Week 5 Recap: 49ers & Vikings stay undefeated, Drake Maye goes off, WTF Bears?!

Welcome to the athletic football show brought to you by the US bank smartly visa signature card. I'm Robert maize an eventful week five in the NFL. Let things off with just a quick chat about the Sunday night game. We'll dig into that in earnest on the hangover tomorrow. But then me, Dave and Derek went long on the Seahawks Niners game a phenomenal game between two very good teams. Chatted a couple NFC Nord teams and attention lions Vikings Vikings are five and O Drake may with a monster day, chat about the ending of the Washington. Giants game, which is still one of the most bizarre sequences. I can remember in an NFL game. Plenty of WTF moments in week five. Bears, Jags Eagles, everything about Broncos Chargers and then got a little bit romantic about Jalen Warren and the season he has had so far all of that with me Dave and Derek. Let's get to it right now. Let to dig into from the week five slate. We're going to go through all of the important stuff that happens today, but let's start just with the ending of that Sunday night game. Obviously, you guys just watched that when and over time. You're comment about the overtime drive one hell of a drive to straight one hell of a drive from the Ravens to get that thing over the top. It was such an impressive drive. I mean, just the stats 14 plays seven minutes off the clock in overtime. Sure. That's wondering what happens if you just take all 10 minutes of overtime on your first possession. That was a soul snatching touchdown. Just take the ball home. Yeah, just just walk out the tunnel on your way through. Well, I mean, stupently picked up a few big third downs there. The one to Z flowers. I thought was particularly impressive. And then by the time you get down close to the in zone, Derek Henry had like probably two runs where they were just moving the pile and you could just feel them leaning on the Falcons and you could feel how exhausted Atlanta's defense felt in that moment. It just it was very impressive. And you know, we always say this like we're working on the rest of the show while Sunday nights going on. And it felt like every time I checked in on this game. It just felt like Atlanta was in control. And for Baltimore to rally and take this thing on the road with a backup quarterback is a really, really impressive win. Based on how the Falcons have been playing the last couple of weeks. If you're Baltimore, this is the exact type of game that would be easy to lose backup quarterback center you just traded for isn't ready yet. So your offensive line still in sort of a makeshift place. And so for them to steal this one and come out at four and one, hopefully with Lamar being back sooner rather than later. Again, this is absolutely one that in a lot of situations you can drop and that did not happen. They were up eight Atlanta was up eight with six and a half minutes to play. And that's what I'm talking about. I looked up and I was like, OK, like this is a game, but I feel good about Atlanta holding on to this and Baltimore had other plans. And they also finished it in like that's the entire ethos of their team is to be able to run out the clock that the way that they did. And also like with the overtime rules now where even if you score a touchdown, the other team gets it back. There is a lot of value of draining what at least six six and a half minutes off of the clock. If you can and they drained a little bit over seven, I believe. And so that is like in the modern NFL, the perfect overtime drive short of what they said of like literally running out the clock and getting all 10 minutes, which is pretty hard to do. Even if the books did, you know, did it on Thursday night, we're going to dig into this game and earn us tomorrow on the hangover will be hitting Ravens Falcons from Sunday night will be chatting about bangles dolphins and we'll also be talking about Texans Titans, including a full breakdown of the Marvin Harrison junior trade have some thoughts, but didn't want to shoehorn that into the Sunday night recap. We want to sit with that a little bit. So those are the three games that we will be hitting tomorrow. Like we typically do Sunday night game is usually how we kick off the hangover plus a couple more games. So that is what is on tap on the Monday into Tuesday show. Let's kick things off with this recap, talking about the 49ers knocking off the Seattle Seahawks 32 to 29, the Niners and off five and O Seattle falls to three and two on the season. What do you want to start this conversation? What is your lasting image of this game? The fact that it was bizarre shit. The fact that here's here's what I'll say and I'm curious if you think I'm being a hater and entertaining game. And at times a really well played game like I like brought pretty made an impression on me in this game Jackson's method jig was obviously incredible like there were there were pockets of really high level football played here. Arguably the two best teams in the NFL to play a game decided in the final two minutes by three points. Not a particularly good game like when you combine for seven turnovers. I'm left wanting when you're talking about like really deciding who the best team was. I don't mind it that much because I do think it was a lot of. I was going to say it was a lot of very good defensive plays. It was a combination. I think there were some tough offensive moments. I mean a couple of the the Darnel picks are. As much bad choices as they are great defense, but I think I still come away believing in the overall quality of this. It kind of reminds me a little bit. It's not exactly the same. But when we think back on the Rams chiefs Monday night game from 2018 and the amount of points scored in that game. There were both. You can have a little bit of sloppiness and still be a very good team. I think that's the case of both of these as iconic as that game was though when I think about that Rams chiefs game. I'm just like what a bunch of goofy bullshit happened in that game and like I have no doubt in my mind that these are both really good teams and I said it right when the game ended. The Niners not only are they five and oh they went to Lumen and beat the Seahawks and they I don't care what the Rams travel arrangements where they beat the shit out of the Rams to start the year. That's too as good of resume building wins as you could ask for in the NFL for five weeks. And so I think I think some of it was really weird and I wish it had just been a tighter game. I wish it had been. I wish there hadn't been so many moments where I was like well I was really stupid but still a highly entertaining game and a very impressive one for the 49ers just to put a point on how weird the game was I look this up immediately after it ended we had 28 combined first downs between the Niners and the Seahawks in this game and 61 combined points. Those two things in tandem have happened three times in an NFL game in the past 27 seasons since 2000 that's happened three times the last time it happened was during a Bengals Browns game in 2013 that we had that few first downs and that many points. And so if you came away from watching that game thinking man what a weird game you would be correct about that we do not see that type of game in the NFL very often it's about once every 15 years 18 yard touchdown drive for San Francisco 24 yard touchdown drive for Seattle 11 yard touchdown drive for San Francisco. Fumble return touchdown for San Francisco zero yard touchdown drive 23 yard touchdown drive for Seattle after the Debow or excuse me after the party fumble yeah I mean it was kind of a shit show and still a great game but I think that's worth saying Derek what's your answer to that question. Yeah because it was such a shit show I think I was actually weirdly impressed that the Niners were able to win the game that they did like I think for a lot of ways like there have been stretches where they've been a team that can win from behind and win games that are weird and stuff like that but for the most part Shanahan offenses have been like they're best when they can get the ball rolling early defense compassion they can like really snowball on you. This was a really bizarre game and they did get help from their defense obviously but there were stretches were like some of the two high pressures that Seattle were calling really giving pretty issues the two trap call where they get him on the interception like they had some good stuff on the Seattle defense but the fact that you get proof of concept with Mike Evans in like every way and we already have seen that right but you have the goal line drive where he makes just an insane grab on a slant over one of the DB's they have another play later in the game where exactly what we talked about coming into the week where he's the single wrist. Where he's the single receiver on one by three the safety poachers away and they throw him they throw him like a deep back shoulder ball you hit one or two dig routes over the middle to Mike Evans like you they wanted a player who could come in in the passing game and say hey Kyle Shanahan you don't have to scheme it up every time perty you don't have to go make a play every time outside of the pocket we can just find the huge guy to go make a play for us and he did that for them and so the fact that they could win that game that way and the last little bit of it they ran the ball better in this game than I thought they would. Like there were stretches where it really really worked for them where I thought this was a Seattle front that there was a chance that they could just dominate them and they did the 49ers did not let that happen to them. The last two drives the Niners had was the it was the question we started the preview conversation with why will this be different for the Niners offense in this game then it was the last couple times we saw these two teams play in week 18 and in the playoffs those last two drives. I think are where you felt the difference for them to go up 2926 and then for them to put the game away. Okay, so they drive where they go up 2926 Derek already pointed out one of the plays but there was a third and 10 big time completion Evans where he hits like a big in breaker. Ernest Jones steps up just a tiny bit just a little tiny bit because of the shallow that's coming. But he's willing to let that thing rip it's a conversion and then like Derek just mentioned second and 21 after and after intentional grounding from party they throw that back shoulder ball to Mike Evans. So not only is it the type of play that no receiver on the Niners is making last year deep outside the numbers like we talked about it's a second and 21 you're behind the sticks the drive should probably be over I'm going to give this guy a chance and he's going to go make a play for me. So those two catches, in my opinion, just that. drive in general for them to go down and score, that feels different. And then to put the game away. When they were to put the game away, that final drive, when you have, it's 29, 29, 29. They have two chunk runs to start the drive. It's an eight yarder and then a 13 yarder. You have an 11 yarder to kale and black. Their ability to kind of impose their will on the ground multiple different moments in this game San Francisco. That to me is what I felt the most different. And some of it, the niners are the siak didn't play that many light boxes in this game, but they did play mostly neutral boxes. And so I think a good way to look at this is on blocked box runs. So plays where you have as many blockers, as they have defenders in the box, what do the performance look like? In the playoffs last year, the Niners had a 17.6% success rate on those runs. In week 18, it was 25%. In this game, it was 47.8%. And you felt that you, that, that to me, other than the Evan stuff, was the biggest difference between this version of the Niners and the one we saw at the end of last season. And Derek, those were the crucial differences, like those were the things they needed to be able to do against this team. And so even if it was an uneven performance overall, even if the siox made them earn it almost like for 90% of this entire game, when it came down to it, those final drives, those were the differences we wanted to see and those are the differences that we saw. And it was beautiful because the run game last year was just then slamming Christian McCaffrey in two of all the yards at a time, absolutely no chance. They had nothing. And now I think, and you know, day pointed this out when we were doing the preview, the interior of the offensive line is playing better than it really has at any point. I think in the last handful of years, they were, they were very good in the run game and Conor Colby's past pro protection. It's Seattle. Yes. Pro was a different game. But the fact that you won somewhere. Yes. What you won somewhere when you were supposed to lose everywhere. I do think it's some amount of improvement. Absolutely. And so I think that the fact that the run game could win that way. And then I even, I do want to give pretty some credit on, I think it was the first Christian McCaffrey touchdown. A pretty checks into that because the front that Seattle is in, they have like a two eye in just inside the left guard. And then the next guy on the defensive line is like way out in the D gap, like outside over receiver who's near the line of scrimmage. And pretty is like, we'll shoot. Let's just run it into the gap. And they did that and they, they climbed to a well and had some really good combo blocks. And they got him into the end zone. Like the fact that you can kind of, obviously, this offense has always had checks in the offense. They can do that. But the fact that they're winning schematically that way, but then also still having moments where they're just not letting themselves get pushed around and being able to generate runs late in the game. Like the fact that again, it doesn't have to just be, can pretty make six plays for us outside of the pocket. The fact that they've got the tools that you would want to see from a shana hand offense does make them very, very scary. And he did make a couple of those plays that he did. That is just not only that now. That is going to be a necessary part of the equation for them when they're playing at their best. You want to just be able to roll on the schedule and within structure. And we've seen this offense being show their capable of doing that. That's what they look like at their best. But against this defense, it's never going to look like that. And so you need for him to be able to make a couple of those out of structure creation plays. And that was the touchdown of cooks. Like he makes that play happen. I know y'all, y'all broke down a lot of the plays, but that entire touchdown drive to go up 29 26 was incredible. And like outside of the turnovers, if I'm looking for snapshots to remember this game by getting