The road to the Super Bowl goes through… ‘NEW ENGLAND’ – Damien Woody 🔥 | Get Up

The road to the Super Bowl goes through… ‘NEW ENGLAND’ – Damien Woody 🔥 | Get Up

Wood chef Rex Ryan. Let’s go. Late night last night. If he didn’t stay up, well, he didn’t miss much. Game of the night. Rogers and the Steelers visiting the Chargers on Sunday night. Right off the bat, this is Rogers backed up. Alex, what’s he thinking here? I have no idea, Greeny. This was a defensive battle. Field position game, but now you’re dancing around in your own end zone. You fumble it off your own lineman. I mean, at least he jumped on the ball, Greeny. That’s all I can say here. Troy Fatanu, his own guard, is the one who actually does lock the ball out. So, it’s a 3-2 game now. The Steelers are down 53, which sounds a lot more like the Pirates are playing the Dodgers. And then what happens here, Alex? Again, another force. I think, you know, Rogers getting frustrated. Uh, he looked angry all night and threw this ball over the middle high. He looked angry. Yeah, that’s how old people look, man. That’s how they look. Old people look angry. Now, we got 16 seconds left in the half. And Rex, here’s your adopted son, Justin Herbert. Yeah, the bazooka. Boom. There it goes. Right there. Touchdown of Maki. Chargers up 123 at the half. Now fourth quarter, Steelers down 15-3. They’re going for it on a fourth down. What do we think of the play call here, Alex? This makes no sense. I mean, to throw up a fade to DK Maf into double coverage. Like, this is what you do on first down, man. Fourth down in the game. There’s there are a thousand more things that are more dynamic than this. They had just no offense working at all. And then last little chance here. Rogers looking for Calvin Austin. Rex, a feet for hands. Uh, come on, dude. Are you kidding me? Look at this. Look at this. Just point up. Tough night. Rogers through two picks. Chargers win it big 2510. Afterwards, Mike Tomlin not in a particularly good mood. I’m I’m not lacking confidence. I don’t need a pat on the back. Um, we stunk it up tonight. We’ll be back. How would you assess Harris performance tonight? How would you next? You know, I expect to play great every single week. And this was not my best performance. I got to play better than this for us to win. Whatever it takes. I got to make a you know, if it’s if it’s better checks, if it’s better throws, whatever it is, I got to play better. I will. What was the first thing you said to me this morning? Rogers looked every bit his age last night. He looked like a old quarterback, scared to get hit out there, took sacks, wasn’t accurate. And I mean, listen, make no mistake about they got their butts whipped by an injured Yeah. Los Angeles Chargers team. Yeah. And so, we’ve been kind of talking about the Pittsburgh Steelers now for a couple weeks. Like, do we think that this is sustainable as far as holding on to the division? I think last night gave you the glimpse of why most people think that they’re not going they’re not going to hold on to this lead in the AFC North. I believe he he did look old at times, but then he’s making these mistakes that rookies mistake. I mean the safety in your own end zone in this defensive battle, right? Throwing the ball high over the middle and then he did not play well. This is a clean pocket. That is a wideopen NFL receiver. This is a throw that you should make 10 out of 10 times. We throw it 10 ft at the rim. A receiver almost comes down with this. This again, this is open in the NFL, right? Like that he’s got him beat. It is man-to-man. Give him a chance. We underthrow it. Then this one again, backside, it’s a run call. We come back to throw this into a drop defense. He does that a lot, by the way. And then this third and six, just chuck and duck. He feels the pressure. Doesn’t want to take a hit, right? Like it would this pedestrian doesn’t begin to describe what this was like last night. Like this like it it did it put me to sleep. Yeah. I mean, I I should have gone to sleep because I I watch this game. Why? I have no idea. Like Aaron Rogers looked awful. Okay. The receivers stunk too though. Yeah. I mean the one dude with the feet for hands, but like literally can we saw a couple where guys actually were open. Uh there were a million where they were just getting deeded up all over the field. So to me that they have no receivers. All right. I like the running back, but for some reason they don’t run the ball. Maybe Aaron’s checking out the pass. I mean just give it one of those little deals again. I