Week 4 Recap: Chiefs and 49ers Remain unbeated, Jaguars win ugly, CeeDee Lamb goes off

Welcome to the athletic football show brought to you by the US bank smartly visa signature card. I'm Robert Mays Week four is in the books a lot of great stuff to dig into today We're gonna talk about Panthers a lot of lions tomorrow on the hangover We touched on it a little bit at the top at a really impressive performance from Bryce Young and Tedaro and McMillan We kick things off with the chief speeding the Raiders in an exciting one CD-Lam the Jags and the Patriots notably Drake May grabbing our attention some WTF stuff from the Bronco It was offense everything about Rams Eagles, and I mean just some bizarre Historic stats in Bears Jets and then we got a little bit romantic about Zay flowers with me Dave and Derek Let's get to it right now Another awesome day of NFL football we had a fantastic witching hour in the noon window A lot of interesting results in the afternoon window and then a Sunday night game that was exciting on a bunch of different levels Not only did it come down to the final drive for the Lions, but what a game from Bryce Young and Tedaro and McMillan my god I couldn't believe that game came down to the end the way it did like it seemed like the the Panthers had kind of run away with it And at some point it like it was around when there were like seven and a half minutes left in the fourth quarter It was like Panthers got a two-score lead Feels like they'll be able to run the clock out the way that they've been playing offense today Like we can kind of be one I can check out and then like every time I look back I'm like wait the Lions might still actually go in when the game Assuming a basic degree of competency the NFL really is starting to right remind me of the NBA where Runs coming like unless unless one team just looks completely inept or there's a quarterback injury If you're within like if you're within 17 you're gonna have a shot to make it interesting late in the game most of the time We saw that way we're not another game Seattle LA's the same thing where you look up and you're like holy shit This was lopsided like 45 minutes ago and so really fun way to cap it off though like a thousand yards of total offense So good time to bring up the Charters in the Seahawks. We're gonna talk about that game on the hangover tomorrow We're gonna dig into Panthers Lions on the hangover tomorrow. It's gonna be the first thing we talk about for people who are new watching these We don't often hit the Sunday night game in real time We're prepping the rest of the show during the Sunday night game And so unless it's like a marquee matchup between two bulletproof playoff teams for the most part We save the Sunday night game to start the hangover, which is the show we do Monday into Tuesday So that's what we're gonna do this week talk all about what the Panthers did What Bryce Young did what Tadaro and McMillan did we'll be digging into that we'll be digging into Seahawks Charters like I just said and the third game will be the Giants and the Cardinals So those will be the three hangover games tomorrow it bears repeating before we move on though Tadaro and McMillan holy crap I So it's young as well. I went into the Sunday night game I was up 15 in my high school fantasy league that is more important to me that I like to admit at the stage in my life I was like, oh, I'm a hang on to this. I got a cheap Brock Bowers touchdown late They got those two Kenneth Walker touchdowns in about six seconds I was like, man, what an unlikely win lucky me and then I hung on to that lead for about 18 minutes of real time because of what Tadaro and McMillan did tonight So it's been a fun start to the season for Bryce Young and Tadaro and McMillan the flashes from Bryce Young have been incredibly exciting And so very excited to dig into that game In earnest and in full tomorrow, but we are going to start this show with another big win for today And that is the Kansas City Chiefs knocking off the Las Vegas Raiders 30 to 27 For offensively this was a sleepy game For a good chunk of the game the score was in the teens as we got deep into the third quarter into the fourth quarter And then we had an explosion Late in this game again another one where Raiders were down two scorers felt like it was over they somehow dragged themselves back Derek you were the only one that wasn't in the room as that game was happening curious as your initial thoughts on the Chiefs managing to pull this one out against the Raiders Well, it's funny you say it was sleepy and I'd think at one point the broadcast right before the big Kenneth Walker run The broadcast was like oh the Chiefs have only had like 18 yards in this quarter blah blah And he instantly rips off like a 70 yarder because Tray Smith absolutely moves the defensive alignment ahead of him Jalen Moore does a really good job with kicking out the defensive end there The whole right side the whole movement on that play Everybody and then the whole point of why you get a guy like Kenneth Walker is if you can get him to that second level The safety coming down is not going to be at the angle that he wants to be and Jeremy chin was not at the angle that he wanted to be to go and catch Kenneth Walker And so I do think overall And this will probably I think continue to be true of the Chiefs offense But I do think that they should be good enough at it. Maybe without Taekwam Thornton. Maybe this won't be true They feel like a touchdown to check down style of offense I think the way that their run game operates it is very explosive and I think today they were very much like we hit Three or four like huge chunk plays down the field and other than that they were living in the flats It was boots. It was my homes getting to check downs making some plays that way It was a very like Feaster famine style of play and I do think if my homes can hit enough of those I do think that that can work We can maybe talk about what that actually looks like without Taekwam Thornton Rashi Rice was obviously paying up in this game and so it gives me a little bit of pause But when they've been good at it they've been very good at that this year I totally agree about how the game felt I mean their explosives is what carried them in this game And so I think there's a few different things to hit there one It was the difference in the game Them being explosive versus the Raiders only having really one explosive play I mean the 28-yard genty screen at one point but other than that it was really just the Kind of leak played he and Thomas it was on the same side So it was almost more like a delay down the sideline de and Thomas But that was really the only one and then the chief said Really four of them right they had the one to what worthy they the two to Thornton They had a 76 yard run for Kenneth Walker So that really was the difference in this game is that the chiefs were able to be so explosives That's the observation about this game The second thought is How fucking weird is it that that's what the chiefs are like think about how we talked about the chiefs are the last two years The idea that there are feast or famine offence that had to survive on explosives today That's an uncomfortable place for me to live with the Kansas City chiefs But that is what happened okay, it's funny you say that because there's that there's a half dozen preseason conversations that live in my brain rent free And one of them is the long conversation we had in July or August about Is Kenneth Walker being explosive as hell Good enough to fix everything about the chiefs offense and Through four weeks the answers yes and ironically it's terrible because tyke one Thornton I don't need to see a whole lot else to know that he's going to be missing for a while I mean it's it's devastating. That was a tough moment I mean did you guys I don't know if you guys saw the clip Jax did you see the clip I think it was Caliando came over to him and was trying to get him up and then tyke one Thornton pointed to his foot Caliando looks at his foot and then immediately looks away Well, I thought was the reaction all of us had he didn't like no like you can see him start to pop up and like celebrate And then after a while it's like oh, that's not that's not gonna go how it's gonna go which sucks because he was I mean other than Ken Walker and Patrick Mahomes maybe he was like their best player in this game I legitimately I've been joking about it. No, Davis heard me say this like three or four times in the first month of the season That tyke one Thornton is the most important receiver on the chiefs And I after today. I think you would feel the difference in losing him I don't know if you want to live this way every game where it's three or four explosives and Kenneth Walker is what's carrying you But in games where you have to live like that this offense is going to feel significantly different without tyke one Thornton Even going back to last year. I felt like he gave them a Dimension that they really didn't have because for as much as Xavier worthy was supposed to be that sort of player He hasn't been that sort of player. He had the contested catch on the field today But that doesn't really happen and Thornton's the guy that's been giving them That Element and so losing him I actually do think is a really big deal. It's a huge deal And I mean if I'm a chiefs fan. I'm clinging to the hope that Xavier worthy boxed Eric Stokes out for a contested catch 40 yards down the field in this game and Looked really impressive doing so and I'm guessing they're gonna need a lot more of that Well, I don't know what the deal is with Rishi rice's hamstring but soft tissue injuries for receivers are always scary and so It sucks for them and maybe you're right that this isn't a way to live consistently But it sucks for them that Kenneth Walker has managed to open so many things up for what we would all agree is a pretty lackluster receiver group and Now they're I feel like they're gonna be playing with a hand tied behind their back either that or they have the early buy by the way They're off next week and so I don't know receiver tryouts Tyree kill. What are you doing? Tyree kill feels like I mean That that was a joke for like three weeks and now I'm like well you got to at least see what he looks like running around in shorts during the buy week I mean they have to do something Like whether it's Tyree kill or you have the buy so like If you want to trade for someone like you have a week to like actually get them into the offense before it becomes like Is this guy actually gonna work in our team like I actually do think that they're in a decent position if they want to do something I don't have the season long stats from last year I'd be curious on a per game basis if you ever match this total Patrick home's average 11.3 area. It's per attempt tonight That just wasn't how the chief's offense was operating over the last couple years Obviously, their inefficiency on deep throws was a point of conversation But they weren't even attempting that many he had six passes today that were 20 plus yards in the air And so this version of the offense is just kind of strange and when you think about the moment where this game changes It's the third and five where he hits Thornton against covers hero Like him buying that time and finding Thornton down the field is where this game changes If you look at it in that moment before that pass gets thrown the Raiders had I can't remember the exact number on it But they're like win expectancy in that moment from next gen was extreme extremely high. As soon as it got to that third and five, it felt like the Raiders were probably going to win that game. And then Maholmes completes that crazy throw to Thorden behind that time to his left. And again, just being in a place where the Chiefs offense lives and feasts on those explosive plays. And that's where they survived for most of the game. It's just kind of a disorienting place to be. Two stats I wanted to share coming out of this game, which to that point, I mean Maholmes had a big day, despite completing 15 balls. 