surge and having explosive runs against this front, even if it was inconsistent, that's one, but that touchdown drive, the, the, um, the intentional grounding where even worry just did not bite on the boot fake at all and was right in his face. That was his only incompletion of that drive. He hit Evans on the, uh, on the 15 yarder on, on first and 20, which I did want to make a note. I loved the broadcast. It was such a great shot. Evans, the, the play we already showed where Ocata just crushed him on the end breaker. He's playing with broken ribs. Yeah. And they zoomed in on Mike Evans face after that catch. And he looked like he was about to cry. And I was like, yeah, holy shit. Like these guys play through a lot of stuff. And you can kind of forget that over the course of a game from like the 30,000 foot broadcast view. But the close up of his face in that moment, I was like, this dude is gutting through some really nasty shit to play this well. We didn't need this season for Mike Evans to appreciate how legendary of a player Mike Evans is and what he's done in his career. But I do think sometimes it's helpful when guys Brady, Brady going to Tampa is an example of this to me, obviously on a different level. But when a guy changes circumstances and you kind of have to look at him a little bit differently and we control for so many of the different variables. And it's like, oh man, yeah, this guy, like even if you take him and put him in a different spot, what an incredible player he is. And so Mike Evans doing this on this team in these moments, and also seeing him contribute to this sort of offense. That just playing with broken ribs like that, toughing that stuff out, how important he was for the Niners to win this game, the moment where he turns Trayvon digs around to look at the back of his dreams. Mike, Mike, Mike Evans is running up the score on his legacy so far this season. And I find that very beautiful. I'm very happy for all the love Mike Evans is getting here. But again, on that drive, like, Purdy on the touchdown to cooks, he buys time and like creates that himself, the two point conversion to Mike Evans. Like he did so much stuff out of structure in addition to like, yeah, to be able to buy time like that against a rush like Seattle's and then make a throw like that under duress. And then to do it again on the two point conversion, in addition to standing in the pocket and ripping five or six really impressive throws against this defense, I thought I thought Brock Purdy was awesome in this game, even with, you know, I'm sure he wants the interception to now my approach it back early in the third quarter, not to say he was perfect, but he's a great call. Like if you just watch how that call unfolds, it's exactly what you want. If you're Seattle, it's an overload pressure to the offense is right side. He tries to come off of it quickly. And it's kind of like a palms, he coverage Derek where he probably thinks it's like some sort of quarters and then Prisha comes off of it. And so it's, it, when you think about the beats of that play as a defense rush coverage tied together, it's exactly how you want that play to unfold. And so it's a bad result from the quarterback, but it's also just perfect defense on multiple different levels, which even if you have a good day, the sea hawks are going to do that. I love that call because it's, it's for a couple of reasons I love that call. One, when you're doing it, I don't know if Prisha was free styling. I don't know if they were like taught it this way for this game, but he's usually when you play palms, it's like the quarterback is in squat technique. So he's like back a little bit more to the sideline. He's trying to eye the quarterback and stuff, but on that play, he's like backpedaling and looks like he's more playing like a deep third zone. And then he like snaps and turns and comes off of it. So it never really looks like he's playing the squat corner. It's a pretty until he's driving on the ball. And so I think you have that little nugget, which I thought was interesting and cool. It's really more like a trap call. The other element of it. I'm sure you guys remember this in 2024 early on, the Niners played the Vikings in like week three or something like that. I do. This was the first, this was the first week that Brian Flores was like, all of my palms pressures, I'm turning them up to 10 and party had nothing for it. And so I thought that that was interesting that the sea hawks were like, we saw that game. We're going to play a little bit more of that stuff because that's sea hawks do some of that, but that's not really their bread and butter, but they were going to it a good number of times in this game. All this being said about how impressive a win it is for the Niners, the sea hawks very much had a chance to win this game. If we have a down the line shot of that Cooper cup play, there is a chance that Seattle, we're sitting here talking about how the sea hawks miraculously were able to overcome. How many turnovers did they have for four turnovers and ultimately win this game for turnovers. One of which like you said was just a touchdown, like not even a short field, just a touchdown. So for them to be as close as they were, I would, I'd be frustrated if I was a sea hawks fan because you shouldn't turn them all over four times and Sam Darnold, unfortunately, this is more of a trend than you would prefer the turnover worthy plays and the negative plays. I think he threw he threw picks on his first attempts of each half after throwing a pick on his first attempt of the Chargers game last week. That would trouble me, but to be as close as they were to pulling this out of the fire, despite everything that went wrong, I think that's weirdly encouraging, even though they need to clean it up on defense. I think that's where I sit with it. Again, watching them get pushed around is kind of would be overstating it, but watch them getting pushed around situationally when the the touchdown, the 11 yard McCaffrey touchdowns a perfect example on that play. It's actually a really cool thought process from San Francisco. They're an 11 personnel. And so Seattle matches it with light people. And but Evans is so condensed on that play that he almost becomes a tight end the way that they're blocking it. And it turns into a 11 yard touchdown. The sea hawks, the brilliance with the sea hawks so often is that because they they can live in this light body world and still stop the run no matter how you're approaching them. And so to watch it happen that way where the nighters again situationally with some personnel groupings were able to run the ball consistently, that is something maybe just a file away that does feel a little bit different, but we've seen this team be so good on that front. I'm not really worried about it. The one thing I would come away from with this game in Seattle when we're considering like what we thought about them potentially coming into the year and then what it looks like so far and what it looks like in this game. I'm surprised that the offensive line looked as out of sorts as it did against the Niners front. Because this was a group that had continuity coming into this season. They were bringing back all these guys, even with the new offensive coordinator, the thought was, is this going to be the best version we have seen from the sea hawks offensive line in years. in years and years when you consider all the circumstances. And that just didn't happen today. Like there were a lot of plays where the Niners were really kind of chewing them up up front. That would be the thing if I were a Seahawks fan being like, okay, is that something to worry about long term? Overall, I don't think you watched this game and think the sky is falling or we should be really worried about a lot of stuff. But that was the one element of what I saw from the Seahawks in this game that might give me a little bit of pause about what the rest of the season would look like. You think it's unfair, Derek? I think there was a little bit of that. I will say Grayson, Holton, the more the season goes on is starting to play very well. He's the one who forces the fumble on the touchdown that they get. And yes, the past couple of games, Keon, White's been good. They got Michael, Michael Williams back in this game. And so there's still no Nick Bosa. But I do think the front is probably going to be better than it then it was in week one. And so I, I will at least give Seattle a little bit more time because I do think some of the discombobulation with the offense overall ends up hurting the offensive line. Like when your backs are constantly fumbling and your quarterback is throwing a pick on the first drive of the game and you can't get into the rhythm you want. I do think that hurts you a little bit. And honestly to Dave's point about like Sam Arnold, just like all of these turnovers, they are definitely like that's just who he is. They won the Super Bowl with him leading the NFL and turnovers last year. And I would say even though we knew that that going in, it's pretty hard to repeat doing that. Like that, that's a really, really tough way to live if he's going to continue to do this. And I do feel like right now the problem is worse than it was last year, or at least you were getting more of the positives to kind of offset it. And I do feel like the offense is a little bit more stop and start for various reasons. But I do think partly because of that right now. What do you think of the other reasons? I mean, I do think it's him just missing time. Like that's going to hurt. But I don't know. I guess I do think that what you pointed out specifically with Kubiak last year, his situational play calling, I don't think you feel as much of that with Brian Flurry. And that's not to say that he's like terrible at it. But Kubiak did really get them out of some jams last year in a way that I don't know if I always feel for them. It just feels like there are a bit fewer like easy completions, especially to the ancillary players who aren't JSN. I think that's fair. I mean, we really didn't see many of those today at all. I mean, I hear you, but I mean, did like JSN's target share last year was out of this world. It was off the charts. I mean, this on for like, he's good enough that he can get away with it. But I feel like that's been the story for the sea ox over the last couple of years more than anything. And you can call this copium. If you want to, I just think the sea ox will look like a different team when they're preferred running backs are available. Yeah. That's going to be a big part of this for sure. You not have either one and let and obviously we knew they were going to be without Charbonne, but to lose jadarian price for a significant period of time after knowing you weren't going to have Charbonne for six weeks, you can just feel how toothless they are. And like a manual Wilson's had some nice moments and he does what he can, but you're downgraded there. And then you're just, you're not getting anything from George Alani at all to this point. And so if I was a sea ox fan, I would be telling myself that will probably look like a much different offense when I mean, both of those guys will be available. I would hope pretty soon. I know like prices still got a few weeks on injured reserve. Charbonne is ramping up. But if I was a sea ox fan, I'd be like, all right, within the month, I have optimism that those guys will be available. And this will look a lot more than a lot better than it does right now. Derek, I'm really glad you mentioned Grayson, Halton because I feel like he's a really important player for a bunch of different reasons beyond what he did in this game. The main concern I had about the Niners coming into this season was what is the interior of the defensive line going to look like? It's still a pretty thin group overall. I mean, they've just had, they had injuries on top of the concerns we had about those young guys taking a step. But the fact that CJ West Alfred Collins, it hasn't mattered that those players that we thought were going to be foundational and central to just the Niners defensive plan this year, like last year into this year, those guys have been a non factor for injury reasons. And there's not, they're not a part of the equation. The fact that that hasn't mattered, in part, because Halton has played so well, it's, it's huge. Like it's a pivotal thing to have happened because there is a chance that those swings and misses so far on the interior of the defensive line would have been enough to torpedo your season. And him specifically on top of, you know, whatever you're getting from most to dig a zoo, but that wouldn't have been enough. And so Halton specifically kind of being able to keep this thing held together when it seemed like that entire position group, especially against the run would have just been an absolute nightmare this year has been really, really big for this team. If it was just OSA, it would not have been enough. And I actually do, it's funny Halton being the one who is, who has really come on for them, rather than, you know, Alfred Collins, who I know obviously he's missed some time, but Collins is more of a sit there, takes some space sort of player. Halton's got a little bit more like juice get in the backfield, which like that really is what compliments these linebackers the best. Like if you create some sort of window, drag, drag green line is going to find it. Fred Warren is going to find it. Even I think Jaylen Dougher is going to find it if you give him a little bit of space. Like I just think these guys fit into the chaos incredibly well when you can create it. And so the fact that he's come on, has been really, really huge for them. And then the other guy want to shout out on defense. Getting Malik Mustafa back in the lineup. That dude was on a war path today. He had multiple shots. I think at least two that I can remember both were on Rashid Shaheed or no, the first one was on Cooper Cup, the second one was on Rashid Shaheed just flying out of the roof to hit somebody at the sticks. And one of them was a big third downstop. Like so the fact that he's been back in the lineup and you can between it's like you can feel the attitude again in the defense. I think that to me is like what makes them feel like the Niners again. Jaya Brown had a moment like that to like late in the game. He had just I think it was like a Darnell check down to Halani on like third and sixth. And Jaya Brown just smacked the bejesus out of him. Like yeah, that's a that's a wonderful point, Derek. They played with that like really inspiring physicality and aggressiveness that like the great Niners teams looked like. And the great point. The crazy thing is they lost green law like so much of that has been because yeah. Much of that. So much of that has been green law over the years and they lost him pretty early in this game and still played that way, which also speaks to what a batshit