Week 3 Hangover: Brian Flores is a menace, Mason Graham comes alive, and the Giants win ugly

Welcome to the athletic football show brought to you by the US Bank smartly visa signature card. Time for the week three hangover me and Derek dug into three games today started things off with Bucks Vikings, just a phenomenal performance again from the Minnesota Vikings defense. Follow that up with a little Browns Panthers talk, Browns defense, especially the Browns front, looking like we thought it might coming into the year and then finish things off talking about the giants and the Titans, which was the most hangover game that might have ever existed. Giants Titans, James Winston, Camboard and a downpour. It doesn't get any better than that. Hit all three of those today. Let's get into that conversation with me and Derek right now. Time for the week three hangover. We had a bunch of games on last night's show and so there was not a ton to choose from this morning and that makes this a very hangover ratio. We've got some pretty gross stats coming from these three games, but I still think there's plenty to chew on in all three of the matchups that we're going to dig into, but there was a lot of ugliness in the leftover games from yesterday and there's going to be a decent amount of that today. No Ravens on this show today. No, this is the hangover episode so far that we've done this year that feels the most like what we were doing last year where it really was like digging through some mud and I do think Vikings bucks was like compelling in some ways, but it was a disgusting football game. The Vikings are three and oh, I mean, the fact that we didn't talk about them last night almost feels like a tad disrespectful. We just had so much other stuff to get to and it was a really ugly game. I mean, just to give you guys a sense of this, the Vikings yesterday won the football game. Per next gen, they had a 23.6% success rate. The bucks had were at 23.4%. So I didn't have time to look up the historical context around that. I have to imagine that's one of the lowest combined success rates success rates in any game in a very long time that wasn't a weather game. Like it wasn't like that we were playing in a downpour like we're going to get to tighten this giants makes a little bit of sense that that game was as ugly as it was. The fact that this happened in decent conditions and we had a sub 25% success rate for each of these teams. It was really hard to watch offense for almost this entire thing. And for really both sides and we'll dig into the specifics of it. It was a combination of I thought two defenses that were called really, really well throughout the game. I think Vikings more so than bucks obviously because four is insane. On top of like both quarterbacks just left a number of plays on the field. And obviously for Kyler, you know, first real full game in the system. He's coming off the concussion and makes a little bit more sense. And then with Baker and the bucks like they had been cratering and spiraling already for the first two weeks of the season and then you run into Brian Flores who is going to kind of make you do that regardless of who you are. What side of all do you want to start with? You want to start with bucks offense versus the Vikings defense. I mean that's more interesting match up between the two just in terms of how well the Vikings defense played. I think I agree. I think that that's probably where I would like to start. The Vikings defense man, though literally the first play of the game. The bucks are trying to run one back power to the left hand side Dallas Turner grinds the tie-down back into the formation. And then I think it was Eric Wilson comes down and just explodes the puller in the hole. And Bucky Irving still spins out and it's like a four yard carrier, whatever. But immediately it was like, yep, they're going to bring the thumb the same way that they always do. And so I think them just doing that like that immediately setting the tone in that way. I thought was interesting. The other big picture thing I want to talk about and we'll obviously talk about some of the certain plays and stuff like that. We've come to obviously blur as Flores has been blitzing at a truly insane rate this season, especially even on third and fourth downs in this game, though, he only blitz on 39% of the time on third and fourth downs, which is not typically what they have been doing. They brought a lot of four man rushes and on those four man rushes Baker Mayfield was two for seven with two sacks of pick and zero first down conversions. So they kind of went off script for what they normally been doing and said, hey, we're going to make Baker read it out, especially on these third and 12s and stuff like that. And really at no point in the game, did he prove that he was up to that? It was just another example of how there are so there's just a step ahead right now, no matter what you're trying to do against them, like they're glowing up absolutely everything. It's a combination of and we'll get into some of the specifics just for context before we start doing this. I wanted to look it up while you were talking. Since 2016, over the first three weeks of the season, this is the one, two, three, four, five, sixth best performance in terms of defensive success rate through the first three weeks of the season in the past decade. Collectively, the Vikings and the three games that they have played are giving up a 32.3% defensive success or offensive success rate. I mean, it's ridiculous. And I think it's again, it's a combination of so many different things that we can dig into. The player in this game that best expresses this. Eric Wilson, dude, he's insane. I mean, just absolutely insane. And I think you can take this big or small in using Eric Wilson as a microcosm for the Vikings defense. You can do it for this game. You can do it for what it's felt like this season. And you can do it for the entire Brian Flores tenure. Eric Wilson is a journeyman linebacker. Eric Wilson has bounced around the league. He's been available for next to nothing as like a rotational player. And over the last two years in this Vikings defense, he has played incredible football. And this is just what they do. They have these better encycl through this defense. And every single one of them, if they can handle it mentally, becomes the best version of that player throughout their entire career. And I think Wilson, both in this game and over the last two years, has been a very pure representation of that idea. He got drafted by this football team 10 years ago. Obviously, a way different football team and had the journeyman to get like to four different teams before he finally arrived here. This was not a player who really had a starting job at all until he was 30. He started like 12 games for the Packers in 23. But that was like injuries. They were just banged up. Like that was not like they went into that thinking that he lands with Brian Flores. And I think at first it was a little bit of a slow start getting him to the lineup. And now he's just a starting linebacker. And again, I think there are so many specific plays in this game that highlight what he's capable of. Like again, first play where he's just mashing a puller. He can do that for you. There was one play where he's like picking the guard and then explodes the running back and like barrels him over and he gets a sack. I think him and Blake Cashrin gets to the quarterback in the two minute