15 for 225. It's the second, it's a weird game. Second time he's won a game in which he only completed 15 passes this year. And this is the first year he's managed to do that in five years. Not since 2021, were they able to get that much out of so few completions for Patrick Maholmes. The other fun thing coming out of this, it shouldn't be surprising given what he's done. Pertru Media, Kenneth Walker's, well, he finished with 177 today. Pertru Media through the first four weeks of a season, only 2003 Jamal Lewis and 2010 Aryan Foster have rushed for Moriard through the first four weeks of a season. Like he passed, DeMarco Murray ran for 1800 and 2014. He passed him up on today just barely, but I mean, he's on a complete tear and they're going to have to do something at receiver if I had to guess, but the question over the summer of like, is this enough to actually make the chiefs feel different? Yep, sure is. What are your thoughts about the Raiders after this game, Derek? Because if the Raiders don't fumble the kickoff at 2319, they have three minutes left down by four to potentially go down and win this game. Instead, the chiefs get the ball back, they score immediately. Now to two score game with three-ish minutes. Obviously, the Raiders cut it close, but when you're down 11 with three minutes left, or yeah, we're not 11 with three minutes left, it's going to be a tall order, even if you can score that first touchdown. We saw that. So as you think about just the Raiders' ability to stay in this game, what you saw from them on both sides of the ball, where do you sit with the Raiders four weeks into the season even with them losing this game? I mean, pretty much where we came into this game where it was like, I think they are an exciting team. I think their ceiling is going to be limited just by the fact that I think in certain talent-wise, like offensive line, I think some of the secondaries still up and down, even if those guys are really exciting. There's just spots that I think you can pick on. And I've talked about how I came into the season with the Packers, like those two positions. When those are your shaky spots, you're going to give up some big plays. And I think, obviously, that's what happened on both sides in this game. But I do think that they're a team that's really well coached on both sides of the ball, like some of the pressures that they were trying to bring to get to my homes. I thought the way that they were getting pressure off the edge specifically, which we talked about coming into this matchup, they were really able to do the Quay Walker, where they fired him inside the red zone, inside the goal line. And they were able to go and sack him homes out to his left. I thought it was really nice. And then offensively, Kirk Cousins is a really good quarterback if you don't hit him. I know that that sounds like it's the NFL. You're going to get hit all the time. And obviously, there's limitations to that. But when he does have time to work or he gets the ball out, or they just block it up really well on that play, he really is seeing it really well. He's very accurate in the offense is designed in such a way that a quarterback like that is going to be able to take advantage. And so they're going to lack some explosiveness down the field because they don't have a receiver who can automatically cash in that way, like a CD lamb George Pickens or whatever. And Kirk Cousins doesn't really have the arm to do that. But I do think that again, like I said, coming into the week, they're going to test your all of your rules and make you play good sound football. And I think that we saw that like they put a very good chief's team on the ropes. And I do think that they can do that to a lot of other good teams. It's kind of funny that we talked about this going into last year, where the Raiders were this kind of oddity in the way that they were built. They have a first round top 10 running back. They have, I mean, calling them a tight end is almost a misnomer at this point. But their best offensive weapon, pass catcher, is obviously a tight end. Now you have Michael Mayer as a big part of what their offense looks like. And we thought, oh, there'll be a high floor team. They'll be kind of strange, you know, they'll stick around. They'll give people problems. And then that obviously didn't happen. They were a disaster from day one. It took a year, but the Raiders are who we thought they were going to be last year. They're this weird team where you're built around tight ends and a running back in this game collectively, okay? Kirk Cousins ended up throwing 52 passes in this game. He threw 29 of those 52 passes to the tight ends and the running back. Brock power is ended this game with 11 targets. Michael Mayer had 10 and Ash and Jensy had eight. It's a weird team. It's a weird team in the way they thought we thought they were going to be a weird team this year. But there's just so much to like about everything that they're doing on both sides of the ball, even if a part of that weirdness is them boxing themselves in and limiting them in a way that other teams with more explosive pass catchers aren't limited. It does kind of sound like you're telling me that winning doubt higher like the young assertive play collar who's about his business. And you can make all this stuff look a hell of a lot better because clenkubee X been so impressive. And the prop winner, it's been just as impressive. I think that when you get, I compare them to the Jags a couple weeks ago and I said their best case scenario is probably being like a diet version of the Jags and from last year. And I think that's kind of where I sit with it. I think they're probably well coached enough to give people problems all year, to stay in a lot of these games. I just worry about what the ceiling looks like and ultimately what the firepower looks like because of the explosiveness at receiver and the explosiveness of the quarterback. Other than that, I think that there is a lot to like about this team just sticking around, sticking around, sticking around and Raider fans, taking a lot of satisfaction in watching them every single week. I just think that what they've continued to show even after losing this game, there's just so much to like about what they're bringing to the table, game in and game out and what a fun satisfying place to be as a Raider fan compared to it last year felt like. And if you're looking forward to the future, like sometimes there might be teams like this right where, okay, you're this upstart kind of fun team and you lack this explosiveness in the passing game. And it's like, well, are we going to run out of road at some point? Well, at some point, Fernando Mendoza is going to play. And I don't know if that means this year or later, but like, and again, I'm not even calling for him to play because I do think Kirk is playing very, very well. But if you're thinking ahead for the future and you're trying to be excited about 2027 and you're like, man, we got a solve receiver in quarterback. Well, they don't have to solve quarterback. I, you know, who knows how good he'll be, but they have an answer for like trying to get more explosive that way. I'm not calling for Fernando right now. Either even though that was my whole mission heading into the season. Kirk has played well. It's worth mentioning, like Kirk, after a overall solid game, like glitched out on that final play. Yeah, he did, he did glitch out. Like his, I mean, how they handled that final drive, he did glitch out. He, I mean, he, he just went through like a system reboot at the line. And then realized, like he clicked back on after he started scrambling and was like, wait, I was drafted in 2012. I got to get rid of this wall, which, you know, kind of a down note to finish it on because it's at least conceivable. They could have gotten into position for a game tying field goal attempt, which I would have liked to see based on how entertaining that game was. It's, that's just still, it's a, it's tough sliding. I mean, like, when you a new notice and everything else, I feel like sometimes we should give quarterback specifically a little bit more grace when it comes to the decision making in those moments where the game is kind of spiraling away from you when you have no ability to stop the clock. But yes, I'd say glitched out as the proper way to describe what was happening in that moment. Is it bad that I'm already playing like which receiver can the Raiders for the next off season? Is it bad that I'm already putting, trying to put George Pickens on the Raiders and just, what are the options? George Pickens, I'm going to be a food agent next year because the other one. Pickens feels like a Raider. Well, and what did we say about Fernando Mendoza? Get him someone who will catch the back shoulder. I'm pretty sure George Pickens will catch a back shoulder too. The Fernando point is such a good one though, because if you're a team like the Raiders and I mean, where the Browns are at right now, if you win enough games and you put yourself out of the quarterback conversation and you're like, all right, well, now we do like a middle of the road thing with the Sean Watson and have to piece it together, the Raiders aren't in that position. The Raiders have the number one pick in this draft that we'll be playing for them eventually. And so that's not enough solace to explain away or not care about the fact that you lost this game today. But as somebody who doesn't have to be moment by moment emotionally invested in the Las Vegas Raiders, I think that is the perspective I'm taking here not to go to in the weeds. I apologize. But we always talk about how receivers of that caliber rarely even make it to free agency. Pickens was tagged and to Alec Pierce, they were able to reach a deal in Indianapolis. Maybe the more realistic scenario here is the draft. And Indiana has a hell of a wide receiver who played with Fernando Mendoza. But if the Raiders have like the 28th pick in the draft, they can really get that guy. Maybe you can maneuver. You know, we're not, we're not going after. I would have said Jeremiah Smith, but that's definitely not on the table. Like the Raiders are way too good for Jeremiah Smith, but these are building the beast conversations. All right, before we move on, let's take one quick break. Gentlemen, now you have my tension. The Dallas Cowboys knock off the Texans 34 to 30, but the guy that really stuck out in this game. CD Lamb, 21 targets, 17 catches, 189 yards, and one touchdown. That being the game winner. CD Lamb and the Dallas Cowboys offense against the Texans, you officially have our attention. That's where, that's where I want to start. You remember last year Joe Flacco and Jamar Chase played that game where he threw to him like 20 some odd times in, in prime time. And it was just like no matter what they wanted, Joe Flacco was going to find Jamar Chase. That's against the Steelers defense. That was good. But like, But you could kind of pick on in certain ways. This is the Texans, man. Like I still think that this defense can be really good even despite how today went. And for DAC and for CD to play the way that they did, especially in the second half of this game, the offense didn't do a whole lot in the first half. It really wasn't until the second half that they really exploded. The Texans were giving DAC fits in the early going of this game. They were down 17, six at half time. The Cowboys were. They scored six points in the first half. Yeah, was it 17, six or 16, six either way of 16, 16, 16, so I stared at it right here in front of me and it said 17, 16. It's been a long day. We had a London game. But I mean, yeah, and especially like with the way we can get into that, but I thought Domingo Ryan's ran circles around Brian shot and Hymer at the end of the first half in this game, which is why you were down two possessions in the first place. But yeah, like DAC missed a wide, DAC actually missed CD on what I think was a sluggo early on in this game, just because the Texans were throwing so much at him and to see them fight through that. Yeah, like it looked, it looked really cool down the stretch and CD had one of the best receiver games of this decade. First receiver in the second receiver in the 2020s to catch 17 plus passes in a game. Keenan Allen did it in 2023. And then Antonio Brown did 17 for 284 as a stealer in 2015. But I mean, like as as fun as the Cowboys made it look. I really feel like the Texans made him earn it, which made it so much more satisfying to just to watch as a fan of football. It was a good combination of great players making great plays, but also I really liked a lot of the stuff design wise that Dallas was doing, especially in the second half. The great players making great plays is George Pickens going up and getting that play action deep shot. I mean, off his back shoulder. I mean, he again, not a featured player in terms of targets in this game, but the verticality he gives the offense is so necessary. At the offense just feels so much different when they're willing to push the ball down the field when he's creating some of that vertical stretch. I mean, there was the one play I can remember when it happened in the game. It's in my notes somewhere where CD just gets totally dropped on a crosser where I think it was stingly was trying to pass him off. And there's all that space in part because Pickens is yanking out, lesser to that side. And then Lacer gets thing for two penalties against Pickens and then so even if Pickens wasn't a featured player in terms of how often he was getting the ball thrown to him, consistently that was early. It was 1330 or so in the third quarter. They're running Pickens on a vertical CD is running the crosser and I think was trying to pass him off. And that gets to the design element of this. You look at some of the stuff Dallas was doing with bunches, stacks. There were a lot of things out of two by two where they were in stacks and it was creating this communication issues. There was another play where CD is the number one receiver to the left side, Ferguson runs the vertical. Stingly takes Ferguson, CD is wide open on the quick out and he gets that. And then the sluggo is a design play where we feel like they've been sitting on a lot of stuff underneath. You have Pickens faking the slant, taking it vertical, Dak puts it on them and that's a huge play in the game. And so again, I think it's a combination of those receivers are really good. But I think Dallas with design in the second half created a lot of those completions against a really good defense. They just picked on all the right stuff. Like you mentioned the crosser that Stingly ends up dropping. There was a play earlier in the game where the Texans are in like a mug look and it's they have trips to the right side and they're running like the two fin routes from the inside and the number three is running that vertical. And just the way they get passed off, like Petri thinks he's supposed to squeeze with number two. He should probably go help one, Stingly drops it off and there's nobody, there's nobody covering him. I also thought the Texans do still play a lot of quarters. I thought the Cowboys did a good job of abusing how much underneath space there is in quarters and like getting like on the fourth and fourth where they just run two of those showers over into that. And just abuse that space. I thought was impressive. They hit a sailor out where you get or a