harrison played. I was so impressed by what they looked like up front in that game. The defense just came to play in exactly the way that you would have hoped from last year. I mean, I really enjoy watching this defense in the back seven specifically, which we can talk more about. So if you had any bit of optimism or hope or excitement about the 20, 20, 26 Jags would look like and what the follow-up act would be after last year, none of that has been diminished based on what you saw in week one. You were turning up the volume on that shit so far. To say, it's been ample for us. It is so encouraging. And again, even Colin were two years in with him as a play caller after last year. One year in with Anthony Campanile last year. I think really that one of the bigger questions beyond just normal regression considerations is, all right, can they do it again? Like can they keep stacking these seasons together? And so to come out of the gate like that is just incredibly exciting. And we'll talk more about it on the flip side. Because that opposite is true for the Broncos. Like any bit of optimism or excitement or hope you had about what Denver could be. You're one of Davis Webb. You're three of Bonix. We have Jalen Waddle here now. The defense is still supposed to be great. None of that showed up in week one. Not a single element of that. And so the vibes could not be more disparate with the Jags and the Broncos as we head into week two here. As somebody who had a lot of Broncos optimism and bought a lot of Broncos stock, I've been staring into the abyss a good amount since Monday night. Just, you know, you're them the wins pool. I have them in the wins pool. I had them going to the Super Bowl in my preseason predictions. I'm high as I was sky high on Jalen Waddle who caught I think one pass on Monday. It's all bad, man. Is that? I mean, Derek, do you have anything to contribute before we dive into this? I mean, Derek's just smugly sitting there. Should I just fight with himself? Talk myself off the ledge here now. I feel fine with everything I've ever said about that offense. I think the other thing though, I feel bad for not letting myself do the Jaguar's thing all the way. Like, I've been so high on Trevor Lawrence for so long. I love the way that the defense plays. Like Cohen, I think has done such a fantastic job at two spots now. And there was just something in the back of my head this year, where I was like, I don't know, I really want to see it again. And maybe maybe that's fair, because it still is a young coaching stuff all that. But like, I thought this get they were insane in week one. They were insane. And they were so good and I'm so excited. But like, you don't have to, you don't have to freak out too much about one week. And especially one week of Jags football. Like you're going to say something reckless when we talk about their offense, but we'll get them. Oh my god, I'm going to say something reckless when we talk about the Broncos offense. So let's start with that. Let's start when the Broncos have the ball in this game. Going back and rewatching what that performance looks like against the Chiefs, I think beyond again, beyond the production, beyond the final results. It was such a disappointing game to it. When you, when I watch the Broncos, the biggest disconnect and we can talk about the quarterback and the play car and all that shit. But the biggest disconnect for me and going back and watching that game. If you look at just AAV, so no funny money with the cap stuff, just on a per on an average basis. What are you paying your offensive line? The only team in the league that's allocating more money per year to their offensive line than the Broncos is the Eagles, which is all that money is fake. Again, they shouldn't even be a part of these discussions because they can pay everybody whatever they want based on how they handle the cap. You can't have that sort of allocation to the way that you've built your team and have your running game and your past protection look the way that they did last Monday against the Chiefs. If that's going to happen, if that's the version of the Broncos offense that we're going to see and I'm not even absolving the quarterback, I would never absolve the quarterback. If that's the version that we're going to see, this is a non-starter. You cannot be the team that you want to be. If your biggest investment is going to play like that and look like that in every facet and just get really pumped physically by the Chiefs. Like the Chiefs came out and punched them in the mouth in that game and that's just not going to be feasible if you want to be the team that you think you can be on that side of the ball if you're Denver. Virtually all my optimism about the Broncos on the offensive side of the ball. Yes, Jalen Waddle being dropped into it was a huge part of it. But that's because I was operating under the assumption that this was at the very least the best past protecting offensive line of football. Which it has been over the years. And the continuity's there. You just mentioned all the money they've spent on these guys. That's not what we got. The Broncos allowed 17 pressures top five most in the NFL for week one and a 51 and a half percent pressure rate. Which is the most pressure they have allowed in a game by rate since week two of 2023 against Washington. Which was that goofy game where they tied it on a Hail Mary at the end and still lost because they didn't get the two-point conversion. Russell Wilson basically. That's what we're talking about. That was the last time the Denver offensive line looked this leaky. And also we shouldn't again, it's similar to the Eagles and money. We shouldn't talk about pressure. It's with Russell Wilson. Also that's right. That's because of the way that the quarterback chooses the boy. North of 50% for the first time since 2023. 17 pressures in a game is the most they've allowed over the last calendar year with one exception, which is pertinent to this conversation. Last December against Jacksonville, who definitely got after them. And I expect to happen again. The running backs were horrendous playing their role in this. And so all of my hope for Denver was that Bonix was going to have a relatively clean ecosystem to work. And like, like you said, that's not to absolve him for the part that he has to play. But I don't think Bonix can quarterback this team to the level. It's looking to reach without like sterling offensive line play. And it wasn't even mediocre on Monday night. It was just outright bad. Which was that's the most shocking thing of all of this. Like even the defensive miscues for me. Whatever it's week one teams have left of a preseason. Then ever, maybe you can coach yourself back up on tackling. But for the offensive line to go from looking unassailable for most of the last two years to what we saw against the chiefs was. That's what has scared me more than anything else. Ben Powers took a cut play. Pay cut this off season. Not surprising that he would be a relative weakling. And he was. He had a couple of rough moments in that game. But McGlinchie getting toasted by our mason Thomas twice in like short order. And then like you mentioned with the backs, the thing that was so. You could set your watch to it with the Broncos over the last couple of years. It's just how sturdy and put together it all felt in past protection. The plan, even beyond the individual talent of the component pieces was so good so often. And so to watch this version of the team combine with the fact that they couldn't run the ball for shit. It just felt so different than what we've come to expect from this team. And Derek, it's only amplified because for as promising as some of the moments we've seen from Boneyx have been over the last couple of years, he is an actively bad quarterback. When pushed off his spot and pressure. And that's exactly what's happening over and over and over again in that game. And that's why I think some of these so many of these things work in concert with each other. Like the Broncos offensive line has been pretty good for the last handful of years. Part of why the pressure numbers are so low is the plan is often good. But they're also an offense that is all about being on schedule. And so they throw a lot of these screens that like, hey, let's get us to second and five. And we can call kind of whatever we want. They were not able to do really hardly any of that in the game against the Chiefs. Like the Chiefs were just killing all their screens, all their quick game stuff, not letting them stay on schedule. So you got into a little bit more peer pass. And I think one, the offensive line, like they were getting skimmed up like. I mean, first play of the game. They send a double cat pressure, which is completely insane. But then even on the ARMAs and Thomas, the third and one pressure that he had, he didn't get a sack, but he forced Bonaix out to the right. The Broncos slide their entire line to the left hand side to Chris Jones playing at three technique. Because it's Chris Jones, it's like, yeah, we got to go cover him. And you just have this ocean of space for the one on