drill. There was a play where he's mugged up on, you know, obviously looks like he's going to be a rusher. He pops out into the field and gets a hand on the ball that Baker may feel trying to throw past his head like he can do everything for them. And that is kind of the point of the defense is how many guys do we have who we can we think that we can ask to do anything on the football field. A lot of those examples that you just mentioned. The play after he did something else on the play where he gets the P.B.U. dropping off the line of scrimmage. The very next play he's running with Kate Otton step for step off the seam and gets a P.B.U. The play before the nuked, let the when he nukes the left guard on the stunt and gets the sack. He got a TFL on second down to force them into third down. And those plays where he's mugged up on the line of scrimmage and then getting depth off of it or just really any play where he's being asked to be a middle of the field zone defender. That's what really stuck out to me in this game is that it doesn't seem to matter whether they have six guys in coverage, whether they have seven guys in coverage, the amount of space they're eating in a specifically in the middle of the field when you're trying to access crossers or rap routes or any of that stuff. It's just so, so good. Like in theory against a team that blitzes a lot. That's where you should be able to hammer them and they just do such a good job of erasing that space consistently. And I think that in this game Wilson was the best example of that. I think absolutely it's just I think the way that those guys obviously when you're playing zone coverage, you're going to one place and then especially in their system, you're immediately triggering on the quarterback's eyes or you're triggering where you think the next route is when you pass it off. And their ability to do that like the speed at which they do it and how how little they are wrong is really impressive. Like they play more palms coverage than I think anybody in the league, which palms is basically like covered two that can turn into quarters just depending on how it plays out, but the way that those guys read it and pass stuff off like they are never wrong. And it's it's kind of remarkable how how well they just like clinch down on space and really never allow you to get easy throws on stuff like that. It's why like when they play all those like two high pressures a lot of the time where they have four guys or two guys deep depending on how it plays out and two underneath. It's because of how well they play that exact coverage that they can blitz in that way more than any other team in the NFL. There was a play I literally wrote this in my notes. There was a play. There was a sequence at one point in the game where Redmond gets his hand on a pass at the line of scrimmage. It's nearly intercepted two guys ran into each other. That was on second down on third down. They heat Baker up. He throws them all short of the sticks. Isaiah Rogers cleans it up. Drive over pumped. And I just think they are the no one to me does it better than like the the sea hawks suffocate you over the course of a game. But I don't think there is any defense in the league over the last couple of years. Seahawks Texans anybody that forces you to play on their terms as often and as efficiently as possible as the Vikings consistently do it. And there are so few offenses that can flip that script on them and play the game they want to play against this team. It takes the really, really good offense. And I think that's why, you know, they fell short in the playoffs, like the Rams picked on them a couple of years ago, but that's the type of offense that it takes. Anything less, any tier less than like the tippy top guys, the tippy top play callers that are among the elite guys in the NFL, they are the ones dictating the terms of how the game is going to be played against you. And over the first three weeks, the degree to which they have done that, including against Ben Johnson in the week two is just incredibly impressive. To me, the difference between like them and the sea hawks is the sea hawks don't give you anything. They really just make you earn a lot of stuff or take all the stuff underneath and you've really got to make guys miss or you've got to make the heart throws over the middle of the field. It feels like with the Vikings, they are just daring you to do something. They are like throwing knives at you and they are daring you to go make a play. And it's just really, really hard to live that way. Like the way that they play defenses incredible and the way that I honestly think too, they'll play some good quarterbacks obviously over the course of the year. And I think we've seen the truly elite guys can pick this stuff apart. But there is a part of me that wonders like this is what the third, fourth year that these a lot of these guys are now in this system. And like I kind of wonder if it's just even more these guys are attuned to the way that this works. And I really want to see how it kind of progresses over the course of the season. Yeah, me too. And I think we probably having Harrison Smith back helps right. And just having like one more piece back there to give them a little bit of flexibility. But coming into it, I think there were some questions about what the front would look like because it was really young. And the idea that even if you're having to wait a little bit on Caleb Banks and Dominique Orange and you know, they'll come along at their own pace. I think we probably understated how impactful and important guys like Jalen Rebman would be after the season that he had last year. Dallas Turner taking a step forward. And then the back seven, like the back seven isn't filled with stars. It's filled with guys like Eric Wilson, who in this defense can be incredibly effective players. And so when you combine that, when you combine a back seven full of veterans who know exactly. And I think that's probably it is that when you're constantly forcing the other team to play the game on your terms, it doesn't really matter that you don't have star level talent at every single position because what they're being asked to do specifically is so the focus in it is so narrow, right? But I think that's what they do such a good job of is that like we're going to ask you to do this one very specific thing because we know that's the only answer they're going to have because we're making them make that choice. And when you're narrowing the scope to that level, you can get really effective play out of these guys that if you drop them into any given situation, maybe we wouldn't see this level of play from them. I think that's a great way to put it because they allow every single defensive player they have to do the thing that they are best at. Like do you want Isaiah Rogers like running man to man with people or like matching people in coverage? Absolutely not. But can he sit in the flat and play palms and read cover two and all that stuff? Absolutely. I think the safeties are good at like kind of reading quarterbacks eyes and running around that way. Obviously, Harrison Smith is unbelievable at that. The linebackers like them using Eric Wilson as this hybrid, you know, we'll be on the line of scrimmage sometimes. He'll be a mug player, but we can pop him out. The pop out players that are the best that are the ones with long arms and Eric Wilson has that sort of like length and it's how he gets a hand on the