Eagles vs. Packers ‘not close’ 🤯 Colts on Upset Alert, Bucs & Steelers on NIck’s Picks | FTF

Eagles vs. Packers ‘not close’ 🤯 Colts on Upset Alert, Bucs & Steelers on NIck’s Picks | FTF

Here’s the AFC playoff picture. The Broncos are the number one seed in the whole AFC. Does their 8-2 record deserve your respect, all of our respect, really. Oh, listen, I, yeah, being 8-2 deserves at least a modicum of respect, and that defense deserves well more than a modicum of respect. That defense is awesome. And it’s not just Nick Bonito, Zack Allen. I thought, I thought they hit on Gino yesterday was borderline dirty, but uh, he’s a, he’s an excellent player, um, and those aren’t the only guys. Uonga is a great player. They, the Certan’s not even out there. He’ll be back. He’s a great player. That defense, it legitimately might be the best in football. And the offensive line has allowed the fewest sacks of any team in the league. And everybody thinks Sean Payton is at the very least a good coach, you know, a great coach at one point in time, still, I don’t know, but, so you’ve got maybe the best defense, maybe the best offensive line, a good coach, a legit home field advantage because of where you play. The only way, and you have the best record in all of football, the only way that team would not be universally regarded as one of, if not the favorites to win the Super Bowl. Is if they had just a dreadful quarterback. And I’m sorry to tell you, Denver, but what all your old buddy Nick Wright’s been telling America for 10 weeks, all of America got to watch last night, and that was not an aberrant performance. It is week after week of guys open, sailed over their head, of clean pockets. He gets happy feet, of Bo Nix doing his best, young Aaron Rodgers, I’m gonna, I’m gonna slide out to my right, throw it off 1 ft because of this arm talent, and it sails out of bounds. And so I, if you look at the teams we think are going to be in the AFC playoffs, the Bills, Steelers or Ravens, Colts, Chiefs, Chargers, right now, those are the Vegas favorites, and, and the Patriots. I left out the Patriots, my apologies. Every single one of those teams, I believe. If you said to them, hey, who do you want to face? They are picking maybe the Chargers because of their injuries, and if not them, they’re picking Denver, even though they have the offensive line, the coach, and the defense, because we’ve seen that quarterback play that way for 10 weeks in a row, Greg. No, look, I was the one that said that this team would make the playoffs. I don’t believe anybody else picked them to make the. I did. You did pick them to make. I did not. I picked them and finished last in the division, um, and one of the reasons why is because I believe in the head coach. I obviously believe in their defense, and I said Bo Nix, year two, he’s gonna continue to come on strong. Last night was hard. Don’t lie, it’s, it’s a serious night. Last night it was really hard to watch, um. And they just find a way to win. Like when you listen to Sean Payton, like he’s like the only thing he can really hang his hat on is we’re 8 and 2. Like we know we have a really good defense. We, we have some struggles offensively. Uh, watching them, they had, they, they fought tooth and nail. To get 11th downs in that game, that’s all they got, 11th downs, and so it’s not just that Bo Nix is bad. There’s no rhythm to the offense. There’s no sustainability to what they’re trying to do. Like they wanna run the ball, you know that they’re, you know that Sean Payton wants to protect Bo Nix right now, and so you know that they’re going to run the ball first. And if he doesn’t show that when, when I, unless I need it in the 4th quarter and we’re down and I, we, everybody even that doesn’t watch football knows you gotta throw to get back in the game. If you, if you just need to get a, a dink and dunk, I was watching like the checkdowns and some of the outlets to the running back, and he, the way he throws the ball, he doesn’t give them a chance to do anything after the catch, and that was what stood out to me. It’s not that he was inaccurate because everyone’s inaccurate from time to time, but it’s like when he does have these guys in front of him. He doesn’t give them a ball that they can do a lot with afterwards. That’s problematic when you already can identify we sputter offensively if we start to even get going. It was really hard to watch, but they’re 8 and 2. Yeah, they’re 8, and that carry, that’s gonna carry them to the playoffs. Like they can’t blow it now as far as making the playoffs. Yeah, uh, Collin made a great observation. I thought earlier it’s speculation, but it could be true. He said he thinks that Knicks is playing, he’s overwrought with anxiety, and then in the fourth quarters. And it’s like I can’t think about, I just got a playoff instinct. That’s when he’s been better. So I don’t know if that’s the case. Obviously, Sean Payton put a lot of expectations on his shoulders going into this season, but I’m not, I’m not ready to write, and I know you haven’t been with Knicks his whole career. I’m not ready to write him off and say this is him. Like he played really well last year, especially the second half of the season. And, and, you know, he’s had his moments obviously this year in the 4th quarters. So I think he can get there. I think it’s in