can’t stand watching it. and their defense actually played better than they have been, but they’re still terrible. I don’t know that any of this is a terrible surprise. Remember last week Dominique Foxworth saying, “No, I don’t believe in the Steelers after they beat the Colts because they had five turnovers in that game and they were able to win by a touchdown.” ESPN Bet was calling this division when the Ravens were three, four games back and standing there with a one and five record. ESPN Bet still had the Ravens as the favorite to win the division. Look at it now. I mean, those are overwhelming numbers. – 275. For those of you who don’t speak gambling, they are a prohibitive favorite and right now they are one game behind the Steelers. The two teams play two more times. The Ravens schedule is set up for Baltimore to win the division. This just feels like the Steelers are descending. The Ravens are ascending. And like I said, ESPN called it before anybody. You said you said to us this morning, the Steelers tried. We were all wondering why didn’t they get any help before the trade deadline. You were saying they tried. They were in on Jacobe Myers. They made calls on Jaylen Wadd. They made calls and all the receivers that were out there trying to get somebody else in there. They recognized that they needed help. They just didn’t get it before. I I had a really good one for him. Uh George Pickkins would have been pretty. But by the way, they couldn’t trade him fast enough. Oh, I know. That’s what I him fast enough. Like last night just wasn’t their formula, right? again at the beginning of the year when they signed Aaron, this was going to this was going to be play defense, field position, be good situationally, win tight ball games. Like they didn’t do those things last night. In fact, they did the opposite. Obviously, turn the ball over, were terrible situational football. They they were over on third down until less than four minutes to go in the football game, right? Like this this is not the recipe. Now, again, they could be competitive, but like I I’m not sure they I would favor them against anybody. No, they’re headed. Meanwhile, there’s a team that a lot of us, myself included, picked to go to the Super Bowl before the season began that seems to be headed that way as well. Show me Josh Allen and the Bills facing Tua and the Dolphins pick it up. First play of the second quarter. Dolphins are up seven zip. And then Alex, how about this throw from Tua? He’s got Jaylen Wadd in the back of the end zone. Yeah, I mean this is when the Dolphins are playing at their best. Little play action pass. Obviously the speed that Wadd brings. And this is a great throw by Tua dropping it down the chimney in the back of the end zone. He had couple passing touchdowns. Two did. Extra point no good. So it’s 13- nothing now. Nine minutes to go in the half. Rex lookie lookie. Fumble by Cookie. Oh golly. Oh that’s a back breaker. Nothing was working for the Bills down 16- nothing at the half. Now we got 6 minutes to go in the third. That’s still the score. Bills third and goal. What exactly is this Alex? This is a force. I mean again you’re down 16 to zero. It’s third down. You’re trying to make something happen and you throw a ball up for a bit. It’s his third red zone interception of the season for Josh Allen. He’s frustrated. Dolphins take over. But now we’re early in the fourth quarter. And I’m not going to lie to you, when I saw this play, I thought Buffalo’s going to come all the way back and win this game. Rex, how about this catch? Oh, it’s unbelievable here. I mean, Coleman ends up making the great catch here. And that’s what we expect to see. All right, Buffalo’s going to come back. And and and but they did not. We got a little tush push. We got a ball punched out. We got a fumble. It’s recovered by Ninka Allen. third time with multiple turnovers in the last five games. Dolphins take it and they go the other way. And then just for good measure, they want to put a little cherry on the Sunday. Rex, this is Devon Han. Gone. You ain’t touching that, dude. 22 carries, 174 yards. Dolphins win it huge 30-13. The 17-point loss, the largest in a divisional game in Josh Allen’s career. just the second time he’s lost a division game by more than one possession. The first time came in his rookie year of 2018. This was supposed to be Buffalo’s season. This was supposed to be the year where they’re favored in every single game when they barely had to travel only one game out of the Eastern time zone and the whole rest of the division