game. This was that green law got tossed for headbutting Ernest Jones. And that's item 15 on the list of things to talk about. Do you want to spend any more time talking about the end of the game? I mean the JSN wouldn't even call it a drop. The JSN in completion on the corner out that fault that falls and completed forces them into that fort down. Like if that either of those plays go slightly differently, we might be talking about the Seahawks winning this game. I'm I thought JSN got smacked a player to before that. So I wonder if like that had anything to do with it. Like I he's I think that this was just sometimes did ball doesn't bounce your way at the end. Like it is. Yes. I don't know. Listen, there is no part of my being that's going to put any of this on Jackson Smith and jibba considering the game. I hope even the most die hard Seahawks fans are like, ah, you're you're allowed a Mulligan or yes. Correct. The touchdown he scored is an insane play. Like when you think about where he catches that ball and where Fred Warner specifically is in relation to him when he catches that ball, just a ridiculous player. I think Derek's point, though, this the last thing we have to say about this game about getting the ancillary pieces more involved that that would be the other part of if you're trying to build the case for why the Seattle offense would just be a better unit and more consistent unit this year than they were last year. The offensive line continuity was a big part of that. But the other part of it was all man. Another year of AJ Barnard, Elijah Royo in year two, a full off season of Rashid Shaheed, like we're going to get these guys way more involved in the offense than we did. And so far, it just hasn't really felt like that. It's felt like the same helping we got of JSN last year. And it's a long season. You again, you have a new coordinator trying to incorporate some of this stuff. But those two elements, the offensive line continuity and those ancillary pass catchers being a bigger factor for this team, that hasn't really happened for this point. All right, let's talk about some of the other performances that really jumped out today. It is time for you have my attention. Gentlemen, now you have my attention. The Minnesota Vikings are now 5 and 0. They are one of two 5 and 0 teams in the NFL after knocking off the Saints 23 to 13. The Vikings at 5 and 0 and your offense showing a little bit more life today than it has in previous weeks. You guys officially have our attention. There's our question on the preview show. Can the offense show enough to make you want to take this team a little more seriously? And what is your answer to that question? My answer is beggars can't be choosers. I said on I said on Friday show me show me something. No, okay. Okay. I will say this though. I will say this. Take the morsels. I think I think it is worth saying. This was this was a far bigger beat down than the score suggests. This was a 100%. This was a dominant performance by the Minnesota Vikings. They lost 17 expected points on two snaps in this game. I mean, and that's part of it. I get it. But you they lost a ball on the plus seven and on the plus 12 bare minimum. Those are going to be fuel goals at least one. You think has a chance to become a touchdown and one of them becomes the Saints only touchdown of the day. And so without those, even if only one of those things happens, you're talking like third 30 to 13 or like 26 to seven or something. And I think this looks a little more impressive. I thought the Vikings ran the ball really well. And And most importantly, you know what? All right, I am being diplomatic. If Kyler Murray makes decisions as well, most of the time as he did in this game, I think the Vikings will be pretty good. Like I was, I was pretty impressed with Kyler Murray's like down to down decision making and making the plays that were there for him to make. Certainly not spectacular, but like we said it all off season. If Kyler Murray is just fine, this will probably be a pretty good team. And I think I believe that. And I think he showed us glimpses of that in this game. And I don't even think just decision making. Actually, I mean, I think I think you're right on the decision making. He I think his first 11 passes, 12 passes, he completed all of them. And some of that was checked down the stuff. But he did make some really impressive plays going to the going where he needed to at the ball. But I do think the other part of it, for me that I kind of got excited about, was you saw Kyler Murray the athlete again? It was the play making. Yeah, the play making is for me. Yeah, that's what I would get excited about. He had seven scrambles in this game for 54 yards and three first downs, which is like double what he had in the previous two starts that he had made combined. And then the last thing, even one of those first downs that or one of those scrambles that he did not run for a first down, it was when they were at about midfield and he turned what, if it was an incompletion, what could have been a 61 yard feeble into a makeable 55 yard feeble, which they did make. And like you, you're going to need those little bits of him squeezing out points like that. For what is, I think an offense that can be nice, but is probably going to still be imperfect. And so the fact that you got him having those floor raising plays again is like, all right, if he can do that and Jefferson can make three insane catches. I'm glad you said that because the next part I was going to say is he's also able and willing to just put the ball in Justin Jefferson's vicinity, which you cannot take for granted after the last year or so of Vikings football. Absolutely not. Just, I think, I come away from this game just with questions about how it's all going to fit together in the long run because I'm with you, Derek. I think the most encouraging part of what Tyler gave you in this game was the playmaking. It was the, what he was doing as a scramble, but also just what he was doing as a play, extended an improviser. I mean, the first, the completion he had to Jefferson for 19 yards in the first quarter, that's a play where Jefferson snaps off the crosser on a scramble drill and it's a chunk game. And so that type of stuff is going to happen if he's extending plays, but some of the stuff in structure still isn't really there. And when we've seen the Vikings at their best, right? Sam Donald did a little bit off schedule, but this was a where this guy is going to stand in the pocket. He's going to throw the ball where we want him to throw the ball and we're going to get some explosives off it. He's going to make some mistakes in the long run, but it's a lot of stuff happening within the structure of the offense combined with what we are in defense. That equation kind of changes a little bit. If Kyler Murray is going to play like this, I think what will make me feel good about the overall formula in the long run, Derek, is if you're combining the creation plays, the willingness to give Justin Jefferson three or four chances of game, which he's going to make. The thing that I want to create some steadiness for the offense to go along with that is what you find in the run game. And even if it hasn't been good so far, I think you're potentially seeing enough flashes from it. And especially when the offensive line gets healthy. The fact that Donovan Jackson and Derek saw it in play and they didn't have the left side of their line. The left side of the line, and I think that what you've seen is that when they're running the ball downhill out of some of this two back stuff, I actually think that's when the run game looks the best. And so I still think they're finding their footing in that area. And if they can and then you combine it with some splash plays from the quarterback in 18, that to me might feel like enough combined with the defense to make this thing dangerous. I would go as far as to say I thought the running game was outright good in this game. Especially because the derisaws out Donovan Jackson's done for the year Jordan Mason's still on IR as well. Like I think you're going to be limited in your explosiveness because Aaron Jones is your running back. And that's just it is what it is. But they got some decent gashes, but they finished with a 38.5% rushing success rate against arguably the worst run defense in the NFL so far this year. Like it, I don't know where I land with it. I get I think there are enough moments to potentially give me some hope about what this thing looks like in the long run, but right now when I wouldn't say it's been good. When Sanker returned that fumble and I mean, they missed the PAT. So they should have been down, but it's tied. That was the other the other thing that kind of sparked my interest and got my attention was they went right back down the field and retook the lead like five or six plays. And a lot of that was the running game. Like Jones ripped off a 20-yard gain on that drive and then they got to the plus 10 and just bullied the shit out of the Saints for a touchdown. That's what I was saying. There were flashes like there were five or six runs in this game where it's just like, okay, that's the vision for what this thing can be. If you want to call it flashes, that's fine, but there were things to be encouraged about considering what they are working without right now. That Jones such as a perfect example, they lost Hockinson on the second snap of this game, too, by the way. So like a pretty Josh Alvers already heard. And so you're really pleaded a tight end. A pretty depleted offense, move the ball well enough. Certainly not exciting, but encouraging at least. That Jones touchdown is a perfect example. That's just like, we're pulling a guard, we're running power, we're going down, we're getting downhill, you know. I guess it was the, I guess it was a full back on that play, but oh, it's a guard. Yeah, it's a guard. I was off from the end zone angle, yes. In the middle of the third quarter, they had like a really nice trap run. Yeah, I think if you're not going to be a team that can just like outright move people, you need to have a little bit of, we're pulling guards and we're doing two back stuff. And it's a little bit weird and all that stuff. And so I do think you saw some moments and I still think they're trying to work on how clean that that stuff is going to be. The Hockinson thing is huge though, because obviously having Jefferson back eases some of the pain, but he had been Kyla Murray's favorite target the previous two games. Like he Kyla Murray was throwing him the ball all over the middle of the field. And so the fact that obviously he misses some time is going to be tough, but I, this game did make me more encouraged. I do still want to see it against the defense that has not been one of the five worst defenses in the NFL this year, but I think after last week where it was like, oh, they should beat the hell out of the dolphins and they really didn't until like the fourth quarter. The fact that you actually made a bad defense look bad, that is some amount of encouraging. I'm not willing to crown the Vikings off this performance, but again, I asked the question, can you do anything? And if they win this game like 12 to 6, I'm just like, I don't care, there's screw it. There's nothing you could do to make me feel better about this. I don't care what record 30 in this game. They should have and they could have. And it was enough to make me to make me encouraged and excited to see more. That trapper on your talking about Derek, that was on the same drive. Is when they scored that touchdown on the power. I mean, that was on the same drive. We saw them stack a couple of those runs together. The other part that, again, I want to see it maybe against a slightly different defense. Even if it's impressive in this game, because you're down to starting offensive lineman, the Saints finished with a 28% pressure rate on a 36% blitz rate and had a 3.09 time to throw. And when the Vikings had a 3.09 time to throw, that shouldn't happen. That's, that's hard to do. That's, that shouldn't happen. And you felt that in this game. The pass pro for the Vikings was very good, even with two offensive linemen out. The play that sticks out to me that like, is the perfect example of this. We're tied at 13. The 32 minutes left in the third quarter. Kymer Murray hops around in the pocket for six and a half seconds on that play. That's not exaggeration. That's the actual recorded time on next gen. And he finds Jones for a 32 yard game. Like that's, that's great. It's good that you have a quarterback who can do stuff deep into the down. I want to see them be able to stack some, some stack some of these performances together against teams that are not the new ones. You could see the light bulb click on in his head where he danced enough and looked for a rushing lane for long enough that he suddenly realized like, wait, we're like seven seconds into this play. Somebody's probably open. And he was like, all right, I guess I'll throw. And the guy was all by himself. Anything to say about the Vikings defense in this game that we haven't really already said this season, because to me, it feels like more of the same. No, this is just when you're a young quarterback in the league, you're going to get baptized. And this is who does it. And I just, you, you could see by the end of the game, Tyler Schuck did not really want to participate against some of the blitz stuff, which like, yeah, you have a banged up offensive line. You're being blitzed at an unholy rate. Your guys cannot block it and they beat up. And so there was like the picky throws at the end where they do like brush pretty heavy against him. It doesn't actually even get home. Like they actually pick it up really well. And he just kind of like chucks up a go ball when I think was supposed to be maybe a double moves to Chris Olave. And like he's not under pressure, but I think he's just kind of under the assumption that like, this is all we got against the blitz at this point. And the game is pretty much just over after that. And so I don't think it really affects how I change about Tyler Schuck long term or really changes what I think about the Minnesota Vikings defense. But there is something kind of kind of fun about watching like a young quarterback have to go through their first trial by fire of Brian Flores. The first play of the game, we talked about this Derek with I came up after which game it was on the hangover just leaning into the idea of how much the Vikings dictate how the game is played on that side of the ball. Like they're always the ones dictating how the game is played when they're on defense. The opening play of the game. Cashman comes untouched through the beagap. Schuck has to dump it down to check it down to Camara and Van Ginkgold drops him for five year at loss. It was the first play of the game. And that's just how a lot of the possessions look against them. They're