FOX Sports’ Mark Schlereth Talks Bills, Jets, Broncos & More | Full Interview | The Rich Eisen Show

joining us now as he does every Tuesday, though normally there’s a guy who doesn’t have the fantastic hair sitting in this seat. Threetime Super Bowl champ Mark Slareth is with us. Mark, a lot I want to get into with you coming off of last night’s game. Let’s start with with the Bills. They were 4-0. They seem to be cruising. They were everybody’s Super Bowl pick. The last couple weeks have been a little bit bumpy. What do you make of what’s going on right now in Buffalo? Yeah, I mean I think there’s a lot of things. One, um, you know, you throw a couple of picks, one in the red zone last night. Um, those things always come back to haunt you. They’re inexcusable, but most of the time you look at those picks that are thrown, you get under duress. There’s under pressure throws um that you make and and those things affect the way you play the game as well. You’re everybody’s target because you’re the Buffalo Bills. Um Josh Allen won a MVP last year. So you’re, you know, heightened awareness of the teams you play. You’re going to get everyone’s best shot. And there’s always something with the Bills right now over the last two weeks that have been, you know, kind of what has cost them a game. Obviously, they couldn’t stop the running game, um, Bejan Robinson last night. So that was, you know, that was big. And then you feel like it gets you out of what you do. When I watch the Bills, they have become a very balanced team. They run the ball exceptionally well. They take a lot of pressure and create a lot of play action opportunities for their quarterback. And when you’re behind or things aren’t going the way you want them to go, you tend to get a little pressed on the offensive side of the ball. So, there are a couple things, but I I would tell you this, Tom. I mean, offensive football has been um dare I say in the AFC so up and down at times atrocious. And I don’t know if you watched that Jets uh that Jets Broncos game, but it set offensive football back um into the leather helmet days. I mean, it was so bad. So, there is a lot of that. It’s endemic of the National Football League because of our failures to you know to to make guys practice in pads to actually execute the game and um and work on the game because we have taken a lot of the physicality out of the game under the you know under the guise of hey we’ve got to keep our players safe. Um so there’s a lot of that that is is continuing to um to me to manifest in really poor play across the board. I’ve heard that so many times, Mark, and of course, you know, in your in your days playing, in my early days covering the league over 20 years ago, it was first day of training camp, 845 shells, 3:00 pads. However the coaches structured it, it was true two a day type of environment. Now, of course, you’ve got the ramp up period. There are teams that fundamentally don’t believe in going live at all and have a lot of unpadded days through the course. When you talk about the failure to develop and the failure to have that time on test, what does that mean? What is the impact that we actually see particularly in the early stages of the season here? Hey, how many quarterbacks are hurt right now? Too many. I mean, I had I had Roger I was calling a game a year ago um and standing on the sideline, you know, pregame talking to Roger Goodell and he’s like, “Hey, what are we going to do about all these quarterback injuries?” Well, I got an idea. Make the guys up front practice. Like I say this all the time and I’ll say it to you, Tom. The most skilled position in football is the offensive line. It’s the only position in any sport where you’re matched up against an unlike athlete, where the guy that’s across from you is as big and as strong as you are, but he’s exponentially more gifted as an athlete than you are. And you’re expected to win 100 out of a 100 matchups, 65 for 65. And if you give up one sack, you’ve had a horrible game. And that guy’s going to the Pro Bowl. And you know, if if if a 6’3 point guard blows by an NBA 7 foot center, we don’t go, “Man, that center sucks at defense. We got to get him off the court.” No, you got a great matchup. You know, we don’t put heavyweights against welterweights in boxing. But that that is the equivalent like you have got to be and and it’s five guys that have to be tied together and have to be doing the same thing and on the same having the same communication and knowing exactly what they’re getting. And they are from an athletic standpoint, I mean offensive line, we are the worst athletes collectively on the football field without question. And so every step, every nuanced hat position, hand position, where you want to block guys, all that stuff, all that stuff has to be developed. It has to be worked on. And it can’t be worked on in a walkthrough. It doesn’t work that way. And so you see it and you see diminishing like a diminishing skill set of that position, diminishing development of that position and then you see the results of that are quarterbacks are injured that like you can’t you know all these things all these things kind of pile on and you know I just I I know we’re the golden goose and I know we’re teflon and we all those things but eventually will it cost the NFL viewership? I right now it doesn’t look like it, but eventually will you we look at like, wow, this is just a really bad product. Mark Schlerith is our guest, host of the Stinking Truth podcast. Also, I noticed right there says on the bottom of the screen, Mark, good luck