ball on the play that I talked about earlier. And then the other guy that we haven't talked about in this game, but they use him effectively. I even pace as a blitzer in this game was eating Cade Aughton alive. There were multiple plays, especially in the second half. You know, there was one where he blew up Cade Aughton like early in the third quarter or he like swipes past him and then Aughton like squirts out of the backfield and Baker somehow gets the ball to him, but it was still an incredible pass rush. And then a little bit either later in the driver on the next drive, he explodes Cade Aughton to get, I think, a sack like he splits the sack. And so the fact that every single player in the defense just gets the scope limited for them and they get to only do that and really not get put in compromising positions for those skills, their skill sets. It's the same thing that we praise like Kyle Shanahan for with his wide receivers, but Brian Flores is doing that with defensive guys. Yeah, we don't normally, we don't talk about defensive quarters defensive coordinators being a multiplier for individual talents in quite the same ways we do for offensive players because, I don't know, maybe it's because we think about it through a fantasy football wins to a certain extent. Like there's tangible production with a lot of those offensive guys. You see their individual numbers in a way that you don't for a linebacker and coverage or a safety. And so it's a little bit more of an abstract idea, but I think Seattle, we've talked about this a bunch like it took them getting down to thinly its safety for us to feel the difference and who was out there and who wasn't. And with the really good defenses, that's exactly what it is. And the Vikings are precisely that. You mentioned paces of blitzer. The thing they found and just kept picking on at a certain point in the second half is that they were running those crossdogs with Wilson and Cashman and the boxers had absolutely no answer. There were just way too many snaps period for Tampa in this game where their response to a mugged up look was we're going to let the linebacker come scot free and we're going to ask a back to hold up against that guy with a head start and with momentum and we're he's just going to explode the running back. The runback is going to get exploded into Baker Mayfield's lap. That just happened away too many times in this game. That can't be the answer. But but I kind of think that's the beauty of the Brian floor as defense is because the bucks are probably sitting there and being like they're not going to bring them both every time. Nobody brings both of the mug players every time. And then of course of the second half he's like, yeah, we will. Why wouldn't we? You don't have an answer for it. So that truly is like the beauty of how the Brian floor as defense works. It's a lot of like, yeah, I'm not hitting you. I'm not hitting you. And then like as soon as they decide that that's what they want to do, they're going to do it and just unleash everybody. Anything that really be said at this point about the bucks on the offense. I mean, Baker's going to miss three weeks at least is what Todd Bulls came out and said today with that thumb injury. It almost to me like doesn't matter for this season. Like they're 0 and 3. The offense has struggled to find its footing even with Baker. They were really having a hard time. I mean, it's hard for me to imagine even with Baker Mayfield playing this being a playoff team this season. And so now I think it's just a question of what does this look like moving forward? Like what does this look like for the rest of this year, but also going into next year because you just paid this person. I'm a little bit, I'm pretty worried because like I actually think the offensive line and run game in a lot of ways. Obviously some of their path pro answers were not great in this game, but individually, I think a lot of these players still look good. And the run game has had moments all throughout the season. I just think overall there are too many mistakes on this team. Like Baker Mayfield is not accurate. I think when he was trying to replace some of the blitzes in this game, him and his receivers communication on what exactly the landmark was supposed to be was not great, which is I know it's a new system technically, but he's thrown to all these guys for a while now. Like there should be a little bit more. I think communication there. That missed to a Buka on third down is one of the saddest in completions of the season at this point. And you watch it and you watch the body language after that ball that ball falls in complete. And it's like, oh boy, like we have reached a tough moment three weeks into the year. Because that's the simplest answer. We're going to throw the slant against the blitz. And they just like we're not able to connect on it. And then the other thing to you that I would mention that I think is a small frustration with me. Bucky Irving purely as a runner looks more explosive. He just makes a lot of mistakes, man. Like fumbles and just like he had a drop in this game when Baker Mayfield got out of a pressure. Like it's just a lot of stuff like that for who whenever he touches the ball is their best skill player. But it just there are too many mistakes. I think overall in this offense right now. Baker thing is we literally just finished recording a video about how it's not interesting to talk about. But we probably should just readily admit that quarterbacks are more sensitive to their surroundings than we want to talk about. Like it's not interesting. But Charter Lawrence was quarterback 18 in the 2025 QB tears quarterback 18 who's just behind two. And Baker may feel through 40 touchdowns in 2024 William Cone was his offensive coordinator. And I think if that season doesn't happen, Baker may feel does not make $55 million a year. But now you're paying Baker may feel it's cap it in 2027 is $65 million. That is that sounded crazy when Dak was at 60 and Dak has always been a much better quarterback than that. $65 million and it's just you're we're in a tough spot with this team right now because you've committed to Baker now. And it feels like we're trending in a direction where we're probably going to turn the page as a franchise after the season is over. And it's just really messy. Like I just don't know how you untangle this heading into next year. I mean like really your only your only answer is you have to hit on whatever your pursuit of the next Liam Cohen looks like. Like that's the only way you make good on this is if you find a guy who can almost immediately make Baker may feel looks like look like a 65 million dollar quarterback. And I do think again, that's possible because we should readily admit that these guys are that it is that most of these situations are fragile. They can change very quickly depending on the circumstances changing, but you're really threading a very tough needle there if you're the box over the next year. And it's also like I know it's not that long ago, but like Baker may feel those 28 29 when he was having those, you know, the 23 and 24 seasons. He's now 31 for a player that is a little bit smaller has always tried to rely on his athleticism to get himself out of problems and has been banged up at like every point in his career. And he, I think we knew that he was a player that the wall was probably going to come for him in a similar way to where it did with Russell Wilson, where it was just