also doing some funky ass shit on the back end of some of these plays. They ran a seven man pressure where they were playing like, it kind of looked like one side of a cover three to like to the right side, it wasn't cover zero, like it wasn't. man, even though it was a seven man pressure, like their ability to do some of that stuff where they're in theory vacating so many voids, you should be able to throw the ball in, but no one seems to be able to find them. And then when you go back and actually watch either the dots or the all 22, you want it to be a mistake. The quarterback is making where he's like, man, that this guy's wide open. Like, how can you not find this? But so often you have droppers and the exact zones you should be in the exact situations, the exact areas you should be able to access. Like what they're doing right now in some of these pressures and just how dialed in they seem to be taking away the exact routes they have to given what the pressures should open up is crazy. Like it just he has been on an absolute heater for the last five games. It's remarkable. And he, I think Mark of a great coach knows his own tendencies. So the first third down of this game, what's the whole thing with Brian Forrest? They're going to bring pressure. It's going to be some weird zone drop all this stuff. Nope. They play man-free and Tyler Shuck has no idea what's going on. And he like, I think he ends up thirding the ball. And so like knowing your own tendencies of like immediately throwing the quarterback off rhythm of like, oh, we kind of prepped for this thing all week. And immediately they're giving me something different. Like you just, you get them unsettled immediately. The only, obviously like guys like Wink Martin Dale have been like crazy with the blitz stuff. But in my mind, the only thing that really feels as insane and loose as Brian Flores is like Pete Clemson Brent Venables, where it just like they're doing stuff that is not holy. It is not in the Bible. And they're still getting away with it. And that's what to do it at the NFL level. I was going to say that's that's a little easier when you've got when you've got Isaiah Simmons in the college and like all these players. But in the NFL players on your team going against, you know, a middling pit team. Sorry to pit fans. But yeah, I think it's a different animal doing it in the NFL. I mean, he's making these offenses look like middle-ing ACC teams, which is pretty impressive. Let's get to our next one here. The Detroit Lions put up 45 points in a win against the Cardinals. They go three in out on their first three possessions and then just go in a touchdown spree after that. I know it's the Cardinals defense. It's been struggling. But watching the Lions offense and watching them hit this gear is just such a reminder of what they're capable of when they're humming. And so the Lions put up 45 against the Cardinals and really just putting their putting their foot on their throat in like the final three quarters of this game. You have our attention. Even if it's fake because the Cardinals aren't very good, it was still refreshing to see the Lions win a game this way. They haven't they have not played a stress-free game yet. Like they've either lost or been in a nail bite or all the way down to the wire. And so I like the Lions are at a point where you can't take for granted the opportunity to kick the shit out of somebody. So it doesn't drastically change my opinion of the Lions, but it still means something for them to put in a performance like this, especially heading into there by week. They're off in week six. So to get a week off coming off of performance like this, I'm sure is a relief for a lot of people in that building. It doesn't change my opinion of them. To me, it was more a reminder of, and this is such a stupid thing to say, but how many good players the Lions have? Like that, this type of performance in this type of game is just one of those. And the guy that really makes me say that is like, oh yeah, Sam LaPort is really good. And they have a lot of these guys. And the other part of it was watching the way that the offensive line played just overall. I thought that you had some really nice moments from the guards in this game. You had some absolute highlight real plays from Penny Sule in this game. And you talk about the by-a-week, Kate Mase is going to be back. And so there was a moment earlier in the season when the offensive line was banged up when Miller and I think Mahogany missed that game. I want to say it was against Buffalo. That's right. You're looking at the overall just state of the offense and Detroit and being like, man, is this going to feel different than it did last year when they were really struggling up front and they were really inconsistent. And then you watch a game like today, the way the offensive line played, the fact that you're about to get your starting center back. All those skill position guys have their moments over the course of this thing. And I think it just again was a reminder to me that when they're at full strength, which they're going to be here in a second, the offensive line, the offense overall really does have a special gear that it can reach. The offensive line kicked ass in this game. I thought Mahogany, like Mahogany, you mentioned, I thought he had just a really good game like there were between him and Suel and obviously a couple of the tight ends in the run game as well. There were a couple of runs specifically to the left side where it's just you could run a truck through there and I just thought that's what the Detroit lines offense should feel like. And so the fact that they were able to tap into a little bit of that against like the Cardinals defense isn't good, but like some of those players up front are decent. Like rollope rollope has can do some stuff to use even Collins can set the edge like they don't have nothing up there. And so I thought that that was impressive. And I think too, in terms of how many points they scored, they did not do anything for the first 20 minutes of this game. They went three out of their full three drives. Yes, it was a lot of like we're in gun. We do not have answers for their blitz stuff. We don't know what they're doing crazy to watch what they did last week and then come out. So the first drive they were under center, but they're second and third drives. They come out in the gun on first and 10 on both of those drives. It's like, guys, why are you doing this to me? I couldn't believe it. It was all just weird. Like they come out with that. They had a drive where Jared golf gets stripped sacked on a second down because Sam Laporta is blocking Baron Browning, which like, I'm not even saying that's like a schematic fault. Sometimes you got to let your tight ends block, but it was just like, that's probably not a situation you want to be in. And that stuff happens, but even on that play, it's a gun play action. And with the action, he drifts into Sam Laporta. And so it's just everything about that play. It's like, let's throw the shotgun shit in the garbage can. Like there, you have a way to play offense where you can really assert yourself. And so to watch them kind of drift away from that. And I thought the drive starters beyond those first three drives were some of the best calls of the entire game. We're throwing screens. We're just getting things going. Obviously the one the throwback screen to Gibbs is the craziest version of that. But I thought that the drive starters after those first three drives and really jump started at every single time. Essentially, they touched the ball. And so I mean, it's the at a play action screen to Gibbs for 23 yards on when they were up 14 seven, the throwback screen to Gibbs jump starts to two minute drive for them to kick the 24 to seven feel goal. Like, it just felt like patting into the offense overall really settled in over the course of the game. And really allowed them to tap into what we saw for most of it. Their drive starters got better. And then the fourth down calls, they had, yeah, they had a huge four down touchdowns. They had the what I think actually both of them were the JMO, but like one or one of them was two Jamison on the on like the back line. And then they had a really sweet fourth and one conversion in the middle of the second, which this actually is where they got jump started. This was in the offense finally came alive. But they ran this little like they had rock right motion from left to right into the flat. And so it's fourth and one. Everyone's like, we got to run with the flat guy, but they have Sam Laporte already to the right. He runs this little like out and up round. He is nobody's even in his vicinity. And he scores a touchdown. And it did kind of feel like a deep breath moment for the lines where they were like, okay, we survived a fourth down and we scored a touchdown. We can kind of cruise back into this game the way they want to. And then from there on, they were the offense that looks like the best in the NFL again. You're talking about the touchdown Laporte scored on fourth down. Yes. Yeah. To me, to me, the biggest play is the fourth and three on the previous drive, because if they don't get that fourth and three on the previous drive, they're already down seven, nothing. And then you're handing the back, but they're handing the ball back to the Cardinals. And so getting that fourth and three and on that fourth and three again, talk about the game that Laporte had. The fourth and one touchdown is leaking out wide open down the right side line. That fourth and three, he's running a big boy in breaker route with Denzel Burke on him and Jared gets all the way back to it on the back side. Like that is a big time play from those two guys. If they don't get that and there's a chance you give the ball back to Arizona, they go up 14 nothing after that drive, the entire game potentially changes in that moment. He got smoked on that one. That to me still felt like they were still like kind of holding onto something and still clenching the touchdown to me felt like we can breathe a little bit. But no, you're right. Like if they if they don't get that in Arizona scores there, like Arizona is a good enough offense that if they're ahead of the curve, they can get the game to run away from me. Obviously, that's not what happened, but they're talented enough to do that. That's arguably my bigger takeaway from this game. And I'll say it again, we don't have to overreact to beating the Cardinals. But the Lions have played a lot of stressful games and the Lions defense has looked abysmal every week of the season up until now. I just looked this up while we were talking weeks one to four. They lead the lead led the league and opponents points per dry. They were giving up more than three points per dry, which is worse than the cowboys. It's worse worse than the Saints. I mean, even their wins, they have not been able to count on the defense for anything. So while all of that was getting going on the offensive side of the ball to force five consecutive three and outs. And we don't have to overreact to what it means because going into this game, Arizona was going three and out 40% of the time, like top six number in the league. Like this is not a good team. But you take what you can get when you've had the first month of the season. I mean, Kelvin Shepherd was under fire. Oh, that was a tough one. That was a press conference was incredible. We're trying to keep our heads above water sort of press. Absolutely. And so to come out here and like show you anything against any one thought Roger McCreary in the first half of this game was pretty damn good. Like clearly the Cardinals made it a point to target the shit out of him. And for the most part, he gave way better than he got DJ. read had some nice moments too. And for where this secondary has been to this point in the season and knowing that Brian branch is expected back on the other side of the by week, I was watching that back and kind of like stroking my chin like, okay, well, if the offense looks like this, again, we've said this about so many teams, but we only need the defense to be fine to have a shot to do something here. And they looked fine in this game. Two more things talking about the fourth and one touchdown, Derek, the play before that Laporta gets it to fourth and one. They spit him the ball on the flat. He makes a guy miss. And that's the only reason he was even fourth and one. He would have gotten tackled essentially at the line of scrimmage if he didn't make, I think it was Williams. It was why that Williams he like shook in space to get to the fourth and one. And then the other play just we mentioned it very quickly. The touchdown throw to James and Williams. Like the golf is sliding just enough to his left to buy time to make that throw. And I mean, it's a beautiful throw and catch like that's by again, buying just enough time in the pocket to get that thing off. And so a really nice performance from the Lions. I know it's against the Cardinals, but when you want to see their offense be able to hit that sort of gear and they did today, speaking of offenses that hit a gear today, the Patriots scored 45 points in a blowout win over a Las Vegas Raiders team that have been playing pretty darn good football over the first month of the season. Drake May 26 of 34, 374, 11 yards per attempt four touchdowns 0.74 EPA per dropback. You officially have our attention. What was your biggest both both of y'all? What was your biggest impression watching this back like when it wasn't in the middle of the early window past protection. Past protection and he believes he's the best player on the field again. Like those two things to me. Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that he was able to just stand there for six seconds. Most of the snaps in this game. That was that was my biggest. Yes, but but I saw that last week from him to the confidence. I mean, and so the fact that he had the confidence again where he was like, I can make all these throws because even like some of those throws were still very difficult, even if he obviously did have the time. I was really impressed with the offensive line though, not even just past protection wise, but it like the past protection was very good. They were also picking stuff up like not even just guys winning one on one, but like their plan was better than I think it had been especially the first one. They were getting four get across every single play like the past protection plan was really, really good in this game for the Patriots. And I think what helped them a little bit there. The run game like kind of worked. It's not the best thing in the world, but over the first two or three weeks of the season, it was what it was last year where it was a hindrance to the offense. And the quarterback had to make them right and make a bunch of plays. And last year, they were able to do that. It's against some, you know, so so defenses, but they ran into some good ones against the playoffs and early this season. And that wasn't the case that this is a Raiders run defense that like has been solid. They've had their moments. They've got some decent players. We talked about it coming into this week. And the fact that you know, they didn't run all over them. They didn't kill them, but they made it such that this did not have to be a hey Drake may drop back 50 times when they know you're going to pass for 40 of them sort of game. And the fact that they didn't have to live that way. And then we're able to be as dominant as they were in pass protection. I mean, I I'm assuming it's more than five pressures, but like I feel like I could count on my hand the amount of times that he was unclean in this game. The only so that he was pressured like a reasonable amount. And you actually look at the numbers, but that was in part just because those are based on. He's holding it forever. Exactly. That's based on tracking stats. And so when you actually look at it reminded me a little bit of the game we talked about with. I can't remember which bills game it was might have been last week. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So it's similar where we talked about the bills and their past rush in that game where they had a decent amount of pressures over the course of the game when you look at next gen, but the time to pressure was just extremely low. And so that's what happened in this game as well. All of the players for the Patriots or for the Raiders in this game that had of the there were four players that had at least three pressures in this game for Las Vegas. Three of them had a time to pressure of at least 3.3 seconds. So a lot of those pressures were coming really deep into the down because they're holding out of the ball. They're hunting big plays on the day. The Patriots gave up six quick pressures per next gen. A lot of those were two blitzers where guys are just coming clean a little bit. But when you look at the actual four man rush them getting four hands on cross be pretty much the entire game and making everyone else beat them, the Raiders couldn't do that. It's worth mentioning Tonka Hemingway came out pretty early and he'd been having a nice season, but they're overall the four man rush for the Raiders had absolutely no shot in this game. This was Drake's lowest pressure rate of the season. And I mean, all those numbers are accurate, but just watching this game back, Derek said it perfectly like the number of times the Raiders were able to move Drake off his spot and make him make a quick or frantic decision. It didn't happen very often. And I thought like a picture perfect snapshot of how this game went was Kyle Williams had the touchdown and then he had the second huge explosive when the game was already a blow out. The Raiders sent six and they pulled one guy out. So it was a five man blitz with like a sim pressure and Hunter Henry was in the back field with the with the back as well. So like they had a loaded back field and it didn't nothing happened. Like they picked it up so effortlessly that Drake didn't even have to like look down at the rush. He didn't have to move his feet. They sent like it just it was the most ineffective blitz I've ever seen. And on that play, Henry chips Max Crosby that that's his role on that play from that split black split back. And it felt like that happened all the time. And the other thing I wanted to know besides Drake looking awesome and looking like the MVP runner up again. Caleb Lomu came in at half time because Will Campbell got banged up and looked pretty damn good. Not that this is the most fierce pass rush in the NFL. And I think he went against Crosby at least once or twice. But like for the most part was not dealing with Max Crosby a lot. But man, for a guy where the book on Caleb Lomu as a first round pick was that he was going to need a lot of seasoning. He stepped in and I thought played really, really well. I think pf pf chartered him with one pressure allowed on 29 snaps. We talked about coming into the season who would also be the edge presence for this team. Like where would they find past rush considering the construction of the edge group Elijah ponders done some good stuff for them. He had to he had two sacks today. He had two quick pressures today at four pressures overall Milton Williams had three quick pressures on the day. So that was the one of the questions like edge rusher was a big question mark for this team. And ponder has given them more than we probably would have expected. I'm thinking about featuring him on my that rock video. You should you should. He was he was everywhere. He's a good one man. He's he I'm trying to figure out who he reminds me of like it's it's across position composition. But there's something about like Dion Dawkins has like a very weird body type. But like at his peak was like an insane athlete. And it just like kind of made it work. Elijah ponder doesn't look like the most like chiseled insane athlete. But he just like he is a really good athlete who just makes shit work all the time. And like he's just the fact that he can be a rusher for them. He can crush the pocket. He's good in run defense. He's their best dropper as far as their edge guys go like he really is like a little bit of like a skeleton key sort of player for their front. He's awesome. It's not surprising that he doesn't look like an all-time athlete that I was undrafted last year. I mean it's yeah for him to come along and be as central to their defense as he's been is a really nice story. The other thing I'd mentioned just schematically I thought that the Patriots were doing some interesting stuff in this game. Like when you look at the drive for them to even go up seven nothing you get a DPI would take out several of those in this game. There were several long past interference penalties that jump started drives. But that to me just is a sign of an offense that's on the front foot the entire day. But on that drive, the 16 year completion to dobs to kind of get things going. They have like a little rail motion. They get into dagger off of that. They had multiple plays in this game Derek where they're either emptying out the back with like one of those like just drain motions from the backfield to get into empty or the back is offset to potentially incite like an empty check from the defense. Like they clearly thought they were seeing something with where the back was and getting him out of the backfield or offsetting him to kind of play with whatever the defense was expecting. They saw something on tape that forced that pushed them to do that. And so just some of the little buttons that they were pressing overall. The screen called the Hunter Henry is like a beautifully times play and execution. Like I thought Josh McDaniels, but he's gotten some shit this year for what he's done. I thought today was maybe the best game he has had so far this season. It finally looks like an offense that knows it doesn't have H a brown. It did not feel like that once he left for the first couple of weeks. It was a little bit of static. It was a little bit of like our guys will just win. And that's just not what they have right now. And I do think that some of the motion stuff was really impressive. You bring up so glad you bring up the play where they run that like rail motion where the player going out to the flat runs the wheel and they run dagger in front of it. They ran that again later in the game early in the third quarter. And then he hits Eli Raredin on a unbelievably beautiful pass like right over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That like that is as good of coverage as you can ask for from Quay Walker. Like that you made the window so tight. It is what it is and the quarterback was just better. And so then like knowing that they can get back to that play knowing who's going to be able to cover him. Like I just I do think that their construction right now it feels less static than it had before. My biggest gripe in weeks one and two was like their past protection plan was so bad. And it looked cleaner in this game like it. The offense feels like it has answers again. And the quarterback is seeming like he believes in it again. And so if they're going to operate it this way, this feels like a team that has a top 10 unit on both sides to the ball. Truthfully, all right. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I wasn't going to do this. Oh, no. I saw where you were glancing. What do you have? We can save it. We can say no. No, there's nothing at the spot at the table. You want to put them back that quickly? I don't know. We tried our worth. I didn't agree. Do you want to use your handrails here, Derek, and week five to put the Patriots back on? You don't have to. I'm not I'm not pressuring you. We can wait and see. Only because it's week five. No, but this does to me feel like a team that is like worth it. They're all watched right now. If they do this for one or two more weeks, like, yeah, absolutely. Okay. We don't have to do it now because there is an empty seat that we are not going to fill with anyone else. Just spoiler alert because I don't think anyone else deserves it right now. Their next three games are jets, bears, and dolphins. I think all right. Well, we'll check. We'll check back in after a couple weeks. We'll check back in Africa weeks for just just to be clear, we are going to leave the seat empty. I think we should leave the seat empty after taking the cabos off on Thursday. I was very impressed by the Patriots today. And I mean, winning 45 17 in the NFL is impressive, but like it's it's not enough for me to want a reverse horse. All right. Okay. All right. We can keep him off. But like, hey, key. I mean, manageable schedule coming up. I assume AJ Brown will be back sooner rather than later. I mean, we're at week six already and he got heard in week one. So like he'll be back after that stretch. Yeah. So I will revisit it. I think trending in a very positive direction with the pages. I think we're all land with it. I think they're table worthy. But the fact that we already took them off and we'd have to use one of our votes to put them back on, we can wait and see, right? Like they should be punished a little bit for how those couple of weeks went. Last one here. The Giants commanders game had our attention because the league wouldn't let it not have our attention. We didn't have a choice. We're sitting there trying to watch the beginning of night or so. And I'm not trying to say that Giants commanders isn't worth watching, right? It is worth watching. It's an exciting ending. We'll talk about it. I don't understand how in 2026, I have to watch the end of that game when I have NFL Sunday ticket. I just, I don't understand it. Why? Like what, what is the possible rationale for that game having to be on my television when I should be able to watch everything at the same time? I truly don't get it. It's also the second time this season that has happened. I'm struggling to remember the other one, but in like week two or three, there was another overtime game that wouldn't end and it got in the way of the late window kickoff. And I just, yeah, it's not a commentary on the Giants and the commanders. I don't understand how when you pay out, I would like to watch both. When you pay out the ass to have the ability to watch everything, blacking out the start of the game of the week for anything. It could have been the best game of the year. And I'd still be pissed if I couldn't watch the first 10 minutes of a game that I paid for. Let the mechanics of it are frustrating on its own. I just don't understand the thought process behind it. If you're trying to make Seahawks Niners the national game, what, what part of the audience want needs to see the end of Giants commanders before that game kicks off? Like who around America is like, oh, I must see the end of this game before I see the start of the next one. I just don't understand why that's how it works period. Let alone how Sunday ticket works. After the decade, the Giants have had, I feel like even Giants fans are like, hey, can I, can I at least get like part of my team? Keep the game on in the local markets. That should be how it is. Nationally, I don't get it. No. That's now why we're talking about this. We're talking about this because we have to discuss the end of the Giants commanders game. Derek, you are the only person that was not in the room. Me and Dave rewatched the TV copy of it just to get every single beat of how the final couple plays went. From your perspective, what did you see in the final minute or so of the Giants commanders game? So on one hit at first, I thought like nobody knew that they had a timeout. Like because it seems like, I don't know, it just seems like a very bizarre situation. It comes out later that like some of the players, I think Chris Paul is asking you locker room. They were like, no, we knew like we talked about it. We didn't have a timeout. And so you even had Dan Quinn after the game, talk about he was like, yeah, in that situation, we thought we were going to be able to throw the ball away. If it doesn't go our way and we can move on, we can take the kick. And so to me, the more you watch it, it is very clear that like they called a boot a boot pass with, by the way, on the play before, Rashad White goes down with like 50 seconds left. So they choose to go slow. They choose to go slow. So this is not like they get down with 20 seconds and they got to go and they panic. They are choosing to go slow. So that part of it, I thought was a little bit weird. And then they call this like little boot play action pass. Jayden doesn't really boot out all the way. Does not want to kill the play immediately, which he should do if it's covered. He should just throw it away and we take the kick wherever it's going to be. And he instead like fiddles around and then tries to run by the time he goes down, there's nine seconds left. And nobody else on the team is thinking that we have to run and kill this because we thought we were already killing it with the play that we had called. And so this to me, I mean, coaching I guess has to be better about making sure that everybody's on the same page that you have to kill this no matter what. But to me, this is like a quarterback who's he's played a lot of games. He started like a hundred games in his career going back to high school college NFL. I think that he should know better. And I'm a little bit baffled the game ended the way that it did. What do you think is more indefensible? If Dan Quinn allowed for the clock to run from 55 seconds to 14 seconds. And in that entire time span of running clock did not make it clear to everyone what the game plan was over the next one to two snaps or that Jaden Daniels is a year three franchise quarterback in the NFL who won the Heisman in college and has been starting since he was like 14 and like didn't