for you. You’ve got the Jets again this week. Panthers at Jets uh for Fox. A two-part question. One, is the Jets offense fixable? And two, have you ever seen an endof situation managed the way that Aaron Glenn did on Sunday? Uh, no. To to answer your first question is or actually your second question, the end of the half management where the clock just ran out and you had 20 some odd seconds and um it just was like at that point it was just like it is so bad that let’s just get into the the lock room and have orange slices and you know maybe we can I I don’t know what that game was so bad fixing the offense. Um that’s an interesting question. Um Justin feels like I think is it fixable? Yeah. But you’re going to have to depart on on what you’re doing right now. This is not Detroit, you know. Um this is not Jared Goff. This is Justin Fields and he is not ready for prime time when it comes to being a drop back quarterback and basically picking a defense apart. And I know there were nine sacks and I know that he was under a lot of duress. No question about it. But at the same at the same, you know, as I as I talk, the same token, um, you got to get rid of the football. Got to get the ball out of your hands. And there were so many times where his inability to decide and him holding the football and deciding not to let it eat and, you know, waiting for a receiver to turn around and look at him before he throws the ball. Like, you don’t have that kind of time. So, you have got to put him in a position of strength, which is what it’s the bootkeep game. It’s the waggle out the front side game. It’s the quarterback design runs, the RPO where you have actually one read. Um, you know, you got a one like a one read route. You got like I think you have to put him in a position where he can excel and what you’re doing right now or at least what you did on Sunday is not the kind of offense that he is going to that he’s going to thrive under. other side of that game, the Broncos who are four and two. They’re tied at the top the AFC West at this point. The the offense though so far, Mark has been pretty up and down. That team’s in your backyard. How how good are the 2025 Denver Broncos? Offensively right now, they’re struggling and um you know, there’s this narrative out there that they have the best offensive line in football, and that’s just garbage. Um they they just have so many, you know, busts, inability to identify linebackers and safeties and who they’re going to. Um that game on Sunday was a debacle. I mean, a debacle. And there were so many mistakes. The first three plays of the game, you you’re in a eye formation. You motion the fullback out of the back field. the linebackers correspondingly move a little bit and your left guard Matt Per who who was starting for the first time. It’s almost like that the linebacker moved and now it’s all a sudden like well since he moved I don’t have to block him anymore. Like I I don’t know. Did he have the Harry Potter cloak of invisibility on? I like I don’t understand like your inability to identify who you’ve got and how to get to that guy um was alarming. And sometimes it’s a matter of sometimes it’s a matter of for Shawn Peyton, I know you like to be very multiple in your run game and have a big menu, but you got to small up and simple down because you guys can’t handle it right now. So the first three p plays of that game, I mean, you practiced all week, you developed it all week. The first three plays of the game were like there were two busts and a fumble. like you’ve got your first 15, you have coached it, you have walked through it, you have done it all, and then all of a sudden we get out there like we’ve never played before. Um, and and that was kind of how that whole day went. And I’ll tip my cap to the Jets because they set the tone, man. They they put a physical ass whooping on the Broncos across the board from receivers to DBs, from offensive line to defensive line, from linebackers to running, everybody. like they they they set the tone physically and the Broncos never actually responded. So, I’ll tip my cat to the Jets for that, but there were a lot of mental mistakes across the board that is just they’re just unacceptable. I I found myself looking this up last night, Mark, as the Bills were kind of having that game get away from him. The preseason betting odds to be the Super Bowl champion, there were three co-favorites coming into the season. It was the Bills, it was the Ravens, and it was the Eagles. three teams that have varying degrees right now of issues they’ve got to sort through in your mind right now there’s no undefeateds left after six weeks which is a pretty rarity too is there a favorite is there one team that above all you say I I wouldn’t want to see that team come January February last uh just last week I said it was Detroit you know and then all of a sudden Kansas City looks like they figured it out but Kansas City look like they figured out two weeks ago and then they go to you they go to Jacksonville on night and lose a game. No, there is just no there is no dominant team. Like if if parody was your goal in the NFL, you know, with the draft and the way you do things and then, you know, first to worst, you know, from a scheduling standpoint and strength of schedule, if parody was your goal, you certainly have achieved it like because there is no dominant team out there in the NFL right now. If you’re talking about, you know, that game too and the way that it ended with the Lions and the Chiefs, there’s the occasional situation, right, that plays out postgame. There’s