sail concept where they had the safety driving down on the sail. They hit the post over the top like just so many good beaters in the second half. Texans played 50% quarters in this game per next gen. I was glad you mentioned that, deck 17 of 23 for 165 on those plays. You know they're going to play a lot of it, you better have those beaters ready. And again, I thought that it's just, it's not crazy stuff like Dallas isn't going to run the sort of offense where you're going to look, it's not the Niners, where you're going to look at some of the wild shit that they're doing, whether it's motions or design and be like, man, how did they come up with that? But just consistently creating conflict for a defense that really struggled to communicate in the second half of this game. And I feel like the Dallas coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for how that went on top of what the receivers did. Okay. Also, it goes without saying, I guess, given the statistics, but the quarterback as well. Oh, yeah. That was so awesome in this game. And the game winning drive in particular. So good. So good. I let I charted the entire thing because I was so impressed by it. And like going back to my point about the Texans made this difficult, even if the Stats are gaudy. I mean, on the first snap of that, you know, two, two minutes and some change to play, two timeouts in the two minute warning, Jalen Petri almost picked him off on the very first snap of that drive, looking for a dig to CD, two snaps later on third and one, Kamari Ramsey, the rookie safety, makes an amazing TFL to fort to force a fourth down. Dak answers that call on the little sit down route to Ferrer. That was another cool design. It's a bunch to the right. And because it's a bunch, Ferguson gets lost and he sits down over the ball. He's wide open and Dak hits him. And then right after that is probably my favorite thing that happened in the NFL today, which is second and ten whole shot across the had the fought from the far hash. Jalen Petri drops off his guy and is falling back on the route. So you've got Stingley and Petri sandwiching the throw. And Dak just fits it in between them beautifully, just arrogantly for a 15 yard gain and that kind of gets the cowboys into the territory where, all right, we can start thinking about winning this game instead of tying it. It was just a nails throw among like ten that Dak made in this. You don't want to come back to CD? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that ball, when that ball comes out, that it comes out so early. And that's one where we talk again, a lot, design, guys open, guys dropping routes. There's nothing designing about that. That is a comeback against Derek Stingley, one-on-one for CD-lamp. And if that ball doesn't come out with the exact timing that it does, that thing does not get completed. That's screw you. Here's this. And it's the coolest thing. That was the thing that CD did so consistently in this game. There were three or four examples of it. I wish I could pick point to more of them specifically, it's just in my wall of notes here. But on that play that he makes against Stingley, CD being so friendly coming back to the ball. And when you have a quarterback who is going to test those tight windows, he's going to give you chances. You have to earn those by playing that way. You have to make your quarterback right on some of those throws. And CD just consistently three or four times throughout this game is making catches in some of those tight windows because of how friendly he's being to the quarterback, how aggressively he's coming back to the ball. And that was another example of that, Derek. And if you're going to be one of the best soft fences in the league, you have to have both gears, right? And we can scheme it up and obviously I think that the Cowboys have mostly proven they can do that. And then you've got to just be able to win one on one football and I think that they proved that they could do that too. And so this was, I even looked us up for the other end like this was. In terms of second half that Demiko Ryan's has ever coached with the Texans, it was the third worst by EPA per play and success rate. And some of that is like sure they got skimmed up, but like some of that is they just got beat one on one, like I just thought that this was all around an incredible performance by the Cowboys. They got bailed out a little bit, right? You have those two last year penalties on that one drive. They got a little bit of help, but the Cowboys defense deserves a ton of credit. Now the Texans are on four. They're sitting at 0 and four. And this is one of those games where can't blame it on the offense. The offense did plenty to win this game. This was a top 10 EPA per dropback of CJ Stroud's entire career. And that we talked about it when they fell to 0 and 3 that even if the Texans defense hasn't lived up to the reputation, the offense hasn't been pulling its weight, the offense did enough to win this game. And like even, and you know, they're picking on Ready Stewart man, they were picking on them. CJ made several equally impressive throws in this game. Like he was dealing and you're going to give up points and yards to the Cowboys offense when these guys are clicking, but this was a week where you needed the Houston defense to step up. And even if you just make one play, they needed to, they needed to make a play in crunch time there. And yeah, I, I didn't think the offense was doing enough over the first three weeks. They did plenty today. The one play I found it, there was, we actually showed a replay of it, but it was a 16-yard catch by CD Lee in the third quarter. And Bullock was driving down on the crosser and unless CD comes back to that ball, just very subtly, that, that pass is not completed. And the other thing that really stuck out about that play, the one on one blocks on that play from Tyler Geyton and Tyler Booker to give that space to find a, to give that the room to find a little bit more space in the pocket. That's been quietly something we haven't really talked about with the Cowboys offense. Geyton has played really well over the first part of this season. And we, I don't know if we ended up talking about him as like one of the players who could swing the season, but we should have. I think we might have, just because he has been such a, I would say just a question mark over his first couple of years because he's been hurt so much. Yeah. Like the idea that he's been disappointing or was kind of a lost cause coming into the season. And that I never really understood because we hadn't seen him and the injuries were coming, he got hurt in training camp one year and just completely derails what your season is going to look like. And so for him to be as good as he has and for us to not really be talking about the state of the offensive line, when they haven't had Tyler Smith for the first month of the season, to me is a definitive win for the Cowboys. And Shottenheimer said after the game, there's at least a chance Tyler Smith could be back for week five. So, and even if he's not the fact that they're even planning for that right now, and the offensive line has not been an issue overall. It's not the reason why you've lost the games you lost. Big big win. The Texas defense is obviously a very good unit. They've been a very good unit for most of the past month. But Derek, this is one of those moments where you're sitting here at Owen for it's probably not going to happen again. You're probably not going to have the miracle come back that you did last year to claw back into the playoffs. And it's just a reminder that these defensive teams, it can feel fleeting, man. It can feel really fleeting. If you don't really take advantage in those moments that you can kind of take it all the way with one of those teams and it was probably last year for them to do it, it's very easy with teams that are built like this for you to look back and think about what if and realize that you might have missed your window to do it like driven by that side of the ball. It's starting to sadly feel like we might be in that place with the Texans. And you know the worst part of it, I thought CJ Stroud was unbelievable in this game. CJ Stroud was incredible. Like if the whole calculus for this team was that the Texans defense was going to play at a really, really high level and then CJ Stroud was going to return to whatever form that we thought he could be like a top 10ish quarterback. And then the offensive line was going to get better. I think long term, I still have faith that the Texans defense can be like top 5, top 6 by the end of the year. I think CJ Stroud has been one of the best five or six quarterbacks in the NFL thus far, but the offensive line and all of the skill player injuries, obviously, Nico Collins missing time. Higgins not being able to play all of that stuff. That to me has been more damaging and because I think if that stuff was even at the most middle outcome for what those things could have been, I think they could live with what had happened to their defense the first month of the season. But most of that stuff outside of straddle loan was in like the bottom 20th percentile for what could have happened. But that's why they've ended up where they have and last year, the defense rose to such a level that they could carry it. Like you're saying, I think for a defense to rise to that level is really, really hard. And we thought they might be able to, but again, I think it just speaks to how hard it is to carry over that type of performance on defense. Like the Cocks are second on the NFL and EPA per play. They've done a really good job of maintaining that level, but it's really, really hard to do that year in, year out. The Texans were able to do it for multiple seasons in a row, but I think there's a reason that one of the things we fall back on and talking about how you sustain success in the league is that as a defense, it's just more volatile from season to season than offense typically is. And so for them to kind of be on the other end of that volatility, and that doesn't mean going from a good defense to being a bad defense is, it means going from the best defense in the NFL. And if you look at a lot of the numbers last year, it's the OX techens Texans one, two. I think Seattle finished number one in defense of DBOA, but there are so many just ridiculous rate stats for the Texans defense last year. And doing that again over and over and over again is really, really hard. And when you fall from being that sort of defense that can truly carry you through an entire season to a defense that's fourth, fifth, sixth best in the league, just kind of a normal run of the mill, great defense, that gap, you feel it. And that is the gap that we have felt with the Houston Texans this year, unfortunately, even if down to down, they have still been really good on that side of the ball for the most part. And for Dallas, I mean, this is a game where for you to scrape the two and two here and not fall another game behind and kind of keep pace in a division where the Eagles look really messy. The Giants are winning the division, but the Giants have beaten the dolphins, the Cardinals, and the Cal boys. The Cal boys. And that weird week one game, it's, this is a big win for Dallas, not only for just kind of proof of concept about what the offense can do against a really good unit, but to stay at two and two and really keep yourself very much alive to be the top of the division sooner rather than later as a huge one, especially after a sky is falling sort of weak with the way it ended in Rio, which I just never really understood. I just never really understood that. It's a tough moment for your head coach. It's an embarrassing moment. I think they've really had to dig themselves out of that hole just from an optics perspective, but in terms of what the football team looked like against the Ravens team, I think is really good. I just never understood why we were in panic mode. It's the way you lose it. Like, you know, we don't have to rehash that during the recap a week later, but the way that that gets away from you, even if the Ravens are a good team. But the bounce back was impressive. Let's get to our next one here. The Jacksonville Jaguars went in ugly 122 to 17 against the Bengals. I want to talk about this just because it's a reminder that the Jackson win in a bunch of ways. We've talked so much about the offense who talks so much about how Trevor has played. I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA. I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the NBA, but I don't know if you've ever been in the negated the Travis Hunter interception because of the arms dead roughing. And that, the bingles kicked a field goal on that drive. So like having that negated directly leads to Cincinnati points. Basel Tudon has a 44 yard touchdown brought back by a holding flag. Same drive, they still drive down to the three yard line and Robert Hainesy commits a hold that negated. They shot themselves in the foot and plus territory a lot in this case. It was for a lot of field goals as a result of it. It was more real than it was in the, but I framed it earlier. The offense didn't move the ball. It was just messy when they got in. They were fine. They couldn't get out of their own way. Anton Harrison negated a touchdown with a holding flag. And like I said, they did a lot of shit poorly in this game, just sloppy mistakes. And it stood out to me that they overcame it anyway. Like you said, like to play like this on the road and negate turnovers, negate touchdown opportunities, let the bingles score points when you didn't, you know, when you had chances to snuff out drives. I thought it was so incredibly impressive. And then what? The Jags