one with ARMAs and Thomas. He's clearly got a lot of juice and he's able to make that play. And so they got beat in that sense. And then also, even for all the other issues I have with Bonaix, he did get the ball out on time and early in previous seasons. Like he was always like balls going to be out. I'm going to check it down. I'm going to throw away. I'm going to bail. I thought in this game, he struggled a lot more holding onto the ball. Did not feel as comfortable getting out to his options. And so maybe that's part of that they were trying to be more aggressive and he wasn't comfortable with it or it's first time with Davis Web as a play caller. They're not sure how they want to piece this thing together yet, but it just looked very discombobulated in every single way, which is a problem when this entire The whole thing for the offense was like, yeah, we're buttoned up. We might have like some limitations, but it's extremely buttoned up. You look at the way that the chief's defensive front is built compared to the Jags. Obviously, there's no Chris Jones on the Jaguar's front. But I think the carryover is the edges are better. Even if we had some really nice moments from the chiefs young guys in this game, including FAU, which that was the biggest surprise of all of this is that yeah, we you can understand our Mason Thomas showing up as a past washer based on where he was drafted, what he showed in the preseason, FAU having multiple really nice moments, that's A situation where you look at the chief's front like, oh shit, what could this be over the course of the year? But the judges and Jacksonville are really good, even if the interior pieces aren't going to affect the game in the same way that Chris Jones is. The element that I think is the easiest to carry over between what the chiefs are doing and what the Jags want to do because they both did this in week one. Some of the simulated you're going to see a ton of those from the Jags, I think, in this game. When you go back and you watch how much the running backs particularly struggled in past protection. The Jags are going to do some of that. They did it last week. I thought Ventral Miller had a couple really nice moments as a blitzer. Campanilla is really creative in some of those situations where there was one play. I can't remember when it happened. It was in the second quarter that was, excuse me. The pick, the pick that Watson threw to a leucon was a simulated pressure where both edges dropped out. And it's actually an incredible play by Miller. He gets picked a little bit like the clip to a little bit by the back, but keeps his feet and keeps affecting the play as it's happening and that he, I thought he was really impressive. That was one of the question marks we had about this team with him stepping into that role for Devon Lloyd. I thought he was really good. I think we'll see him a lot as a blitzer in this game based on what we saw from the Broncos in that one specific area last week. I mean, like Dave said, the Broncos running backs could not pass protect like Nick Bolton almost had another ship sack that, you know, ended up being called, I think they ruled it like a. They ruled it in complete past because his arm is coming forward a little bit, but like you're going to be able to get the backs and like, I think the fact that Ventral Miller specifically is good as a blitzer. I was like, he's probably not going to be as good in coverage as Devon Lloyd was and maybe he doesn't have the same rain to Devon Lloyd did, but it was like, I think there's a chance that because he's just like a missile send him at the quarterback or send him at the line of scrimmage type of guy, they can get that. And so the fact that week one, you already saw that value. It's like, okay, I think the defense can still do what they want to do. He's an old school off all I'm backer in a way that I appreciate. And if you know how to weaponize those guys, you can get by with those sorts of players. And I'm smiling and just thinking about what it's like to watch the Jaguars defense and week one was the same thing that we saw for a huge chunk of last year, where they're clearly just so well coached in the back seven and there are multiple plays in that game, where they're in man coverage. And the way that they're passing things off like to the robber player and cover one, like just the communication, the cohesion early in the season for a group that. Like it was banged up last year. And so the combination of like Antonio Johnson, Eric Murray, Jordan Lewis and Travis Hunters, a new piece to this anyway, this group hasn't played a ton of football together collectively. And to watch them be as good and as buttoned up as they were last week, I know it's the Browns, but I just think on both sides of the ball. We'll talk about the offense in a second. It's just clearly such a well coached group in Jacksonville. I was just laughing because off the top of my head, almost everyone you just said in the Jaguars secondary missed the solid chunk of time. And Tonyo Johnson didn't, but like Jordan did, but he wasn't like a week one starter. Travis Hunter obviously did Eric Murray did. So yeah, like for them to be on that, the same page that quickly is really impressive. As much as I felt that about the defense watching them last week, my favorite unit bears aside, because I'm willing to admit that I can't see that will clear eyes my favorite unit that I rewatched over the course of this week from week one was the Jaguars offense. I just smelling salt. It's what they're doing. I compare, we're talking to Brandon Thorn about it on Twitter early in the week and just how satisfying it is to watch. It's an incredibly satisfying aesthetically pleasing offense. It's almost balletic in some of the things that they're doing with all of the motions and the way they use formations and the rhythm that they play with it reminds me a little bit of watching the Niners at their best in the ways that they move. And I think that there's a lot whether the influences director now we said this on Sunday night. There were a lot of elements of what the Jags were doing in that game that felt like the Niners getting five out some of the motions they were using some of the backfield actions with Brent and Strange are reminiscent of what the Niners are doing in their run game. The difference between what the Niners look like with Brock Perty and with the Jags look like with Trevor Lawrence. The difference is purely expressed in the stylistic differences in the quarterbacks and the Jags even if there are again the foundation and the bedrock at some of the ideas you can carry over. When you have a quarterback that is at his best attacking in the way that Trevor can and has been from the second half of last year into week one. That's what makes it feel so distinctly different from what the Niners are and it was the best possible version of that last week. I tweeted out the stat about it last night, the, to me, the purest example of this they had five empty dropbacks the Jags that against the bangle against the Browns last week. Trevor was five of five for 105 yards on those plays. He had 22.8 air yards per target on those throws 22.8. That's like breaking the chart type shit Trevor led the league in EPA per dropback last week, which is not surprising point six five. He was fish the fifth excuse me in average depth of target like his average depth of target was 10 and a half yards downfield it's not unprecedented, but I went back over the last five years. And I could only find like nine other performances that met those thresholds where you're that efficient while throwing the ball that far down the field half of those are Lamar Jackson, if you're even some of that even that number to me is probably I think I was looking at it. I was looking at a similar numbers yesterday. I want to say like 62% of his attempts in that game were 10 yards or more in the air. And so the what you're talking about with the average that the target stuff that's dragged down by the fact that they threw some screens. Like the Travis Hunter. Yeah. He threw like that down the idea that 62% of his attempts are 10 yards or more in the air. That the closest comparison I come up with and the empty stuff reminds me of this Derek, when you go back and you think about what the Rams felt like in like 2021 Matthew Stafford got there. And they're in all these empty looks where they got the two chippers. They're getting hands on the edges to give yourself a little bit more breathing room to let you push the ball down the field out of those sorts of looks. That is something that Trevor can do at his best that very few quarterbacks have the juice to do. And so to see that be such a prominent piece of what the Jaguar's offense was in week one. I'm just incredibly excited to see what this thing is going to look like over the course of the year. I like the Rams early Stafford comparison for this reason. I think Trevor Lawrence has the perfect blend of I will throw whatever the hell you want me to and you saw that some of that some of the times in this game his first pass attempt. They do like they fake the outside zone