looked down. Now they’ve gotten chased down from behind by a young energetic Patriots team. We’re going to get to them in a minute. What do we say about Josh Allen and the Bills this morning? Dwood, they’ve like they’ve lost their window. They’ve they’ve royally messed up their window. They’ve had the AFC East locked down for six years. Yep. And they have nothing to show for it. And guess what? You just mentioned it. Yep. Here are the Patriots. They’re back again. And so you look at Josh Allen. You look at this game yesterday. You know, you heard whispers. Oh, it was the Miami Dolphins. This is not a trap game. I’m sorry. Buffalo, you’re not even leading the division and it’s a divisional game. You got your butts whipped against the Miami Dolphins that we had written off dead to rights, fired their general manager. The coach is basically out the door and all they did was whip your behind down there in South Beach. This is not a bad game. This is more of a bad sign for Buffalo in my opinion. Rex, are the Buffalo Bills contenders or pretenders? They’re pretenders. And look, I this the same team that I picked over Kansas City. All right, because why? Kansas City doesn’t run the ball. I told you they can’t stop the run. How many times did we see this yesterday? Time and time again. This team is one like I I think they’re the worst run defense in the NFL outside the two junior college defenses. I think they’re ranked 30th. Uh so to me it’s like like you where are you going to go? You get in the playoffs, all you got to do is run the ball and you they can’t stop you. They they are allowing Cindy just super quickly we can throw up there 838. The Buffalo Bills are allowing 148 rushing yards. Yeah. And then those other two junior college, the other two teams are a combined 5 and4 on your screen. And the Bills are they think we thought slashthink a Super Bowl contender. Are we stopping that now? Is that conversation over? They looked like it last week, right? I mean, this is a team that dominated the Chiefs at home and really kind of beat him up up front. And then you go down to Miami and it’s not just that you lost it to them, right? Like you gave up 200 yards rushing. rushing 200 yards rushing again. I think there still are some big question marks and this is a mature football team, right? Like to to ride this emotional roller coaster of last week to this week and now you’re you’re looking like you’re going to go on the road potentially in the playoffs. You’re right. You may not win this division, but again, you may have to go to Kansas City. You may have to go to some of these places when Buffalo I think this recipe was obviously such a big homefield advantage and that looks very different now. Chefty Bills. Well, we talked about the Steelers making calls at wide receiver. Bills made calls on Quinn and Williams. The Jets weren’t going to trade Quinnon Williams in the division. Ed Oliver is out indefinitely. The run defense wasn’t great when he was even in there. Now he’s gone. Now the run defense is leaky. It feels a lot like a one-man Superman team. And when Superman isn’t flying, the rest of the team is crashing. And that’s what happened yesterday. And Rex has always said that Miami is the toughest place to play in the league. At one:00 games, one o’clock games, the Heat and everything else. And there’s some distractions in Miami. I don’t know. Uh but it it really is. And to me, look, but am I surprised the Bills laid laid this big of an egg? Absolutely. And because why? Cuz Superman usually is so good that I can just I can do it myself. Could you imagine Buffalo without him? Is this a three- win team? I’m surprised they didn’t make a move last week. Listen, I mean outside James Cook’s phenomenal player. Khalil Shakir is great at running flats and five yard routes, but like outside of that, who scares you on the outside, right? Keon Coleman makes these plays here and there, but he just doesn’t even get enough targets. Take Josh Allen off this team and they’re not all that different from the Cleveland Browns. Yeah. And and look, I mean, there are a lot of teams when you have a quarterback like that, then you depend on him, and that’s all well and good, but the reality is this was a team when you have Josh Allen, you’re going to have multiple windows within his career, you’re going to have multiple windows to win championships. So, his window is not closed. He’s going to be around another decade and they’re going to have chances. But this little iteration of their team, I think you said it exactly right. They had a