have a beat on the situation just in general. Like it's a combination because when I went back and rewatched it, the most baffling thing to me is to snap that Dan Quinn's rationale of why they even ran the play was that we were trying to get more yards. Fine. It's I don't want to fair is logical because the conditions were a mess. The conditions are a mess. We don't want to kick a longer field goal than you have to. We see teams do that all the time. But if that's the thought process, getting it down to 12 seconds, it's not worth running the play at 12 seconds because at that point, you're almost necessitating that the quarterback dirt it in order for you to get the field go off because if he completes that ball in bounds to anybody, the game is over. So why even run the play like you that that has to happen if you're going to run that play run any sort of play, it can't happen with 12 seconds left on the play clock that that just can't be how that entire situation unfolds because now there's almost nothing good that can happen by snapping the ball with 12 seconds left. They could have slow played the shit out of this entire situation and still gotten to the line for another play with like 25 plus seconds. And then again, like get up and clock it whatever you need to do, this could have this could have been so easy if you didn't move at a literal snail's pace. And like to play it that way without a clear understanding of what was going to come next is I don't know. I don't have a firm reaction to it because it's so crazy. I don't mean to absolve Jayden Daniels of blame. He absolutely deserves blame for how that final play was handled. I just don't understand how that's the way you handle like Derek side. It's the ball that play at the Roshad right run ends with 50 seconds left. How you handle that 38 seconds the way that you did. I just truly don't get it like what the thought is and how you're approaching it that way. It was kind of shocking to see them go that slow or usually you would go fast immediately and just like run a play with 35 seconds on the play clock. And then like you get to take like you to choose how the game ends that way. And so I do agree with that like them managing the clock the way that they did was really bizarre. And then the final play going the way that it did I think was on the quarterback. So it really is both like them putting him in that position. I think he's like kind of doesn't really make any sense, but that was that was one of the worst failings of the entire season. Like that that was truly bizarre. I enjoyed Mike Tomlin's commentary at half time in the Sunday night game where he said something along the lines of we're never going to know what actually happened because if it comes out it'll be so bad for the people involved that you just you got to bury that thing deep where Ashburn wherever their facility is. You just got to you got to dig a real deep hole out behind the facility for that secret. All right. Before we move on, let's take our first quick break. Well, Derek said it's one of the worst plays of the entire season. We've got plenty of other bad shit from week five to get to. It's why it's part of the reason we didn't wedge that play into what the f***. So let's get to those right now. Here's some of the tougher moments outcomes everything from week five. It's time for what the f***. What the f***. The Jacksonville Jaguars beat the Philadelphia Eagles 19 to 17 today in London. There's just so much to say about this game. We'll go from one instance of Cochamus management to the next one, but it wasn't just that. It wasn't just the way that Jags Eagles ended that puts them here. Everything about the Jaguars Eagles game from London today. What the f***. We can talk about all of it. This is one of the most striking instances of players overcoming coaching that I can remember. The fact that the Jacksonville Jaguars players were able to win this game was unbelievable to me. It's all like Parker Washington. It's all Parker. It's just Trevor like losing his mind and in the midst of losing his mind because play calls are coming in fall starts like play calls are coming in late fall starts are happening They can't get lined up and he's just like in the midst of this making insane. He's like Parker Washington will bail me out and guess what he Was right Parker Washington will bail you out and he makes an incredible play and then obviously you know it goes down to They get the situation where the Eagles think they win the game with the field goal and then the the jacks Return the kick to like the 40-ish and then that gives them an incredible chance to make a field goal Which like that is another instance of players like the fact that I think the jaguars Coaching kind of put them into position where the games should have been lost like that and then they return the kick and win it anyway This I was actually I was watching this game with my girlfriend in the morning because it's the only game on and I was like They they deserve to lose this game because they should have to think about what they've done They should have to consider what has happened here and now they will still do that obviously NFL teams do that But the fact that they get away with it with the win. I was like that is insane that they get away with that to have to pull it out of the fire The way that they did against an Eagles team with their Decimated with injuries on offense like absolutely decimated Jonathan Grinard doesn't plan this game Jailings can't get hurt in the middle of this game like the idea that Your players needed to overcome the situation that you put them in for you to win this game against an Eagles team that walked in limping the way that they did It's they deserve to look they deserve to lose this game and I really hope they do spend a decent amount of time reflecting on what this thing looked like Derek said something that Triggered a thought in my brain like Trevor Lawrence is the most happy-go-lucky like sunshine from remember the Titans Just like not bothered by anything guy. The way a game. Have you ever have you ever seen I've never seen Trevor. I've never seen him like that that that stretch with the delays of game is just there I had two thoughts in that moment one Indefensible but the idea that you can get down to the one-yard line and then have that drive go the way that it did is Indefensible the other one. I was talking to David about this as soon as I got into the office today The Jags need to cut this shit out with all the London games You if you when you're a six and a 11 also ran in the AFC South and you're like some NFL novelty fine play Play them all over there. I don't give a shit when you're a team that's trying to win the Super Bowl The idea that you're gonna give away a home game and play two London games in a row And allow the Eagles to play essentially a home game in London when you're trying to be one of the best teams in the league There's so many needs to have a conversation with somebody. There is no way the cultivation of the British fan base Is worth handing away this home game to go play the Eagles. You know who they play in London next week Houston So they're giving up a home division game To stay over there and do this. I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about it Do they have to they they handle a two home games to do this? I Looked at their schedule. They play at Houston in December So like the the Houston home game is later in the year. So this is the Jacksonville Home game in that series and they're playing it in London. I think they're playing that one at Wimbley So it's a different stadium if that matters to you at all Not really my other cut the shit with the Jaguars by the way I think at least part of their like because they really only have these issues now when they get into the red zone or get Get in get inside the 10 and the thing is They're a good like passing red zone team when the ball is outside of the 10 yard line Like I think that they can throw into those windows really well When they get inside the five and passing is harder generally for any offense Especially if you don't have it just a Mike Evans we can throw it up to him and he'll win You need to be able to run the ball a little bit better All of their stuff where they try to get inside the five is weird shit They go into wildcat they bring out jumbo they get into funky formations And so I think Especially in this game where I think that they were scrambling a little bit And getting into like there's in four downs with some of that stuff They were just like kind of scrambling with what they really wanted to call and what they really wanted to do In some of those situations and like you see it in the numbers like before today They were 9 of 11 scoring In the red zone and I think most of those were touchdowns they were 0 for 3 On touchdowns in the red zone today and they only scored once it was It was just in all time like really stupid performance for this coaching staff and team The Jetsweep to Tuton is an all-timer dude. It's an all-timer And I'm not saying it's it's the wrong call like I think that stretching my life We all we all watch this game like wait after waking up and having coffee on the couch And so are yes of course In a way they're not always having to explain why this game is so dumb I'm trying to explain to her why it's not the dumbest thing in the world to like run a jet sweep on the go line The field shrinks vertically. So you have to stretch horizontally sometimes that stuff can work But the details of that play To motion Chris Rodriguez out of the backfield So now you're giving no threat of being able to run the ball downhill What so ever and you're asking Chris Rodriguez a player who has Never I'm assuming in a game Ever blocked a player in space in a way you would ask a wide receiver to do it is having to block zack bond On that play in that moment You're just asking that thing to get absolutely nuked. I just I couldn't believe it I couldn't believe that was the choice You know it took my breath away when I watch that again is and if it works and you get a block on the edge It looks fine and and all as well, but that ball was snapped on the one and Basel Tutton took it at the six Even it was an under it's an under center play And yet it's designed so the back gets it at the six yard line on fourth and a foot And I just I would I would prefer to not do it that way And like they had a they ran the speed option like three plays before that I was going to imagine that it was same drive It was that was sick which one thing that struck me too watching that one though It took more of an effort from one over Michael It took way more of an effort from Tutton than than the blocking I so the other thing I wanted to mention too And I remember noticing this in the moment before the freak out at the end of the game They screwed shit up with the clock in the in the before half time drive too Like they almost incurred two delay of game penalties on that drive And I remember thinking we're cutting it kind of loot We're cutting it kind of close to your fellas like what the hell is going on And like when Aaron Rogers is doing that shit in his prime and he's running the clock all the way down on purpose It's different like you could tell how manic this was like you could tell how Trevor was like Doing this to he's like hurry up get into your motion so I can snap this and it was incessant I feel like it happened seven times in this game and it burned them like three times Let's not Let the Eagles escape this without a little bit of scorn. I do think their performance over they're all overall was admirable Like the fact that they were in this game the fact that they almost won this game the half that Jaylen Carter had There are not that many defensive players in the NFL that are capable of having that sort of half He was insane just blowing up plays all over the place I mean what he did to those guards in both the run and pass game over the first half was ridiculous The Eagles had a chance to win this game They're the two big mistakes that are worth digging into one McCyelem and going out of bounds on that completion If that doesn't happen the game is probably over you kick that field goal with zero seconds left But you allow the jacks to save one of those timeouts And then we've had a lot of end-of-game kicking situations recently I don't think this was the most egregious mistake. I think going out of bounds was But this is different than the Raven situation where we want the Ravens cowboys the Ravens cowboys game Where you want Dallas to put the ball and play there because the Ravens had a timeout left And so you're trying to tick down as much time as you possibly can The Jags did not have a timeout left And so really the only big play you can make in the middle of the field While stopping the clock is the kickoff for turn And so by not kicking that thing out of the back of the end zone I absolutely think you gave the jacks the best chance to win that game And so multiple like situational mistakes from the Eagles with the game on the line And Nick Sireon into his credit took the blame for that But that's one of those things we're like well, that's this is literally your job These are the things that you are in charge of because you're not in charge of anything else I'm sure Derek what like what irks you more I think that I think the kickoff decision irks me more than lemon going out of bounds Even though you're right Like that could have allowed you to just kick and walk off. But that's one of those things We're like I Something has beaten all the one thing you cannot do to the offense like to the huddle But like as that drive even starts or as that sequence starts like The one thing no one can do is go out of bounds. It's the one thing that no one can do And like I guess because he's a rookie you give him a little bit more grace for stuff like that But I don't know man. You can't go out of bounds Like you that's the you know in a situation you are not allowed to do that I do think the kicking one is frustrating though because like You had time to think about it like sometimes with these stuff that happens in the moment like You're just gonna kind of like your brain's gonna turn off for a moment You're just not gonna do the right thing especially if you're in a rookie first time in your in that situation But when you're going into the kickoff and you have time to sit there and think after the score happens Okay, we have a minute to breathe all that stuff and then you still kind of land where you did that to me is I don't I don't know about worse, but I think it's like harder It's harder to excuse because you had as much time to think about it as you did The last thing to worth mentioning from this game just in terms of long-term outlook Anton Harrison left this game on a cart And it doesn't I assume it doesn't look good I didn't hear much about the injury post game But to leave on a card after a non-cocked