like, Oh, shit, one day it's, it's gone. And I don't know if that is necessarily true of Baker Mayfield right now, but it feels like that's more where we've arrived. And so while he is sensitive to his surroundings, I do have worries about like his individual play and ability to like get back to wherever he was before. You do have to clear a certain bar to make good on that improvement in surroundings. Like you have to reach a requisite level for any of the rest of the stuff to matter. And I don't think it would be unfounded for Baker specifically for us to be worried about whether he can still clear that bar because the last two years, he's been firmly under it if you just watched the way that he has played. Let's get to the other side of the ball because for as good as the Vikings, defense wasn't this game. Again, the offense was pretty terrible down to down. Like you can count on one hand, the positive passing plays that happened in this game for the Minnesota Vikings, two of them came on the same drive. And they were like two of the five really nice moments that this team had the entire game. If they don't have that sort of performance from the defense and they don't return a punt for a touchdown, this is not a winning performance from the Vikings offense. No, the Vikings offense was not like the passing offense looked. They looked like they had a quarterback who had not played in the system who was playing in a way that is not attuned to what he had done best early in his career and coming off of a concussion. I think I think you like and you lose Justin Jefferson at some point in this game and you lose Justin Jefferson, yes, exactly, which if you were having a young quarter or not a young quarterback, but a quarterback in a new system who was like needed a little bit of an answer, you would want to rely on Justin Jefferson and obviously he didn't have that. And I do think that that is especially notable, not only because he's excellent, but like Jordan Addison any time that people were getting hands on him was getting bullied. There was a route where T.J. Hawkinson was running like a seam route and he just kind of slows up and stops it down and Kyler tries to throw it up the field. And so you have some miscommunications there. And so you had Kyler was bad, but I do think that there were like a couple of excusable moments where I was like, okay, I kind of see how that didn't go well. But then he had a few like, I think the most frustrating one to me. It was early on in the second quarter. I think it was the first play of the second quarter. They run this like spacing concept from the right hand side, where they just get like those two little spot routes and then they have a motion player from left to right. He runs into the flat. The outside spot player is open and like they do a little play action. Yeah, it was Hawkinson. He's open. He's wide as open at the sticks on I think third and five. And Kyler gets like a flash of color from the edge player right in his face and just like freaks out and takes a sack. And it's like, you don't got to be perfect man, but that play needs to be made. And there were just a few more of those moments than you would have liked. That was the worst one. That was the worst one where he he starts inside and then moves outside, but there is enough time between that one to two before that color gets to him where that ball has to come out. And that happened not to the same degree, but there were probably four or five plays in this game where if you pause that at the top of the drop, that ball needs to come out. There was a sack with like 11 minutes left and the thing was the third quarter where he has Addison and an in breaker versus cover three and it's open. And if he lets that ball go when he should, it's going to be bang bang, but that ball has to be thrown. So you can just tell he's not seeing it very clearly to like you said, I give credit to the box defense because I think they were doing a really good job. They gave out that one dagger completion Jefferson on the first drive. And after that, anything they were trying to do in the intermediate area of the field was a non starter. Like they knew that was the exact space they needed to take away, especially over the middle. And that's why I think the only things that worked for the Vikings in this game is when they threw the ball over the top and we're getting just bypassing that entirely. It's like if you're going to sink underneath that stuff in the intermediate area, we're just going to throw the ball over your heads. And that was the only thing they were able to do. And Mike, and here, this is where I land with it. Is that something that is going to continue? Like are we going to be at a place where Kyler really struggles with the refined elements of playing quarterback in this system? And it's just feast or famine where they can push the ball down the field when he has a defined choice to be made, but when you actually make him read stuff out, he's not going to be able to because if that's going to be the case, then I worry about what this offense is going to look like over the course of the season. He deserves some grace, concussion, first, like, first game back, second game period in the system. But this is a disappointing start to that process. I guess is what I would say. It definitely was. And again, I don't want to hit the panic button until we see like three weeks. I think of play like this, but I do think there's some level him double clutching and not wanting to fire over the middle like that's who he is. I think you just hope that a lot of the other stuff is going to get cleaned up and be better. Again, if Justin Jefferson's back and you've got some outside routes that you can just hit on, I think that that will be nice. He had a couple of really nice, I thought outbreakers in this game. But if you're going to be an outside and vertical team, the vertical stuff has to hit every time. And like he hits the one to addison on the backside post, but there was another one in the two minutes or on the third and four, the safety nails down on the crosser. And he's got Addison wide ass open on the post. And he kind of leaves it like way too much air under it and leaves it like a little bit on the outside of the hash. And it's like, man, if you just throw that to space over the middle and let your guy run for it, I don't know if it's a touchdown but it's a huge completion. And so it's just like those stuff, I think more than anything really does need to get cleaned up. At this point, the defense is playing well enough that they're going to potentially be able to keep them in a lot of these games, but you're going to need to see more from the offense. If it's going to matter at some point during this season, you're going to need more from the offense for any of this to matter. And that that's kind of where I leave this game. And with the bucks, I just, we can do a post more on the bucks at some point relatively soon, because I think we're going to be to that, we're going to get to that moment sooner rather than later. All right. Let's take our first quick break and then come back and shout a little Brown's Panthers. Get to our next one here. The Cleveland Browns beat the Carolina Panthers 21 to 18. The Browns are now two and one on the young season. I want to start here. I really loved a lot of the stuff the Browns did on defense in this game. I really enjoyed watching the front seven in particular, when the past rush, especially in