five-year stretch here. They needed to win one. You got to win one when you have that group and they got blocked out by Mahomes. And right now it looks like they’re going to get caught from behind by the Patriots. We’re up here with Patriots and Bucks in Tampa. We talked about it a lot on Sunday Countdown. Sort of a statement opportunity particularly for the young quarterback Drake May and his team. And then Alex, how about this throw? Look at him stand in the pocket getting hit and just feather this ball to his rookie receiver who’s out of there. I mean I they have more guys that help produce on the outside. I mean know where they get these guys. 72 yd touchdown. Bets game is tied at seven early and now it’s May and it’s to Mario Douglas and he’s off to the races. Patriots would continue a drive that would then result in a fourth and goal. This a gutsy decision here to go for it Rex. Absolutely. And look at this ball. I mean unbelievable. This kid’s in his second year and he puts it. You couldn’t hand it to him better. Look at the look at the feet placement by outstanding feet. Pats up 14 up 14-10. You would know. Here we go. Trayvon Henderson. Rex up the middle. Patriots up 2110. Holy cow is right. Four minutes left in the third. Bucks with a third and goal. Baker Mayfield. This is a great play, Alex. Yeah, Baker doing Baker things. He fought hard in this game to get him back. They just they don’t have enough on the outside. Tez Johnson sticks the landing. It’s 2116 New England. Bucks going for it now on a fourth and three. And Da they’re going to collapse all over Mayfield who he will somehow get rid of it, but it’s not nearly enough. Yeah, this listen this as much as weaker Baker is just crazy. But this Patriots defense is is legit as well. And then one more time, Rex Tvon Henderson. He had 147 yards and two touchdown. I love this. Check the sideline first. Watch that. We’re saying this is a well coached football team, right? You can tell Braves has been on these guys. He busted this one open in four minutes. Midun checking to the sideline if it’s okay to score. Let’s be clear. I’m sure a lot of people in the audience don’t notice that when it happens. He’s looking over there to find out if he should score the touchdown. Yeah. Yeah. This is a four-minute situation and there oftent times depending on the score and it’s very nuanced. Coaches have charts for this stuff depending on the score and how much time’s left, right? Like sometimes you go down and and we’re ending the game and you could see him they were so far backed up you’re not expecting to break one from your own, you know, 30 and he does. So mid run he’s checking to the sideline if he should score or not. Just I thought it was awesome. When when a player does that and you’re the head coach and you see that what’s your reaction? Do you love that guy? Does he endear himself to you when he Oh my gosh. Absolutely. I mean, and his whole team, he’s he’s putting his team over himself, football IQ, and and like like to me, that was amazing. And they’re so well coached, man. I mean, let’s go with that thought cuz we were talking this morning in the meeting about how great Drake May has been and he has been great. There’s no question about it. But Rex, it is a testament to a lot of things, including coaching. Yeah, coaching matters. And you know what? They got the number one coach out there, all right, with this guy. And I’m just telling you, Mike Frabel, Mike Frabel’s an amazing guy. And you know what else he did? He brought a hell of a coach with him in Josh McDaniels. Say what you want about Josh McDaniels. One of the best offensive coordinators in the history of this game and he’s proven it again. You give him a special talent with with Drake May and look what happens. Coaching, playing together and all that. But that was just a great example of like Vrabel is so on top of these guys and it’s all about team. A lot of times it’s guys want to be individuals. We see a lot of these teams that maybe have more talent than the Patriots. They don’t play as well because they play as individuals. This guy has them playing like this and that’s why they are so dangerous. And it’s going to be like that for a while because whereas most great offensive coordinators are coveted as head coaches and get jobs. With all due respect to Josh McDaniels, he’s had two head coaching jobs. He’s very happy in New England with his f. So, he’s going to be there with Drake May for an indefinite period. So, let’s go big picture. Dwood Wood, what was your first thing you said to me this