GET UP | “Not Ravens or Browns. The Steelers will win the AFC North” – Dan Graziano believes Rodgers

GET UP | “Not Ravens or Browns. The Steelers will win the AFC North” – Dan Graziano believes Rodgers

Last night’s action. The week four in the NFL is now behind us. So, let’s do awesome, awful, awkward. Dominique, tell me something you saw that was awesome. Oh, I love all interceptions, especially when the end result is a big man running with the ball. Dexter Lawrence, get it. You can make it. That man a touchdown. He even fell in slow motion. It’s a great Damen Woody was devastated yesterday during this highlight that he didn’t make it for the sexy Dexi with the thick six but the spectacular play. All right, that was awesome. Graz, what did you see this weekend that was awful? Someone else who almost scored a touchdown. Adai Mitchell of the Colts like he’s in home free, but then he drops the ball in the oneyd line and goes to the end zone for a touchback. This is the second year in a row the Colts did this. Jonathan Taylor did it last year against the Broncos. I think Shane Stiken should get that play out of the playbook. Hey, it’s not a good one where you’re about to score and you drop the ball on the one yardd line. Rex said it’s like hitting a home run and failing to touch home plate. It was such an incredible play, too. Like the athleticism is just such an awesome right there in the game with the ramp. Yeah. Finally, Jac what was awkward this right here. I mean, Liam Cole was all right. Sol you wanted to talk that trash during the course of the week. Don’t come over and shake my hand. But you got to you got to admire the strategy. He started talking once there were people in between him and Robert offensive lineman. Know your matchup. Me and Robert Salah, not a good matchup. I’m going to go ahead and back on out of this one. Yeah, let’s just We don’t have to play it for you. You may have heard it. We have to bleep all of it anyway. The bottom line of it is they were just for more. They were just arsing at each other. Yeah, that’s probably not a fight Liam Con wants a whole lot. Okay, so that was awesome. That was awful. And that was awkward. Sort of falling more into the awful range would have been the Ravens and the season that they are having. Lamar Jackson is hurt. The team is one and three. Yesterday, John Harbaugh said the hamstring injury that Lamar suffered will prevent him or did prevent him from returning to the game against the Chiefs this weekend. And so, the question becomes, Dan Graciano, when does he come back? They have back-to-back home games followed by a buy. Yeah, look, they they need more information. My understanding as of yesterday was they weren’t sure how much time, if any, he was going to miss. Obviously, it’s a possibility he has to miss this week, but I think they want to see how the injury responds to treatment and any activity they give him here over the next couple of days. We should know more today, tomorrow. S, you were making the point that the Bengals imploding, whatever, forgetting their how they do, they’re no longer a serious consideration. The Steelers, who I think many of us still question, the Ravens still have a chance to play themselves back into this, but the quarterback injury sort of throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing. It does, but you know, they have the pieces, I think, within the coaching staff and personnel. If they can get healthy defensively, that’s the big if. I think they’re in a position where they could be one of the seven in the AFC. I don’t think their season by any stretch of the imagination is over. They do have a tough stretch here. They got to figure out. I talked to the Ravens right before we came on the air. Dan’s right. Getting some treatment today. They’re going to do more tests on the hamstring to see where Lamar Jackson is and then probably rest him at least for a day or two before they figure out where he’s at. So, and this interesting little note and Hembo just put it up there. The Ravens, despite being one and three, remain odds on favorites to win the AFC North, which is remarkable considering the Steelers are three and one. Here’s the real question. You You’re a former Raven, you’re you live right in that area. What has happened to their defense? Yeah, I mean, I think the easy answer is to point to all the injuries, but it’s not just that. They are undisiplined and they also can’t win these one-on- ones. They’re trying to run these blitzes to create matchups that they can that can be advantageous, but they won’t win them. And that’s a problem when you’re playing against these teams. If you can’t get rush with four because Vanoi is out, Matabke is out, then you’re going to have to blitz and try to create matchups where you can win. And you blitz, you don’t win the matchups, you’re putting a lot more pressure on the secondary. And then the disguises are undisiplined and out of position. Just feels like there’s a lot wrong with this defense right now. And to your point, you take for granted how special