the first half, needed to come up with a big play and a big moment. I liked the plan. I liked the individual performances. It was what I hope to this group would look like coming into the year. Like over the first couple of weeks, they didn't necessarily show this level of teeth, but there were four or five six examples from this game where I was like, this is what it is supposed to look like. You started to feel the talent that we thought this defense had and like the player, I really want to shout out Mason Graham looks like the player that we thought was a top five pick. The first play of the game, he's in the backfield. And I think what my thought with him to last week, I watched their defense and I was like, I'm pretty sure that's the best game that Mason Graham has ever played as a pro. And then I watched this game back this morning and I was like, I'm pretty sure that's the best game that he's ever played as a pro. He was really, really good in this game. It's funny that you mentioned him there. I totally understand well, totally fair. When I went back and watched the guy that I just couldn't stop watching because I'm prone to fixating on him over the course of a game. Jared verse is just such an awesome player. And what he's unique in that he you're never going to fully understand his value by how many sacks he gets over the course of the season, the pressure numbers. And this is where I think there might be a little bit of a disconnect with how people see Jared verse, like they look at the pressure numbers and they look at the sack numbers. And it's like, all right, well, he gets a ton of pressures, but how impactful is he really? And then you watch a game like this. I think he had six pressures in the game. He had think he had two quick pressures, but there were so many examples where and Rashid Walker had a tough day and Rashid Walker's had a tough season to this point where you just watched Jared verse what he walks the left tackle back into the quarterback almost immediately. And it's it's the same way the Rams looked when they were at their best. And I think it's not an accident. He is such an important piece for a complimentary pass rush where it's all working together. And there are multiple examples in this game where they're he's denting the pocket. It's causing Bryce to either have to move off his spot a little bit or not be able to get rid of the ball immediately. And that little half second of affecting the play, you watch the stunt inside start to get home and one of those guys gets home for a sack. That is finished off by a guy like Mason Graham who had two of those in this game, but that starts because Jared verse is impacting the timing of the play almost immediately because the left tackle is next to the quarterback about a second after the ball was snapped. I think the player described was a fourth and three, too, which that's another thing in this game. The Panthers failed two fourth downs early in the game, which I think was, was obviously. And David Brown's short fields on both of them and they scored on both of those drives gave them short fields. Exactly. Honestly, now that you say it like that, because I totally agree about Jared verse by the way, this feels a lot of the way that we had to talk about Jadevian clowning when he was at his peak, where it's like the sack numbers are just never really quite there. But he is just always around the quarterback and always pushing a tackle into the quarterback and a good run defender who can like take backspace in that way. Like he does feel very similar to clowny at his peak in that way. to me. There were so many examples like the first drive, the first drive, it's second and nine, the Browns run like a sweet simulated pressure with a nickel coming off of one side, verse pushes the left tackle back into the quarterback. Bryce takes her grounding. The fourth and three that you mentioned, there's on third and goal when they were up 10 nothing, yet again, verse puts the left tackle and Bryce's lap. Bryce has the throw to the flat. That's open. And the reason he is worse plays of the day. Yeah. That was one of his worst plays of the day. But if if verse doesn't do that to the left tackle, that ball gets thrown. That ball gets thrown if verse is not affecting the play, it still should come out. But that's just another like quiet moment where I might be a pressure. It might not have been because the tackles in front of him the whole time, but he's affecting that play. And that just happens so, so often. The last guy in the defense I wanted to mention, because we talked about him coming into the season as could he take have a bounce back year. Quincy Williams just looks so much better in this defense that he went with the jabs last year. He just looks so much better. When the job is, hey, can you just run and hit people? He's incredible with that. Like he's he's really like he killed a screen in this game. He had a couple of like check down stops that he made like Quincy Williams does look. He looks really good again. And so I thought I just think the fact that you feel the teeth in this defense again after, you know, they were kind of up and down the first couple of weeks. And so for them to have this game against an offense that however real what the Panthers offense is we can talk about, but they were really good the first two weeks of the season. And so for the Browns to come out and kick their ass, I thought was like really impressive. I think this was a really good test for the Panthers offense in a very specific way. When we talked about Carolina last week, me and Barnwell in the middle of the week and we're trying to figure out is this real. The thing that I was most worried about is that you see this when the space around Bryce condenses and he can't buy more space either by finding an escape hatch where he can extend plays as a scrambler, thrower, right? Let me find let me find a window. Let me get up and out of the pocket. Let me find space and create deep into the down or when they're moving the pocket for him. They they did a really good job in the first couple of weeks of very subtly moving the pocket. And the best stuff the Panthers offense did in this game was yet again off play action where they're subtly moving the pocket and they're throwing all those crossing routes. They hit two of them to the tight end and then they eventually hit the touchdown to John Mechie. They did three times on one drive when he's it's having to sit in the pocket and pure dropback situations and you're condensing that space. That's where you real that's where you feel how small he is. And that wasn't happening a lot over the first couple of weeks of the season. It happened over and over and over again in this game because Jared versus on the other side. And that is what I was worried about. And it just showed up in about as bad and as blatant of a way as it could have in this game. And he is a quarterback dad because of exactly what you're describing where it's harder for him than other quarterbacks to step up into open interior space in the pocket. I actually thought for a lot of this game the interior was fine. The tackles were getting mashed into the pocket immediately both Walker and Freeling for a lot of this game. And he's just not a quarterback who can navigate that space. And he made a handful of nice plays when he was clean or versus the blitz. He had like a really nice throw to Mechie late in the game. Like he did some good stuff. But it's like. That