some type of an instant the NFL has been trying to eradicate those from the game. I’m curious, Mark, in all your years, did you ever think about or actually do, you know, going and popping somebody in the face for something that happened during the game? No. Uh, no, but we did it during the game. Like in the game there was, you know, back in those days there was a little bit of a frontier justice. And you know, like if you did something in the game that was deemed um that was deemed dirty or was deemed like, hey man, that’s that’s crossing the line, then we got to take care of it. and you know and it wasn’t officiated to the point where you know everybody’s getting ejected or those things h like there there was that aspect of we’re going to get you within the context of these you know four quarters uh you’re going to get yours as well and you know and that’s how you know that’s how things got kind of rectified and so I don’t know maybe now w without that and everything seems to be a penalty and um you know and physicality is is fined I mean yeah it it’s so interesting to me. I was doing a a game the other day and you know like social media went crazy because I was like oh come on helmet to helmet like and like like it’s not a that that runner wasn’t u you know that he wasn’t he was you know he took three or four steps he turned up the field you like he wasn’t defenseless it’s like come on what are we what are we doing and so it was helmet to helmet and that’s a 15 yard penalty and I’m like I could show you seven 10 12 other of exactly those play they just didn’t sound as loud Like we flagged anything that sounds loud like like maybe somebody could get hurt. We’ll flag it. I I just I I don’t know. At some point we all signed up to play the game. We understand how violently, you know, how violent the game is. Everybody signed up. Everybody knows the consequence of of playing the game. Um and I’m all for player safety to a degree, but you can’t you can’t uh you know you can’t take physicality out of the equation. It still has to be. You can’t litigate contact out of a contact sport. It just it at some point you have to realize that we all signed up for it and we’re all out here and let’s just let the guys play. When the players get faster and faster, their pads get smaller and smaller. You got wide receivers who essentially have no type of padding from the waist down out there. And yeah, depending where you get hit, there’s going to be some type of a of an outcome. Even in the college game I was watching the other day, there was a targeting call where the defender, from everything I can see, lines him up with a shoulder. It is shoulderto-shoulder. The guy’s head snaps back. He’s thrown out of the game. I mean, again, to your point, player safety is is extremely important. But there are times where just from a physics standpoint, I find it hard to believe that we can avoid certain types of things that by the letter of the law are a foul and, you know, intent apparently is not not part of the equation. Yeah, some of those things there’s nothing you can do about it and it’s just part of the game and and you know like I like I always say and this is offensive to a lot of people. Um there’s a reason that that not everybody can play in the National Football League. One hand of God you’re not gifted enough to play and two you don’t have balls enough to play. Um and that’s just a fact like that just the way it is. Like there’s some guys that can go out there and can do those things and there are a lot of people who can’t. And look at man, I’m not mad at the people who can’t. They just understand that this is what we sign up for. And every guy as a player understands that it’s not if, it’s when. There’s a 100% likelihood that you’re going to get injured. It’s just the way the game operates. And like we know the the consequences now. Like it’s out in the open, right? There is CTE and there is head injuries and there is trauma and there are we’ve seen some brutal injuries. That Tyreek Hill injury is as brutal as any injury I’ve ever watched. Mh. Um, but I understand like we’re still going to line up and play because that’s what we signed up for. So, I’m all for player safety, but but at some point you still have to it still has to resemble football. And I’m not saying that it doesn’t, but we just get further and further and further away. Um, you know, under the under the whole kind of guise of, hey man, we want to keep everybody healthy. Mark, great stuff, man. We appreciate it. Enjoy those uh enjoy that Jets offense again on Sunday. Yeah, it’s going to be it’s going to be beautiful. I appreciate that. That is Mark Schlerth. You can hear him on the Thanks, Mark. Stinking Truth podcast. See him calling the game on Fox this weekend. Always great stuff. Hey, you made it all the way to the end. Thanks for that. Check us out every single day streaming live on Disney Plus and the ESPN app 12 to 3 Eastern.

Fox Sports NFL Analyst/’Stinkin’ Truth’ podcast host Mark Schlereth and Rich Eisen Show guest host Tom Pelissero discuss the Buffalo Bills’ 2-game losing streak, the reason behind so much sloppy play through six weeks of the NFL season, why the New York Jets’ and Denver Broncos’ offenses are struggling mightily, the Chiefs-Lions postgame fight, and why the NFL is trying to “litigate contact out of a contact sport” is a fool’s errand.

Tune in to the Emmy-nominated Rich Eisen Show live weekdays from Noon to 3PM ET on Disney+, ESPN+, ESPN Radio, and streaming on SiriusXM channel 80.

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