it is when you have a group that understands it and everyone’s on the same page. Before Mike McDonald left, this was a defense that was absolutely buzzing. Zack Ore, the defensive coordinator, kind of got it going a little bit last year. When I watched him at the end of that Buffalo Bills game, it just looked like a team that was trying not to lose the game. You don’t see that same Raven aggression that we’ve seen over years where they’re going out there and they’re trying to actually dominate their opponents. That’s the part to me defensively that you just don’t see. It is important as you note that they got the defense together in the second half last year with Zack Ore in his first year as coordinator. So, you can give them credit for the possibility they’ll do that again. They are down seven potentially seven starting players on that defense and some of those guys mabek not coming back. So they have to make some adjustments. You go back two years when they were the one seed they had the best defense a dominant defense that would just go up against really good offenses and smother them. They don’t have that anymore. And if Lamar Jackson has to miss time then then it gets out of control. stop taking too many chances defensively and they have to start giving Derrick Henry 22, 25, 26 carries a game, take the pressure off defense, play more alignment assignment football like they did under Mike McDonald or defensively. Don’t take as many chances and be more aggressive with the running game and keep opposing quarterbacks off the field. The Derrick Henry idea sounds good, but they actually haven’t been running the ball particularly well. like Derrick Henry’s having these explosive plays, but maybe you keep at it and they’ll keep creating those explosive plays, but if Lamar’s not there, that changes how much you want to run. It does also make you wonder like they don’t they don’t base any of the decisions they make on what you know, Las Vegas says, but the reality is they have a sense in their own minds of what number it’s going to take to win the division, right? So, you’re they’re not going to be the one seed no matter what happens at this point, right? They remain favored to win this. They seem very unlikely to get that. So, right now it’s win the division, get in the dance, get healthy, and take your chances. Do you think they feel and Lamar feels pressure to get back out there like you start losing more games here, it gets away from you. You don’t want to play on a hamstring, but at the same time, you lose two more games before you’re by one and five, you may really be buried. They’re going to have to I mean, obviously, they’re going to have to lean on their doctors to to clear him, right? You see what’s going on in Washington. They would have loved to have a gimpy Jaden Daniels out there on Sunday, but no way. So, you have to protect Lamar from himself if that’s the case. I went to their training camp and I talked to John Harbaugh and and fast start was a big thing. Like they wanted to get out to a like that was because he felt like they started 0 and2 last year and they end up on the road in Buffalo in the playoffs and that that cost them. So obviously that’s off the table. So now if you’re the Ravens, can you flip the script? Can you be the team that’s at its healthiest playing its best come January as opposed to the team that has the big regular season and then fizzles out in January. They have to they they have to win these next couple games before they’re buy or else it math gets hard. By the time we got to the playoffs last year, we all thought Ravens are a serious contender. It went sideways on them in Buffalo. First guess it. Are they going to get back to that this year? I don’t I I don’t see it from where we sit right now. the amount of injuries on the defensive side of the ball. Your starting quarterback who is such a threat when it comes to Derek Henry in the run game. He’s such a threat involved in that as well with an hamstring injury and with them playing the Texans and then playing the Rams right now. If Lamar’s not able to go now, you’re asking Cooper Rush to lead this offense that is centered around the abilities of a Lamar Jackson. I don’t see them getting back to that level right now. Yeah, I getting to that level. No. Will they make the playoffs? I think they’ll make the playoffs and then you hope that Lamar can escalate to the level that he’s shown us and they can make a run. We’ll continue this. I’m up against the clock but but S made a good point and I’m reading we’ll make it again. There are sneaky good teams all around the AFC like just getting in as a wild card from that division about what this is all going to add up to. 5 minutes left. The ball game is essentially over anyway. But here comes RJ Harvey. 