was the best throw he made. The one that's a match on the breaker on the left side in a crumbling pocket. That was the best throw he made by far in this game because that was from the far hash too. That is like a that is the throw that you've got to be able to make if you're going to stick in this league with his some of his limitations. And I did think that that was impressive. But like you said, you feel when he is small in the pocket in moments like that, I will say one thing that I've been impressed with him over the course of this year really, but especially in this game, especially compared to previous versions of what he was. Part of my frustration with him is that you were if you were going to be this limited player, you really had to be buttoned up and on your p's and q's with stuff that needs to come out. But last year his ability to throw quick game and beyond time was not good enough. Like he would double clutch stuff. He would be a second late all that stuff. So far this season on throws of one to 12 yards under a 2.5 time to throw. So that's not a perfect modicum for quick game, but like it's pretty close. Bryce Young is third in EPA per play and 12th in success rate right now. Last year that was 39th and 33. And so I don't know if it'll hold at that rate over the course of the year, but he's not like ruining plays every time he has to go quick game. And I do think that that allows this offense to like breathe and have some function to it, even if they're still going to be some struggles when he gets collapsing pockets. I totally agree. And what I was really encouraged by going back and watching him, there were two things that to me stuck out about the way that he was playing that felt different than it had felt in years past and maybe gave him a path forward. One was just how much better he was finding the space we're talking about. That's just a time on task, time in the league. I've realized how I need to play in order to survive. And I think you could just feel his sense of that being better than it had been over the last couple of years. And the other part of it was how fast he was seeing it. He threw a touch on a wall or in that Falcons game that he sees that thing immediately. And that ball comes out. And so I do think there will be better days ahead when the offensive line isn't getting absolutely mold and affecting the game in exactly the way his game can't be affected. That's kind of where I leave this game. And the fact that you seem to have like you're open to the idea that he could be better over the course of this year for some of the specific reasons we're talking about. That's important. Like I want people to recognize that in the moment as we're having this conversation. He looks better than last year. And again, I still have my reservations about like what is really the ceiling for this? How much does it? Like you have to do a lot of protecting and building the offense a certain way to make this work. But it looks like if he can do a lot of what he did last week in terms of the good. And then again, your tackles aren't just going to get nuked every single passing play. And also hopefully you just don't have to pass 50 some odd times with him at quarterback. It's like, yeah, you can be a functional to nice offense. You know, again, there's other considerations other than can you do that in one season. But I do think that they can be totally fun. The other thing to worth mentioning about the offense outside of the tackles, just getting mulled over the course of this game and how it affected things. Jay on Coker goes out at some point. And Jay on Coker had probably the two biggest past plays of the game before that tries by pressing Tremaine go ball on the left side. And so you lose Coker in the middle of the game. Like you only had two receivers. You need both of those guys in order for this thing to work. Even though again, Tremaine did have a couple of nice moments. On the other side, I think the thing that really jumped out to me is that the flip side was true. Both of Dishon Watson's passing touchdowns to Harold Fanon in this game are a product of past protection. Both of them. Like when you watch it, the Panthers on both of those plays are trying to run stunts that just got absolutely snuffed out. They're over the course of the play. It's terrible. They're not a good games team right now. That is, we said this in week one when we were talking about Jay on Phillips being a trying, they might have been in the division preview. When you watch them, it's so easy. And I understand why we have to do it this way. Like there's only so much institutional understanding you can have about how every team plays and why every team struggles in these sorts of areas. When you watch the Panthers going back to last season, the idea of well, now we have Jay on Phillips. So the past rush is going to be better. And I know scored isn't playing, right? I get that. But this was never a team when I would watch them where it felt like the past rush. We talked about complimentary past rush plans and the way the Browns looked, the way the Vikings look. It is such a drastic difference when you watch those teams. And then when you watch the Panthers, like just dropping a 30 million dollar edge rusher into this thing, if the rest of the plan doesn't feel dynamic and is making other teams feel uncomfortable and edgy in the pocket, the 30 million dollar past rushers ceases to matter. And that I just keep coming back to that every single time I watch this defense. All of his best place in this game, Jaylin Phillips, that is where when he's lined up in the D or shoot, if you want to say it like the E gap where he's just like way out there in like a wide nine. And they just give him a runway to just like sprint full speed and like make a move at the last second. That was really the only place I thought that he was like super effective as a past rusher. And that's that's just not really a way to live. Like I just don't think that that is an effective down to down way to do it. I did think some of their pressure stuff in this game was interesting, like they were bringing DBs from depth like really well. And like Mary was a really good blitzer in this game, but they really were not getting home unless they were scheming up one of those guys to get home. And otherwise I thought like the pure past rush was just not really there in a way that they've clearly invested in like they've again, I know shorten is not there, but they have signed a lot of players in free agency to go and get to the quarterback on some level. And they still I think struggled to do it. Anything else to suck out to you about the Browns offense? I think Monkin is kind of cooking right now, man. Like I Watson should have thrown three interceptions in this game. Like there was one where Willie is jumping a pick early in the game in cover two and Watson throws that in. There's another one where he's trying to throw they have like a play action where fans running a little crosser and then they have the dig behind it. He is as late as you can possibly be getting back to the dig and he throws the ball right at late and ransom and he drops it. But I just thought some of the way that Monkin was taking vertical space with like two or three players to one side completely running like all these posts and stuff like that and either running overs into it or getting shallows or getting screens out there because what most of these players are best at whether it's