they throw the drift out to Parker Washington right behind it. He's just like top of his drop ripping it the touchdown he throws to Josh Cameron. Same thing top of his drop absolutely ripping it. He will make the like, Hey, I'm going to scheme this open for you. Please just put the ball there. He has no problem making those throws, but he can also switch gears like a Stafford in in 2021 and be like, Hey, I can read out four and five man concepts. Like pure dropback like down the field like I can and I can really make these throws all the way to the sideline like just how explosive the ball comes out his hand when he's throwing outside the numbers is pretty special stuff like that's where you clearly see why he was a first overall pick talent a while ago. I just I know that it's week one, but this is like partly residual from obviously what we saw off the end of last year. I think this can be like 95% of the 2016 Falcons like this offense. I think might be completely insane. I don't think that's crazy. And I think comparing it to the Matt Ryan MVP here, there's carry over between that and the staff for 2021 year when you have these guys who they've been one thing for with Stafford and Matt Ryan. It was for eight, nine years, right? Like we had come to understand them as one thing and then you changed the circumstances and they emerges something different, whichever it's only been four years, but we're seeing that happen. Like we're seeing what a guy that that has that level of talent, a top three pick in the same way that staff and a Matt Ryan, where when you put him in these sorts of circumstances, it can be electric, nuclear results on offense. And again, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but when you're stacking it up to what in combination with the second half of last year looked like that to me is where it gets really exciting. That's what I was going to say is even if you want to be cautious at the start of a new season, this has been since week 11 of last year. Like when they made the Jacobi Myers trade, this stuff clicked into place and it has looked like this more often than not sense. And so for them to pick back up right where they left off, how could you not be excited, even if you're trying to temper it, it's still very exciting. Well, here's the thing that makes it even harder to temper. The elements that we were maybe had some reservations about coming into the year, the run game was actively bad for them, even when everything was humming when they were throwing the ball in the back half of last season, the offensive line, I think was a worthwhile concern. That looking as good as it did in week one, pregnant specifically, I thought was like unbelievable. Like I thought he was so incredibly good in one on one pass right and one on one pass protection situations against Mason Graham specific. over and over and over again in this game. The recovery, the movement skills, I was so impressed by what I saw from him. You combine that with Harrison playing next to him. Go watch what Anton Harrison did on the first play of that (beep) first play. - Oh my god. - You talk about how frustrating I was with the lack of physicality from what the Broncos were. That's the exact opposite of what Anton Harrison was showing you on play one of that game. And then the other guy that I think you have to throw in there to how this feels different. - Talk about it. - Borkature is like he is that and even Quentin Morris as their third tight end in this game. Like it just the physicality, the ability for them to assert themselves in the run game and not getting picked on in pass protection. That was the one thing lingering in the back of your mind about what might hold this offense back because it did hold the offense back at times last year. And so for this to be the first glimpse we get of this group and for them to really kind of shove that back in your face about doubting it in the summer is the best early returns that you could have gotten from this Jaguar's team. - I always got the vibe that a lot of the Borkature pushback was fantasy football related. That's just my own interpretation of it. But even still like even from a pure football perspective, I think it's reasonable to say, well what are the odds that this guy is gonna come in and like get a substantial amount of snaps and have like the play strength and the wear with all to do all of the various things that you need him to do right off the bat. I'm sorry, my bad because like if you turn this game on and watch it for 15 minutes, he's taking Jared verse out of the play at the point of attack. He's chipping an edge before climbing up and just wiping Grant Delp it out of a play. And then they had a wide zone run at some point in the first half where he's just washing Carson Swellsinger like 10 yards down field. I would have never even like screw catch production. I don't care about that but like the multifaceted way that he was able to make an impact on this game from the word go blew me away. I think for the most part, it's about price and it's about what you're paying for that sort of player. Because last, the comparison to like Jackson Hauser's the guy that I keep coming back to for the skill set you're seeking out that all these teams drafted on day two, he was a fifth round pick. And so draft and guy like that in the second round, I think that's where you can have a little bit of an issue with it, but this is a weird ass draft. And I think it's you're chasing the trend but also understanding what the player pool looks like in this group. And so at the end of the day, who gives a shit? Like if you had draft that guy two rounds earlier than you wanted to, if he's going to have this sort of impact, then none of that really matters. They were second in the league in rushing success rate. And of course, we have to see how that age is over more games. But let's just say Borkerture helps you achieve that level of respectability, even if it drops off from where it is right now. Worth it. Like, I mean, this is a team that won 13 games last year. If he makes you a more three dimensional offense with a chance to win the division and God knows what more worth it. Absolutely. It also makes it easier. Pregnon's given you first round returns. Well, sure round pick, which he was on Sunday. The last thing about the running game that I think is worth mentioning, I was really impressed with Tutan. Like his, the balance and the play strength. I remember talking to somebody there during training camp and them just saying that even if he's a smaller speedback, that's the way we think about him. His strength is an underrated part of his game. He's not necessarily going to run people over, but his ability to play through contact and the balance that you see. That is something he's bringing to the table. And Derek, we saw that multiple times in this game where he is not going down at first contact and he's getting every ounce of what is being blocked. And we typically don't think about guys that have his 40 time playing that way, but that's what we got from him and week one. I mean, there was one stretch run. They tried to hit to the perimeter to the left hand side. And he gets hit by like multiple defenders at the line of scrimmage. And he still turns it into like a seven yard carry 'cause he's able to pump through some of those broken tackles. And so he did that. He also just, I really appreciated how, like his presence of mind of when it's time to just get north. I really appreciated that because that's what this offense needed. Like Travis H and can do some things for you. That is not what he's good at. And so the fact that we saw that from Tutan and I thought Chris Rodriguez had like, he only had like six or seven carriers in this game, but I thought that he handled those pretty well as well. Like the fact that the run game between the offensive line, the tight ends and the running backs just feel like they have a little bit more like push you around and really fight for stuff that I really appreciate. - Against the Broncos specifically, I think people are gonna look at what the Jags did against the Browns and say, well, you're not gonna be able to do that against Denver. And I think I can understand that to a degree and I think that's wrong. I don't think the Jags are gonna have the same game they had last week against the Broncos. Two things I'd bring up. One, the Jags had a really nice outing against the Broncos last year. I mean, they had a fantastic day against Denver relative to what other offenses were doing. And two, the corner talent, we know that for Denver. The spine of the defense and the coverage quality and the spine of the defense is the relative weakness for that team. And that's actually where the Jags were getting after the Browns in this game. When you look at a lot of the explosive plays, I mean, the big crosser to Parker Washington, the play where Quincy Williams doesn't even move. Like that's the worst example that I assume the Broncos linebackers will move as the play happened. But the other one that I keep coming back to, that deep hooker out to Brian Thomas Jr. on the right side. That's a