scored their final points of this game with seven minutes to play and the bingles had multiple opportunities to go steal it from them. And that's what I found myself thinking as the noon window wound to a close where I was like, well, Jags, you do stupid, you play stupid games. You win stupid prizes. Like even Parker Washington stepping out of bounds on the third and 10 that could have iced the game. It's like you have given the bingles so many opportunities that in this league, that is how you lose road games. And for the Jags to not let that happen, I thought was incredibly impressive. I mean, shit, even on the final drive, Joe just went boom, boom, boom, first three plays of the bingles like last gas drive were all chunk gains. And they got down near the red zone and the Jags forced three in completions. And then rayon, oh goodness, I lost his name in my notes, rayon. lane, I think, the safety who's not a player, like he's never started for them makes a phenomenal tackle on that fourth down to get him off the field and get the win. I just, you're not supposed to survive this many mistakes in the NFL. And I think it speaks a lot of the jacks that they did. I mean, the forcing the turnovers is what flipped the game. And they, these are plays where those turnovers are earned. I mean, the first one, Josh Heinz Allen gets immediate pressure in the interception of the Joe Barrow throws in the two-minute row. And I think that you can explain it away a little bit because he was getting hit as he makes that throw. I think Jordan Lewis might have picked that ball off anyway. He was sitting right underneath it where Joe Barrow was trying to go with that ball. And it's just a reminder that even in a game again where Joe Barrow throws for 400 yards, there was really a nice moment. Derek, I'm glad you pointed that out about the whole shot. They were playing so much clock coverage. He was willing to throw the ball into that area. They're more, they're a handful of just bully ball tee higgins back shoulder throws in this game. Like the Bengals had their moments in the passing game. But I think there were still enough reminders of what sort of defensive team the Jags are. If you watch that interception, Antonio Johnson, they're in like a funky cover to look. And he takes the vertical on that play to take it away. And that's just something where this team so rarely do you watch them guarding space in zone coverage. Like they are just so good at snuffing things out. And that play was a really good example of it. And so even if Joe's getting hit on that play, I still think there's a chance Jordan Lewis gets a hand on that ball or picks it off just because of how well gloved up everything was. And on the play before that, Antonio Johnson's going to took away the vertical and that cover to look. He had a run stuff coming down on third down to make that or on second down to make that third down when Joe throw when Joe throws the interception. And then he had another one that I was a five yard loss in the first quarter flying downhill. So it's just everybody. Jerry and Jones had a really nice moment in coverage on that drive where the bangles were down 16 10. He was they tried to throw another back shoulder ball and second and 10. He snuffed that out. Coverage or a hunter did a fantastic job on the outing up to Hinsley or to Tinsley on that third down. And so again, even in a game where Joe brought through for 400 yards, I know Jamar chase got hurt early on. But I still think that you feel the quality of the Jags defense over the course of these games, their ability to stop the run and then their ability to come up with enough plays in the secondary. It's just a good unit in my opinion. It's a really good unit. And that is again why I wanted to bring up them kind of almost on purpose, allowing those whole shots compared to what we just talked about with the Texans, right? Where it's a lot of dropped coverage. It's a lot of beaters for the stuff that they like to play. It's a lot of Dallas cooking up these special plays for as much as the bangles were getting a lot of these chunk plays. It was either, like you said, T Higgins or some of the NCAA guys made really good plays, like Myers had a really nice catch down at the end, Gassicki had one. And so some of those guys just made plays, but it really was the Jaguars just saying, we're going to give you this. Prove to me that you can do something else to beat me. And they couldn't. And I thought that again, for as crazy as the box store looks, I thought this was an incredibly impressive day for their defense. And like you're mentioning, like teams, when they prove to you, they can win in a bunch of different ways. That is the sign of a contender in a lot of times. The last thing I wanted to say about how weird this game was, it's only one of 11 games since 2000, where a team has thrown for 400 passing yards and scored fewer than 20 points. It was just a really weird game overall from that sense too. Do you remember the rendition of this game from last year when Joe Barrow got hurt? And the Jags allowed a 92 yard go ahead, touchdown drive in the dying moments. And they couldn't get off the field because of flags and miscommunications. And ironically, they won 13 games last year. So they wound up being a good team. But it's so easy to come up with ways to lose games like this when you can't get out of your own way or when you make mistakes. And yeah, it matters to me that they won a clunker like this. Their offense is going to find some moments over the course of the game. They did it in this game again. The drive to go up 1610, the, the fake toss gun from play action to Josh Cameron who shook off Jordan battle coming down hill was a great yak play. They had a little flash play action where Brent and Strange kind of blocks down for a second leaks out to the flat for 11 yards. And then they're drive to go up 2310. It's a really cool design on a chunk plate of Brent Strange on like a deep wrap route. And then it's like a same side power to Chris Rodriguez for the touchdown with Col van Lennon pulling. And it's the Col van Lennon like doesn't really block anybody. But because of the way that the run hits Chris Rodriguez essentially goes on touch for 25 yards. It's actually a great job by Anton Harrison because they say you know who blocked somebody. And that's the reason that Van Lennon didn't have anybody to block because he's supposed to kick if they hadn't met on the line of scrimmage. I assume. And because he crosses Harrison's face, he takes him in the moment, which actually I thought that was a cool call from the Jaguars because what the Bengals had been doing in this game was letting the end slice. And then they would fire a backer down into the sea gap so that they could get presents there for whatever they wanted to for some of the split zone stuff. And then the Jags run the speeder were like, we're just going to wash it. If he's going to go inside anyway, let's take the tackle wash him all the way down. And then we're going to get this puller out where we want like that was one of those where you see the best play callers like find some little thing that the defense is trying to do to them and pick it apart for what was like literally the game winning touchdown like that ends the game for them effectively or at least let's them get into a comfortable position. After a week of Drake May panic discourse, the New England Patriots really kind of like salvage their season in a way by beating the Buffalo bills today. Instead of going to one and three, the Pats now set a two and two, the bills are at three and one. Drake May, and we'll talk about it a couple of frustrating moments yet again, but for the most part over the course of this game, performance that looked a lot more like 2025, Drake May than what we have seen so far this year. Drake May and the New England Patriots offense after knocking off the bills, you once again have our attention. They're back. My favorite son is back. He that I'm glad you said it was like 2025 because he still did silly shit sometimes in 2025. The fumbles, the trying to do a little bit too much every now and then he's still doing a lot of that. He probably just got away with it a little bit more last year than then you would normally think a quarterback would be able to. So he has the strip second this game, which the strip sack is funny too because one, it's the small hands like this is going to be a thing with him probably for a majority of his career. It's just the way that he's built, but the thing about it is he kind of puts himself in those positions where on that play, the right guard is just getting pushed right into his face. And he tries to slide up into a pocket that is non-existent. And so like he really didn't have a good answer there, but he's like sliding up into like the trash compactor from Star Wars and just let himself get strip sack. And it's like we should maybe avoid that situation if we can if we know that we're a player that is kind of prone to some of these, but at the same time, him being able to step up into trash like that and make those plays, it's why he had five or six incredible throws in plays this game that looked like last year's Drake May. His ability to find space and time in the pocket showed up over and over and over again in this game. You guys you watch Parks and Rec, right? Of course. There's the episode where I'm an elder millennial. Of course I watched Parks and Rec. There's the episode where everyone's sick and Rob Lowe's just looking at the mirror and just like stop pooping. That's how I feel about Drake May, where I'm just sitting there and like stop fumbling, stop putting the ball on the ground. Other than that, other than that play, I am very into the performance that we saw from Drake May tonight. We set out to parse through this game just because like it's a wild finish and what what the hell happened in the second half here. And they were going back and forth down the stretch and rewatching it while we were getting ready for the show. I didn't go into it because like, you know, everything's happening all at once in the early window. You're you can't catch everything when there's nine games on at the same time. I went into it not knowing full well what to expect. And halfway through the game, I was like Drake. Yes. Like I felt like this wave of relief watching him make some of these throws, you know, both of the touchdowns to Romeo Dobbs were fun. I mean, the first the first one is the first touchdown to Romeo Dobbs rewatching it. My soul left my body. You did like you yelp very loudly rewatching that. So wait, they were playing the clip right now. So the Patriots on this play are trying to run a fake screen to the right where they're getting guys down the field. The bills glove it up. In a lot of situations for a lot of quarterbacks, that play would be dead. If you trying to fake that screen and throw the ball down the field is is taken away. Instead Drake may get all the way back to the backside to Romeo Dobbs in a pocket that is condensing and rips that thing for a touchdown. But that is an incredible play from him right there. Like and that he did a plenty of that stuff today. But that that was the moment rewatching this game where I was like, holy shit, that's an impressive play. Well, and that's what felt like he was back like what Robert or Dave either of you, what do you think was most missing from the first three weeks of Drake, make compared to last year? It was like he just wasn't making the act and fit it in there kind of throw and he did that size of this. Yes, if you want to arrogance, yes, because like I think trying to fit that dobs throw in there, I think that's a little crazy. But he's willing to do it like getting to the backside skinny posts like that in the red zone is like that is big boy NFL quarterback. He had that throw he was taking a shot from Rousseau as he throws that ball. He gets obliterated as he lets that thing go. Yeah, and he was doing that again, all game. And so you get the one moment where he gets strip sack. But like I said, there were 10 other plays where Or that was worth it to you. And I think the other one where I really felt that where I was like, oh, he, he believes that he can do this again. And he's playing like he did last year was it was the second quarter, about eight minutes and 15 seconds left. Mac Collins like starts to bend and over and snaps it back off into the corner. It's not really open. And Drake is like, I'll get it in there anyway. And he puts it just over the top for Mac Collins to go make a play. And it was like, okay, between the touchdown, him making that throw, he made three or four other ones in this game that were just like tight window, have to fit it in there. Like, this looks like the player that he was for a lot of last season. And I know the first three weeks were disgusting. I feel pretty confident believing that this version of Drake may is much more reality than whatever the first three weeks of the season were. He had a throw and I apologize to our wonderful producer Katie. I forgot to give it to her ahead of time. But like at the very beginning of the third quarter in the stat sheet, it's a six yard game. But it was second and seven beginning of the third quarter and they moat like they motion Henry across. So it's like three guys on one side and dobs just runs like an out to the sticks. But the whole play collapses and Drake has to bail out of the pocket. He's on the minus 18 and throws a ball to the 30 on the run and just puts it right on dobs like just lasers it right to him and it sets up a third and one. He doesn't look remarkable on the stat sheet at all, but I was like, holy shit, that A, that was an incredible throw like on the run six yards behind the line of scrimmage. And