conception, Judkins, Fanon, it's like with the ball in their hands, they can make people miss and make place. And I do think that they did a really, really good job of that. And then one specific sequence I want to talk about, they had at one point early in the game ran that concept where you get two posts coming from from like the right side, let's say, and then the deep cross are coming from the left to get into that space. And they threw it once and Judy drew DPI, whatever. They went back to that same concept. And then instead of Boston running like the inside post, he stops it down, breaks it out for a sailor out and it's wide open. And so I do think that Monkin is doing some pretty good and interesting stuff. I think I just still have my questions about the effectiveness of it all on a down to down basis given the quarterback play. Yeah, that's where I sit with it as well. I mean, a lot of the most important place he made in this game or what he was doing as a scrambler, and I guess that's part of the benefit of him playing over whatever other quarterback they're going to try it out there. But you mentioned that the mis turnovers. There was two drives in a row. There was a third and five in the second half where he just misses conception. There's like a little push from the left guard that affects that throw, but he misses that high. And then on the next drive, he misses him again. Like he thinks he thinks Watson thinks he's going to sit down and he doesn't. So that's in incompletion and a bunch of different situations and moments where they could have turned the ball over. And so I'm with you. The quarterback part of this was always going to be, can we get by? And I think they're getting by enough. But the gambit with this thing and I think the place you'd wanted to reach, you would want to reach if you were a Browns fan is, do we feel good about all the other elements of the offense independent of the way the quarterback is playing? And I think you watch this game. You've watched some of the other games they've played so far this year. You're about as close to that as you can reasonably be in an NFL context because that's really hard to do when the quarterback play isn't very good. It's difficult to feel good about a lot of the other things that are going on around it. And I think we're kind of there with what the Browns have done so far. I think through three weeks, you're there where they want to be where you have like you feel good about things. The offensive line is not perfect, but it's much better than it was last year. The young players look pretty good like they're tracking to be where they want to be for whoever is going to play quarterback in 2027. All right. Let's take one more quick break and then get to the most hangover, the most hangover game that's probably ever been played. The New York Giants at Tennessee Titans played a football game yesterday. You could, you could argue that. I don't know if I would. The Titans had one first down in the first half. Are really, I mean, I get I don't even know why that's surprising. Of course they did, but like that's they that is bad. They had one first down in the first half at the four minute mark of the second quarter. They had a six yard completion to Juan Del Robinson, four minute mark of the second quarter. That was their longest gain of the game up to that point. It was a six yard completion to Juan Del Robinson. That sounds about right. And that is in part because he dropped like a 20 yarder before that. It's, it's a frustrating game for the Titans because you watch the first half and I don't know this to be true, but this is my assumption. It felt like the weather eased up in the second half. When I was watching the Titans passing game, my assumption is the weather eased up a little bit. In the first half, the gap between these two teams is the Giants could run the ball and the Titans could not. That was the only difference between the two teams. The Giants offense for the majority of the first half was one busted play to Camp Scataboo who deserves so much credit for how that play went by the way. He's releasing to the flat sees James buying time outside of the pocket and immediately just books it down the field, makes himself available in the scramble drill. It leads to an explosive. The Giants get points on that drive. One of the other scoring drives that the Titans had when they went up six nothing. They ran the ball ten times in a row, ten straight running plays for the Giants on that drive that eventually falls short because they try to run a wild cat play with Scataboo a quarterback. They lose like seven yards and they have to kick a field goal. But at that point in the game, that's as productive of a drive as you possibly need. They were doing that over and over and over again. And then the Titans in the second half do start moving the ball pretty consistently. They have a touchdown drive. And then two more drives get down inside the five and then two just, I don't know if inexplicable is the word, but two baffling choices by the quarterback baffling mistakes by the quarterback leads to them to coming away with zero points on either one of those drives. And that's the reason the Titans lose this game. I mean, the most egregious miss to me is the one where he misses Tate in the end zone where he's like rolling left and it's like kind of a scramble juror play. And he throws it like way further out in front of Tate, then it really makes any sense. And like Tate is like kind of slow rolling out of this role. Like that play was a greatest. The next one is like he expects the tide end to be able to go up for it. And he's not able to because he's kind of getting fought off with the defender. But I do not think Kim Ward was particularly accurate in this game for a lot of those moments. Yet there were a couple of drops in like plays that got called back. Like I said, in the second quarter, Wando Robinson drops like a deep corner. They had one called back like a deep shot to think it might have been to Wando Robinson down the right hand side because I owe man for an OPI, yeah, where he's like trying to pick the corner where like I think even if he doesn't touch the corner like Wando Robinson probably gets open. So it's just one of those like really frustrating plays the the pick at the very end of the game is very young quarterback, what are you doing coded in so many ways. Yes, you have two timeouts with 24 seconds left and it's first and 10. You've got plays like you've got time here to figure this thing out. And so then he tries to force a pass on the back line, obviously, Javon Holland is able to go pick him off. The other issue then just making that decision of trying to force something in that moment. If you're going to try to make the hero play to the guy on the back line, you have to miss high. That's the rule of the of the end zone. You miss high on the back and if you're throwing short, you miss low because it just makes it more difficult for defenders to get hands on the ball. The fact that he forces that and gives Javon Holland even a chance to get a fingertip on that ball. I think is a massive mistake. And one you see more often from young quarterbacks in that moment. The accuracy issues early in the game, how much of that are we going to try to attribute to the conditions and how much of that are we going to say this continues to be an ongoing problem. This is something to be worried about. It is something a little bit to be worried about because I think