morning about the Patriots? The road to the Super Bowl and the AFC is going through Foxboro. Where have we heard that before? Listen, it goes back to it goes back to what I was saying about about Buffalo. Yes. Yes. If my if my man Brussi was was here, we’d be we’re back. It’s happening again. I can’t take it. This this was like an entire two generations of my life and now I have to deal with it again. But they are legit. That is the tr that’s the case, right? They are legit and they’re at the very beginning of how good they’re going to. That is the absolute truth. And to juxtapose this with the Buffalo Bills who are maybe the worst rush defense in football. The Patriots are the number one rush defense in football by a long shot. And again, I mentioned it the contributors on the outside. Kan Booty’s out. Didn’t matter. Rookie Kyle Williams comes in. Mollins led Matt Collins led the team in catching. I mean got you Stephon Diggs here in a clutch situation. Like this team, they have a top 10 unit on offense and defense on both sides of the ball. Again, they are a very very complete football team. There’s not many teams in the NFL that can boast that. Can we look at the schedules? Does Cindy have those under? Yeah, I do. I have it right here. Patriots. Got it. Uh B12 I have. There you go. Okay. So, take a look at this and look at how the schedule’s set up here in the next few weeks again before they meet again. And the Patriots already have won in Buffalo. Patriots played Thursday night this week against the Jets at Cincinnati, home for the Giants by almost impossible to imagine they don’t win all three of those. Looks like they got worst case in a row. It looks like four buys in a row. Four buys in a row. They’re going to win. When we were walking out yesterday, we all watched the games together on Sundays. I was walking out to go home and you looked at me and you said the this this division race is the it’s the Patriots at this point to lose 100%. The Patriots have played better than anybody expected. They’ve got the quarterback. They’ve got the coaching staff. They’ve turned it around and this organization was in a bad spot a year ago and it has totally turned around. I I think you hit the nail on the head, Sheffy. It’s the speed at which this happened that I think even for us that study football like this is incredible, right? I mean, I think we all knew Braves is a good coach and he put a staff together, but this would take some time. I mean, this has been overnight, right? I mean, this is it’s been unbelievable the job he’s done there. I happened to be with Robert Craft in June to do a podcast thing and I said to him, I know this is going to sound odd. I actually think you may win the division this year. And he said, I think that too. I said, I’m going to text your head coach and tell him. And I texted Varel. I said, I think you’re going to win the division. He said, I’m going on vacation. Leave me alone. Quit putting the pressure on. But I in June I felt like this kind of thing was capable. But it’s happened sooner than people thought. On the left side, the left guard, left tackler, both rookies. I mean, by the way, uh I just got a text from my man Teddy Bruski. He said, “Tell the fellas, yeah, we’re back.” Teddy was here. He’ been doing that jumping up and down thing that he like. Look, here’s here’s what it is a testament to and the big picture. The the two most important people in any football operation, the head coach and the quarterback. They got both of those right. Right. If you get both of those right, give the credit to Craft and whoever else is making those decisions. You got both of those right, you got a chance. I also would throw in the general manager because so many times these teams are fractured because the general manager and head coach aren’t on the same page. And you see here with New England, they went out and got players to fit systems. Y all right. They might not be great for this, but they fit our system and what we want. So, the coaches are involved. Scouting department’s clearly involved. That’s why this team is lined up and that’s why they’re going this way. [Music]

On Get Up, Damien Woody, Rex Ryan, Adam Schefter and Alex Smith join Mike Greenberg to discuss the latest storylines in the NFL, including:

0:00 Chargers vs. Steelers
3:42 Aaron Rodgers vs. Chargers
6:30 Bills vs. Dolphins
8:01 What went wrong for the Bills?
12:12 Patriots vs. Bucs
15:12 How did the Patriots improve so fast?
16:34 Will the Patriots win the AFC East?

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