B, yeah, that's the type of shit that was missing that turns that into an easy third and one instead of third and seven and you're getting off the field right at the start of the third quarter. I thought he did an incredible job buying time just subtly with sliding in the pocket, just find it buying himself a little bit more time and space. And then the other thing just with his legs, I mean, how many big scrambles did he have in this game? That was the other element that looked a lot like what he was doing last year. And so just a really, really impressive game. And we even talked about that last drive. I mean, on that last drive, again, keeps his eyes down, feel while he's sliding the left to find dobs for a completion, hits a deep wrap route to chism down the field. And then the catch that chism makes that one head to catch to win the game. I mean, just ridiculous on multiple levels. Yeah, there's another one where he's he's buying just a little bit of time to his right. We're playing it right now. As you're watching, just buying a little bit of time to his right and then it fits that thing in there and just what a catch by a chism. My God, Derek was just watching it and wonderment right there. It was one of the coolest plays of the day and the fact too that that is like not supposed to be a player who was like really going to be in their plants this year is another incredible part of it. But I was just really excited to see because I think the fact too that we got this version of Drake Mayback before AJ Brown is back, that makes me feel very, very happy and we'll see what he looks like when he gets back. But I'm glad we got there before AJ Brown to come back as somebody who invested heavily in what the Patriots could be this year. Like I said, it was by like the third quarter of this game. There was just relief washing over my body where it's like, okay, I don't know how many games the Patriots are going to win, but they don't look like a disaster against a good team. A team that was three or no heading into this game. So let's talk about that team. There are a few things that jump out to me about the bills in this game. Derek, at the point, the play you pointed out where he gets all the way back to Hollins, that that plays on the backside where Hollins runs out a little cross or returned. That is deep into the play. The exact same situation as him getting all the way to the backside and the dobs touched out. If you look at the stat sheet in this game, next gen had May pressured on 43% of his drop backs. He does very misleading in terms of what the game actually felt like down to down. He had a lot of time in the pocket consistently. So if you actually look at the numbers, even though he was pressured 43% of the time, a lot of that is coming deeper into the play. The bills only had three quick pressures on the day per next gen. Two guys had more than two pressures. We're so, and I can't remember who the other defensive lineman was. It doesn't really matter. Both of those guys that had more than two pressures, their average time to pressure was more than three seconds. So the past rush really was not affecting this game consistently, even if the pressure numbers look good over the course of the game. That's one area of concern for the bills and just the bill's defense and where it stands right now. Then the other area of concern is they shot themselves in the foot multiple times on offense again. I mean, Josh Allen gets away with that backhand flip at the goal line. There's no reason he got away with that. I mean, there are plenty of guys in range to pick that off as he's doing that. It wouldn't even been a safety anyway. So him doing that in that moment and then the throw late in the game is just completely unnecessary. But you just don't need to do that in that moment. They just like take a beat here to if you watch it back to. At the very beginning of the play, he thinks the corner is going to be open. And I think if he's able to throw it at the very top of his drop, it might be open. But then he has to evade a rush or he like spins out of it and he like plants to throw it again. And there's nothing in his mind that tells him it's been a little bit too long for me to throw and try to make that throw again. And he just tries to make it anyway. And it's obviously incomplete. With the amount of timeouts they had, time they had, it was only I think second and sixth or something like that. Like there was really no reason for him to make some of those plays. I thought that was bizarre. The other thing I think that was weird to me about this game. The first two games of the season, they ran over everybody out of the same formation basically, which was like the five man surface to one side, weeks on the other way, all whatever. They've like gotten away from that. And I don't know if that's like they want to diversify their game plan and their playbook as the season goes on. And so they're tinkering with stuff. But it's just like their run game the past couple of weeks has been a little bit worse than the first couple of weeks because I think part of that. And when you and the way they're running the ball was impressive and the way they fell over the first three games, there are a couple of things that stood out to me about it and why the offense just felt different. I just thought that Josh Allen was seeing it extremely well over the first couple games. That has been less reliable over the last couple of weeks I would say. It hasn't felt nearly as clean. You talk about some of the run game stuff. The other thing is that they were just cooking people off play action. The amount of play action that they were using compared to what they had done in previous years. They were I think number one or number two in the league and under center play action rate, which even with the construction of their offense, the last couple seasons and under center run team, they weren't a heavy play action team. In this game, they used play action on 23% of Josh Allen's drop acts. He was six of seven for 103 yards in a perfect pass rating. He averaged 14.7 yards per attempt. They did it seven times. They also just didn't run the ball very much in this game like for a game that was never out of whack. This is James Cook's lowest carry total since the end of the 2024 season, 12 carries. It was working. You had a 67% rushing success rate. As a team, they had a 53% rushing success rate. I thought, and I know this is a type of shit that you can do when a team loses a game where you just nitpick every aspect of it. But for James Cook to feel like an afterthought, in my opinion, for the most part. And then obviously, Dalton concade getting two targets, which Joe Brady himself said, what the hell was I doing? Why did I do that? That's the other thing that stood out about the first couple weeks is that Dalton concade was the most important pass catcher on the team. Dalton concade was off to this amazing start, and he got two targets in this game. And at least one, if not both of them were like late in the game. And so like I said, it's easy to pick that shit apart after the game is already over. But both of those guys are way too good to be as not implemented as they were in this game. And some frustrating moments. I mean, Josh Palmer drops that deep ball that he probably should catch down the field, which was kind of a start point, the weirdest way that I've ever seen someone try to catch a football in my life. He was so underthrowed, he didn't know what to do with it. Like it was just kind of a weird play overall, but it almost short-circuited his brain the way that ball came out of Josh Allen's hand. That's the thing. I don't fully blame him for it. It was coming in weird. He's having to come back 20 yards to go and get that thing. It was a weird play, but I've never seen someone attack a football the way that he tried to attack it. Was that the one? I think that was, I mean, yes, he should have caught that. I'm pretty sure that was the one that got negated by Dion Dawkins holding a guy anyway, right? Dion Dawkins had a rough day in this game as well. Like he had a holding call, he had a hands to the face call in the red zone. And Gabe Ocas ran over him on that one. I was going to say he got his ass whipped. Elijah Ponder got him on a nearly, I think actually ironically it was on a play action, but yeah, not a wonderful day for a guy that you can typically count on. Yeah. The bill's offense is likely going to be fine. The things that worry me are just why the fact that we still have like these couple of Josh Allen moments in these games that are close is just, it's frustrating. I mean, he's a phenomenal player where we see what he can do it as best. And then to have those couple of moments consistently, you just, you wish that just wasn't just a feature of who he is as a player at this point in his career, but it still kind of seems to be and surely no explaining that away. Like for as good as he is, game in and game out, the fact that they probably still should have won this game based on how well the offense played down to down is just doesn't negate the fact that we have a couple of these every single week and the defense is struggling right now. Like the mistakes on offense, the fact that you're going to still have a couple of them each week, apparently. And then what the way the defense is playing, it's frustrating. But my takeaway from this game is much more about the overall quality from the Patriots offense and the quarterback than it is anything Buffalo really. I guess outside of is it time for defense panic, but we're still four weeks into the season with a new coordinator. Like I'm not there yet. How much does it do for you and Derek, I would love your answer on this. How much does it do for you that Keon Coleman's starting to look like the lights coming on? Is it too small of a sample? to be excited about that because he made some dope plays in this game. I don't think so like I do at least I don't know he's probably never going to be as good as I wanted him to be coming out of Florida state, but if he can actually be a more functional part of the offense and we can get Dalton King came back in the fold and we can find ourselves in the run game, which like even when the bills have been really good at the past, like even last year, they had a two or three week stretch with a run game was not very good before they had to like refine it again and like that's just going to happen and I trust that they can find those peaks again and so if Keon Coleman is actually going to the one crazy play where he like bobbles it up to himself and catches it like that's kind of just randomness, but there were a couple of other actual downfield shots where they're willing to throw him like those deep posts and stuff like that some of the same like Josh Palmer routes and that to me is like a meaningful signal that they do think that he can be a useful part of this thing by the end of it. Bills played Dalton King came to ran 17 routes in this game. I just don't understand that. It's it's seven plays of 13 personnel 13% of their place, which again, it's just such a departure from what they were doing the early part of the year and then the other thing to mention DJ Moore did get hurt in this game. So DJ Moore was only out there for about half of the bills passing plays, but again, I don't I don't think that's the reason that the bills lost this game. All right, we're going to move on to some of the stuff that was not as exciting in week four, but first we are going to take a quick break. What the fuck? Let's get to a couple of the lesser performances from this week. We were going to put the Niners in you have my attention and the Niners deserve that, right? The Niners are for no. We're talking about teams winning in different ways. The fact that they were able to win this game when their offense wasn't rolling. I think the Niners have proven to be a very good team. But going back and rewatching the Broncos offense in this game, there are very few teams in the league when they're playing as the worst version of themselves that are more frustrating for me to watch than the Denver Broncos offense. And today it was kind of an all-timer. Bonyx in this game, average 4.6 area yards per attempt was negative three average area yards to the sticks. And there are a couple plays. I was rewatching it and literally turning around my computer to talk today about them as I was rewatching them. Because of how frustrating they were in the moment. The Broncos offense when they're in this mode kind of gross. It's pretty disgusting. And today was another one of those games. And so not trying to take away any credit from the Niners who are for no. And we will talk about them and why they won this game. But the Denver Broncos and their offense, what the fuck man? You know the worst part about the Bonyx, like the the the area yards and all that stuff. It's not that it's just them calling screens or just them calling quick game. He holds onto the ball on real drop-back concepts and then checks it down. Or he immediate or he's throwing the swing or he's like immediately just trying to get to the shot. Almost like per for like you know we talked about like the Aaron Rogers like performative deep balls. Bonyx is like performatively holding on to the ball just so that he can get to eventually get to the running back check down in front of the ball. Like it just feels like that happens all too often where he's not really trying to progress the play. He's just like well they're kind of playing shell cover Jagass. I'm just going to check this down immediately. And like I do think that that part is true. Like the Niners were I think playing on top of everything and saying hey you got to make these throws. If you're an NFL quarterback for a team that is supposed