act injury I was gonna say the the nature of the injury Didn't make me feel good and one of the things we talked about with the Jags over the first month Why would this thing feel different? Why do they feel more potent? Why were they How did they answer some of the questions we had about them coming into the season? They're play up front and in part him taking the step that he was taking was part of that. And so this is a step in the wrong direction, this entire game. What you saw from the guards, what you saw from Ezra Cleveland specifically, and then to potentially lose Harrison for an extended amount of time is a really tough one. I do want to say one more time, like, and they bungled it at the end and they were not particularly good. But such a great example of like even the shittiest teams in the NFL are loaded with professional football players and coaches who are really good at scheming shit up for a game. The Eagles were eight and a half point underdogs in this game. And like, you know, it makes sense that the narrative with Lane Johnson retiring and the Jurgen's trade, it's easy to just be like, well, they're just going to get wiped off the field. And I thought Jacksonville would win this game comfortably. But these are really high level athletes and coaches putting this shit together. And I, even though the end of the game was just kind of a disaster, I thought it was really admirable the way the Eagles boat up in this game. I totally agree. I mean, the defense, the difference, the defense was a little bit disappointing over the first month in part because the past rush has hadn't been very good. And so for them to turn up the heat past rush rise the way that they did Carter specifically, but also, I mean, no, it's meant that a couple of moments, Bond had a pressure on a, like, a designed, like, big stunt on a five man pressure, like, they, they affected the game up front more than they have recently. And I think that's the formula for them to stay relevant over the course of the rest of the year. If the defense can play like that, the front can play like that. And you can just try to piece together the offense. I mean, that's how they stay annoying and honestly makes it all the more tragic that they had taken a game from a team that was playing like a Super Bowl contender and let it slip. So I thought it wasn't the best game from the Jags. The first half from the Jags defense, I just thought it wasn't the best called game. Like the both of the big Cooper touchdown and then the big Wix completion on those touchdown drives. They're playing one robber on both of those plays against this team. Why? Like why are you ever giving this quarterback man coverage right? Why? Why? Like, you're, you're taking away the middle of the field while giving them one-on-ones. Like, that's exactly what they want. And so the Jags have been an awesome man coverage team this season. But to do, and then even later in the game, they weren't, they weren't, when they played man, it wasn't Robert. And so either if you're going to play man pressure, if you're not going to play man, at least try to have those droppers somewhere else rather than have a guy drop the safety dropping down from the middle of the field. It didn't make sense to me. And so those are the two biggest past plays that Eagles had in the first half were against those looks. And Campanilla typically is awesome and like really, really good. But that first half was just kind of uncharacteristically off when it came to having your finger on the pulse of what that offense is trying to do. Yeah. What, what are you trying to rob against this quarterback? Exactly. He's not going to throw that area of the field anyway. Who cares? This isn't Jimmy. Right? Like, we're not, we're not, right? This is not the coverage you should be playing against Joe and Harrison and they did pay for it a couple of different times. All right. Let's keep rowing here. I don't need a preamble here. Chargers Broncos. What the f*** everybody involved? I don't have that much to say about this game. The other than the fact that it was gross, just unbelievably bad, unbelievably bad going back and rewatching it. I regret the fact that I did. We had to talk about it because it was so ugly. And because the Broncos just continue to be this ugly, but I, I'm not sure as I spin back through games on a Sunday night, there has been a more disheartening review all season than going back and watching this Broncos Chargers game from today. What did you say? I agree. When Robert was rewatching some clips from this game, I would just hear periodic like grumbles of like, oh, Jesus. It was, it was so bad. It could be for either team. Oh, no, yeah. The, the one that broke me, there were, there were a couple. I mean, we can just say this right now. Justin Herbert's brain is just cooked. Okay. I mean, just, just cooked. I mean, when you watch, which, and it happened again over the course of the game, because I thought in the first half, he was like fine. Like, he made some pretty decent throws. He was fine under pressure. Obviously, some other guys are making drops and stuff like that. By the second half, and especially like the final interception, he throws where they're in this like mugged up pressure. Brandon Jones is a safety online scrimmage as the end man. And it's like, there's never a thought in Justin's Herbert's mind that Brandon Jones could just drop off and play coverage. And he just like throw the interception right at him. I mean, he's like undercutting that route. And he'd like never thinks that he could drop. I'm like, what do you mean? Everyone in the NFL is doing these seven man fronts where they drop out. Like, there's like huge chance that he could drop out there. Derek, you said on the, you said on the hangover about the Charger Seahawks game, his picks in that game were indefensible. And this is worse than that. Yeah. It's, it's just as bad. It's just as bad. I mean, it, and that. So when they, when they fail the four, the quarterback sneak in the fourth quarter, after that is when the wheels just completely fall off. He has the sack fumble. When the game is tied, the game is tied when that sack fumble happens. Zach Allen wins immediately against the amount of the, the sheer amount of f*** ups by this team when they're pulling a player is it just mind boggling. And so they're trying to run like a dash protect protection with the guard pulling Zach Allen crosses the face of Jake slaughter immediately torpedoes the play. And instead of just taking the sack while he's falling down, Herbert tries to get rid of it, gives the ball back to the Broncos and essentially gives them the game. And then right before the interception, he does it again. He, he does it again. And so you just feel his, his brain at this point is like putting like a fried egg in a skillet. Like you just feel it cooking over the course of the game. And that's exactly what happened again in this thing. It's, it's so bad. He's broken. He, he makes the bad plays worse now, which like that is always the sign of like, Oh, this guy is not seeing it feeling because that's what, when CJ start was playing really poorly at the end of last year, it was not that he was necessarily creating his own bad plays. It was that as soon as something went wrong, he was turning that up to a 10. And that is, I think, what you're feeling a lot right now from Justin Herbert. He again, the fourth quarter was so, so bad from him. But when you watch the Chargers offense over this entire game, it's just unwatchable. And I, I guess we can understand how that happens. You're playing with zero of your day one starting offensive lineman at this point. I guess cold strange cold. You have one. You have one of the guys. You were trying to go in season with a terrible. And you say, okay, you got all strange who everybody was terrified that he was starting. You have no NFL receivers or offensive lineman, essentially, at this stage. And so you can understand how that happens, even if agreed. The, the quarterback is making bad plays worse, even if the circumstances are that bad. The Chargers had 11 runstuffs in this game. Okay. That is tied for the second most in a game in the past three seasons. The Steelers had one with 13 and 2024. The Chargers had 11 of them in this game. Their offense is just non-functional at this point. And the quarterback again, as he cooks over the course of the game every single week, seemingly, is compounding it later in the games. But that, the, the Broncos don't have an excuse. The Broncos have NFL players still. They have a lot of NFL players. And this game was funny too, because I thought, I mean, I don't know if I thought this, but, you know, Sean Peyton is taking over the play, calling in in theory, it's supposed to look a little bit different. Maybe they'll call this stuff that Bo really likes all this stuff. All the good place. Yeah, all the good place. There were still so many moments where they were terrified to let him play quarterback. Like, there was a third and seven around midfield. I think it was a third and seven. Yeah, on the first drive, it's there on the 50 yard line. It's third and seven. And they run like a little stick return concept where he runs like the pivot on the stick route. And they get like four yards. And it's like, okay, if we plan on going for it on fourth and three or whatever, that's a perfectly acceptable call. And they just don't do that. And they decide to punt. And I'm like, well, then why are we calling a play that's not going to get us that when you know he's just going to throw the four yard route anyway? Do you have that? They had, I think, on what the two yard line at the very end of the game, they decided to just kick a field goal instead of trying to, the game was tied. It was 20 to 20. And they could go up I think 23 20 instead of 27 20 or at least try to, but I'm like, I don't know, man, I would want to try to put the game away there. I know you believe that the other guy spiraling, but like just a lot of moments where they were, it didn't look, the offense didn't look different or better is what I would say. The third and seven play is one of them is one of the ones I wrote down as I was slowly losing my mind as I was rewatching this. The play that broke me. The third and nine give up handoff to Betty. You are an NFL team to hand the ball off on third and nine. I don't care what the dynamics of the game are. I don't care how bad the other team is playing. It's not third and 20. It was third and nine and they handed the ball off that they are treating anything like above third and five as a, we'll get him next time. And like, how do you run an offense like that? Even if you're a great offense, you're going to run into five, third and five pluses of game. That's just the way the sport goes. Like they are, they are calling an offense like they don't believe they can make any plays that are difficult. It's insane to me. My favorite sequence was the Marvin Mims 26 yard punt return that set him up. I think they were on the plus 27. Bonyx throws incomplete checks down to Dobbins on second down throws incomplete and then will that's this is a 40 to the hour. I remember this too because I wasn't like only watching this game. Obviously, right. And so I see them get the ball like on the 27 yard line. And then And I'm like, kind of watching other games. I'm just like, you know, kind of mindlessly being like, oh, incomplete, whatever. And then I come to the end of the drive and the fuel cold teams out there. I'm like, how the hell are they settling for three when you get the ball already inside the 30? Like, especially to like, think about how many other teams, especially like this week, the Niners, every short field they get instant touchdown. And it's just like so many other teams can do this and they just like, could not figure it out. When that happened, we were, Robert and I were watching the two main games, the late games together. And like, men's got daylight. And it looked like he had a chance to score and it fizzled out. And when he got tackled, I was just like, you know, I don't think they're gonna get points at this. Didn't, I didn't expect to be correct. But Cowboys were at the table when it was annoying me. Oh, I thought you were taking the ball. There was all of the table. It's why I looked at it to remind myself that the Broncos are there. If this might be, we should just cut the table down to eight teams now. Honestly, we don't, we shouldn't wait until mid season. We don't, they're not 10 deserving teams to be there. There's not enough already. The Broncos are three and two, by the way. After today, three and two Denver Broncos. Let's see what Thursday night against Seattle looks like. Let's get to our last one here. Oh, good God. (laughing) The Chicago Bears get absolutely worked by the Green Bay Packers today as road favorites with their backup quarterback. Everything about that performance from the Bears, and we'll touch on all of it. What the (beep) was that? You know what? I'm just gonna say it. It's nothing personal against the Bears. I'll tell you what the (beep) that was. That's what it's supposed to look like when you play a backup quarterback on the road in the NFL. And for the briefest of moments, maybe I allowed myself to believe that Ben Johnson really was that magical that they could just keep winning games with backup quarterbacks. And before the first quarter was even over, I was like, okay, you know what? It's nice to know that there's a limit and even Ben Johnson can get the shit kicked out of him when he doesn't have his quarterback. And guess what? It looks a lot worse when you get the shit kicked out of you after you've talked shit incessantly for the last year. This is the downside of approaching it this way. And you think the Packers didn't care? Like listen to Zaire Franklin talk about Luther Bird and after that game in the locker room, justifiably so. When you handle this, the way that the Bears have handled it, consistently over the last year. And this is what happens to you. You deserve every single bit of it. - I just, I thought that this was the team the Packers are supposed to be, man. Like they looked, obviously there are some moments of like disappointed by the Bears in this game. Like I thought Dennis Allen kind of got undressed in this game by Matt LaFleur. But like that was why the first four weeks of the season were so frustrating. He's like, we know that Matt LaFleur can do this. We know that Jordan Love can make those throws down the field. And so the fact that they really tapped into all that stuff in this game and they were able to access that. I was just like, I kind of felt a little bit alive getting to watch Jordan Love play quarterback like that again. I will say the part that like surprised me a little bit from the Packers was, I thought their front on defense looked good. And I thought their plan on defense in a lot of ways was really, really impressive. Like I thought you saw