his head. Some of those throws, I mean those are mental, some of these bad misses he’s having. So they might be able to get him back, but I, I, I was surprised at your take as far as respecting it cause I thought you were just gonna rip it. I do, I think two things can be true, like I don’t consider them a Super Bowl contender right now. But I do respect what they’ve done. I mean, when you look at where they were, yeah, the, the team, when you look at where they were when Sean Payton took over, you gotta give him credit. I agree. I think he’s made some mistakes. I thought he made some bad calls last night, but You gotta respect what he’s done. He’s made them one of the better teams in the NFL with what looked like, I mean, he had Russ, you know, Russell Wilson, like, it looked like a disaster and he turned it around. And then to your point, the defense, they’re getting, the special teams has struggled, we saw that in some of the videos. The quarterback has been bad, and yet they’re 8 and 2 and So you have to respect it, but it, it could be like that Pittsburgh 12-4 in 2020 and Philadelphia even turned out to not be real when they went 10-1 at the beginning of, uh, 2023. Um, Dusty, if you can grab the Bo Nix throw from Weird and Wonderful and drag it down, I just wanna ask Greg a question about that specific play. That was supposed to be a touchdown. I know you’re just talking about checkdowns, but his footwork on that particular play, not like I’m the quarterback guru, but he’s all kind of like happy feet here. Is that so bad if you just watch his feet here and he’s just like on top of it, he’s, he’s, you know, the mechanic seems so off. Is that actually kind of like a batter to cross sports? Is that like a batter in a slump? Like, hey man, just set your feet and you’re a good quarterback. Like you got to the NFL and you’re not doing. You know, basic quarterback mechanical footwork. So obviously you wanna, there’s a timing to what that a timing clock that you gotta have in these situations when I saw this throw and Herbstreit kind of mentioned it in the broadcast, like he just never even thought to set his feet. He saw a wide open guy and was like, let me just throw it there and. When I see things like that, it’s, it’s not that it’s not even a confidence thing, it’s a you’re, you’re moving too fast, slow down, relax, and I feel like he feels pressure. Because sometimes when even when he was escaping the pocket he’s escaping into pressure and it was weird to me because it’s like you’re, you’re setting yourself up but this this was just bad this was just bad I see a guy I gotta hurry up and get to him and I don’t even think to set my feet that is like elementary. I listen, I know this is going to sound, it might sound harsh and it just, it is what it is and I’m glad Brew, I appreciate you saying that. You were surprised by the fact that I, I am trying to bifurcate my analysis here. I do think the Broncos team deserves respect, but we talk all the time about, man, maybe that quarterback was really good, and he just was in the worst situation possible. You have dropped. A five-year college player into a team where they are never off-game script early because the defense keeps them in every game. And teams always have to worry about the run or the pass. You have a head coach whose entire calling card is drawing up open guys and amazing offense. You have the best offensive line in football, and he looks like this. I am, I, I am not exaggerating when I tell you my opinion is, I think there are 25 starting quarterbacks in football that if we drop them into the Broncos right now, would look better than they actually are. And so like, and better than what the Broncos are getting right now. This is kind of an ideal circumstance for a young quarterback to be in, and that’s the production they’re getting. That’s the big concern for Denver. It’s time now for the hottest segment in all of sports. It’s upset alert. And it’s a controversial segment. It’s not controversial at all. Turns out how, you know how analytics ended up. OK. Ruining, for lack of a better term, some of the sports that you love. Too many threes, for example, baseball had to change the rules. Too many home runs, the shift. We have learned in the last few weeks of upset alert that the one point for covering and then you get the amount of points for the outright win plus 3 or something. Yeah. Just makes for a not a competitive game. Well, so hold on. What would show the, show the scores and go to the rules. Coaching Greg got a 15.5 pointer last. So basically you could pick every game right from week one to week 16 and we have half a point. Oh, if you go against the spread, on what, what do you mean? K picked every game right for 16 weeks. It would be a minimum. Of if I got every game covered, again, it’s not called cover. Show the rules, dust. It’s very straightforward. Everybody understood stands. We all agreed to it, but we learned you get a minimum of agreed to read the, read the final two bullets. You get 1 point if your team coverage fails to win outright. The point is to honor the alert part of upset alert. It should be 0 points, but we want to. Honor the alert part. You get a minimum of 3 points if you’re ups and alert wins outright, plus number of bonus points, commensurate points. That is flawed. It is obviously