play where you're taking advantage of a linebacker not getting enough depth on that play. You're putting those guys in conflict. That's where this Jags team, I mean, there, I touched on it in Jacob Myers with these deep throw. But for the most part, these are not 40 yard bombs down the field outside of the numbers. These are 12, 15, 18, 18, 12, 14. Over the middle of the field. This is a team that's going to try to just murder you on these intermediate lasers that Trevor Lawrence is really good at throwing. And the linebackers are the players that you're picking on when you're trying to play that way and you're trying to take advantage of what it looks like when you're getting five out in the route and you're doing that. And so this is going to be a game where Stronaut and Alex Singleton are tested and strained because that's exactly what the Jaguars are trying to do to you. And I, the only solace of hope that the Broncos had in the last years matchup was they sat Trevor Lawrence five times. I, I don't know if they're as, they're as equipped or if the Jaguars are as poorly equipped as they were in that department last year. So if they can't even get to the quarterback and we're just going to have Trevor Lawrence throwing over the head of these linebackers, like I feel pretty good that this is going to be another good day for them like it was last year. It's a really good test. And the, the Browns front has talent, right? Like I think that we're going to look at this being a blow I went and say, well, it's the Browns. Jared verse and year two Mason Graham and Malik Collins, like, there are guys on that Browns front. We don't, we shouldn't hand wave away the past protection game that we saw from the Jags. It's a really good start. It is a, probably a more stern test this week. And it's a really good one. It's a really good follow up game for us to have a baseline of how much should we be buying into the past protection improvement, the past protection quality that we're going to see from Jacksonville this year. All right, before we get to a few more of these week two games, let's take our first quick break. Are you the kind of sports fan that wants to dig into the story behind the stats? Join the athletic live on YouTube to cover all the sports stories you can't stop talking about. On game days, we'll watch the biggest matchups alongside the athletics most tapped in reporters. And you can become part of the show in the interactive chat. The athletic live is presented by Google Gemini. Subscribe now on YouTube. (upbeat music) Each week we like to pick a handful of games that we just want to dig into one element of what we're watching on Sunday with that game. I'm going to start with this. Steelers at Patriots, I want to know whether the plan that we saw from the Steelers defense in week one against Atlanta is their identity defensively or if this is a Falcon specific approach that Patrick Graham was taking. Coming into the year, part of this was Joey Porter, Jr., but part of this was Patrick Graham's history. He's a Patriots guy. I think given his druthers, he would like to play a decent amount of man coverage. They played zero snaps of man coverage per next gen against the Falcons last week. And so my question with this is, why? What's the motivation for playing none of it over the course of the week? I think there are a lot of potential explanations. One, Joey Porter, Jr. did not play. Asante Samuel was not a man coverage guy. He's the exact opposite of that. And so how much of it is your true press man corner not being in the lineup? I don't think that can be all of it, but maybe that's some of it too. The Falcons use a ton of pre snap motion. The Falcons are going to be a huge pre snap motion team this year in the same way that they were last year. We see this with teams sometimes, where if you're going to use a lot of motion, do we get, do you want to play a lot of man coverage? So your guys are sprinting all over the field the entire game. It's kind of how teams are with the Niners. It's why teams don't play a lot of man coverage against the Niners. The other element of why teams don't play a ton of man coverage against the Niners is they don't want to play man coverage against Christian McCaffrey. So is this a B. John Robinson thing where we don't want those linebackers to have to worry about B. John and man. So we're going to play a lot of zone. It might be some combination of all of those things. But I want to see how much they carry over because when you think about the best way to play against the Drake May Patriots, it's exactly what Seattle did last week. We're going to make you run the ball into light boxes. We're going to play a lot of soft zone and make you check the ball bound consistently. And so the way the Steelers played against Atlanta last week, I think is the way for them to play against the Patriots. I just wonder how much of that approach was Atlanta specific and how much of it is. This is who we want to be defensively. You think any part of it could be quarterback specific? It might well, that's that that was the other thing I did not mention. Where it's just like, we're not going to give this guy anything easy. Yeah. But this is a Cooper rush specific game. I'm not going to give Cooper rush an easy throw because Drake London's good at his job exactly. Yeah. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was maybe that was the entire explanation. So I'm just curious where we land. Because again, if you just want to carry over a ton of that stuff, they didn't play much cover six was a lot of quarters and the sea ox leaned in to some of those, you know, too high base looks, whether it was pure cover six stuff, there was some game plan stuff that Nate had pointed out on Twitter that they were those kind of like bespoke for the way they wanted to play against the Patriots, but making him check the ball down consistently, enforcing them to run into light boxes. That's the way you should approach this game. And we just saw the Steelers do that last week. Yeah. I am interested to see how much of it because like I do obviously not having Joey Porter, who wherever you want to rank him among the quarterback rankings, like his whole thing is that he can play press man coverage. I thought Asante Samuel looked great in the preseason. I thought he looked good in this game. But he's like a sit-ins zone, play the quarterback size. I'm reading routes, sort of corner back. And so maybe they just felt more comfortable with that. I think it's also a chance that they sign Jamel Dean thinking that he could also be like this press man corner, but he's getting a little bit older. He's been banged up a number of times. Maybe they were just like, you know what, actually sitting in some of these more like quarters soft zone coverages actually just makes more sense to use him. And so I do wonder how this defense is going to progress. And I think it's hard to figure out too because Patrick Graham has kind of been everything at some point. And so figuring out exactly where he lands is like, I don't know. We'll check back in in October and see what the coverage rates look like. We've spent a lot of time reliving the fact that the Pats open to last season with a loss to the Raiders. Never forget that they've lost to the Steelers in goofy ass fashion last year too in September. They turned the ball over five times in a seven point loss. So the potential is here for some shenanigans with the talent the Steelers have on defense. Absolutely. And I thought the Steelers defense looked really good in that game. I thought they again, it's your point against Cooper rush, but the game one of a new coordinator. I think that's what you want to see from Pittsburgh. And so what that looks like in the approach, the both the approach and the quality against Drake May compared to Cooper rush. That is something I am watching when they open this game on Sunday. Colts and chiefs is our next one here. Derek, what is one thing you were watching in the Colts chiefs game on Sunday? How much they are going wrong Sunday. You'll tell me if I'm wrong. Colts chiefs is Sunday night. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So right down to the wire of being pushed to a different day. Um, I think for me, it's how uncomfortable this chief's defense is going to make this game on Daniel Jones. And I think a big part of it. Last week, we were talking about it a little bit with the Broncos game. The chiefs had a 45.5% pressure rate according to next gen stats. That was the fourth highest pressure rate in the league. Only the Eagles Vikings and the Ravens were better. Do you know who the Ravens played? They played the Indian apolis Colts. And so they're they're now facing a team that clearly has some juice with like, again, our Mason Thomas looked good. I thought Chris Jones looked really good. F.A. You having the game he had like they have bodies and waves. And we know that Spags can bring some of these pressures. And now I think they have more talent and like guys who can win the one on ones when they create those. And so I'm a little bit interested to see that because again, Daniel Jones looked fine moving around. I'm still not like confident that he is 100% the same athlete and mover that he was last year. And the other point that I would make to that in this last game against the Ravens Daniel Jones through two passes outside the numbers beyond eight yards. That was I think that it was I think tied for the lowest in the league. I just don't know if he was comfortable driving the ball outside the numbers like that, especially against good corners. The Ravens got good corners. So do the chiefs man. Like if the Lane can play and I think no Williams had a fantastic game in this week one, like even luxurious need it. Nickel. I thought looked pretty good. Like they can cover. And so if they're going to be able to lock out guys one on one and Jones isn't going to throw those. And you're just telling me Spags is going to be able to create some funky shit over the middle that Daniel Jones is going to have to get right and do it under pressure. I this I think this game could unravel. The Lane is expected to be available as of recently. So I'm just excited to see this defense at full strength again. Yeah. And it's it's a fun matchup just when you think about last year that lost to the chiefs was kind of a turning point moment for the Colts. Like that they had that game. They absolutely could have won that game. And they didn't. And it was really the last time we saw that version of the offense before down Jones gets hurt and the wheels come off. And so it's we want to so funny man. Like you think you have an idea of what the season is going to be even if I think we all had a level of collective optimism about what the chiefs could do yourself like being chomping at the bit to watch the chiefs exactly right. I just I even if you even if you had optimism about it, even if you're like, oh man. And we said this like the juice that they could have with the young guys that's so real like I do think that there's a version of this that the chiefs end this season with a really good defense. Never in a million years did I think I'd be sitting here before a week to be like, I can't wait to watch what the chiefs defense is going to do after what they did in week one. And that's what is so fun about the beginning of the season. Get to our last one here Vikings at bears. Dave, what is one thing you are watching in Vikings bears on Sunday? I'm so mad that this is a noon game. It at least deserves like a 330 window to lessen the attention around it. But it will have its own large tell. I'm talking about I'm talking about for the league writ large America. We live in Chicago. So maybe we're in a bubble, but it really feels like this one thing is the one thing in the NFL this week, which is Ben Johnson going against Brian Flores, particularly after what they did to open the season each of them. I mean, masterclasses on each side of the ball. And now they get to go against each other. The Vikings, they blitz anyway, but just for context. And the numbers will look different depending on who you ask. Per true media. Flores blitzed the packers 73.9% of the time. I've seen it north of 80% depending on who you who stats you want to look at. But so I was curious. Per true media. Over the last 10 years, there have been 12 defensive performances with that high of a blitz rate. So Todd Bolts is in there when he coached the jets. Romeo Crennell did it. Joe Barry. Yeah. Romeo Crennell did it against Denver a long time ago. Joe Barry did it when Bailey Zappy was starting for the Patriots. That's just mean. Hell yeah. Okay. So that's three out of the 12. The other nine are either wink, martin, dollar, Brian for us. God bless them both. It's just it's in beautiful characters in the tapestry of NFL history. It is an absolutely silly blitz ray. Obviously, the Vikings are not going to do that again. Like even for what you think about Brian Flores and how often he likes to bet to blitz, I think it's going to be a much more normal. But that is the that's the fun cat and mouse game of how is Brian Flore is going to stay true to who he is while dealing with an offense that I think is going to be a hell of a lot more equipped to deal with that than the packers were the other day. And I got a shout out specifically Jason Leisure or the Chicago sometimes asked Ben Johnson the question that led to my favorite quote of the week that I've seen where he basically was like, you know, how do you how do you do what you want to do without overthinking and trying to anticipate Flores to the point where you're getting away from what you want to do. And Ben Johnson just kind of laughed and he was like, yeah, there's an element of that. And he was like, well, how do you keep yourself from going into that rabbit hole? And Ben was just like, I'm in that rabbit hole right now. A rare moment of love. We don't get a lot of this. But how you how you sort this out is it's going to be fascinating because there's no way Flores, I can't imagine Flores like not blitzing at all. Even in the two games last year and they split the series week one last year, he really only blitzed like 33% of the time. And then in many apolis, he cranked it up to like 67%. It was highly effective in that game. Like Caleb completed almost nothing past 14 or 15 yards down field. I just, I don't know, man, I think this offense is a different beast. I think they're better equipped to deal with that. They did such cool shit with their tight ends last week where all of them can contribute to the blocking game. I want to if I say nothing else, I want to say DeAndre Swift was a demon in past protection last week. And so I just I think if Flores tries anything remotely as crazy as he did against the Packers, it's not going to work out. So how does he adjust the sliders to try to find a more delicate balance? I mean, I cannot wait to watch this chess match. And when you look at the way the Packers were just the players that the Packers are trying out compared to what the Bears have, you have two guards that have barely played NFL football that the Packers had last week. You have Marcian Lloyd, who's played almost no football. And then in Chicago, you have Joe Tuni, Jonah Jackson, and then DeAndre Swift. And a coordinator who is seeing this defense many, many times and and relatively. And I, I, the famous last words, I almost don't even want to say this because I don't want to jinx it has relatively had some success. I guess Bryant for us compared to other play callers around the league. He definitely has, but I will the last time they played Bears did win. But Caleb was highly ineffective targeting like the deeper portions of the field. And it was a Devon Duvernay kick return that kept that from being a really unsettling loss to the JJ McCarthy Vikings. So the potential is here. I think I lean toward the Bears based on what we saw in week one, but you never know. I'm not going to doubt Flores. Same thing we said about the Jags and having the Broncos in week two being a really good test to see how much of this is real. Watching what Caleb Williams does in this game and comparing that to what we saw on week one. I'm it's a very good follow up if you're trying to determine exactly how we should think about the game that we saw from Caleb Williams last week. Yeah. I think like what you're in love did the keep them in the game for three quarters last week, where it was just chucking at 12 yards down the field off of like a three step drop, knowing you're about to get smacked. I think Caleb's got that in him at some point in his career. How much of he that he can do in this game? I think is is interesting. And the other thing I would say. The Packers had no shot of running blind Brian Flores out of those looks. Yeah, the Bears might be able to run Brian Flores out of those looks a little bit. All right. It's time to take a trip down to Sikko Street for a week to again, if you're unfamiliar with the show, how we do these previews each week, you're going to look at the schedule and they're going to be some games that are easy to dismiss. And we're going to try to give you a reason or two, possibly a perverse reason that you should not dismiss hopefully a perverse reason. Hopefully is there. There is one for us to find as to why you should actually care about and tune into this game. This week, it is Browns at Bucks, where I'll start with this is no matter what happens in this game, there is going to be one fan base that leaves just feeling completely awful about themselves. If you're the Browns, just more of the same, right? And the problem is, if you lose this game and the way that you the ways that you could potentially lose it, the quarterback on the other side represents what you could have done and the path that you chose not to go down. So beyond just the eternal pain of being a Browns fan in this era, you get kicked in the teeth even more if it's Baker Mayfield doing this to you. If you're the Bucks and you lose this game, you lost to the Browns. So it is a very same. You lost to the Sean Watson. So that one is pretty simple, but on either side of this day, if we could have a fan base feeling pretty awful by the time this thing wraps up, I think I'm not trying