moments from Danny Deny Sutton. I thought some of the other defense that tackles play pretty well in this game. And then I just thought some of the coverage stuff that they were doing or stuff to like keep Beijing in the pocket. Like there was a sequence inside the two minute. Bears had the ball in the 15 and they have like a nub tied into the left hand side. And Brandon Cise is the corner over there. And the tight end stays into protect. And Cise just immediately goes. Beijing tries to step up against other pressure and Cise just there to kill it and it's a sack. And so them just like having little adjustments like that. And then there was another play where one of it wasn't an interception, but he agent tried to throw an interception late in the third where Evan Williams is like running with a motion. And then they just play cover three. And Beijing's like, well, I think I'm getting man, I'm just going to throw to my tight end over the middle. And he tries very hard to throw one of his interceptions of the day. And so I just thought their plan was really impressive. And then the front was, that was the best game. I think that they've played all season. That player talking about where Cise adds on. That's me was one of the most frustrating. Burden is wide open. He's wide open. And that ball just doesn't get thrown. And I think this is partially a, I think you're right. I think this is partially a, the Bears getting just outman, like outgunned coaching wise. I think on both sides of the ball, this entire game. I think you felt the back of quarterback, though. On top of the, them being in bad situations the entire day, there are four or five moments. That being one of them were like, that's on the quarterback. Some of the decisions around the quarterback, that lack of a decision is on the quarterback. And I got, I'm not trying to explain away or absolble him for the coaching staff. They deserve a lot of a week and dig into that. But you really felt the fact that the back of quarterback was playing in this game. That doesn't impact the way the defense played. That's, that's, that's the part of this. Like people are anyone who's trying to explain this away and be like, oh, the back of quarterback was in. What would you expect? That doesn't explain what happened to the Bears defense in this game and what the Packers offense did and how they approached this thing. That's what I want to focus on. Cause I'm sorry, I just, I don't care that much about what Tyson Vagin did. He, he wasn't ready for the moment. I'm not terribly surprised by that. But this was, this was one of the most disrespectful game plans. So disrespectful that I've seen. And, you know, Matt LaFlure has, he's done everything in his power to downplay the rivalry and he certainly doesn't play into it as much as Ben Johnson does publicly. I feel like he let the game plan do the talking in this instance. So I just want to share a few stats that I really loved. Derek, I told Robert this one already, but I'll share it with you. Jordan loved through 31 passes on Sunday. 18 of them traveled 10 air yards or less. So 18 of 31 attempts, he's throwing to the sticks or shorter. Every other attempt went 20 plus yards downfield. He did not throw an intermediate ball in this game. And of course, he was six of eight for what? Like 250 air yards, which shout out to Alex, our friend from the discord. I saw you post this and I double checked it myself. Jordan love had more air yards or more yards on throws of 20 plus air yards, 258. Then the Chicago Bears had yards, period in this game. Just like the, the absolute now don't give a shit chucking it downfield was kind of awe inspiring. Like you just don't see it in an NFL game very often where the Packers were like, okay, watch this. Like the sequence, I think it was just before half time where they just threw three bombs to the end zone. And like one of them got broken up. One of them got waved off by illegal hands to the face. And then they threw a third one to Watson for a touchdown. The absolute audacity to just three times in a row be like, I bet you won't do it this time and be right about it. Just awe inspiring levels of pettiness by the Packers. I loved it. The Barrett, the defense has had no answers. Just absolutely no answers. The what's really jumped out to me and we had, he had one really good and this may be an hour and 40 minutes into this. The half that Dennis Allen had against Matt LaFour in the second half of that playoff game was really good. Other than that, some of the Bears' worst defensive moments over the last two years have come against this team. And it's in large part because their ability to snuff out pressures from the Bears defense. No other team does this to them. A couple of those huge moments. The first Watson touchdown. And then I think the 31 yard completion of Watson right before on that driver talking about where it ends with the touchdown to the 1322. The Bears run the double corner cow where both corners are coming off and they're playing cover two behind it. It's hilarious how not close those pressures are to getting home. Like it's hilarious how bad those things look in real time. And that reminds me of the cover zero they ran last year that Watson scored a touchdown at Lambo. Like the Packers ability to just punk the blitzes that this team sends with their past protection plan has been a consistent theme over the last two years. And I think the both of those plays today where they sat in both the corners and it didn't matter, might be the most egregious examples that we've seen. - It's that. And I think on the like 30-ish yard Watson play that you're talking about, it's one of those like funky cover twos that they're trying to get into. And on that play they have three receivers on the left hand side, all run vertical. They're like, well, if you're just gonna play cover two, we're just gonna run everybody down one side of the field. And your deep players are not gonna be able to cover all of those guys. Obviously they weren't able to. So it really wasn't impressive game plan from Matt LaFlor. And like you have the perfect quarterback and really pass catchers to do it. Like Golden had an insane twisting catch on like a deep round in this game. And then what Christian Watson can do down the field. Like it's the perfect, they had the perfect team to do the thing that they wanted to do against this pair of steam. - The Packers performance running the ball wasn't particularly noteworthy, but I would like to shout out Marsh on Lloyd dumb trucking Jalen Johnson at the goal line. - There's been a lot of dumb trucking Jalen Johnson going on recently quite a lot. - I have to assume and it's what, it's week five against the backup quarterback. I doubt many Packers fans give a shit. I bet this was very satisfying for them. - It should be very satisfying to them. It absolutely should be. And I think it's a reminder that two weeks ago when they played Atlanta, it felt like this thing might be slipping away from them. And I think that to me is one of the biggest takeaways from this game is that the bear's front isn't good. We know that. But the fact that this offensive line is capable of playing well enough to give their quarterback in these receivers a chance, if that's gonna be the case for most of the season, this team is dangerous enough. I don't know how dangerous they are, but to me, it's a binary thing. Is the offensive line gonna be good enough to give the quarterback a chance? If the answer to that is yes, then this team can do this. If the offensive line can continue to look somewhat serviceable And Micah Parsons is just. looming out there as a, as a presence that's going to be injected into, by the way, a defense that is playing better than you again, like just leave the defense for dead after the Atlanta game. Well, I mean, leave everything about that team for dead after the Atlanta game. And I don't know if Jalen Daniel's first career start and Tyson Beijing is enough to get you really excited. But again, you will eventually be adding one of the best defenders in the league back into this thing at some point. And I remember saying in August, I won't be surprised if I feel a hell of a lot better about the Packers in November than I do in September and October. I don't know if that's true yet, but it's certainly in the back of my mind. I just thought that the passing game would have a real, really high gear to it this year. I got thought the passing game overall would have an incredibly high ceiling based on the quality of the quarterback, the quality of the pass catchers, how explosive I thought they might be. And the concern was that the offensive line wouldn't give us a chance to see that. And it's not a good group by any stretch. And I think they will have their issues over the course of the year. But again, if they're going to clear enough of a bar to make this thing functional, I think even if it doesn't look like this again, I think we're going to see enough games from Jordan Love and from this group of receivers that the Packers are going to be a relevant team. And it just didn't feel like that two weeks ago. It felt like this thing was kind of slipping through their fingers. All right, before we move on, we're going to take one more quick break. All right, before we get out of here, let's talk about what made us feel romantic about football in week five. I mean, this thing was a thing of beauty. I kind of felt this way about Parker Washington too. So far this year where you have a guy that really flashes and has some moments is kind of a role player, rotational piece. And it's like, man, I think that guy's got something to him. And then something changes, either his role changes, how much he's featured changes. And you're like, oh, yeah, that guy's just awesome. That's how I feel about Jalen Warren. And the way that Jalen Warren has played so far this season and the way that Jalen Warren played today. So Jalen Warren has 15 carries for 101 yards today. And his six catches for 87. A lot of that coming on two big plays, but he's the leading rusher for the Steelers in this game. He's leading receiver for the Steelers in this game. And if you go into some of the numbers from this year, I was just curious about it. So I was digging into it. Per next gen, 57.4% of Jalen Warren's runs have gone over expectations this year. He's the only player in the league books above 50%. He's second in the league enforcement tackle rate behind Kenneth Walker, 28.6% of his runs have gone for first downs. That is behind Jameer Gibbs, James Cook, the Robinson's in Atlanta, Kyron Williams and Kenneth Walker, only Bajan and Kevin and Kenneth Walker have more yards after contact per rush than Jalen Warren. He's just been one of the best running backs in the league this year per touch, full stop, and very quickly has transformed into like the identity of the Pittsburgh Steelers offense justifiably. And for a guy who I think you could get excited about some of the flashes you'd seen over the last couple of years, but was excited extension this year for like $5 million a year. Like this was not guaranteed. We were wondering what it was going to look like between him and Rico Dattel coming into the season. And so Jalen Warren developing into this type of player over the first five weeks of the year. That makes me feel romantic about football. Even as somebody who's admired Jalen Warren's game for a while, it's still very much like a sort of a hipster like like you're not talking enough about Jalen Warren. He's an outright star at this point. Like if he wasn't already a game like today puts him on the radar in a way that is undeniable. And I appreciate, well, hey, I appreciate Aaron Rogers saying like, I don't know why more people don't talk about this guy, which I completely agree. And the other thing I love, he called Jalen Warren, which he was just incredibly praised him effusively after this win against the Colts as you might expect. But he said he's slippery, which I think is a great way to describe his play style. But the thing I love, he isn't incredibly slippery player. And it's easy to associate that word with a guy who's 5 8 204. That's his draft list, his listed draft measurements, which is probably why he went undrafted. He's so much more physical than 5 8 204 would imply like he runs through tackles. That's what makes him slippery. It's his physicality while being like an outlier size wise is it's really, really cool to watch. He's the only player in the offense who is reliable and explosive. Like DK Medcalf can kind of be explosive at times, but he's not reliable in how he's doing that Pat Fryer, moving some of the other guys are like kind of reliable, but they're not really explosive. He gives them both. And also the other thing that was like really how Jalen Warren got on the field early on as an undrafted guy. He's like one of the best backs in the league at past protection. And like you that's where you see a lot of the physicality come through. And so the fact that like it's cool that he like got on the field early on largely because of that and how now has become their feature back and has like Dave said Aaron Roger spent like his entire post game interview like all four minutes just being like I think Jalen I think the world of Jalen Warren. We should get him the ball more. He's the best team I'd ever played with. He's so slippery. Like we got to do everything we can to get 30 of the ball. Like it was he when Aaron Rogers likes you and what your talent brings to the offense, you will continue to get the ball more. So good sign for him for the following 12 games of the season. I'll say that heinous tackling by the Colts on both of his touchdowns. Of course, but well, they're probably for them. The cut he makes on the touchdown run. Again, that's one of those examples where because of the cut he makes he's leaving the linebacker has just less of a chance on that play. He runs through an arm tackle because of the cut he makes. And that's the explosiveness that you see. My favorite play of the day from him. He was a nine yard run from the gun. And the jump cut he makes in the back field. He essentially jumps like three gaps over. But he's just such a fun player to watch right now. And so it's an offense that I think we were wondering how exciting and enjoyable they would be this season. And Jalen Warren has made the Steelers offense worth watching to me. All right. That is all we've got from week five in the NFL quick reminder. Look at Katie's just on it. She knows I'm going back to the hangover games at the end. She's flashing the graphic on the screen because she knows I won't remember them an hour and 45 minutes into the show. That's the producer over there. Ravens Falcons, Bengals Dolphins, Titans, Texans, including some Marvin Harrison Jr. trade talk. That will be what we hit tomorrow. That's all for tonight. I sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please like, comment and leave a rating. We'll see you next time.