flawed. Oh, OK. Well, you weren’t saying that when you were wearing a, a groundhog hat and you were the punk Sonic Phil football. You’re just saying it because Greg and Coach are cooking record. That was before we did the scoring. Well, it is. I, I just gotta give a shout out to coach because right now, coach, you’re putting the team on your back. You got, did he? Most of the big wins, yeah, we, we have 3 wins. I have 1 coach has 2, but he has hit grand slams on both of his, so credit to coach. But, uh, this week, are you disappointed he’s getting lucky. Yeah, he just, he knows what’s the biggest upset every week? Well, this week I’m going with the Arizona Cardinals, and they, they’re, they’re facing off again absolutely they’re going up against the Seattle Seahawks. I know we’re all excited about the Seattle team, as am I. Uh, but this team in Arizona. It’s starting to heat up in the desert, really? Yeah, it’s starting to heat up in the desert. They made a decision at the quarterback position. I’ll get to that, but when you look at this team, and I know every time we show a team’s remaining schedule and we look and we see the Cardinals, we’re like, oh, that’s a win, but really is it when you look at what they’ve been able to do, they’ve, they’ve won games, they’ve been in close games every single week. These are their losses, they’ve led in every one of their losses. And then they end up finding a way to lose. That’s a sign of a team that just doesn’t know how to finish. That doesn’t mean that they’re a bad team. Now you insert a veteran at, at the quarterback position that steadies everything, gives us a little bit more production on the offensive side of, of, of the ball, allows our defense to rest a little bit because we’re sustaining some drives. We’re actually waking up a. Draft pick that we all thought was just gonna be sleep throughout the rest of the entirety of the year and Marvin Harrison Junior, like these are the numbers when Kyler was starting versus now what you, what you have with Jacoby Brissett. This is why I feel like this team has a chance in every single game because they’ve been in every single game. Now you have Jacoby Brissett, not a, not a world beater, he’s gonna. He’s gonna take some sacks, but he’s gonna put the ball in the end zone and he’s gonna protect the ball. I like where they’re going defensively. Jonathan Gannon always has had a really good defense. The defense can play a little bit better, but this is a team that in that division they’re going to scrap to the end, and it’s heating up in the desert. It’s, it’s in Seattle. I know the desert. Well, they’re in the desert. They’re practicing right now in the desert. They’re in Arizona to play. I know they’re playing. I know they’re that means nothing. I’m just desert rain. I mean, OK, I actually like your pick. I, I would have picked that had you not picked it first. I, I do like that pick, um, because I, I agree. I like Arizona. I mean, and you know they’re due for one. You know who else is due for one? You, the Atlanta, me, yes, the Atlanta Falcons. Three straight L’s played very similar to what you’re talking about. So you’re shaking your head. They, they, yeah, get them to play their worst. Uh, it’s, it’s in Europe, so everybody’s thrown off a little bit. All right, I. I would feel even better about it if Indy weren’t coming off a loss. All right, so they’re coming off this loss. They’re gonna obviously wanna make amends for that. But who do they have next? The Chiefs coach, coach, part of his reason for picking that upset last week was looking ahead and obviously Indy is thinking about Kansas City. I don’t care what they say. They’re thinking about the Chiefs. Atlanta 3 and 5, their seasons on the line. Like they lose this game, it’s probably over. And I don’t think they feel like it’s over. They’ve almost beat Tampa Bay. They almost beat New England, like they have reason to feel like we are right there, just like your, your, uh, Cardinals except I think they, the Falcons are more talented. The receiving corps, I know you, you got a good one too, but the quarterback Pennix, I’ll take him over Jacoby Brissett, you know, the defense, one of the best ranked in the top 5 total defense. So I think Atlanta is gonna go out here and shock the world this weekend. Plus I need to go big games. They’re gonna sprinkle a little sauce on that sauce garner and eat that on. No, I mean, it’s the first game withdrew. I love, I, I love that upset alert, and you left out one thing. Well, you did. I mean, called to build for fast track, and this is on a soccer pitch in Germany, a little foggy weather. It helps. Is it gonna be foggy? It is. I looked, it’s gonna be foggy. He definitely did was showing Greg foggy, foggy. It’s not morning time. I’m just telling you, it’s supposed to be foggy. I’m just telling you. I don’t know. I’m, this is such a guarantee the Puckittani Phil of Football is not even fired up for it. Well, you need it, buddy. No, I don’t. I, I was correct. You do need it, but you wanna, you wanna catch up. You wanna win. Oh The Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles are underdogs coming off of a bye in Green Bay that just lost to the Panthers. Doesn’t that seem super obvious to everybody? It was so obvious. I had to get in the Google Doc early to stake my claim. Uh, how’s Jalen Hurts do as an underdog? Surprise, surprise. And this is a little bit, Jalen Hurts is such a winning quarterback. We’ve gotten to the Mahomes category where it’s like, how does he do on a waxing, uh, you know, gibbous moon? It’s like, guess what? Excellent. 