to have like AFC championship caliber you know aspirations you need a quarterback who's at least willing to try it. And I think the fact that we just have too many of these games and moments where he's not willing to be aggressive and ambitious until the game is like absolutely on the line in the fourth quarter. That I think is really really concerning to me and this was. They've had some games like this like you know the Raiders game like this felt like that last year the commanders game I think to an extent this really might have been the worst one like on that front. He averaged 4.6 areas per attempt. He averaged 3.0 time to throw per next year. That's hard to do in an NFL game. I got I you wonder how does that happen. The answer is exactly how this game unfolded for bone X. And I think people are going to they're it's a combination of two things at once. Okay. It is a staff that probably leans into a lot of the screens in the underneath stuff way more than they should. The most frustrating play collectively from this game for the Broncos. It's 3rd and 10. This was the play that unanimously disgusted all three of us at the same time like alive in the moment. It's 3rd and 10 with at the beginning of the third quarter. They throw a screen. They get eight yards on the screen. And on 4th and 2 they kick the field goal. Everything about that is confusing to me. Like a why throw the screen on 3rd and 10. It eight yards on that play. Are you expecting more? It's a then what you got there gorgeous. It's a gorgeous play call if your goal is to go for it on 4th and 2 from the plus 22. The sheer amount of times though they're doing that on 3rd and long. I mean they did it multiple times again in this game and it just that's often how they operate. So that I think feeds into the worst impulses of the offense. But that's not it. The most frustrating that that was a frustrating place in terms of process in terms of decision making in the moment. The most frustrating play of the game for me. There was a first and 20 in the third quarter and the Broncos are running like dagger and it's coming open. And you watch it coming open and instead of throwing it on 1st and 20 which you're trying to get a chunk back. He turns it down and throws the check down right in front of Fred Warner and it gets knocked in complete. I just don't and there's he has plenty of time to throw that ball like plenty of time and it just happens way too often where we talk about like Drake may get in the backside of some of those throws. I don't know the last time I ever saw bonus get all the way back to some of those throws beyond the ambition. It's just the decisions. The decision is made so early in the play where the ball is going. If it's not the check down the only time a decision is happening late in the play is when he's trying to check it down. And that's why that throw he made to waddle. I think it was in the Jags game. It felt like seeing a unicorn because it just doesn't happen and consistently in this game. There were examples like that that just weren't happening. And it's just a really frustrating offense to watch because it the limitations of it are so real in the moment. And I think that this was another example of that today. And that's where it gets difficult for me to like how much can you untie it from like the play calling because I think you that is the lasting image in my mind of bonix is you have a digger out coming open. He says I'm going to throw the check down anyway like he just does that sort of thing a lot and even plays that he makes later in the down are not from the pocket. He will get outside of the pocket and he did have a couple of those plays in the game. But if you're going to play that way you need eight of them, not two of them. And I think that that is kind of the issue that they had in this game. And so and then trying to tie you back to the play calling. It's like well, the offense is trying to get these chunks. They're calling some of these plays. And so at a certain point if he's not going to throw them, you just get frustrated and you're like, we'll fuck it. Then I guess we will call a bunch of swing screens and escort screens and we'll just call double slants this play. And we'll throw another RPO. It's like we'll boot him out so he'll throw it like at a certain point, you just have to call what is going to be thrown. And I think that that puts the play callers in a really difficult position. Whereas like at least last year Sean Payton has done this for such a long time with so many quarterbacks. Davis Web now having to take this over and like this isn't even in a indictment of him. That's just like a difficult position to be in when you are that limited in terms of what the menu is going to be. That's such a bleak thought and like halfway through the game. It's like, all right, call the shit that he'll throw. This isn't this is not working. It's the Broncos offense is in a nightmare weekend and week out. Yeah, plenty of games where they look pretty good and it's like, oh, man, like this thing probably does have enough juice combined with a defense for them to do something. It's just it's so inconsistent. But I get just there are certain games where it just looks like this where they just refuse to attack certain areas of the field. They had one completion beyond 10 air yards today. One. And I think it was outside the pocket. I don't think it was that structure. Yes, you can't live offense that way if you're not going to throw down the field in the pocket. It's just not going to work. Three completions on the day for Botanics beyond the line of scrimmage in between the numbers and those completions gained 14 yards. The Niners do deserve some credit. I think there are a few different defensive players that stuck out to me. Part of this is diameter or Lenore eating up court one sudden one on one on the outside and taking away those opportunities because that's where Botanics wants to go with the ball, right? I have my one on one on the outside. I'm going to take it. And Lenore consistently was winning in those situations throughout this game. The Malik Mustafa had a beautiful PBU late in the second quarter driving downhill on Evan Ingram. Even that throw though is late. And so that's the reason that he's able to get in and play that for even coming to play and make a play on that ball. So the Niners defense does deserve plenty of credit. Lenore specifically, I thought really did a good job while he was playing on the outside before up in the style cap banged up and he had to move inside. And then on offense, if you keep the game close, even if you're doing a relatively decent job against this team considering how they move the ball in the first few games, they're going to find opportunities. Like they're going to hit four or five of these over the course of the day. And that's exactly what happened. I mean, you talk about being able to get to the backside and hit in deep end breakers. The one that pretty hits the Evans late in the second quarter. That thing gets let go so, so early. For him to make that completion. That's the driver. They end up kicking a field goal to same driver. They had that really sweet use check slant off the fake screen, which was an incredibly cool design. So that's again, a couple of those moments. He finds use check. after extending in the fourth quarter, on that same drive, it's like a deep curl to Mike Evans. And then the design to set up the touchdown for 17.6 was like a Mike Evans insert play action, where he gets lost on the left sideline, which is really, really well done. And then obviously, when you can spit a middle screen to your tight end and have him take its 60 yards for a touchdown, it's a good place to be as an offense. The tight end coming off of an ACL injury, by the way, like the fact that he has a kill is eight and a half months ago, the fact that he has as much gas as he does is completely insane to me. And I think what the other really frustrating part about the Broncos offense, the way that they were calling it and playing it, I thought for three quarters, that Broncos defense played about as well as you can hope against the 49ers. They were limiting, they made them, they turned them into like an average offense, which like, if you can do that to Kyle Shanahan and this offense, like that is, you take that every single time, like I thought some of the stuff they were trying to limit explosives and the run game was good, like they had to turn to the weird DBO Samuel stuff to really get that to pop. The passing game was really not good until the fourth quarter, like they were doing a really good job of they were still getting away with man coverage. And even that might have only fallen away because Patrick Chautagne gets hurt in this game. And Riley Moss was questionable and like ended up being hurt in this game. And so the fact that they squandered what was like to me, I thought a really impressive Broncos defensive performance because the one thing I want to give them credit for there. This is a Niners team that especially in the run game, all they want to do is how can we get the C gap? How can we get this thing to stretch? How can we go over there? And I thought the Denver Broncos consistently did a good job of finding ways to fire somebody in there, like there was a third and one where they fire Hufongo in there, forces the play to cut back to the middle. Well, that's where the Niners don't have an advantage in the run game against this team and it gets stopped and they have to end up punting. And so I thought they played really well, but like you said, eventually the title wave is going to hit if you let them hang around in a game like this. I do want to say to that point, Bonix didn't play well. I'm not defending that aspect of it, but you lose Sir Tan and Moss in this game. They lost Pat Bryant to after like one of their best offensive plays of the day. I think they got screwed a little bit. I don't agree with the Marvin Mims turn like the Muff punt call. Oh, yeah, that's true. I don't agree with what happened there where like yes, his wrist hit down before his elbow. And if you slow it down, you can tell that maybe that's a fumble. But by the spirit of what was going on there, I think he's down. And so do you want to play a drag them to hell game where you win nine to six and it looks that ugly? Absolutely not. But what they were doing against the Niners shorthanded was incredibly impressive. And San Francisco was punting out of their own red zone when that happened and all of a sudden, they get to the plus 28 because of a special teams gaff, which in my humble opinion wasn't actually a gaff. And that changes the whole dynamic of this thing from the late third quarter onward. So if I had to guess, I think the Niners find a way to win anyway because they're often they were just a more a more well rounded team. But I do think that it sucks that that break is sort of what tipped the scales and got the snowball rolling towards San Francisco. I do agree with yeah. I mean, that's that's one where again, we said it in real time. The letter of the law, I can understand why it's a fumble, but you watched that play a thousand times. The forearm probably touches down and it's probably down. In the spirit of what was happening, I don't think that should be a turnover, but it is what it is. Let's get to our next one here, speaking of ugly games. The Rams somehow beat the Eagles today 24 to 20 despite them trying to lose that game in a myriad of ways, which we can talk about. Part of it is the Eagles inability to convert any third down ever. 93 total yards for Jalen Hertz who goes 12 of 27. The Eagles averaged three yards per play. They go O of 12 on third down. Honestly, this entire game, what the f*** was happening? It was raining early on too. And like through a lot of this game, which like this game was disgusting in about every way that a football game could possibly be disgusting. Because you get the worst version of the Eagles who are already down, like obviously Devon to Smith did not play in this game. Dallas Goddard has been missing. Sequan Barkley early on in this game gets banged up. And so that's not necessarily excuse making, but it's like Lane Johnson didn't play in this game. We know the land of Dickerson was hurt. You really felt that over the course of the day. It was rough. Like this was basically not the Eagles offense that you think that they are when you just look at the depth tried in week one. And so I'll give them like a little bit of grace for that, but still arriving at a point where not only O for 12 on third down, but only one of four on fourth down. So you had 16 conversion down opportunities and converted one of them. Like that is that is going to lose you the football game every single time, which the proof of that is that they shouldn't have the thing that's the crazy part about this. The Rams played a game that absolutely did not deserve to win either. And they just in the fourth quarter way with the buckle up with the offense. And like we're able to drive down and like I just thought this was another game where by halftime, I was like, man, it does not feel like the Rams are going to be able to turn this around. It doesn't feel like their day, whether it's bad, staffer doesn't look right. The Vante Adams can't catch the ball today. And the Eagles just kept letting them hang around, which that's the last thing I want to say. The best versions of the Eagles feel like they keep teams in it and then finally choke them out in the fourth quarter. The worst version of the Eagles is they stumble around in games they should win until the fourth quarter and then they somehow just lose it all. Saying they felt like the Rams are going to lose it at halftime with 14, 16 left in the game. Stafford throws incomplete