he's one of those players where the ball never comes out of his hand the same way twice, like there are some quarterbacks where the action is so repeatable. And I think on some level, there is value to that the way that he can get the ball around defenders every now and then I do think it's impressive, but it does lead to some scattershot sprays until you are very attuned to the way that you are trying to do that on every single throw. And he's clearly not calibrated to that right now, even if maybe in two or three years, he can be this was something with rookie Lamar Jackson where he just kept trying to do this and it didn't work until suddenly it did and he was the MVP and I'm not saying the war is going to do that, but I do think that the accuracy issues are real. I do think for the most part over the final like two and a half-ish quarters, the accuracy was not that much of an issue and it really was like they were clearly playing in a downpour early because he had those misses. And James Winston is a bad comparison because James Winston is terrible right now, but James Winston could not complete like a stick route in the first quarter of this game, which like I'm pretty sure if the conditions were right, he would be able to do at least that. So at least for a lot of the misses early on, I do attribute like mostly to weather. I think I'm kind of just in wait and see mode, like again, it's a terrible weather game that he played well enough in the second half. I'm very open to the idea that Kim were just isn't good. And that this might just be, it might be a non starter with him in the Titans offense and not just where we're going to ultimately land. I just want to see a little bit more in a new system in better circumstances and better conditions as we move throughout the season before I'm ready to kind of put a fine point on that. I want to get like halfway through the season before I'm like, okay, this is a problem because I do think what you see often times, even with quarterbacks that have been struggling, half of their second season, you can start to see a little bit of life, even for guys that have really, really struggled. And so I think if we can't get there by then with him and then we have some serious questions going into your three, I think that that's a lot more fair. But I'm yeah, I'm kind of also in wait and see mode of like, let's get to Thanksgiving and hopefully it's not this bad anymore. What do you make of the two and one giants and not a lot? I don't think that this is a very good football team. I've been impressed with their ability to run the ball like I do think that that part of it is kind of real. And I think if Jackson Dart was able to play and gave them a little bit more down the field and maybe neighbors was 100% healthy, like you could talk me into like really annoying seven win team to have to play against every week. And I do think that because they can run the ball the way they do, there is a little bit of like last year's Panthers at times sort of vibe where they can just make some some games of rock fight. It's a good comparison. Yeah. Yeah, where they can just like muddy up some games and like if you, if you limit each team to like having two fewer drives and you just get lucky on a couple of them and force to turn over. Okay, you can make every game really shitty and annoying to play. I just don't know if that's going to amount to enough wins to matter, but honestly, if they arrive there with not having their starting quarterback and Brian Burns being out for the season and you win seven games doing that, that's a pretty successful year one for everything. I think all thanks considered. I just don't know. what to make of them yet. Again, we had one weird game against a Dallas defense that was completely out of sorts in week one. They get annihilated in a game where their starting quarterback gets hurt in week two. And then in week three, they're playing in a downpour with James Winston and they're playing against a quarterback that's also dealing with the downpour like I just don't think there's we have enough evidence in any way to understand what the 2026 giants are yet. There are probably the team. Yeah, where the evidence matters the least from so far of what we've seen. And now they're at the point where I don't even think they want to play Jamis trading for JJ McCarthy, which I don't really think that fixes anything either, but that's where their season is already arrived. I wonder how much that is where we want to play JJ McCarthy and how much of that is we just need to add to our quarterback room because I think it's thinner than we wanted to be through weeks into the year. How fast can JJ McCarthy be up to speed to be a better option for you than James Winston is maybe faster than we want to admit based on the way that James is played. But the fact that we're even in this place with the giants where they're wanting to give up a fifth round pick for JJ McCarthy, I think speaks to how fast the season has gone south. Yeah, I think it is more like what you're saying if they just needed another body in the room because other than James Winston, they do not have a guy. And I do not think that he will get it. It took JJ McCarthy two years to get up to speed him in a soda and it still did look very good. And so I don't know if two weeks in New York is going to do a whole lot for him. Yeah, I will see what happens. I think it's probably a worthwhile advice for all just for depth and to maybe salvage something out of the season, but I'm not sure the season really can be salvaged. Even at two and one, I think that with a backup quarterback over most of this year, I just I'm not sure what this team is really going to be capable of. And I think it's going to be hard probably to have a judgment on year one of the John Harbour era when you're playing with this level of quarterback play over the entire year, I think that's probably going to be where we land. And to lose burns for an extended period of time, like I think the goal here with the giants was, could we evaluate what year one of this regime looks to like and what sort of foundation they were working off of moving forward. And I think based on how the first few weeks have gone, that's going to be really difficult to do. And I think that would be my biggest frustration as a Giants fan is that you make this huge swing to kind of change the entire complexion of the organization. And there is a chance that after year one of that is over, you have absolutely no clarity on whether or not that swing was correct. I think we'll get like, maybe they can get it to the point where we can kind of see what the floor is. Like if they can make this work somehow and win six games with all that's gone wrong, sure, that's cool. But we're going to have no idea what the ceiling is supposed to be projecting into 2027. And I think that is probably the frustration. All right. That is all we've got for the week three hangover. You guys are watching this on YouTube are Monday night football recap from last night with Eagles and the Eagles and the Bears should be available for you. If you're watching this on YouTube, encourage you guys to like and subscribe. Have a ton more YouTube specific stuff hitting the channel this year or the only way to see that is if you are subscribed to the channel. So please like, subscribe, comment, do all that great stuff for now. That's all we got. Appreciate you guys listen. 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.