5 and 2 as an underdog, he’s always good. How about the last calendar year? Felt like we. Maybe he wrote Jalen Hurts off a little bit too early. 20 and 2. Remember, we always take out that commander’s game where he got hurt in the first quarter. Deep passes, how’s that? How’s, how’s his arm look throwing the ball deep now that AJ Brown’s back? Oh, surprise, surprise. In everything. Saquan’s coming off his best game against the Giants and a bye, so he’ll be extra fresh. Jalen’s coming off of a perfect game against the Vikings, and then he just had a nice little game against the Giants. I feel the only reason I wasn’t going to pick this game. It felt a little too obvious. Oh, trap trap a little bit. Micah Parsons has, I think, 3.5 sacks, maybe 1 forced fumble against Jalen in 3 or 4 games, but he was quiet last week. Yeah, he was shut out. That means he’s gonna be loud this week. Maybe, maybe not. Be a good 5.5 pointer. I would only want the one. OK, well, that’s not how it works. What’s the time now? It’s time now, whether you like it or not for next year. You can’t do that. You can’t switch to whether you like it or not. You, you found a loophole. All right, you bet the losses were bad. There’s no way around it. The win, the winner was up 28-0 at halftime, but I had the Lions laying 8.5. They lost outright. I had the Chiefs laying 1.5. They lost outright. No excuses. Point thumbs, not fingers. Bad week. The only way to earn back the audience’s week is with a perfect week. I feel it. Luckily. I haven’t liked it. I, it was hard for me to pick just 3. There were 5 games I loved this weekend. I narrowed it down to 3. We are starting with. Bake show. Sorry, KW K KW is a Pats fan. He doesn’t even want the Pats to win. Baker off a buy at home, laying less than a field goal. By the way, Baker is a favorite off a buy, 4-0. Baker, uh, with extra rest, 6 and 4 against the spread. Patriots a little banged up. Baker, offensive line getting healthier finally, even though the skill position guys are not. I believe with respect to the Patriots, the Bucks are the better team. They’re the more well-rested team. They are at home. I am laying less than a full field goal, no problem. Even that Baker last second magic field goal to win covers Bucks minus 2.5. Next. Everybody knows the Colts aren’t built to play outdoors, particularly in Germany, and I’m getting 6.5 with the Falcons. This line was 5.5, and then they traded for Sauce Gardner and moved a point. That is America overreacting to a fancy trade, and we all know a corner should not move the Vegas spread a full point. Also, real analysis here, not weatherman analysis, which is real analysis, but Greg doesn’t. Hey Greg, De Forest Buckner important to your team because he’s out for this game. In fact, he just went on the IR actually kind of a big story, particularly about to play that guy Bjon Robinson and the Atlanta Falcons. Here’s the other thing, it’s a Europe game. They’re sleepy early. They’re weird, and I’m getting almost a full touchdown. I don’t need the Falcons to win outright like Brew does. I see him recover the 6.5. I think they could win outright. Falcons plus 6. Snap. And last but not least, when you need to break a losing stretch, you know what you do? You go to Mike Tomlin as a dog. Mike Tomlin getting 3. Tomlin in his career as an underdog, 67, 40 and 4 against the spread. As we had the Steelers last week as a dog on the pod, not on the show. They won outright. I think they can do it again. All I’ve heard all week is, uh, you can’t blame Justin Herbert. Joe Walt’s not there. Well, you know who is there? TJ Watt and Nick Herbig and Cam Hayward coming for him. I think the Steelers are gonna win outright. I’m getting 3 points. And one other thing. I know this says it’s at the Chargers. That’s because it’s in Los Angeles. But you know what? You know who’s gonna be in a silent count in this game? Justin Herbert. There’s gonna be Steeler fans galore out there buying up those LA fans, uh, tickets, and it’s gonna feel like a Steeler home game. So 3 picks this week. One favorite, two dogs, the Bucks laying 2.5, the Falcons getting 6.5, and the Steelers getting 3. That, my friends, is a 3-0 weekend to get to 500 before the stretch run. You watch. I’m rooting for you because I think it’s good for the show. I’m rooting for you too because I think it’s good for the show. Thanks guys.

Nick Wright, Chris Broussard, Kevin Wildes, and Greg Jennings make their picks for Week 10, including the Atlanta Falcons upsetting the Indianapolis Colts, the Philadelphia Eagles vs. the Green Bay Packers, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. the New England Patriots, and the Pittsburgh Steelers beating the Indianapolis Colts.

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Nick Wright, Chris Broussard, and Kevin Wildes team up on First Things First. The trio offers their take on a bevy of sports stories alongside special guests from across the sports world.

Eagles vs. Packers ‘not close’ 🤯 Colts on Upset Alert, Bucs & Steelers on NIck’s Picks | FTF
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