to rub salt in the wound. I think Browns fans are probably pretty used to not feeling great about the team. If the Bucks don't win this game as an eight and a half point favorite in Tampa, coming off of last week. And you know, you prefer the quarterback. You just sign to an extension, not turn the ball over three or four times in a game, but whatever, we lost to a good team that has high expectations for the season, losing this. This is one of those games where when you get the schedule in April, you're like, okay, like we'll beat the Browns. So that's all right. Like, where are the hard games? You can't drop games like this if you're Tampa and you're trying to improve on last year. And yeah, I know it's not Baker's first game against Cleveland because he started against them when he was in Carolina. That doesn't count though. It's his first game against Cleveland since his football resurrection. Since Sean McVeigh just, you know, dipped him in magic waters in LA and saved his football career. And then Liam Cohen continued. And then Liam Cohen. This is his, this is his first game since finding his football second life. And Baker's pissed off and looking for an edge all the time anyway. You remember that old SNL skit where this was like 10 years ago would drake like manufactured beef with everybody that worked on SNL. It's like, why didn't you say hi to me? And he's like writing rap songs about it. That's how Baker's brain works. And now he's playing the Browns. Like he actually has a reason to be pissed off about this game. So like Baker tuned up to 15 out of 10 on the pissed off scale is worth the price of admission alone. I think to the other small thing with the Baker thing, he's coming off of a game where he was horrendous. Like just doing all of the worst habits that you have with Baker Mayfield where not protecting the ball and he's scrambling when he should in. He's throwing the ball into coverage and all this other stuff. And so if you get that game from him week one, there might be a kernel in the back of your mind as a brown fan where you're like, oh, he's down. We can get him again. And what if he just comes out in the bucks score like 40 points on you and then you're like, oh, no, like we got we thought we had him. We thought we had him at his lowest and it doesn't matter. They're back. The Browns defense is another one of those units where I'm just wondering what's real and what's not. For them to get cooked by the Jags and the way that they did last week, are they going to be a group that we have to worry about? Again, it's a lot of the there's a decent amount of talent among that group is not perfect. But there's a decent amount of talent among that group. But it's a new play collar. It's a new situation. Like maybe that just overall is a unit that we should be more down on than we probably were coming into the season. I don't think we'll have that answer by the end of this week. But it'll be an important data point in trying to figure out which direction we're going to go on the Browns defense specifically similar for the other side of things. I thought for losing the turnover battle terribly for the most part, I was really excited about the bucks defense playing an explosive Cincinnati group. Alex Zaloni, not the best debut in NFL history, but so many of their young players. Benjamin Morrison stepped in for Jacob Parrish and kicked ass. Zion McCollum had a really nice game. Tiki Smith was flying around. Ruben Bane was not very good, but I think this is a more favorite Titus Howard and Spencer Fano in game number two is a little more favorable matchup than you said this this week. You're just playing an actual end last week. Marius Mims, not where you want to start if you're Ruben Bane. I'm optimistic that the bucks defense can look really fun and fly around and do some cool shit in this game. And if they don't, then I start to get kind of nervous. I really didn't think about this, but the Ruben Bane Spencer Fano battle of the short arms test is, it's even that's the way to get the most out of Ruben Bane. It really might be. Again, you guys mentioned it. I think Marius Mims is literally like physically the worst matchup he could have drawn. Like they're better players, you know, Tristan Worse, whatever. But that is physically the worst matchup he could have drawn. I'm really what I'm looking up a, I'm on Ruben's mock draftable page right now and Spencer, Spencer Fano's roommate in test. And so it looks much different. Spencer Fano is just hilarious. Like on this octagonal spider chart, all the athletic stuff isn't like the 90th, 85th percentile. And then you look at wing span arm length and hand size. And it doesn't exist. Like there's just all white space on the spider chart. And I assume Ruben Bane's would probably have been pretty similar if he did any of the athletic testing. His mock draftable trial looks like Pac-Man. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yes. Yeah. Got the Pac-Man chart between all the brown between Fano and the Browns receivers. And then the sheer number of big draft picks, the bucks have used on defense. This is a, this is a big draft net game for sure. I can't wait to see who just feels like absolute shit after this thing wraps up. That's the entire point of Psycho Street. All right, let's take our second quick break here. And we're going to come back and chat about a couple more games from the week to slate. Try out a new segment this year, just as a way to kind of dig into something that's five, four, three, try out a new segment this year. We're calling this take therapy. And it's just a way to talk through something that one of us has been sitting with over the course of the week, something that's been in the back of your mind that you know, or at least you hope you'll feel a little bit better about if you get to talk something through just an intrusive thought that has weighed on you a little more heavily than you want to over the course. So from the time that the game's ended last week until we're recording the show on Thursday. And for me, it is just my overall concern about the Dallas Cowboys defense. We talked about this on Sunday night and real time. I think, and again, this is going to be a space where nothing is off the table. This is a safe space for a lot of say, whatever and just trust each other here. I know that it's irrational to think that this is just going to be how it goes for the Cowboys the entire year. It's week one. We talked about it in real time. There have been even great coordinators that have really struggled early in their first seasons with new teams. And so I know it's irrational to let that week one performance from the Cowboys defense completely changed the way I feel about this group moving forward and think that this is going to be an absolute disaster. But then you go back and you watch it. And you just think about and read all of the panic that has come out of the Dallas media over the last few days. And just every single person in that building talking about fixing communication issues and how much better that they have to be. I don't feel great about it, guys. I'll be honest with you. I do not feel great about where all this sits one week into the season, even if I know intellectually, it should get better over the course of the year with the first time coordinator. I'd love to say I told you so, but I didn't even see the New York Giants walking them down the way they did. And that's the most struggling part about it is like if you gave up 10 explosives in week one and it's like you just, you know, guys were running open and you met a mistackle turns into a 60 yard gain or whatever. It's not good, but it's easier to hand wave away. We talked about it at the time, like the Giants were just so methodical. They had, they had a 13 play touchdown drive with no explosives. And they had two others that only generated one explosive. They just shipped their way down field against the defense that was completely unable to adjust to it all night long. And when you consider, by the way, Malik Hooker is hurt now, as is Demarvian overshown, not that they necessarily even played well in this game. But now the depth of a unit that grossly underperformed is already being tested. And oh, by the way, if you lose your own to in the division with a trip to Brazil to play the Ravens on deck, how does that make you feel? Oh, that sounds insane. That is like an ultimate getting caught like in the bad vibes and just being shot down even further. I think I'm mostly in the same boat with all this stuff. And I think kind of to your point, too, Dave, it's, it's not just that they looked bad. To me, it was the way in which they looked bad, where for me, the biggest concern for this style of defense, what I'm going to call the Fangio style of defense. I think I said this at some point during our preview shows, they've all had awesome linebackers. Like, go look back at all all of the fangeos teams, almost all of them had dudes at linebacker. And I think you can even say, you know, the Mike McDonald system is a similar style of system. He they traded for Rookquan Smith and then the same thing with