28-3 the final score. You see the looks on those faces. Not what they were expecting after the game. Jamar Chase active on social media. The first post says, “Man, y’all better leave me alone.” And they had uh he had like a couple of crying laughing emojis. And then another one he said, “I play with passion # who day.” So I I I turned to someone who might be able to decipher social. What What’s he trying to say there? I mean that he plays with passion and he’s still part of the team like the HUD day. Like he’s still committed. I think you see this is social media in general is like you get access to a lot of voices that you probably don’t need access to. So he’s probably responding to people who he should not be caring what they’re what they have to say. Like there’s nothing specific. Yeah. There’s nothing specific that he was reacting to. So like I don’t make too much of it, but it feels pretty unstable there right now. Here’s the thing. I I I use this word advisedly. Let me make as clear as I can that nothing that happens in a football game almost with with almost no exception is an actual catastrophic event. But within football perspective, when you lose your franchise quarterback, one of those guys that literally everything is built around for the season in week two, that’s a catastrophic traffic event. And that’s what you were seeing in Cincinnati now. And the fallout of it is going to be fascinating. Their season is quite obviously over as far as anything they were hoping to accomplish realistically. Now the question is, how do they keep it together? Well, the bottom line is it’s two things, right? It’s about the Bengals. It’s also about the division within a division. What’s the fallout right for the Bengals? You know, you when you lose your starting quarterback, things shouldn’t completely fall apart. You should have a plan, right? You’re in week two now of this and you shouldn’t get waxed on Monday Night Football. I mean, the Broncos are good. We understand that that their defense gets after the quarterback. We got all that. We get it. But you shouldn’t be completely falling apart. But the other thing is the beneficiaries here, Pittsburgh Steelers. Yes. Baltimore Ravens. It gives the Steelers the drivers seat in the division. It gives the Baltimore Ravens hope that they can figure out a way to get back into the playoff picture. To me, I look at all of it and as we’re watching Jamar Chase and T. Higgins, like that’s just what we live in right now. The quarterback’s not out there. We’re going to show the wide receivers who are doing nothing in the game as much as possible. And the hard part about this, when I played in the league, people would always ask you all the time, who’s the best wide receiver you had to cover. It didn’t matter because it depended upon who the quarterback was. I know they love Jake Browning, but the truth of the matter is this team all falls on the back of Joe Burrow and he’s not going to be there. I think they felt like they could plug in Jake Browning like they did when Burrow got hurt two years ago and and have a representative offense and and you know, he’s been with their program. When we talked about, oh, would they trade for Kirk Cousins or somebody else? I was like, no, Browning is the guy that they believe in. There were I believe there were four players that had more yards from scrimmage this weekend than the Bengals had last night. Like that I’m not kidding. like Ashton Genty and and uh Bejian Robinson. But I mean they they have to reassess whatever their plan was. Whether that means looking outside for for a quarterback option, whether it means significant scheme changes that are designed to just not try and take Joe Burrow’s offense and and install Jake Browning to run it. I I think there’s obviously whatever the plan was, they’re two and two. They’re not mathematically dead, but they have to change. I didn’t expect to have to try to be the ray of sunshine for both of these morning, but to be fair to be fair, the Vikings and the Broncos are the teams that Jake Browning went up against. And those are two of the like the Vikings defense is almost impossible for real starting quarterbacks to decipher. And the Broncos play tight man coverage. Like Riley Moss was insane last night in his coverage on T. Higgins. They and also like Patrick Certain. This is a real tough situation for a guy like Jake Browning where I think Burrow in that situation, his athleticism, his ability to extend plays against man coverage and make something happen. Yeah. Pocket another half second. But the problem is they got Detroit this week and Green Bay next week like it’s not going to get a lot easier. Yeah. I mean I think that those teams are not worse, but those defenses are different. Like Detroit plays a lot of tight man coverage and aggressive also, but they don’t have the level of corners that you would see in um Denver. I hear what you’re saying. The two games that they’ve played without Burough, they lost by a combined total of 76-13. Yeah, it’s not great. So, I mean, go ahead. Bring the clouds in. Bring the clouds in. All of a sudden, it’s pouring rain in Cincinnati. We’ll see what happens. All right. The mayor of

GET UP | “It’s not the Ravens, Bengals, or Browns. The Steelers will win the AFC North.” – Dan Graziano believes Aaron Rodgers