tower hit beyond fourth and eight. The Eagles run the ball nine times in a row, nine times. Thank you, Mr. Rooney. Okay, including a scramble. So that was a call pass, but Jay one hurts takes off. They get down inside the five. It's third and two. On that third and two play, Hertz bobbles the handoff because Cam Jurgens hits him while going in motion. He hits him while he's trying to hand the ball off. So there's no handoff that even happens. If you look at that play, you have three Eagles getting insane movement on one Rams defender. It's probably going in for a touchdown. Instead, it's fourth and two by our young gets a pressure on that play. The Eagles do not score. And then the Rams, the door is open. They go down. They score to make a 20 to 17, including some just ridiculous plays. He bemates a back shoulder play against your hot Campbell. That's just a crazy catch. Double move by Puka, who does a great job coming back to like a severely under thrown ball with Stafford's getting hit. And then Kyron Williams is short on a second down completion. It should be third and one. The Eagles get a personal foul. Rams go down and score. Then it's 20 to 17. Game is now very much in play and the Rams somehow claw their way back into it. And so even with everything that we're talking about with the offense, if that play doesn't happen, where Cam Jurgens hits jail and Hertz when he's trying to hand that ball off on third and two, there's a very good chance the Eagles win this game. That's how many mistakes the Rams made. We're having the other version of the Eagles conversation. Yeah. To Derek's point, there's two ways this go. We're doing the what the fuck just happened. How did you lose this game? How did you not convert a third down? There's an alternate universe where the Eagles win this game. What? 27 to 10? And it's like, we looked like dog shit and we beat the Super Bowl favorites by three scores. And we're not going to apologize for anything, which is something we've done a lot after Eagles games. And for it to beast, what was there like their their win probability was 96% to be at a 96% win probability for a vintage ugly dominant Eagles win and then get the other version of an Eagles game in such a short amount of time was a crazy swing. The other little bit about the Rams. They tried to give you back the game at the end in the exact way the Rams always do, which is they they get the game to within three. They make that score, whatever whichever touched on that was. And then they kicked the ball out of bounce and it gives the Eagles the ball at I think the 40. I'm like, how are we making mistakes like this? Obviously, Meeva said even you missed like a 48 yarder early in this game too. So it's like in all of the ways that the Rams typically give up games that they should win, which is like buy the special teams and doing stupid shit at the end. They still tried to do that. And the Eagles still couldn't get over the finish line. Keep harping on it, Derek. I'm not going to let this Ram special teams should go. I've got them. I've got it all. Well, first of all, the Rams also tried to give it away in the last drive because Stafford tried to throw a pick to Jonathan Jones that he dropped. So that didn't happen. That throw that on the pile. Ram, Stafford throws a pick on the first drive. I don't know over throw. Second drive, I think Davis Davis Allen gets a hold to make it second and 16. They force a field goal. Third and one, Morrow, Joe Mo blows up a play by crossing Coleman Shelton's face. Britten Covey returns a punt to the Ram 17 yard line with six and a half minutes left in the second quarter. So the Eagles have to go 18 yards for a touchdown. That was the derriest Cooper mossing a guy play, which could have been a pick. Easily. Okay. Stafford overthrows Pucka for an interception with 19 seconds left in the half. The Eagles then score on that drive, following a pass in her appearance. That was a swing that probably could have changed the entire game. Stafford misses Devante Adams on a double move with 13 minutes left. Harrison Mevis misses a field goal with seven minutes left in the third quarter. And then they kicked a **** ball out of bounds at the end of the game. And just like what? In any world where the Eagles offense can do anything in this game, the Rams lose and should lose because based on how ugly this thing was for them for most of it. Decisively, they lose. I mean, they almost lost decisively in this version of the game. I, Jaylen Hertz did not play well. Like there were moments. There was one very similar to the bonus play where Jaylen Hertz just has a wrapper out coming wide open at one point in the game and and just refuses to throw it. And that, that stuff is. drives me crazy. But when you look at the environmental factors with the Eagles offense in this game, it's hard to have any sort of shot. 57.6% pressure rate for the Rams per next gen on a 61% blitz rate. They played man 40% of the time in this game. Hertz goes four of 11 for 46 yards on those plays. The Eagles finished with a 36% offense of success rate. With the state of the offensive line with no Devante Adams, like it, it was going to be really, really tough sledding for J. Owen Hertz, no matter what. So I, I'm not going to lay this at his feet. This is just an overall offensive failure from Philadelphia in part because of how short-handed they were. But that's what it took for the Rams to claw their way back into this thing because of how many self-inflicted wounds the Rams had. Imagine Sean McVey's internal monologue at like multiple points. Did you see him after the cam curl play? He lost his mind. I think that, that was a situation related in the game. I felt I'm, I'm sure after that Higby play happens, there are a lot of thousand yard stairs happening on that Rams sideline. And I will say that's why they deserve credit for those last couple drives for them to actually pull themselves back into this thing and win it. They deserve credit for that. But for 50 minutes, this thing looked really, really ugly yet again. Like this team is out of sorts. Even if they managed to win this game, they are out of sorts. Absolutely. And also, if we haven't mentioned it by name, the second and goal run that Kyron had to take the lead. Like, he had a lot of great plays in this game. It was, it was a top three play of Sunday. Like, I know we've said a lot of things that happened today were great, but the way he just lost half of Philly's defense to take the lead was, it was so cool. The stiff arm to get Jeremiah Trotter on the ground, but then also as that's happening, he puts his foot in the ground and gets up field and makes Cooper Dijin miss and then shakes off two more guys. It's an awesome play. He was really good in the passing game today. Like, he was a crucial player, Kyron Williams was for the Rams to win this game beyond him scoring that final touchdown. And you felt puket too. Puket doesn't play in this game. The Rams have absolutely no shot. All right, let's get to the last one here. The Chicago Bears beat the New York Jets 23 to 12 today. And I'm not saying that usually when we do teams in this segment, it's teams that should no better or should be better. I'm not saying that the Jets losing this game is something they should have done or we should be mad at the Jets losing this game. The WTF framing on this is mostly just of how really weird of a game it was. Like, what the f*ck was this game? The Bears had more first downs than the Jets ran plays in this football game. That is a real thing that happened. What a bizarre game all the way across the board. Do we know if that's ever happened before? Like we're a team. There's gotta be someone who knows this information somewhere. There are so many stats coming out of this game where I'm dying to know what the precedent is. And I just, I'm sure somebody will get to the bottom of it, but putting the show together on Sunday afternoon, I just didn't have enough time. But just what a ridiculous game. And we needed to highlight it because if you're not watching everything closely, you're like, oh, the Bears covered with a backup quarterback at home against the Jets. >> That score 23 points. >> Whatever. Oh, this wasn't interesting. And honestly, that might have been how I felt about this if I didn't work on a show in Chicago with Bears fans. And this game was like front and center all day during the early window. And you look up and you're like, holy sh*t, have the Jets had the ball at all in this entire game? >> Yeah, they had it for 17 minutes. >> Which I did look that. I was able to get that stat. 17 minutes and 15 seconds of possession is the fourth lowest total of the last decade. The Josh Johnson commanders had less than that in 2018. Ironically, the Alex Smith chiefs had a lower time playing the Jets. And then this didn't register for me. Tyler Schuck's debut against the Rams last year. The Saints only had the ball for 16 minutes and seven seconds. That track. Every Rams drive was just a march to the end zone. Rare air in terms of just not having the football. The New York Jets did not have the football in this game. >> Second time in the Super Bowl era that a team has had more first downs than their opponent had place. >> Second time in the Super Bowl era. So the last 56 years. >> That's unbelievable. I'm also going to guess, too. The other game was in like 1978 or something ridiculous. Without having known that, that's my guess. This is not historic, but as far as this season goes, the Bears had 9.89 plays per drive in this game, which is the most of any game by any team this season. And that's also, if you remember, they had the Deontre switch fumble, which was only two or three plays into one of those drives. And then the Tyson Bayesian Bayesian interception, which was also only a couple of plays into one of those drives. So every time they didn't turn the ball over, it was like a 12-play drive. And most of them scored some amount of points. >> They only scored 23 points. >> Well, they had a fourth, they had a failed fourth and one. And they didn't have that many explosive plays. I will say, they got billed out a few different times in this game. I mean, illegal hands to the face, I believe, on the screen that was intercepted by Travandre's sweat. That's one that you got billed out. There were a couple other defensive penalties. Tyson Bayesian threw two more interceptions that got wiped off. The first ones of free play, that ball's not getting thrown unless there's an off-sides, that one, that's not the idea that that should count in any way, even optically, it doesn't make any sense to me. And then even the third interception that he threw, I guess it was fourth. The fourth interception that he threw, three of which did not count, was a defensive hold where the player he was trying to throw the ball to absolutely got held. And so there were two, I think, legitimate Tyson Bayesian interceptions in this game, one of which was wiped off. A couple other plays that drives get extended because of defensive penalties, even when you take all that into account. The just ownership that bears offense hat of this game, essentially from the start with the backup quarterback, in again, is just kind of remarkable. Like, their ability to look like this on offense and just be this efficient, this, I mean, they look like a machine. I mean, just the ability to run the ball to the degree that they did, they ran, again, over five, they gave 492 yards of offense. They ran the ball for what? Like, 250 again? I thought it was 232. 230, they ran the ball for 232 yards. And the offensive line, which jumped out to me today, the offensive line was excellent in this game. The way they ran the ball, but also the past protection just throughout was so, so good. Every skill position player chipped in in some way. Obviously, Menongai is a monster day. Oh, Dune's I had a couple really nice moments. Burton and Lovelin got involved throughout this entire game. I mean, just the ability to control the game in this way two weeks in a row with backup quarterbacks playing. And, you know, the jets are the jets. I think that people are going to look at the logo and be like, oh, this isn't impressive. The jets have been a solid football team so far this season. And so for the bears to have this thing in hand seemingly the entire time and truly just have a handle on the game from the start is impressive. And they've done that two weeks in a row against backup quarterbacks or with backup quarterbacks. I didn't think about this, but you see weird scheduling quirks like this sometime where the jets have now played three quarters of the NFC North all in a row. They took the packers to overtime. We talked about how fun the game was against the Lions last week and all the cool shit they did in that game. And so yeah. And obviously they beat Tennessee to open the season. Like they've been a pain in the ass. And the bears is the most like score line final score wise. It's like the most uninspiring score you've ever seen. But the bears just beat the shit out of these guys. And like to do that two weeks in a row with quarterback three and quarterback two. I'm not like we're not talking about them and you have my attention. I'm not ready to go that far, but like it registers with me like that is incredibly impressive and something you should have an eye on for when Caleb Williams is available again. I mean that stupid ugly game against the Vikings is the only reason this team isn't for or no with like some pretty impressive wins on the board. Well, that's the backup quarterback performances have been good. The one time we saw him play not against Brian Flores in a rainstorm. They scored 60 points. It's good to be really good when that guy comes back. I knew the offense could have this sort of gear. And