Ernest Jones and Seattle, like they always have dudes there. The fact that Dallas's linebackers looked completely unplayable in this game, like J. Sean bar. He's a he's a rookie third round pick. That's going to be tough. But I thought his head was spinning. Overshown did not look good, the winters you could pick on the fact that like a defense that is so reliant on the core and the spine of the defense looking good. And those guys were the weakest link that did scare me pretty bad. I think it's just the fact that this is a defensive system that's really rooted in communication is so important, right? Like you need to be so, but especially, and that was the promise of this, right? And that's what I the talent was better than it was last year. They added so many pieces like it is a different group is the ship of the easiest joke we made when talking about the defense of the first time that like the talent level is just drastically different because most of the players are different, but it still isn't an overly talented group. This was think this thing was going to have to sink or swim based on how well it was coached and how buttoned up at all felt. And that was the way you had to talk yourself into the fact that that was the element of it that looked as poor as it did in week one. That's scary as hell. Like that. It's truly terrifying as somebody who had a level of optimism about this going into it. And I think if you're trying to tell yourself a story about why it's now we're totally panicking over this. I think you go back to the best and cleanest example is what the Saints were last year. You look back at and you think about like what the Saints were in the first half of last year. They were going up 25 points a game. They weren't a great defense. They were significantly better in the second half of the year. And it's again, some were the fan geobones and some of this, the nuance and the complexity associated with that. It takes a little bit of time. And so the fact that it was communication issues, maybe you can talk yourself into that being correctable. Like those are things that you actually can get better at over time and with a little bit more time on task. But again, this is all stuff that you're really having to rationalize what you saw last week. And so I've been sitting here very worried about it. And I think I'm spinning it forward a little bit. If you can't look better against Washington, then you look the last week. That's where it gets really scared because while there are elements of this washing offense that can give a defense that the quality of defense we saw last week can still give you problems. This should still be a group that you can bounce back against at least a little bit. You would like to think, but to go back to your point and add at recording we don't know the answer to this. The Cowboys are playing it close to the vest. But overshown as dinged up, barham might wear the green dot on Sunday. And I'm not. I refuse to shit on Jason barham because the fact that he took on this mythic status within the Cowboys fan base because of training camp is a symptom of the Cowboys own issues of not addressing linebacker better. This is why I wouldn't shut up about Jordan Brooks during the lead up to training camp until the dolphins finally extended him. It's an untenable situation for a third round rookie. I mean, a third round rookie that's a tweener. Yeah. That's not a space player. You know, like that's an even another element of this. If sunny styles was being forced into this situation, it would still be tough, but more understandable. This is just a completely different story entirely. And so when you hear stuff like that, that like a third round rookie might be calling this defense on Sunday in week two after looking like he wasn't ready for it in week one. It's hard to come up with a realistic source of optimism. And the commanders did not look great on Sunday. That was against the real deal. Like the real fan. Yes. That we are highly confident is very good. It's it's not great, man. I'm sure actually I can't even say I'm sure I hope it doesn't look that bad throughout the season. And I do trust that Christian Parker can attain a higher degree of communication and and buttoning things up than what we saw in the season opener. But how much better? Because we were hoping this could be a unit that would take a leap to the middle of the league. That that was the hope. Could this be the 15th best defense in the week? That doesn't feel realistic based on one week. No. Maybe that's an overreaction, but this is supposed to be a safe space. I mean, if you're getting, if you're giving up what they did last week, you're already putting yourself in a hole to be the 15th best defense in the league over the course of the season. We only place have a team game. Right. Whether or not they feel that way, statistically, they're making it really hard to get there. Yes. And so again, it's a long, long season. And it's not a matter of them being the eighth best defense in the league. It's a matter of them being the 16th or 17th best defense in the league. That's certainly not off the table yet. But it's been, it's been a lot to wrestle with over the last 72 or so hours. I'll tell you that. It's if the Broncos weren't playing a game of the week, we could have done the same thing about their offense. So I'm right there with you. Let's talk about what we want to know coming out of week two in the NFL. We're going to do this every week. Each of us is going to have something that we just want a little bit more information on a little bit more clarity on by the time the week wraps up. I'll kick us off. Are the Cardinals going to be the team that surprises us this year? Every year, there is a team that is better than we expect that is more competent than we expect. And I think to give ourselves a little bit of credit when we talked about the Cardinals in the NFC West preview, we did not treat the Cardinals as some disaster class. It was, this is a team that is flawed that has a stopgap journeyment a quarterback and is playing against one of the toughest schedules in the NFL and arguably the toughest division in the NFL. Even if they were going to win three or four games, I think we all collectively believe that this would be a watchable team. There are a lot of redeeming elements of this. Well, maybe if maybe that wasn't enough, maybe that wasn't enough optimism. Maybe this is going to be a team that, I mean, we're wanting to know, we'd be the team that we're, people were picking to make the playoffs and win the NFC West. And so is it going to be more than a plucky team that loses a lot of games? Are they actually going to be a group that really overachieves that is consistently giving teams a hard time every single week that ends up somewhere closer to 500 or better in a way we never could have anticipated. And so again, we won't have a firm answer on that for a long time, but that's what I want to know coming out of week two. How confident should I feel and how excited should I feel about the Cardinals being that team? Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to put everyone on the seat really quickly. In your heart of hearts, do you think that this Cardinals team can or will be better than last year's Panthers? Yeah. I, I, yes. Yes. Like I kind of think there, I already am like, I kind of think they're better than that. The only, the only complicating factor to that. No, yeah. It's the division. It's, yeah, exactly. But in terms of like a quality of team. Yes. 100%. Yes. I have no problem saying that right now. And because that's the other thing, the, the Panthers were not even as good as their records suggested last year. I think last year they were like 23rd or 24th by DVOA. But that's kind of the thing with this Cardinals team is like the schedule is probably going to put them in such a place that winning anything more than seven games, even in a really good season is going to be difficult. But this was a roster like to your point. They were a better roster than you ever see for a team that had like the worst, like I guess the highest odds to like lose the most games. You know what I mean? Like you usually just don't see rosters that have this much talent, be projected to maybe lose the most games in the NFL. And so again, I don't know how many, that means they're actually going to win. But like you could kind of sell me that this is competitive. They looked good. Okay. Let me ask you this because I just said I can't see it from a record standpoint because the NFC West is so strong. You know how you subvert those expectations. You steal wins from teams like the Seahawks when they don't have their quarterback. How realistic do you think that is? That Seahawks are three and a half point road favorites, even without Sam Darnel. I don't know how realistic it is because that's why I'm talking about the Cardinals right now. I want to know. What do I want to know? I want to know how realistic it is. I have no idea. We have one glimpse against the Chargers team that just go disappointing, right? Like just was everything about the defense specifically, right? Like the defense was talking about your worst fears being realized. The Chargers looking the way they did defensively last week is your worst fears being realized about the talent level, just not being good enough in the same way that we talked about over the last couple of years when they had to play against really good teams deeper into the season and Jesse Menter being such a multiplier. And so I don't know. It's not an interesting answer, but that's where I say with it. I don't know. I think it's fair not to know. And it makes this game a hell of a lot more compelling than it looks on paper because if week one was not an aberration, then the two and no Arizona Cardinals is not completely out of the question. I would pick Seattle if I was picking this game, but it shouldn't be completely out of the question. If they look remotely like they did last week, that they could be a team with its backup quarterback at home. And so I can't wait to find the answer to that. And that's how stuff like this is how you have a surprisingly good season. If you can steal a game like this and all of a sudden at the end of the year, you're seven and 10 or eight and nine instead of five and 12. Like that's how it happens. I will say they don't need to win this game for the answer to this to be yes, that they are the team that's going to surprise us this year. You don't need to beat the Seahawks in order to be that team. But I think these questions are more relevant in week two than probably at any other point in the year of what do I want to know. And so I think we will learn a decent amount about the Cardinals this week. Derek, what do you want to know coming out of week two in the NFL? Speaking of the Chargers defense, how long do we got to do this with them? Because they got picked apart. in this game by the Cardinals. And I think this to me was so different than like the bills hanging 36 points on the Texas. Like I mentioned, it took so many insane plays for the bills to be able to do that. I watched the Cardinals go against the Chargers defense and they were just destroying them schematically, like just picking apart and finding anything that they wanted. And last year with Jesse Mentor, it just so rarely felt like this team was out of the wrong call or they were miscommunicating something or they couldn't tackle or whatever it was going to be. It felt like they knew what route combinations were coming. I thought the Cardinals did such a good job of consistently putting the ball where they wanted to. You mentioned, I think on the Sunday show how well they were opening up the middle of the field, something I picked up on also when I was watching this game against the Chargers. Jacobi Berset was 11 of 12 for 88 yards and a 75% success rate on throws of 1 to 10 air yards between the numbers and the hash marks. And what they were doing was they were consistently finding some way to like, hey, let's get the flat defender out of here. And we're going to replace him with the ball. And the amount of times they were able to do that so reliably for four quarters. I was like, man, that is what it looks like when you are a first time NFL play call, they're going to start picking on you. We said, well, we said Denver was ultimately the least in like the most surprising in a bad way performance of week one, right? Yeah, but the Chargers are in the conversation behind the Chargers are in the conversation. I think with the way the way the offense looks specifically was incredibly disappointing. But that's the other thing we haven't even mentioned about the Cardinals. The Cardinals defense might actually be good. Yeah, they're deep dude, Max Melton was nuts in this game. I thought Max Melton played a really good good game. Mac Wilson was really good in this game. Like Buddha is Buddha. Like I thought the front looked good. I do think with the Chargers offense though, like I have enough faith in Justin Herbert and Mike McDaniel that like we can get there and we can figure this out with the Chargers defense. We had questions of like how talented is this defense really. And we've never seen Oley recall plays at the NFL level before and side of the Cardinals thing is better because the Cardinals took that game from the Chargers. You look at this schedule in April and you say, well, at bills at Seahawks, Broncos, Chiefs, Rams, Texans, Ravens, but at least we start the season with the Cardinals and the Raiders. So big sigh of relief there. And now you're staring down the barrel of 0 and 2 if the Raiders do that to you as well. I mean, the fact that you dropped the first one is already kind of unforgivable. And that's how a promising season goes sideways quickly. Honestly, I think it's the Raiders are a really good test though because I think the Raiders a week one like it's exactly what Derek is talking about where the talent level isn't even on the same level as the Cardinals talent level. Obviously, like with the pass catchers, especially without powers, but I have confidence that clincubi actually make it hard on you. The schematically they're going to make it hard on you. And so if you're going to get picked on again by a play call or an offensive ecosystem that I have faith in that I think will be a solid test at the very least. I think that actually makes it a really appropriate week two measuring stick for this Chargers defense specifically. Dave, what are you watching in week two of the NFL? What do you want to know? What I want to know is can the Green Bay Packers a play a normal game and be finish it? And that is a valid question to ask after the journey we have been on with this team. As y'all remember, Green Bay beat Chicago on December 7 to improve to nine three and one since then they have now lost six games in a row dating back to last season. It's their longest consecutive loss streak since the end of 1990 going into 1991. We've literally never seen the Packers lose over this prolonged period of time since before Brett Farf. We are in new waters. They also haven't started owe into since 2006. So if they can't manage to beat the jets on the road, we really are just in a new place for most of us in our consciousness with the Green Bay Packers. Reminds me of the quote from Peter Gibbons and office space where he's like every day of my life has gotten worse since I started my job. So if you see a Packers fan. That's on the worst day of their life because they keep finding ways to lose these games and all in the second half and fourth quarter, by the way. I'm willing to say this because it's a jinx. I'm more than willing to live with. I think we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. With the like, oh man, could they lose to the jets on Sunday? That's not a proper response. I'm not saying you did this. Other people are doing this. And I just I feel like we're getting there a little bit too fast. But and that's why I want that's why I included the normal game aspect of this. Even like the jets looked surprisingly good and competent and I don't mean to write them off. But like for who the Packers are, what we expect of them and what they've been under Matt Laflour. They should go win this game without having to sweat too much about it. They are going to win this game and they are going to win this game in convincing fashion. They should know you're trying to do to the jets on Sunday, all reverse jinks. I do think you're right. They're like the jets beat the Titans. And it wasn't like it was they it wasn't like they throttled them like they played well, but they you know what I mean. And so I think the Packers will be fine in this game. I am terribly worried about the guard play though. And whether or not that loses them a game against the jets by themselves. I don't know over the course of the season. I don't think that this will be the first time that we have them in like, what do you want to know? Can you hold up against X teams interior? I do think that that will be a question. I would just love to see the Packers build a lead and then not look up an hour later and be like, what happened here? They've been outscored a hundred and 10 to 39 in the second half during the losing streak. You better be on your pees and cues, would you know right now, would you know, last week. So we're back. We could have done morbidly interested for a variety of reasons morbidly interested to have an eye on that game. We could have done 10 of these this week. I mean, that that's week two is the right this time to have these sorts of conversations. There are a lot of things I think we want to know after this after week two in the NFL wraps up and hopefully we will have some more answers. When that all goes down, we will be back here on Sunday nights, recapping the week that was with love. If you guys would come join us. If you're watching this on YouTube, please like and subscribe. I know a lot of you were new these days. So please hit that like button. Hit that subscribe button. Continue to check out all the stuff we're doing on the YouTube channel. All of our video specific stuff. For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please like, comment and leave a rating. We'll see you next time.