the fact that they played this well with the back of quarterbacks is impressive in an entirely different way. What the defense did today? That to me and what the defense did in the second half against the Eagles. I know the Eagles are kind of unraveling. The jets. We did the trivia this week. The jets were top 10 an EP paper dropback coming into this game. And for them to just not be able to move the ball. They went oh and seven on third down. What the defense Dennis Allen was doing some funky stuff on third down. Like some of the pressures that they're sending the way the defense is playing overall. I don't know how good they are. But four games into the season. The bears are fourth in the NFL and EPA per play on defense. Fourth fake stat. I'm sorry. I can't get there. You know what I can't get there. They're highly driven by what the the Falcons a little bit last year. We're like you you kind of knew that this was like a little bit made up and not real. And that they were having to match your fan manufacturer stuff and do a bunch of crazy stuff and like getting a couple of turnovers every now and then the difference between them and last year's Falcons is this team has whatever the bears offense might be on the other end of it. And so if they can actually even if they're fake good and can do so. of this stuff. And I'm glad you mentioned that Gino and the Jets, like the Jets Offense has been, they're a good parometer team. The NFL's always got a handful of these at a given time. And if you can do that against like what the Jets Offense has been, that probably means something. What's carried them is that they are number one in the NFL and EPA, I put, EPA, EPA plan third down. And some of that is what happened today and what happened in the Eagles game. The Eagles didn't have one for all the second half. And the Jets went over today. But what the bears, some of the stuff the bears are doing on third down is really good. Like some of the pressure stuff that Dennis Allen is doing, we compared them directly to like the early chiefs with the early spags chief teams. Can they be like that? And so even if they're not fourth in the NFL and EPA per play, type good. They were seventh on a third down last year. They're first this year. And overall, they're 14th and success rate. This doesn't have to be the sixth best off of defense in the league. This has to be like the 16th best defense in the league. And they're doing enough right now. They've allowed opponents since the Panthers game. Obviously the Panthers got them pretty good. Not that it mattered. But their last three opponents are five of 29 on third down. Now the question is obviously, like the Eagles are obviously in hell offensively right now. And then it's the Carson wins Vikings in a rainstorm and whatever you think about the Jets. I'm just it's been incredibly impressive, especially considering our concerns about the Bears defense. I'm okay waiting a little bit to see more. I have no idea how real it is. I just know that what it's looked like, especially over the last two weeks, is like, okay, like this, this is something that you can build on. They blitzed five times in this game. They got pressure on four of those plays and they got clean pressure on four of those plays. Like Dennis Allen is cooking in some of these high leverage moments, even if I think we still have some concerns overall about the personnel quality on this team. The more important part to me and maybe the thing that'll keep it from mattering is it just it defies all of my expectations about pro football that you can run for 230 yards with your backup quarterback in the game. I mean, I know Malik Willis did it for the Packers last year, but that's a different story from Tyson Beijing and Case Keenum. The Bears have accounted for 20% of the 230 plus yard rushing performances dating back to when Ben Johnson got there. They've done it four times with Ben as the head coach. No one else has done it more than twice. The rest of the league combined has 16. It's unbelievable how often the Bears are just running at will and to be able to do it without your preferred quarterback is it's not supposed to work that way. So yeah, I don't think the defense doesn't need to be that good. So I think it's fair to be encouraged. I was hoping they would just hang on when Caleb Williams wasn't playing. I didn't expect them to be winning these games by multiple scores while he was sitting on the bench. It's a nice place to be considering how shitty things felt the end of week two. One thing, one more thing we do have to mention in the spirit of WTF, of course, this is the game where the Jets break their no interceptions streak. Yeah, they had four of them. Only one of them come in. Hey, that's one more than counted for the entirety of the 2025 season. So it's a starting point. Yeah, I mean, again, it's one of those should have stood and Tyson Beijing did throw one interception that did count at the ball security and just the overall turnover questions. Like that has to get better against teams that are better, but overall, I think you got to be pretty encouraged by what the Bears did. All right. Let's talk about what made us feel romantic about football on week four. I mean, this thing was a thing of beauty. I really love when we have players that have been in the league for a while and for whatever reason, a new play caller happens or the situation changes just a little bit and we see that player unleashed and unlocked in a way that they never really happened before. And the guy that is like that for me this year is watching what Zay flowers has been for the Ravens. Zay flowers are good player. Zay flowers has been a good player for a while for Baltimore. But the tweaks in his usage usage this year have made him like borderline unstoppable. So Zay flowers this season had another huge game today, by the way. I don't have the stats in front of me. I probably should have the stats in front of me for what he actually did in this game. Well, it was all in the first first half because that's what he keeps doing. I was going to say all the first half all before half. Okay. Eight catches 118 yards in a touchdown. Okay. I'm yet 30 routes total. So 10 10 targets. Eight catches 118 yards. Here's some season long stats for Zay flowers. Stat number one. He's averaging six point three yards per out run this year. Six point three. Best in the league type numbers are usually flirting with four for anybody that's not aware. Anything over three is offensive player of the year. Six point three yards per out run. Okay. He's been in the slot on 57% of his routes this year per next year. That's it was that's compared to 31% last year. So he has been a primarily slot player for them. Some of that is driven by the fact that they're using more three receiver sets in order to put him in those situations compared to what the Ravens used to do. But this is obviously a very conscious choice from the Ravens coaching staff to put him in there. He's run 32 routes from the slot this year. He has been thrown the ball on 16 of those plays. So he has a 50% target rate from the slot. He is averaging 8.8 yards per out run on those plays from the slot. He's averaging 1.3 EPA per target. He's gained first down on 37% of his slot routes. Last year, Zae Flowers had 16.3 receiving EPA out of the slot. This year, he has 21. And he has these runs all these three games. By the way, he's doing three games. That's what I think. He hasn't played the entire to see if this season to this point. He hasn't finished two of his three games and he missed a game with the hamstring injury. We're talking an incredibly small sample size. The one thing I wanted to know was he's run among the guys at the top of the league because Zae is one of six receivers with 350 yards so far this season. Among all of that company, he's run 60 to 80 fewer routes than all of those guys. And the rate stats will drop as he plays more. But the vision that the staff has had for him and the way that they were like, this is how we're going to use this guy. We're going to fucking cook people has been awesome. And you saw last week against Dallas and they did it again today. His touchdown today. They have him isolated on a linebacker coming out of the slot. The guy has absolutely no shot. He takes it to the house. And then the other awesome play that they ran. He runs like a little sail and up from the slot for a huge chunk gain. Just this. And they set it in the summer. Declan Doyle at one point was like, this dude is a star. And we are going to, I think show people that he is a star. And the just crystallized vision they have had for how they want to deploy him and what it has looked like over the first four weeks is awesome stuff. It has been so incredibly fun to watch. I think a lot of it has been the usage. I also think a year ago or two years ago, you couldn't have used him this way. I don't think he was good enough at some of the things that like requires you to play in the slot. I think the way that he tracks and comes back to the ball now is better than it's ever been at any point in his career. And I also think the way that he like when he sees grass in front of him as a yak player and goes is better than it's ever been at any point of his career. And maybe that's partly fueled by like they're using him more that way in practice in the game plans. And so he's getting used to that sort of stuff. But I do think that he's gotten better at that stuff that when previous versions of the Ravens tried to do that with him, you had some like good moments, some bad moments, but it did not feel as consistently dominant as it's been, especially underneath. And then you mentioned that like sail out and up play. I thought the ball tracking on that was even really impressive, which I think down the field, he's always been like the pure vertical stuff has always been a little bit up and down. His vertical stuff has always been like he gets to 20 and he snaps off a dig or he snaps off an outbreak or a comeback, something like that. But the pure vertical stuff like that where he can really go and track it. Sometimes that's been up and down. So the fact that he showed improvement on all of the things that like even two years ago, I was like, man, I just don't know if he's that kind of player. That to me is the most impressive part of all of this. I and I said this leading into the summer. And I I felt better about it when I dug deeper on it. But anecdotally, I didn't always trust Zay flowers as like a down the field guy. He's just some of the drops and the miscus just loom large in the mind. But he looks so impressive this year like the 52 yarder he had in this game. It's not like the coolest catch you'll see on on a Sunday, but just the downfield tracking like over the shoulder arms extended. It just looks very polished and very advanced. And speaking of that, like when I dug deeper into it and what he did last year, I felt a hell of a lot better about Baltimore locking him up on the deal they did considering how much time was left on his contract reaction to that contract coming into the season. Yeah, I remember talking about it with Derek when it immediately happened. I was like, oh, that's that's a lot of money. And then I was like, okay, well, he still has two years on his deal. And he was actually like top 10 in yards per out run. This will probably be fine. It won't probably be anything. It looks fantastic through a month of the season. They've used him in a way that makes him worth every single one of those dollars. And it does really help that quarterback is playing his playing pretty lights out right now. He's he's back. I would say the scramble that he had. Though he tweeted out the play. The scramble that he had in this game. Like just that that is a there is no one in the league for whom the game slows down in the way that it does for Lamar Jackson. It his I want to do something about this at some point this year. Like Like why some quarterbacks are really adept at throwing the ball to the middle of the field and why some are not. And I think some of it is just like spatial awareness. His spatial awareness is just on a completely different level. Like his ability to feel and understand where defensive players are and where they're going to be when guys are around him, when there's traffic down the field in certain areas he's trying to access as a thrower, just an unbelievable player. And I obviously get hurt in this game, it sounds like he's probably going to be okay. They play the Falcons on Sunday night, I believe Jesse Minter said at one point that he probably could have come back in if needed. So hopefully nothing long-term Flomar Jackson, because that connection with him and Zayf Flowers has been something to behold this season and it isn't plenty worth being romantic about. All right. That is all we've got for week four. Like we mentioned tomorrow in the hangover. >> Lions Panthers, Seahawks Chargers and Giants Cardinals, we will be hitting all of those. I know the Vikings are undefeated, I still don't know what to make of them, they beat the dolphins today. >> Without scoring a touchdown. >> Yeah, they beat the bucks who are unraveling last week. Like, well, I'm sure we'll talk plenty about the Giants. We have a midweek show this week, we have a midweek show this week where we'll hit the Vikings. So the Vikings talk will be coming, it's just, it's a very weird for now, I don't know what to make of it. >> Well, and we can't do dolphins on the hangover every week. The whole point of us making some of the changes to the hangover this week is so we don't or this year, so we don't do the same team every single week the way that we did last year at points. >> For now, that is all we got. I sincerely appreciate you guys listening, we'll talk to you soon.